Internet access for soldiers in Iraq is a precious resource — at the government sponsored Internet cafes time limits of 10 to 15 minutes are common. Enterprising soldiers have set up their own satellite-based ISPs in places where electricity comes from generators.

Researchers at MIT developed a new material optimized for manipulating liquids at the nano scale by imitating the Namib Desert beetle. The material (and the beetle’s shell) combines a superhydrophobic surface with superhydrophilic bumps laid out in a pattern to collect and direct liquid.

Terrorists – they’re everywhere. You can’t trust anyone these days. Hell, even the people making the processors and other chips for your military hardware could be coding in back-doors and cut-outs to disable your systems at a critical tactical moment! Better ask the academics for some help on this one…maybe outsourcing wasn’t such a great plan after all.

Never a group to pass over an interesting idea, no matter how costly or otherwise impractical, DARPA have been thinking about ways to keep a whole city and its environs under watch, 24/7. They rather like the idea of a huge robotic surveillance-panopticon blimp floating high above the target town – the trick will be making the entire hull of the airship work as a phased-array antenna. I’m not going to hold my breath.

Nowadays we cart around more digital data than ever before, and the consequences of it falling into the wrong hands are high. Hence the proliferation of security technologies like Nanoident’s fingerprint-locked smartcards, which rely on scanning the finger deeper than just the surface skin for a more accurate identification.