The White House just announced a new research initiative focused on mapping the human brain, which sadly, does not involve a magic school bus.

The initiative, officially called the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, or BRAIN for short (get it!?), will receive $100 million in funding when it launches in 2014. Its long-term goal is to find out how things react to brain cells — with a eye for finding better treatment for Alzheimer’s and epilepsy and making great advancements in the field of neuroscience. Senior officials in the Obama administrations told the New York Times that the initiative was comparable to the Human Genome Project that maps human DNA.

Right now, brain researchers can only record a few hundred neurons, which is done by inserting wire into an animal or human brain to record the electrical activity as brain cells communicate with each other. The new BRAIN initiative is seeking to record thousands of neurons as well as figure out how to process all the data that comes from it — thus touching on not just Neuroscience, but also computer science and engineering.

The BRAIN initiative is also grabbing support from other government organizations, including Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Foundation. The initiative is one of many mention President Barack Obama in his 2013 presidential address, in which he reinforced the importance of scientific research and advancement.

Check out a video from the White House below that explains the future of the BRAIN initiative embedded below.

Brain image via Shutterstock

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has granted $6 million to Professor Franz Franchetti to develop software that protects unmanned ground vehicles and high-end cars from digital threats. Franchetti is an associate research professor the department of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

“This is an extremely challenging project as we work to develop secure robotic systems that are resilient to cyberattacks,” he said in a statement.

Over the past five years, the U.S. military has focused on unmanned vehicles such as airborne drones because they cost less, are smaller, and allow military personnel to operate them from afar. This removes them from harm’s way and makes high-risk missions more realistic options. However, the technology that helps the vehicles work is also hackable, which provides a significant threat to military security and safety.

A recent study by the U.S. Commerce Department found that cyberthreats cost billions of dollars in lost yearly revenues and threaten not only our economy but our security as well. A Carnegie Mellon release said, “Experts fear a click of a simple computer mouse could ultimately explode a fuel refinery, blind air traffic controllers, or jam an important power grid.”

DARPA supports the development of a number of tech projects, such as a “robo-horse of doom” and funneling $3.5 million into maker-haven TechShop to create “insta-factories for weapons systems.” With this contract, Franchetti’s team will develop verification tools such as virtual high-assurance sensors and automatic software systems “to help computers figure out that they are under attack and to help them survive and continue operating.”

Carnegie Mellon University is a private institution based in Pittsburgh, Penn. that’s well known for its engineering programs. Read the press release. 

Photo credit: The U.S. Army/Flickr

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, makes really freaking cool horse-robots. Or spider-robots. I’m not sure what this thing resembles, but it’s a human-sized robot that can now do more than trot along and get back up if it falls — it can stalk you.

The horse, otherwise known as Legged Squad Support System (LS3), comes out of a partnership between DARPA and the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, as The Atlantic notes. It now listens to a “leader follow” command, which tells it to follow a target wherever it may go. A description on the YouTube video of LS3 says that its footing and ability to roll and get back up when it falls have also improved. This means it can stalk you in a number of different terrains.

Unfortunately, the horse isn’t exactly quiet. Its gears and mechanical parts make a constant whizzing noise that is guaranteed to bring attention to it. That is, unless you’re stalking someone in the Forest of White Noise, then you’re good.

Of course, some might ask, why not just use a regular, quieter horse? Can a horse stalk your target and potentially be outfitted with cameras or maybe even weapons one day to take out that target? NOPE. Not unless it’s Mister Ed, and really, the most spectacular thing we saw out of him was some advanced vocal cords.

Check out the video for more of what LS3 can do, including galloping and walking through tight hallways:

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say they have created the smallest transistor yet from a material that could one day replace silicon in semiconductor chips.

Silicon has ruled for decades. But the team at MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories has created a 22-nanometer chip made of the compound material indium gallium arsenide.  (A nanometer is a billionth of a meter). The material is a promising candidate to eventually replace silicon in computing devices, said co-developer Jesús del Alamo, a professor at MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), who built the transistor with EECS graduate student Jianqian Lin and fellow electrical engineering professor Dimitri Antoniadis.

