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The most powerful technologies take a while to mature. But when they do, they can rapidly retire mainstays that are decades old. Given in this paper are the top 11 technologies of the decade which are smartphones, social networking, voice over IP, LED lighting, multicore CPU, cloud computing, drone aircraft, planetary rovers, flexible AC transmission, digital photography and class-D audio.

The paper presents a device installed in a football player's helmet, which measures each blow to the head and reports the force of the impact. The wireless device let coaches pull football players before they suffer brain damage.

In-wheel motors can improve fuel economy and safety for hybrid electric vehicles. A motor housed inside a wheel hub can shunt up to 96 percent of the torque it generates directly to the patch of tire that touches the road. With a conventional drivetrain, roughly 20 percent of the power generated by the motor is lost to friction.

On 6 August, peaceful protests over the police shooting of a local man in London's Tottenham district exploded into full-blown riots. During four days of assaults, arson, and looting, some of London's thousands of closedcircuit TV cameras captured video of the violence.

The end of the cold war has created numerous challenges regarding our national security. A major challenge is the increased reliance on the Army Reserve Components (RC) to meet requirements of our National Military Strategy. This paper examines the impact of RC deployments on Army RC recruiting and retention by researching past and current trends and indicators. It includes documentation from various sources that support my findings. This paper only evaluates the impact on the United States Army Reserve (USAR), and Army National Guard (ARNG) units. In an effort to eliminate strategic level decisions that may negatively impact RC recruiting and retention, this paper identifies options and measures that may be used to assess the frequency and methods by which RC units are selected for deployments.

Advocates of hydrogen fuel-cell propulsion have a new target for their technology: trolleys. At the Fifth International Hydrail conference, held 11 and 12 June in Charlotte, N.C., engineers and transit planners concluded that streetcars are an ideal early application for hydrogen propulsion. Traditional trolley cars have drawn their power from catenaries, unsightly overhead electricity supply lines running along city streets. Hydrogen-powered streetcars would eliminate the wires, which otherwise might stand in the way of a streetcar comeback.

Later this month in California, construction will be completed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility, or NIF, the world's most powerful laser system 12 years and roughly US $3.5 billion after it was begun. The plan is for NIF?s 192 neodymium lasers to create controlled moments of fusion by focusing their energy on 3-millimeter-wide pellets of deuterium and tritium.

When most people hear the word ultrasound, they think of the diagnostic tool used to look inside the womb and steal glimpses at a fetus. But researchers at Arizona State University at Tempe have developed a new use for it: to control brain activity from outside the skull.

Mouths went agape when New York Times reporter David Sanger wrote in June that anonymous sources within the United States government admitted that the United States and Israel were indeed the authors of the Stuxnet worm and related malware. Those two countries had long been suspected of creating the code that wrecked centrifuges at Iran?s Natanz uranium enrichment facility. But never before had a government come so close to claiming responsibility for a cyberattack.

The 11th day of September 2001 began with a tragedy beyond comprehension. It ended in a cacophony of outrage, blame, and urgent questions. How could so few terrorists create death and destruction on so massive a scale? How could US intelligence services have been caught so off guard? Can technology help prevent such attacks in the future, or at least respond to them more effectively if they do occur? A year after the strikes, answers to these questions are finally starting to take shape. The focus here is on the use of technology as a pillar of future counter-terrorism-from the advanced screening equipment now being installed at airports around the world to the robust emergency communications systems that will link workers and officials after any future calamities. Although the attacks prompted a broad array of technology initiatives, some of the most significant have been in intelligence, airport baggage screening, postal monitoring, biometric identification, radio and television broadcasting, hardened emergency communications, and personal security.

The IEEE?s International Solid- State Circuits Conference, which will convene next month in San Francisco, gives the world?s top circuit designers their annual opportunity to one-up each other. Who?ll walk away with bragging rights? Here five possibilities are noted.

Every few years, we're wowed by news of some jaw-dropping sum paid for a previously unknown painting or drawing by a famous artist. But how can a buyer truly be sure that a piece is a legitimate creation of, say, Leonardo or Gauguin? Mathematicians at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H., may have the answer. They recently presented a computer-based statistical analysis technique which they say will help art historians and conservators discover even the most skilled forgery.

The two-seater takes to the air by deploying an asymmetrical parasail "wing" and then accelerating to at least 60 kilometers an hour. Its 104-kilowatt (140 horsepower) Kawasaki motorcycle engine lets it glide at its normal cruising altitude of 900 meters at speeds up to 161 km/h (100 miles per hour), the company claims. A tankful of biodiesel is enough for a 300-km flight. The car's also good for thrills on the ground-it goes from zero to 100 km/h in 4.2 seconds and can tackle dunes and rocky hills as well as any off-roader.

What would happen if the production of laptops, cellphones, and MP3 players suddenly halted? Oh, and no more hybrid electric vehicles and MRI machines? It probably won't happen, of course, but the fact that it could is scary enough. A single country, China, mines more than 95 percent of the world's supply of rare earth metals, found in permanent magnets, phosphors, lasers, capacitors, and superconductors.

For years, developers of face-recognition algorithms have been battling the effects of awkward poses, facial expressions, and disguises like hats, wigs, and fake moustaches. They've had some success, but they may be meeting their match in plastic surgery.

One of the most sought after new features on mobile devices is the touch screen. But that name is a misnomer, according to a group of researchers at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Ill., who point out the obvious-that these displays offer minimal tactile feedback. But suppose touch screens could touch you back: You could "feel," say, the edges of the buttons on a virtual keypad or the links on a Web page.

Last November, Apple happily announced that it had hired Mark Papermaster, a 26-year IBM veteran, to head up its iPod and iPhone hardware engineering teams. IBM immediately sued Papermaster, claiming that his employment contract with Big Blue included a noncompete agreement prohibiting just such a move. A U.S. federal district court quickly ordered Papermaster out of Apple until further notice. The two companies agreed to a settlement in late January; Papermaster will finally sit down at an Apple desk later this month.

Autumn is upon us, and in the United States, so is football season. The players, who deliver jarring hits to one another that often equal the force of car wrecks, are lionized for the ability to, in the words of an old watch commercial, ?take a licking and keep on ticking.? But concussions are not uncommon, and new research shows that even when players are symptom-free and have passed a battery of cognitive-function tests, their brains may not have completely recovered and may still be vulnerable to further injury.

Three snakelike wave-power generators built by Edinburgh's Pelamis Wave Power delivers 2.25 megawatts through an undersea cable to the Portuguese coastal town of Agucadoura. Within a year, another 28 generators should come online there, boosting the capacity to 22.5 MW. That may be a trickle of power, but the project represents a new push into wave and tidal power as governments eye the oceans as a way to meet their renewable energy targets.

NASA is celebrating the successful test of a scramjet on 2004 March 27 in which the engine fired for 11 seconds.

Reports on significant scientific events, technologies, and services going back thirty years ago from the current date.