Technology

In February, the Ministry of Defense (MOD) in Great Britain unveiled its plans for modernizing its military. Curiously similar to the US Army's recently killed Future Combat System, the British program looks to bring a new generation of unmanned vehicles, advanced sensors and energy weapons to the battlefield.

However, unlike its American counterpart, it looks like this project is a go.

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The end-of-the-year holidays are a time of tradition and ritual. The waiting on line at the airport. The flight getting delayed due to snow. And of course, the annual Thanksgiving vacation lost luggage.

To help alleviate that holiday travel-related stress, Google is giving a holiday present to every traveler who passes through 47 specially designated airports: free Wi-Fi.

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Sensor-studded clothes, carpets, and homes could track the gait of grandma or grandpa and ensure that they're not in danger of falling. The U.S. National Institute on Aging has sponsored initial research into how such wireless monitoring could better monitor the health of a growing geriatric population. The European Union has also devoted $1.5 billion to studying technologies and services for the aged.

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UK netizens may find their online activities under ever-greater scrutiny in the near future. The UK government has pushed ahead with a proposal to require monitoring of Internet usage, including social networks such as Facebook and conversations within online games.

The new UK law would require communication firms to hold records of who contacted whom, rather than the actual contents of online conversation. About £2 billion ($3.34 billion) would go toward compensating the firms for the technical challenge of collecting the data.

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Moving through real-life battlefields inevitably proves trickier than playing a game of Minesweeper, but Spanish researchers and army officers have converted the video game Panzer General into a simulator that can test troop maneuver algorithms based on ant colony behavior.

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Google's Android does a lot more these days than just smart phones and nifty mobile gadgets. An Internet pioneer is using the platform to launch a interplanetary Internet protocol on Earth that could harden wireless networks against delays in data transmission.

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According to Kwabena Boahen, a computer scientist at Stanford University, a robot with a processor as smart as the human brain would require at least 10 megawatts to operate. That's the amount of energy produced by a small hydroelectric plant. But a small group of computer scientists may have hit on a new neural supercomputer that could someday emulate the human brain's low energy requirements of just 20 watts--barely enough to run a dim light bulb.

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Despite the vehicles' armor, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) can still take out Humvees and MRAP vehicles with ease. But a company wants to change that equation with airbags that neutralize incoming RPGs and prevent them from exploding.

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Pen and voice input for computers is so early-millennium. Now Microsoft has created a next-gen computer concept that includes touchless gestures and eye-tracking, and has taken the device on a college tour with chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie.

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In 2008, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) banned double amputee Oscar Pistorius from racing in the 2008 Summer Olympics. Later that same year, the ban was reversed. The back and forth centered on Pistorius' specially designed, spring-loaded, prosthetic legs. The IAAF argued that artificial legs designed especially for running gave Pistorius an unfair advantage against runners whose flesh-and-blood limbs didn't benefit from advanced engineering and space-age materials.

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