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  • HIGH TECH SKY TECH
  • WHEN EVERY MINUTE COUNTS
  • UNDERWATER SHOW STOPPERS

HIGH TECH SKY TECH

Move over, Buck Rogers, and make room, Flash Gordon – there's a new space sheriff in town. Star Fleet is going robot. Soon there could be a war-time battlefield where nary a human combatant is in view, but one in which swarms of unmanned, unattended, and untethered drones on the ground, in the air, and underwater are doing everything that is normally seen in a hostile combat zone: surveillance, strike, perhaps even capture and detention. Imagine hundreds, orthousands of vehicles – perhaps robotic flies or birds – all armed and dangerous, and, best of all, all doing the dirty work.

Now imagine this network as mobile – made ready in a matter of minutes – and modified for use in a massive search and rescue scenario, the likes of which we saw for instance, sadly, on September 11th.

This is the aim of Allen Moshfegh at the Office of Naval Research. His envisioned scenario goes beyond autopilot. It goes beyond preprogramming. His vision involves a ‘commander’ giving a broad operational order to thousands of drones and other vehicles – or agents as he likes to call them – but does not require that same commander having to manage all the minute details of the particular operation he has ordered. In fact, the agents will know exactly what to do, and just how to do it even if things go terribly wrong, as they so often do in war.

Moshfegh has pulled together a remarkable collaborative team from academia (notably Mario Gerla and John Villasenor of UCLA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science), industry, and federal government to develop his Autonomous Intelligent Network and Systems (AINS) initiative. His team includes electrical and chemical engineers, biochemists, and computer specialists, as well as neurobiologists and cognitive neuroscientists. Why these latter? Because Moshfegh sees the similarities and parallels between the way our brains convert decision to intent to action – not neuron by neuron, but only as a coordinated effort between hundreds of neurons. He wants to get his agents to perform in much the same way.

Networking a very few autonomous vehicles and performing an operation successfully is already possible. Moshfegh’s intent differs in that it involves whole battalions of thesevehicles working and communicating and operating together. But, this can only happen if these vehicles can, after a fashion, think for themselves, and if the inherently prickly problems of such a system can be overcome.

What are those prickly problems? Consider mission planning and decision making with what is essentially an army of brainless hardware. Then include distributed signal processing, stored sensory information, distributed computing, mobile internetworking and wireless communication, monitor and control, variance in available bandwidth, hardware engineering difficulties, fault tolerance (the adaptive ability to protect and heal itself from the environment as well as from attack), not to mention demanding wireless communication networks (what Allen calls “Internet in the Sky”) needed by all these vehicles (some moving at 300 mph).

“As always, the ‘devil’s in the details,’” notes Moshfegh. “But this will work. We’ve seen it on a small scale already in the war in Afghanistan.”

An overview of the current status of the AINS initiative was presented earlier this month at UCLA. Copies of the scientific papers presented are available to the press.

For more information on Moshfegh’s AINS program, contact Gail Cleere at 703-696-4987 or email

WHEN EVERY MINUTE COUNTS

A razor nick during a much-too-close-shave ten years ago may result in hundreds of thousands of lives saved in the future. Scientist Frank Hursey was working with absorptive materials back in the late 80’s when he cut himself shaving. He picked up a volcanic mineral he’d been studying and decided to try it on his bleeding wound. The product worked so well as a coagulant that Hursey set to work doing further testing.

After three patents and ten years of testing and development in universities, hospitals, the U.S. Marine Warfighting Lab, the Marine Corps Systems Command, and the Office of Naval Research, QuikClot™ is now ready for prime time. It is a granulated material packaged for individual use that can be poured directly into a profusely bleeding wound to effect coagulation within seconds. Tests conducted for ONR by Dr. Hasan B. Alamat BethesdaNavalHospital were so impressive that the FDA cleared the product earlier this month. Acquisition by the Marine Corps seems imminent, and there is also interest in the product at Joint Staff, Army and Special Forces. The product is already on the ground with U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

“The exact nature of QuikClot™ is proprietary,” says Bart Gullong of Z-Medica in Newington, CT, makers of the product ( “But, the basic ingredient is found in cosmetics and non-dairy creamers. It is chemically and biologically inert, and is non-botanical, so it offers no inherent risk of disease transmission and is non-allergenic.”

QuikClot™ rapidly absorbs all the liquid in the blood, and leaves behind the clotting factors which then get to work immediately. The material itself is indestructible (it is heated to 800F during preparation) and the product costs roughly $20 per unit. It has an extended shelf life, and remains viable in extreme temperatures. It can stay in the body until the injured is removed to medical care, and since it is mineral in nature it changes neither in size nor consistency when wound fluids are fully absorbed, rendering it easily irrigated and/or aspirated. A version of the product is being developed for home and veterinary use as well.

QuikClot™ comes in 3.5 oz packets that can be easily opened and self-applied with one hand, or buddy-applied. “The simplicity, stability and cost will allow combatants to carry a pouch in their pack for self or buddy use, and that is the plan once manufacturing capability is up to speed — about 100,000 units per month,” says Gullong.

“This is a major advance in casualty care,” says Lieutenant Commander Dave Street of the Office of Naval Research. “Battlefield deaths due to massive blood loss remain at around 50 percent — a statistic that has not changed since the Civil War. Anything that will change this will represent a greatly increased chance of survival for the wounded.”

For more information on this story, or to interview Dr. Jeannine Majde-Cotrell, ONR’s program manager on this research, contact Gail Cleere at 703-696-4987 or email

Show Stoppers

It’s hard for ONR’s oceanographer Steve Ackleson to believe he hadn’t thought of it before: imaging underwater in fluorescent light.* But the first time he did so on a Floridian coral reef, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Corals in brilliant colors not visible under sunlight illumination were suddenly all around him.

Corals are tiny living sea creatures, which secrete a calcium carbonate material during their lifetimes, which in turn slowly builds up and creates what we call the coral reef. Living corals fluoresce in several colors when illuminated with blue light, and the ways these fluorescence colors mix produces a wide range of coral appearances. But here’s the rub…scientists still aren’t sure why the animals do it.

“This is not bioluminescence,” says Ackleson, “which is the biological production of light. Sea creatures of all kinds use bioluminescence to search for mates, for example and as camouflage. Fluorescence on the other hand is the absorption of light at one wavelength and its re-emission at another wavelength, and it ceases when the source of light is removed. What that boils down to is that some things will glow when you shine the ‘right light’ on them, and the 'right light' can be different for different marine organisms. Why the corals do this is a complete mystery at this point.”

Fluorescence in corals is related to species (and so it can be used to map specific coral groups within a reef) as well as coral health. When a fluorescent animal dies, the fluorescence at some point stops.

“Fluorescence in the ocean tends to come from living things. Dead things, and man-made objects like discarded refrigerators and spent ordinance, generally do not fluoresce,” says Ackleson. “The Navy finds this very interesting. We believe that eventually we can use fluorescent underwater survey techniques for managing reefs in sensitive military areas, for reclamation efforts, and in searching for mines and other man-made objects within a reef environment.” More about Ackleson’s research can be found at the following websites: and images can be found here: fluorescent photography has only been around since the late 50’s. The first documented record of an observation of marine fluorescence only dates to 1927.

For more information on Ackleson’s program, or to interview him if you are media, contact Gail Cleere at 703-696-4987 or email

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