The 30 PackBot 510 units, which usually cost between $100,000 and $200,000 apiece, will arrive in Brazil as part of the $7.2 million deal the country signed with American iRobot advanced technology company. The contracts include services, spare parts and associated equipment.“IRobot continues its international expansion, and Brazil represents an important market for the company’s unmanned ground vehicles,” Frank Wilson, iRobot’s senior vice president, said in a statement. “IRobot is excited to be providing the company’s state-of-the-art robotic technologies to Brazil as the country prepares for several high profile international events, including the 2014 FIFA World Cup.” The first real test for the PackBots will be the visit of Pope Franics to Brazil this July, with the country also looking to use the robots during the Rio Olympics in 2016. The PackBots are equipped with cameras and are operated remotely in order to detect and examine suspicious objects or explore dangerous environments, while keeping their operators safe from harm. The devices weigh about 27 kilogram and rely on caterpillar treads to move around, using videogame-style hand controllers to make it more familiar to the users.More than 2000 of those military robots are currently stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, with PackBots being the first to enter the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Brazil is spending $900 million to bolster its security forces, including high-tech surveillance equipment and helicopters, as the country is hoping to make the 2014 World Cup “one of the most protected sports events in history.” The country’s police will be equipped with facial-recognition camera glasses that can capture 400 facial images per second to store them in a central database of up to 13 million faces.Brazil is also reported to have spent $25 million on four Israeli-made drones, which are expected to make their debut at the FIFA Confederations Cup in June.There’ll also be plenty of manpower involved in the security operation as the World Cup organizers plan have 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers from the Brazilian Armed Forces at each of the 12 host cities during the event. … Read More
US robots, Israeli drones to help make 2014 World Cup in Brazil ‘one of safest sporting events ever’
Fracking debris considered too radioactive even for waste site
After the alarm went off, the MAX Environmental Technologies truck was immediately quarantined and sent back to the Marcellus Shale fracking site it had come from in Greene County, Va. The 159-acre Pennsylvania landfill site accepts residual and hazardous waste, but the cuttings were too radioactive for the site to safely dispose.The Pennsylvania landfill, located in South Huntingdon, rejects waste that emits more than 10 microerm per hour of radiation. The fracking materials were found to emit 96 microerm per hour of Radium 226 – a rate that is 84 times higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s air-pollution standard and ten times higher than the landfill’s permitted level, Forbes reports.Exposure to the materials taken from the fracking site can have serious health consequences, including the risk of developing cancer. The high level of radiation emitted by the materials serves as alarming news for environmentalists and residents located near hydraulic fracturing sites across the US.“Long-term exposure to radium increases the risk of developing several diseases,” the EPA writes. “Inhaled or ingested radium increases the risk of developing such diseases as lymphoma, bone cancer and diseases that affect the formation of blood, such as leukemia and aplastic anemia… External exposure to radium’s gamma radiation increases the risk of cancer to varying degrees in all tissues and organs.”The drill cuttings have been sent back to the well pad where they were extracted. The production company, Rice Energy, must now apply to have the waste discarded at other landfill sites that accept materials with higher levels of radiation.DEP spokesperson Jon Poister told The Tribune-Review that the cuttings emitted “low-level radiation, but we don’t want any radiation in South Huntingdon.” He said it was not typical for the landfill to reject waste based on radiation levels, but this case provides reassurance that the radiation detection system functions properly.“It’s not too frequent that this occurs, but it’s not totally infrequent either,” he told the local newspaper. “There are all kinds of sources for that type of material, including medical materials, and this is a huge safeguard we have in place.”But environmentalists remain concerned about the effects of the radiation produced by hydraulic fracturing sites. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) this year began analyzing wastewater from fracking sites and testing waste products for radioactivity. The investigation is ongoing. “We are sampling the wastewater and wastes, the treatment equipment used to treat it, the trucks used to transport it, the tanks and pits used to store it and the landfills or treatment plants used to dispose of it,” DEP spokesman Kevin Sunday told shalereporter.com.The consequences of long-term exposure to Radium 226 are known, but the effects of specially formulated chemicals used at US fracking sites still remain widely unknown. With the Obama administration overlooking environmental concerns and distributing oil drilling rights without a comprehensive review of fracking, it is difficult to know just how much radiation the sites produce.But with landfill sites rejecting drill cuttings based on high levels of radiation, the waste produced is not an insignificant matter. … Read More
Iran plans oil exports to North Korea
“We have had, and continue to have, negotiations with the North Koreans who have requested to buy Iranian oil. We are discussing the procedure and we don’t have any problem selling them oil,” Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi told a briefing at an International oil and gas exhibition in Tehran.The minister admitted that Iran was feeling the strain of sanctions imposed on the country by foreign governments, but said it would not get in the way of the transportation of its oil to “any country, in any part of the world,” AP cites. A delegation from North Korea is among the participants of the expo in the Iranian capital. A Tehran-Pyongyang oil deal would further develop ties increase between the two states – which are both at odds with the US and the West over their respective nuclear programs and have both been sanctioned over the issue.In September, Iran and North Korea signed an agreement to collaborate in the fields of science and technology. After nearly a decade of US efforts to isolate the two states internationally, it seems they might have actually pushed them closer together. Previously, Iranian and North Korean officials described their countries as being in “one trench” in the fight against the West, while Western powers accused them of being close partners in nuclear and missile technologies.Last year, to put even more pressure on Tehran to abandon its nuclear ambitions, the EU and the US introduced sanctions, additional to the UN Security Council’s, including an oil embargo and financial restrictions.According to US Energy Information Administration, in 2012 Iran saw “unprecedented drops in its oil exports” because of the sanctions. However, Tehran boasts that despite economic sanctions, Iran overhauled its oil industry by developing its shipping industry and expanding its oil market.“If Europeans do not purchase our oil, we have also imposed sanctions on them. We have other customers today and more than 60 countries today, in fact, are purchasing our petrochemical and oil products and derivatives,” Qasemi said in an interview with Iranian broadcaster Press TV earlier in the week. … Read More
The shifting landscape of the New World Order and the approaching cashless society
Paying by phone will be as transformative as the advent of the credit card in the 1950s. It will change the way we shop and bank. … Read More
Daily Report: Thinking Like a Start-Up, at Yahoo
Notorious for neglecting solid acquisitions, Yahoo has bought six small companies under its new chief, Marissa Mayer, in an attempt to cultivate not only innovative technologies, but the engineers who run them. … Read More
Air Force to research non-lethal directed energy weapon ‘bioeffects’ to create new exotic weaponry
The Air Force is actually preparing to spend $49 million to research the biological effects of non-lethal directed energy weapons in hopes of creating future weaponry that manipulates the body on a biochemical or molecular level. … Read More
