China insists the aircraft carrier is being developed for research and training, its development raises eyebrows in Washington due to China’s increasingly advanced military and their aggressive posturing towards Taiwan and other areas of the South China Sea.

China has been increasingly aggressive in the pursuit of getting Taiwan to rejoin with mainland China, a move which most Taiwanese people reject.  Taiwan has been developing missiles capable of striking an aircraft carrier. China has been slowly rising tensions  with Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam and South Korea which all have the explicit backing of American Naval power in the area.

China has defended its carrier program as other countries are far more advanced than them in their development or have just purchased carriers from other governments.  Regional rival India purchased US carriers more than a decade ago.  While in the future China’s carrier program could be a threat to the United States Naval Power it will be many years before they can pose a significant threat.  The US currently has 11 carrier battle groups which stand on the cutting edge of military technology.

Russia started building the carrier before the collapse of the Soviet Union.  It called the carrier program the Varyag but never completed its development. China bought the ship from the Ukraine, which had acquired it from Russia  in 1998 and spent years building it.  The Varyag had no engines, weaponry or navigation systems when China first purchased it.

Do you believe that China’s Carrier program poses a threat to US interests in Asia?

Secret Chinese Warship Photographed By Denver Satellite Company is a post from: The Inquisitr

Anthrax is a dangerous bacteria that is a weapon of choice for terrorists in our modern world but because it looks so innocuous it is difficult to spot it for what it is. This is why simple envelopes filled with baby powder can be enough to clear a building and send the threat level up.

To make the detect job easier researchers at the University of Albany and Cornell University have created a device the size of a suitcase that can identify whether that powder is anthrax or not within an hour.

The basic design, which is small enough to fit in the overhead compartment of an airplane, potentially could be tailored to detect countless other pathogens, such as salmonella, or be used in the field for DNA forensics.

“It was built with the notion of being portable,” said Carl Batt, Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor in the Department of Food Science at Cornell and a co-author of the paper published in July in the International Journal of Biomedical Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (Vol. 2, No. 2). Nathaniel Cady, Ph.D. ’06, a nanoscale engineer at the University of Albany, is the paper’s lead author.

Seven years in the making, the detector requires that a sample be inserted into the device. From there the machine automatically recovers cells, collects and purifies DNA and then conducts real-time polymerase chain reactions (PCR) to identify if anthrax is present. PCR can amplify extremely small amounts of DNA and is a well-established platform for rapidly detecting biological material.

The researchers began by acquiring what amounts to a small suitcase-sized plastic box with the notion that, “whatever we do, it has to fit in here. It was a line in the sand, an engineering challenge where everything had to fit in the box,” Batt said.

The shape of a heavily reinforced suitcase, the device is complete with pumps, heating and cooling elements, and optical and computational circuitry.

via PhysOrg

Chalk one up for the good guys. Can we do something about those airport scanners next please.

A suitcase-sized anthrax detector created by researchers is a post from: The Inquisitr

[Dontevenreply.com, via Geekologie]

Awesome: Man seeks disguised weapons, hilarity ensues is a post from: The Inquisitr

As a result of attending a conference where a $1 million “sea-sick flashlight” was demonstrated by the Department of Homeland Security some folks got together to create their own open source version of The Dazzler called the Bedazzler.

While you can’t buy this as a finished product or as a kit but you can download the instruction to build your own for under $250. As well they have made the source code, schematics and PCB files available for download.

Make your friends puke for $250 – and a little DIY is a post from: The Inquisitr

The new battle armor would provide protection from nuclear, biological and chemical attacks. As well as a totally reworked protective vest they would be outfitted with a bulletproof helmet that will be wired for video-cam transmission.

As far as the armament goes the rifle called the K-11; which could actually see real field usage before the body armour, is a double barreled assault rifle that lets them shoot either NATO 5.56 or 20 millimeter grenades; all from the same trigger. Apparently day and night aiming is done with a thermal target seeker that can calculate the distances automatically.

Maybe Master Chief’s armour not so far off is a post from: The Inquisitr