For years, chip makers have successfully shrunk the dimensions of electrical circuits etched in silicon, allowing huge numbers of transistors to be squeezed onto chips. But the amount of power that can be fed through those tiny circuits is limited, since the chips run the risk of melting down. This has led to fears that Moore’s Law — the prediction by Intel chairman emeritus Gordon Moore that the number of transistors on microchips will double every two years — could be about to come to an end, del Alamo says.

An alternative is the compound indium gallium arsenide, which is already used in fiber-optic communication and radar technologies. The researchers have shown it is possible to build a tiny metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) — the type most commonly used in logic applications such as microprocessors — using the material.

“We have shown that you can make extremely small indium gallium arsenide MOSFETs with excellent logic characteristics, which promises to take Moore’s Law beyond the reach of silicon,” del Alamo said. “Through a combination of etching and deposition we can get the gate nestled [between the electrodes] with tiny gaps around it.”

The research was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Semiconductor Research Corporation.

The team is presenting its work this week at the International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco.

But I can’t resist this one. And it is, after all, news. Even the BBC agrees.

The U.S. Army has successfully tested a lighting laser gun. Yeah. How cool is that: lighting, laser, and gun, all in one weapon.

Gotta be an Al Qaeda car

Here’s how they describe it: a “device that will shoot lightning bolts down laser beams to destroy its target.” I sure hope the grunt who gets to use it first is of Scandinavian origin and has a name like “Thor.”

This is how it works: a very brief but incredibly intense laser beam paints the target. By intense, the army means 50 billion watts of optical power … about 500 million times more powerful than the light bulb illuminating your room.

By some trick of physics, very intense laser beams focus themselves in air. And when they are intensive enough, laser beams generate an electro-magnetic field “strong enough to rip electrons off of air molecules.” Army scientists explain it all right here.

Thor wishes he had an LIPC

That does two things. First, it creates free electrons … the raw material for a lightning bolt. Second, and just as important, it creates a channel of plasma along the path of the laser beam.

(Plasma is just ordinary matter stripped of some of its electrons.)

As you might have guessed when reading “channel,” plasma is a highly efficient conductor of electrons … much more efficient than the surrounding ordinary air.

And given that lighting bolts are just lots and lots of electrons desperately seeking a cool place to crash for the night but soon, you have just created everything you need to aim lightning.

In fact, you’ve created a weapon straight out of science fiction or fantasy: a lightning laser gun.

DARPA has outdone itself again.

But not really in the naming department. Some unimaginative army pencil-pusher has labeled this fantastical machine the Laser-Induced Plasma Channel (LIPC).

Doesn’t quite have the ring of a BFG, does it?

Image credits: Thor/ShutterStock, Lightning/ShutterStock

Here are some of the most interesting responses, from the I-want-that-too to the wow-are-you-serious to the funny and sometimes slightly randy. Have your own? Post a link in the comments!

I want that too

Colonization of space. Hands down. RT @GeneHa: RT @darpa: What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
Simon (@simlee009) June 17, 2012

Human flight, unfettered from fuselages. RT @DARPA: What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
Darrin (@Hawkspring) June 17, 2012

Renewable clean energy 4 everyone, everywhere RT @DARPA: What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
Green News Report (@GreenNewsReport) June 16, 2012

I believe we were promised flying cars. RT @DARPA: What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
  (@DjWeideman) June 16, 2012

Teleportation. I'd like to visit Australia, quickly. @DARPA What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
Michael Stone (@mikeydog) June 16, 2012

The Hoverboard, of course! -> “@DARPA: What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?”—
Pablo Llopis (@pablollopis) June 17, 2012

And end to poverty, disease, and shitty drivers. RT @DARPA: What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
Alex (@barbamagnifico) June 16, 2012

Replicators! Food for everyone!! RT @DARPA What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
Kanwe Twitty (@silentxmedia) June 16, 2012

