NASA is testing a portable surgery robot in an underwater testing environment. The test will involve a remote surgeon sewing a tear in a rubber tube and conducting a skill test used for student doctors. The delay time between the movement of the robot and the feedback to the surgeon will be about 1 second. The connection will travel via 'a commercial Internet connection' from Seattle to Key Largo, FL. Then by wireless connection to a bouy. The Raven portable medical robot is tethered to the bouy. There is no further description of the internet connection used in the article...ISDN? IP2 with standard of service protocol?

Boing Boing posting this slashdot piece about internet routing in space (IRIS). The Defense Department launched their first 'IP-aware' satelitte this month. The satellite is able to send and receive IP packets without sending information to earth. This will enable satellites to communicate with each other, and effectively make them another network resource.

This BoingBoing blurb talks about a project from the Department of Defense looking at a system for 'Augmented Cognition'. The Boing Boing folks want more information about how it would work - and mostly they are just talking about the poor content of the video, which is available here. Surprise! It's a DARPA project.

I am suddenly reminded of one of the first DARPA projects that I ever heard about. It was to develop a helmet for the military that would keep the wearer awake and alert without the need for drugs. Also the helmet would stimulate the aggression centers of the wearer's brain. Looking at the article now, it appears as though I read a few things into the article (there must have been another article somewhere). MUSC says that the idea is to 'improve soldier performance'. Remember, this project is the first time that I had ever heard of DARPA. I think that the helmet project automatically gave them creepy status in my mind. The project was given to the Military College of South Carolina, MUSC. The press release I read is available here at MUSC's site and is dated from May, 2002.

Shelly Minteer and her colleagues from St. Louis University has been working on prototypes of a sugar fueled fuel cell to power portable electronics. The fuel cell works by using an enzyme to break down the sugar and gain electricity for the system. She has used sugar water, flat soda, tree sap and drink mixes successfully in the fuel cell. Shelley is currently powering a hand held calculator with this device. She hopes that in the future she will be able to use this renewable and biodegradable source of power as a battery replacement. The US Department of Defense, who funded the work, hopes that she will be able to generate enough electricity to power their portable battlefield gauges and sensors.