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14 Jan 08. A supercomputer that could help answer some of science’s
biggest questions will be unveiled on Monday. With the power of 12,000 desktop PCs, the mammoth machine called HECToR is the country’s fastest computer and one of the most powerful in Europe. It can make 63 million calculations each second, allowing scientists to conduct research into everything from climate change to new medicines. The purpose-built machine is housed in 60 wardrobe-sized cabinets in the University of Edinburgh’s advanced computing centre near the Scottish capital. After years of development, Chancellor Alistair Darling is due to attend the official launch ceremony for the 113 million pound machine. (Source: Reuters)
14 Jan 08. The British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS Radio) is set to provide the missing communications link for the British Forces. For the first time, BFBS Radio will be heard on-air in Great Britain via DAB Digital Radio in a trial of the service starting on Saturday 12th January 2008. BFBS Radio has been broadcasting to the British Forces overseas since 1943. The Forces’ station currently has bases in eleven countries, including Iraq, Germany, Cyprus, Northern Ireland and the Falkland Islands, and reaches another dozen countries, including Afghanistan and Kosovo, via satellite. It plays a wide variety of music, has its own news service and specialises in on-air messages and requests between servicemen and women and their families. Now in a pioneering trial, the service will be available across mainland Britain and can be received on any DAB digital radio.
08 Jan 08. The Boeing Company has begun initial production of Engineering Design Models (EDMs) of its software-defined Joint Tactical Radio System Ground Mobile Radios (JTRS GMR), meeting an important milestone in the plan approved by the program’s Joint Program Executive Office (JPEO). The engineering models will undergo simultaneous field and system regression testing throughout 2008. As part of the plan, Boeing also will test and deliver incremental software releases supporting the JPEO and Future Combat Systems program. The EDM radio systems then will begin formal government certification and field testing in late 2008. More than 100 pre-EDM JTRS GMR radios already are operating in test environments across the United States. Continuous program field testing also has provided an opportunity to assess the Wideband Networking Waveform (WNW), the backbone of the radio’s Internet-like capabilities.
Jan 08. The Ministry of Defence and US defence agencies have agreed specifications for secure e-mail and other electronic collaboration. The specifications were agreed through the Transglobal Secure Collaboration
Programme, a shared effort between British and American defence agencies and aerospace partners. The TSCP secure e-mail specification is a public-key infrastructure-based technology that assures the identities of authorised users by means of digital certificates that can encrypt and verify e-mail content.
TCSP participants include the US Department of Defence, the UK’s Ministry of
Defence (MoD), Boeing, EADS, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and
Rolls-Royce. According to the TSCP, the US Defence Department intends to eventually make use of it to protect information classified under Defence Department guidelines as “Controlled but Unclassified Information.” This includes the designations “For Official Use Only” and “Sensitive but Unclassified.” The MoD will begin adoption later this year for classifications that it categorises in as up to “U.K. Restricted.” In a prepared statement, TSCP said the expectation is that prime contractors will also adopt the specification on an ongoing basis across equivalent levels of proprietary information. (Source: Google)
15 Jan 08. Computer Dynamics, a GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms company, today announced the SeaBrite