Wormhole bus stops. RT @SeleneMSC Transporters! RT @DARPA: What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
Peter Patau (@MadisonGuy) June 15, 2012

Wow, are you serious?

the torture droid Darth Vader uses against Leia RT @DARPA: What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
Sam Biddle (@samfbiddle) June 15, 2012

Robotic spy drones over U.S. soil @DARPA What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
Robert Laurie (@RobertLaurie) June 16, 2012

Duh! DEATH RAY @DARPA: What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
David (@sleepytako) June 16, 2012

RT @andylevy Black goo that tears apart your DNA RT @DARPA: What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
  (@subject_delta) June 16, 2012

PLEASE DEVELOP A BEAM THAT CAN STEAL MY SOUL. RT @DARPA: What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
Josh Greenman (@joshgreenman) June 16, 2012

Funny

Time travel, but you'd have done it already. RT @DARPA: What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
Josh Greenman (@joshgreenman) June 16, 2012

3 boobed alien from Total Recall RT @DARPA What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
Max Robinson (@DieRobinsonDie) June 16, 2012

very tiny Rick Moranis RT @DARPA: What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
John Herrman (@jwherrman) June 15, 2012

chewbacca RT @DARPA: What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
Matt Novak (@paleofuture) June 15, 2012

The blue busty alien that Cpt Kirk banged? RT@DARPA What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
Kelly S. (@kelter1) June 16, 2012

Flying toasters RT @DARPA: What technology from science fiction would you most like to see as science fact?—
Liam O'Donoghue (@Liam_ODonoghue) June 16, 2012

For more (and newer updates) check Twitter.

Image credit: ShutterStock

Today DARPA took a break from funding next-generation weapons systems, advanced hypersonic aircraft, and frickin’ laser beams to put $3.5 million into TechShop, the paradise for “inventors, makers, hackers, tinkerers, artists … and anyone else who wants to be able to make things that they dream up but don’t have the tools, space or skills.” TechShop currently operates 5 locations around the US, giving members access to a vast array of tools, building space, and lessons.

In authentic military tradition, the project has a funky acronym: iFAB. The Instant Foundry Adaptive through Bits partnership between TechShop, DARPA, and the Department of Veteran Affairs is intended to “create a foundry to rapidly design and reconfigure manufacturing capabilities to support the fabrication of a wide array of military vehicles.”

In other words, DARPA wants to create insta-factories for weapons systems and military vehicles. Think a pop-up shop that follows the military through a battle zone: instead of new equipment manufacturing, repairs, and upgrades taking place thousands of miles away, military hardware could be built and serviced near the war zone and returned to battle within days.

“Supporting initiatives that expand the number and diversity of talent contributing to the nation’s defense is critical to DARPA’s efforts in advanced manufacturing,” DARPA director Kaigham Gabriel said in a statement. “The resources made available through this effort enables more people to ‘make,’—the DNA of creativity and innovation.”

According to BusinessWeek, the funding will enable TechShop to open two new locations in Washington, DC, and Pittsburgh, joining locations already in Menlo Park, Raleigh, San Francisco, San Jose, and Detroit.

The Veteran Affairs also gains from the partnership. TechShop announced that, as part of the partnership, 2000 one-year memberships which typically cost over $1000 each, will be made available to veterans. Jonah Czerwinski, director of the VA’s Center for Innovation, said that iFAB supports the VA’s goal of “finding new ways of providing veterans with resources that help them serve an important role in America’s economy.”

Photo credit: cell105/Flickr

DARPA, the U.S. military’s research arm, is getting ready to issue a call to arms — specifically, humanoid arms on a new kind of robot.

DARPA’s Grand Challenge, a prize competition for technological innovation that could be useful in military applications, began in 2004 as the military’s way of crowdsourcing new designs for driverless cars. Now, DARPA is preparing to proclaim a new Grand Challenge.

This time around, the military is looking for a better humanoid robot: a bipedal machine for use in all kinds of terrain and environments, up to and including industrial disasters.

