DSIAC collects and publishes articles related to our technical focus areas on the web to share with the DoD community.
SpaceX’s successful static firing of its Falcon Heavy rocket Wednesday in preparation for the rocket’s expected maiden flight next month is important for the Department of Defense and the intelligence community. Why? It could lead to big savings. Today, United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, has a tight grip on
Rice researchers show how to optimize nanomaterials for fuel-cell cathodes. Nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes or modified graphene nanoribbons may be suitable replacements for platinum for fast oxygen reduction, the key reaction in fuel cells that transform chemical energy into electricity, according to Rice University researchers. The findings are from computer simulations by Rice scientists who set
“Two-dimensional materials” — materials deposited in layers that are only a few atoms thick — are promising for both high-performance electronics and flexible, transparent electronics that could be layered onto physical surfaces to make computing ubiquitous. The best-known 2-D material is graphene, which is a form of carbon, but recently researchers have been investigating other
Arsenal including electromagnetic railguns and microwave weapons aims to neutralize web of satellites that give US its main strategic edge. China’s military is developing powerful lasers, electromagnetic railguns and high-power microwave weapons for use in a future “light war” involving space-based attacks on satellites. Beijing’s push to produce so-called directed-energy weapons aims to neutralize America’s
A multi-institutional team led by the U.S. Department of Energy”s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) discovered a way to create new alloys that could form the basis of next-generation semiconductors. Semiconductor alloys already exist-often made from a combination of materials with similar atomic arrangements-but until now researchers believed it was unrealistic to make alloys of
Some biodegradable plastics could in the future be made using sugar and carbon dioxide, replacing unsustainable plastics made from crude oil, following research by scientists from the Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies (CSCT) at the University of Bath.
What exactly do we mean by an “enhanced” human? When this possibility is brought up, what is generally being referred to is the addition of human and machine-based performances (expanding on the figure of the cyborg popularised by science fiction). But enhanced in relation to what? According to which reference values and criteria? How, for
The emergence of inexpensive small unmanned aircraft systems (sUASs) that operate without a human pilot, commonly known as drones, has led to adversarial groups threatening deployed U.S. forces, especially infantry units. Although the U.S. Army and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) are developing tactics and systems to counter single sUASs, a new report by
Scientists at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and the Georgia Institute of Technology are focused on the development of batteries that improve the safety and energy density of ones currently found on the battlefield. The joint modeling and experimental work reports on the progress towards the discovery of novel solid state electrolytes that would allow
Microbiologists led by Derek Lovley at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who is internationally known for having discovered electrically conducting microfilaments or “nanowires” in the bacterium Geobacter, announce in a new paper this month that they have discovered the unexpected structures in many other species, greatly broadening the research field on electrically conducting filaments. Details
Scientists reveal how electrical resistance in metallic granular media decreases as the pressure on the micro-contact interface between the grains increases. In a recent study published in EPJ E, a French team of physicists made systematic measurements of the electrical resistance – which is inversely related to conductivity – of metallic, oxidised granular materials in
For over 30 years, Silicon Valley has been known as the world”s center for digital innovation, but that perception is becoming as fresh as a flip phone. China is determined to become the world leader in the IoT, and just launched the second half of a ten-year, $US60 billion plan to cultivate domestic innovation in