DARPA developing cyborg insects

cyborgmoth.jpg
Photo Credit: Mike Libby, Insect Lab

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding research that would embed insects with microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) that would then in turn allow them to be controlled remotely. The program, dubbed “Hybrid-Insect MEMS” or ‘”HI-MEMS,” is funding three research groups at the University of Michigan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Boyce Thompson Institute.

The final milestone [of the project] will be flying a cyborg insect to within five meters of a specific target located some one hundred meters away using remote control or a global positioning system (GPS). If HI-MEMS passes this test successfully, then DARPA will probably begin breeding in earnest. Insect swarms with various sorts of different embedded MEMS sensors–video cameras, audio microphones, chemical sniffers and more–could then penetrate enemy territory in swarms to perform reconnaissance missions impossible or too dangerous for soldiers.

Friday Free Fiction for 5th October

A pretty decent haul this week:

Gareth L. Powell‘s on a roll as far as getting his work published is concerned. In addition to the stuff that’s made it into real dead-tree venues, here’s some of his work you can read for free:

[Disclosure – Gareth’s a good friend, and fellow (founding) member of the Friday Flash Fictioneers]

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[link expunged]

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Via Nancy Jane Moore:

Here’s a goody for your free fiction page: Suzette Haden Elgin‘s
novel, The Communipaths, first published as an Ace double back in 1970, is now available free online.

By the way, Elgin is still writing and publishing — she just released (in print) an SF poetry collection “Twenty-One Novel Poems.” She blogs at http://ozarque.livejournal.com/ .

Also, the new issue of Farrago’s Wainscot is out, with stories by Forrest Aguirre, Michael Jasper, Yoon Ha Lee, Timothy S. Miller and Jenn Reese. Plus poetry and other.

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Clarkesworld Magazine provides us with “Excerpt from a Letter by a Social-realist Aswang” by Kristin Mandigma.

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Project Gutenburg has some freebies by Alan E. Nourse: “The Link“, “Meeting of the Board” and “My Friend Bobby“.

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Here’s a new site that I’d not heard of before: Every Day Fiction does what it says on the tin, and delivers you a short story (apparently not always sf) every day. I discovered it after Ken MacLeod noticed he got a name-check in a piece called “Security Question” by Ramon Rozas III.

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Chris Roberson‘s on a roll with his own Friday Freebies – here’s a big old chunk of his novel Paragaea.

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The one and only Charlie Stross isn’t able to give away the entirety of his latest novel, Halting State, under a Creative Commons licence, but he is able to provide us with some of the early chapters – start with the prologue.

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Futurismic’s own Jeremiah Tolbert has a great flash piece up at the Daily Cabal – “My Cell Phone is a Slut”, no less.

And as always, if you’ve a hunger for the bite-sized stuff, the Friday Flash Fictioneers can deliver: the above-mentioned Gareth L. Powell gives us “Driving to the Moon”; Gareth D. Jones has his tongue in his cheek with “The Alliterati”; Martin McGrath has been playing catch-up after a few weeks of silence, and you can see the results; Neil Beynon delivers “A Bit Of A Pickle”; and there’s always “Secrets of the Faith” by yours truly. Looks like some of the gang are running a little late this week, so you may want to keep your eyes peeled for work from Shaun C. Green … and last but not least, welcome to our newest recruit Dan Pawley, whose FFF debut is entitled “Transportation”.

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And one to watch out for in the weeks to come – Fantasy Magazine is moving entirely away from print and changing to a free weekly online format – and increasing their per-word price for accepted fiction in the process!

Enjoy your weekend!


Authors, editors and anyone else – if you’ve got something free to read or listen to that you want included in next week’s round-up, drop an email to me (Paul Raven) via the address embedded in my name on the Staff page. Cheers!

[tags]free, fiction, stories, online[/tags]

Fancy living at sea?

1483480507_66500ff5a0_m.jpgThis funky partly-submerged oddity is a design for a floating house, with five stories and enough room for six people. Featuring a bathroom and guest room slightly underwater and a lower level observation room for looking into the ocean depths, this would be a room fitting of many a sf or Bond villain! It even includes an electrical generator and enough storage for weeks of food and water. The entire structure is plastic, fibreglass and acrylic but will cost potential buyers a cool $2.5 Millon, which isn’t actually that much compared to a lot of mansions these days.

[via Neatorama, photo by sub-find]

Jet-lagged hamsters, U.S. military among Ig Nobel winners

Pink-eyed white hamster It’s Ig Nobel time again, as the Annals of Improbable Research honors research achievements "that make people laugh – then think." This year’s winners include the U.S. military for its plans to make a "gay bomb," the use of Viagra to help hamsters recover from jet lag, and a medical study of the risks of sword swallowing. (Via New Scientist.)

The awards are handed out by real Nobel laureates, and the popular ceremony (this year’s theme: Chickens!) also featured a humorous "Moments of Science" skit and a contest to win a date with a Nobel laureate ("He’s shapely, he’s sassy and he’s smarter than you.")

Alas, no one from the U.S. military showed up to receive its Ig Nobel. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons.)

[tags]Ig Nobels, research, humor[/tags]

Wearable monitors – cyberpunk style for the subway

Scalar's Teleglass T4N wearable monitors From the “cyberpunk gadgets I’ve always wanted” department come these stylish and remarkably svelte wearable monitor glasses, which deliver any NTSC video signal to a pair of tiny monitors right in front of your eyes … and still allow you to see beyond them, so as not to bump into people while watching music videos on the metro platform. In a couple more years, these things will be as cheap and ubiquitous as PMP earbuds – which should make avoiding eye contact on your daily commute that much easier. [Image re-ganked from PinkTentacle post]

[tags]wearable, display, technology[/tags]

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