DARPA program manager Dr. Gill Pratt announced the new objective at the Defense Threat Reduction Agengy’s Industry Day. According to sources present at that event, Pratt, whose specialty is in robotics and human/machine collaboration, said DAPRA plans to grant funding to six hardware teams and twelve software teams in the Grand Challenge.

In addition to the robots themselves, DARPA is looking to fund environmental simulations and will be working with unpaid hardware and software teams, as well.

DTRA Industry Day attendees report that DARPA is looking for a robot that can do the following:

• Navigate itself into a open-frame utility vehicle, hop into the driver’s seat, and drive the vehicle to a specified location.
• Exit the vehicle, unlock a door, and go through the door.
• Safely travel down a 100 meter-long hallyway littered with debris.
• Climb a ladder
• Fix a gas-leaking pipe
• Replace a broken pump

The U.S. military has been showing off new robotics projects in a big way lately. Just last month, the Navy held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a state-of-the-art new robotics lab, complete with a range of realistic testing environments (rainforest, desert, wave pool, etc.) and a few humanoid bots, as well.

More details on the DARPA Grand Challenge should be coming soon, so stay tuned to the DARPA newsroom for upcoming information.

While the long-necked flightless ostrich is a puzzling and often humorous creature, the Department of Defense’s thinks it’s the perfect design for a robotic “terror bird” that will help protect human soldiers in combat when it is completed, according to The Register.

Dubbed “FastRunner,” the prototype is being developed by two teams of scientists at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) and MIT. The project statement from DARPA (the research and special projects wing of the Department of Defense that brought us the Internet) is to design a bipedal robot that can run 20 miles per hour on a flat surface, and maintain a pace of 10 miles per hour on choppy broken ground or hills to identify enemy combatants, hidden munitions or other threats to human soldiers.

“Having just two legs, the robot is lighter and simpler … than a four-legged machine,” Sebastien Cotton of the IHMC told The Register. “There’s also more flexibility … a two-legged robot can get through narrower spaces. That said, the same leg design could work for robots with four legs or more.”

The robot is expected to weigh about 66 pounds, according to Gizmag, and stand 4.59 feet (1.4 meters), which is slightly smaller than a mid-sized adult male ostrich, and roughly half the size of a large specimen.

Working with computer simulators, the teams have more than 70 percent of FastRunner’s first leg designed. Once built, the robotic ostrich could carry out surveillance and reconnaissance and search and rescue missions where human soldiers might be at risk. And unlike the real ostrich, this bird will never hide its head in the sand.

Big Blue is announcing today that it, along with four universities and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), have created the basic design of an experimental computer chip that emulates the way the brain processes information.

IBM’s so-called cognitive computing chips could one day simulate and emulate the brain’s ability to sense, perceive, interact and recognize — all tasks that humans can currently do much better than computers can.

Dharmendra Modha (pictured below right) is the principal investigator of the DARPA project, called Synapse (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics, or SyNAPSE). He is also a researcher at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif.

“This is the seed for a new generation of computers, using a combination of supercomputing, neuroscience, and nanotechnology,” Modha said in an interview with VentureBeat. ”The computers we have today are more like calculators. We want to make something like the brain. It is a sharp departure from the past.”

If it eventually leads to commercial brain-like chips, the project could turn computing on its head, overturning the conventional style of computing that has ruled since the dawn of the information age and replacing it with something that is much more like a thinking artificial brain. The eventual applications could have a huge impact on business, science and government. The idea is to create computers that are better at handling real-world sensory problems than today’s computers can. IBM could also build a better Watson, the computer that became the world champion at the game show Jeopardy earlier this year.

We wrote about the project when IBM announced the project in November, 2008 and again when it hit its first milestone in November, 2009. Now the researchers have completed phase one of the project, which was to design a fundamental computing unit that could be replicated over and over to form the building blocks of an actual brain-like computer.

Richard Doherty, an analyst at the Envisioneering Group, has been briefed on the project and he said there is “nothing even close” to the level of sophistication in cognitive computing as this project.

