Beams of light > Spectrum of lights > Technology
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In an age of aerial drones and driver-less cars, Rolls-Royce (RR/) Holdings Plc is designing unmanned cargo ships. Rolls-Royce's Blue Ocean development team has set up a virtual-reality prototype at its office in Alesund, Norway, that simulates 360-degree views from a vessel's bridge. Eventually, the London-based manufacturer of engines and turbines says, captains on dry land will use similar control centers to command hundreds of crewless ships.
Drone ships would be safer, cheaper and less polluting for the $375 billion shipping industry that carries 90 percent of world trade, Rolls-Royce says. They might be deployed in regions such as the Baltic Sea within a decade, while regulatory hurdles and industry and union skepticism about cost and safety will slow global adoption, said Oskar Levander, the company's vice president of innovation in marine engineering and technology.
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Iron Dome is a mobile all-weather air defense system developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems in collaboration with the US Department of Defense. It was designed to intercept and destroy short-range rockets and artillery shells fired from distances of 4 to 70 kilometers away and whose trajectory would take them to a populated area.
The system, created as a defensive countermeasure to the rocket threat against Israel's civilian population on its northern and southern borders, uses technology first employed in Rafael's SPYDER system. Iron Dome was declared operational and initially deployed in March, 2011 near Beersheba. A year later, the Jerusalem Post reported that the system shot down 90% of rockets launched from Gaza (rockets which will land in unpopulated areas are ignored). By November 2012, it had intercepted and disabled more than 400 rockets. In July of 2014 the Iron Dome continues to intercept and destroy hundreds of rockets that threaten Israeli civilian population.
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By augmenting their bodies and minds to acquire animal-like abilities, some people are trying to sense a world that most humans cannot experience.
At the end of World War I, the aristocratic Horace Ridler returned to Britain from Mesopotamia a changed man. Turning his back on his privileged upbringing, Ridler tattooed his face and body in swirling patterns, took to wearing a large nose ring and stretched out his earlobes. Donning a costume of jewelled robes, he reinvented himself as Omi the Zebra Man and toured with circuses such as Barnum and Bailey, and Ripley's Odditorium. Ridler was just one in a long line of people who devoted themselves to taking on animal-like appeareances.
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Android wearables provide just the right information at just the right time, allowing you to be connected to the virtual world and present in the real world.
Designing for Android Wear is substantially different than designing for phones or tablets, so we'll start by describing how your content can work in tandem with the overall Android Wear vision. Android Wear experiences are contextually aware and smart. These devices bring a new level of awareness to computing. Rather than requiring attention and input from users, Android wearables are aware of their situation and state displaying the right information at the right time. Timely, relevant, specific.
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Despite ramped-up security efforts in anticipation of the 2014 Winter Olympics, concerns persist over terrorist threats facing the games. CFR Distinguished Visiting Fellow Raymond W. Kelly highlights three things to know about the threats and response preparedness in Sochi.
