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Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh admits Office of Naval Research engineer to United Kingdom's Royal Academy of Engineering

Hitoshi Narita tells us that as a child growing up in Nagoya, Japan, he was fascinated by large structures…airplanes, ships, trains… anything that was large, mechanical, and moved. Watching the large cargo ships coming in and out of the ports near his home, he knew even then that he wanted to be...

November 11, 2002

Snakes, Robots, and the War on Terrorism

It's mighty daunting to be called a " brilliant young innovator" whose " work and ideas are apt to change the world…a visitor from the future, living among us here and now." Talk about pressure. But that's exactly what MIT's Technology Review Magazine called Howie Choset, mechanical engineer and...

November 01, 2002

Fiery Ice From the Sea

If you know anything about methane gas – and the Office of Naval Research thinks you should – it probably has something to do with swamp gas, and a faintly unpleasant sulfurous smell that rises from country marshes on sultry, summer evenings, or perhaps – for more romantic types – stories of Will-o'...

November 01, 2002

The Genius of International Science Collaboration

For the last 50 years, the Office of Naval Research has been in the business of guiding the most "imaginative research" * found across the country. Technologies taken for granted today – the cell phone, the Global Positioning System, the laser, the national bone marrow donor program, for example –...

November 01, 2002

Advanced Sonar Makes Quick Transition into Mine Reconnaissance System

Arlington, VA -- The Unmanned Undersea Vehicle office at the Naval Sea Systems Command has announced the rapid transition of synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) into the Long Term Mine Reconnaissance System (LMRS). The Office of Naval Research's Commercial Technology Transition Office made possible the...

October 28, 2002

Visceral Reality

The stuff of Army and Marine Corps boot camp is legendary - mud, grueling marches, hours of, climbing and crawling with the requisite 100-lb pack, through smoke, barbed wire, gun and missile fire, with sweat, little sleep, scanty rations, and punishing, in-your-face "trainers." The culminating final...

October 03, 2002

Robots Powered by the Ocean Itself

They call them "gliders," but these move through water instead of air. Two new robotic gliders—autonomous underwater vehicles—powered by changes in their own buoyancy or by different temperature layers in the ocean—will be tested opera-tionally off Southern California this winter. Both gliders were...

October 02, 2002

Detecting Breast Cancer with a New Algorithm

What does remote sensing for camouflaged enemy ground vehicles have to do with breast cancer diagnosis? By next year, perhaps plenty. A smart sensor fusion algorithm modeled on the human visual/brain "unsupervised" learning system and a 200 channel hyperspectral remote sensing capability have been...

September 04, 2002

From Tanks to Tumors

What does remote sensing for camouflaged enemy ground vehicles have to do with breast cancer diagnosis? By next year, perhaps plenty. Both find threats in hidden in innocent clutter. The Office of Naval Research's newly developed 200 channel hyperspectral remote sensing capability — modeled on the...

August 22, 2002

Tagging the Great White Shark…and a Few of His Friends

What will some 4,000 of the smartest dressed elephant seals, tuna fish, albatrosses, leatherback sea turtles, great white sharks, and other pelagic megafauna in the Pacific all be wearing in the coming seasons? How about the latest in microprocessor-based electronic tags, some no bigger than...

August 22, 2002