This new computing unit, or core, is analogous to the brain. It has “neurons,” or digital processors that compute information. It has “synapses” which are the foundation of learning and memory. And it has “axons,” or data pathways that connect the tissue of the computer.

While it sounds simple enough, the computing unit is radically different from the way most computers operate today. Modern computers are based on the von Neumann architecture, named after computing pioneer John von Neumann and his work from the 1940s.

In von Neumann machines, memory and processor are separated and linked via a data pathway known as a bus. Over the past 65 years, von Neumann machines have gotten faster by sending more and more data at higher speeds across the bus, as processor and memory interact. But the speed of a computer is often limited by the capacity of that bus, leading some computer scientists to call it the “von Neumann bottleneck.”

With the human brain, the memory is located with the processor (at least, that’s how it appears, based on our current understanding of what is admittedly a still-mysterious three pounds of meat in our heads).

The brain-like processors with integrated memory don’t operate fast at all, sending data at a mere 10 hertz, or far slower than the 5 gigahertz computer processors of today. But the human brain does an awful lot of work in parallel, sending signals out in all directions and getting the brain’s neurons to work simultaneously. Because the brain has more than 10 billion neuron and 10 trillion connections (synapses) between those neurons, that amounts to an enormous amount of computing power.

IBM wants to emulate that architecture with its new chips.

“We are now doing a new architecture,” Modha said. “It departs from von Neumann in variety of ways.”

The research team has built its first brain-like computing units, with 256 neurons, an array of 256 by 256 (or a total of 65,536) synapses, and 256 axons. (A second chip had 262,144 synapses) In other words, it has the basic building block of processor, memory, and communications. This unit, or core, can be built with just a few million transistors (some of today’s fastest microchips can be built with billions of transistors).

Modha said that this new kind of computing will likely complement, rather than replace, von Neumann machines, which have become good at solving problems involving math, serial processing, and business computations. The disadvantage is that those machines aren’t scaling up to handle big problems well any more. They are using too much power and are harder to program.

The more powerful a computer gets, the more power it consumes, and manufacturing requires extremely precise and expensive technologies. And the more components are crammed together onto a single chip, the more they “leak” power, even in stand-by mode. So they are not so easily turned off to save power.

The advantage of the human brain is that it operates on very low power and it can essentially turn off parts of the brain when they aren’t in use.

These new chips won’t be programmed in the traditional way. Cognitive computers are expected to learn through experiences, find correlations, create hypotheses, remember, and learn from the outcomes. They mimic the brain’s “structural and synaptic plasticity.” The processing is distributed and parallel, not centralized and serial.

With no set programming, the computing cores that the researchers have built can mimic the event-driven brain, which wakes up to perform a task.

Modha said the cognitive chips could get by with far less power consumption than conventional chips.

The so-called “neurosynaptic computing chips” recreate a phenomenon known in the brain as a “spiking” between neurons and synapses. The system can handle complex tasks such as playing a game of Pong, the original computer game from Atari, Modha said.

Two prototype chips have already been fabricated and are being tested. Now the researchers are about to embark on phase two, where they will build a computer. The goal is to create a computer that not only analyzes complex information from multiple senses at once, but also dynamically rewires itself as it interacts with the environment, learning from what happens around it.

The chips themselves have no actual biological pieces. They are fabricated from digital silicon circuits that are inspired by neurobiology. The technology uses 45-nanometer silicon-on-insulator complementary metal oxide semiconductors. In other words, it uses a very conventional chip manufacturing process. One of the cores contains 262,144 programmable synapses, while the other contains 65,536 learning synapses.

Besides playing Pong, the IBM team has tested the chip on solving problems related to navigation, machine vision, pattern recognition, associative memory (where you remember one thing that goes with another thing) and classification.

Eventually, IBM will combine the cores into a full integrated system of hardware and software. IBM wants to build a computer with 10 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses, Modha said. That’s as powerful than the human brain. The complete system will consume one kilowatt of power and will occupy less than two liters of volume (the size of our brains), Modha predicts. By comparison, today’s fastest IBM supercomputer, Blue Gene, has 147,456 processors, more than 144 terabytes of memory, occupies a huge, air-conditioned cabinet, and consumes more than 2 megawatts of power.

As a hypothetical application, IBM said that a cognitive computer could monitor the world’s water supply via a network of sensors and tiny motors that constantly record and report data such as temperature, pressure, wave height, acoustics, and ocean tide. It could then issue tsunami warnings in case of an earthquake. Or, a grocer stocking shelves could use an instrumented glove that monitors sights, smells, texture and temperature to flag contaminated produce. Or a computer could absorb data and flag unsafe intersections that are prone to traffic accidents. Those tasks are too hard for traditional computers.

Synapse is funded with a $21 million grant from DARPA, and it involve six IBM labs, four universities (Cornell, the University of Wisconsin, University of California at Merced, and Columbia) and a number of government researchers.

For phase 2, IBM is working with a team of researchers that includes Columbia University; Cornell University; University of
California, Merced; and University of Wisconsin, Madison. While this project is new, IBM has been studying brain-like computing as far back as 1956, when it created the world’s first (512 neuron) brain simulation.

“If this works, this is not just a 5 percent leap,” Modha said. “This is a leap of orders of magnitude forward. We have already overcome huge conceptual roadblocks.”

[Photo credits: Dean Takahashi, IBM]

We’ve included a number of videos that IBM has released describing the project.

IBM’s Bill Risk builds a brain wall.

Columbia University’s Stefano Fusi describes the brain vs. the computer.

IBM researchers John Arthur and Paul Merolla describe the inspiration for the project.

IBM researcher Dan Friedman discusses circuit architecture of the brain computer.

Steven Esser of IBM research describes the software

An overview of cognitive computing.

Peiter Zatko, a famous hacker (known as Mudge) from the early L0pht group, is now program manager for cyber security at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. At his keynote speech at the Black Hat security conference, he painted a grim picture of the cyber security landscape — and he proposed a new DARPA program to deal with the problems.

He noted that the number of viruses keeps rising, even though the amount of money the federal government is spending on cyber security is also rising.

“It looks like the Russian government during the Cold War,” he said, referring to how rising defense spending drove the old Soviet Union into ruin.

Zatko analyzed 9,000 samples of malware code and found that, on average, each consisted of 125 lines of software code. That’s not a lot of cost, time, or engineering effort. By comparison, the most sophisticated cyber protection software uses about 10 million lines of code. And, based on research by IBM, there are one to five bugs introduced in every 1,000 lines of code, Zatko said.

Malware writers thrive by finding bugs and exploiting the vulnerabilities that the bugs introduce. Modern day operating systems may consist of 150 million lines of code, which means that each new OS can introduce 150,000 bugs to exploit. These numbers make it seem like keeping up with the bad guys is a losing game, Zatko said.

Zatko was also cynical about antivirus software vendors. He said those vendors are motivated to create fixes that eliminate each new branch of malware. But he said the heavy cost of investing in software that takes out a whole new source of viruses — what he calls a tree — tends to scare off the antivirus vendors. They can charge subscription fees for patches that fix each little branch, but they usually can’t monetize a gigantic fix so easily. So the antivirus vendors are commercially motivated to keep putting Band-aids on the problem of an explosion of malware.

That’s why Zatko is proposing a new DARPA-funded program to fund lots of “maker spaces” for hackers and boutique security firms. He is doing so to try to get around the huge government contractors that tend to move too slow. He wants to fund the equivalent of the new Homebrew Computer Club, the creative maelstrom that led to the creation of the first personal computers. Dreamed up over the past nine months, the Cyber Fast Track is aimed at accelerating the government’s interaction with security startups and small vendors.

“The average government program is created in 81 months,” he said. “That’s six years. …Time is a hot commodity in cyber.”

He pointed out some examples of projects that got funding and took a few people a small amount of money to produce. He said one project created “attritable” unmanned aerial vehicles, with five people working for half a year. Zatko said this program is why he signed on with the government to get something done. Under the programs, the government gets government-purpose rights for whatever gets created and the creators can commercialize the technology.

About 20 to 100 projects will be funded each year, with 14 days as the target time to create a contract.

“We have to come up with a new process,” he said. “This is cool stuff. We can hack this stuff together.”

Defense Department’s Grand Challenge moves downtown — The great annual race of robotic cars, until this year held in the desert, is moving downtown. The DARPA-sponsored event awards the winner $2 million. Unmanned vehicles will attempt to avoid people and buildings instead of boulders and sagebrush, with no remote control or other human interference. (See Merc story here.) The goal is to help the Defense Department fulfill a Congressional mandate: that one-third of combat vehicles be unmanned by 2015. Guess this is a sign of the times: While the U.S. military rolled through the Iraqi desert with no problem, managing street warfare is more of a challenge. Meanwhile, a Jon Feiber, a venture capitalist sponsoring one of the competition’s entrants, suggests the project could help with traffic congestion. Another possible payback my be fuel efficiencey, if cars are pacing themselves at optimal distances from each other, and at optimal speeds.

Speaking of traffic, look at Wikipedia‘s — Google traffic going to Wikipedia is exploding, with Wikipedia now the No. 3 website in Google’s downstream, after Google Image Search and MySpace, according to HitWise. That’s phenomenal, for a non-profit company that has less than ten full-time employees (Ars Technica has good summary. It’s costly, too. Wikipedia’s bandwidth this year is expected to cost up to $100,000 a month, and it’s running more than 350 servers. With annual costs at about $5 million a year, but incoming donations at barely $1 million, something might crack soon — the company says it only has three to four months of cash left. Put two and two together: If Wikipedia’s getting that much traffic, all is has to do is put up a few Google ads. If anything, Google will look more favorably at sending even more searchers over to Wikipedia — and monetizing the site would be easy. We don’t know founder Jimmy Wales’ personal motives, but publicly at least, he’s proclaiming he doesn’t want to let ads onto the site.

Fancy that, hedge funds are actually useful — The NYT cites a study showing that hedge funds boost the value of companies they invest in, at least in the very short run, on average, and holding on to the gains for at least a year.

For the green tech fans — William Hudson writes an engaging piece about the challenges faced by ethanol and other forms of alternative energy. He concludes with what we all should know, i.e., that the sun is where the magic is. Future breakthroughs will be around how we harness its immense power. That’s why investor Vinod Khosla is pitching the benefits of solar lately, and this goes beyond the solar panels we traditionally associate with solar.

Visto gets $35 million more, to sue? — When we asked the mobile messaging company Visto last Wednesday whether the Redwood City, Calif. company could comment on reports it had gotten $35 million more in venture capital, a spokeswoman said she couldn’t comment on “speculation.” Two days later, on Friday, the company issued a press release confirming the investment. So why was Visto so secretive, seeking to avoid acknowledging the December funding? Well, as Valleywag points out, the lead investor, Altitude Capital Partners, turns out to be a specialist in investing in companies with patents and “historical litigation.” We’ve already mentioned how Visto appears to be going down litigation path. It hasn’t made money in ten years, so perhaps this is the only way?

New York is back — Here’s a good story about New York’s reemergence as a technology hub, given its weight in the publishing and advertising worlds.
This, though, after the NYT recently wrote about Silicon Valley as the new hegemon.

Sparter, offers virtual currency trading — While auction giant eBay decided to ban sales of virtual property, there’s a new company, called Sparter, that is stepping in to let gamers trade virtual currency. The company has received venture capital funding from Bessemer Venture Partner, and while it wants to work with IGE, a service that lets gamers trade in their virtual currencies for one game in exchange for another, Sparter apparently wants to also let you bypass IGE, letting you trade directly with other gamers. (Via Virtual Economies.)