6 November 2010 | NewScientist | 21

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CALL it community computing, a cool art project or digital-hygiene nightmare: USB keys are popping out of the walls in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan, just waiting for any passer by to walk up and plug in.

German artist Aram Bartholl’s “Dead Drops” project is a twist on geocaching, which uses GPS technology to guide treasure hunts. Keys are planted in brick walls, houses and lamp posts around New York. Users simply slide their laptops or other USB-friendly devices onto the sticks, and are free to upload or download files at will. On each key Bartholl is leaving a text file explaining the project, but as people begin adding to the drops anything goes – from simple friendly notes to local advice or advertisements. Just watch out for viruses and other digital nasties.

Robofish is quick off the markAS A spectacle, it doesn’t amount to much. In fact, it’s gone in a flash. But that is the point of a mechanical fish that emulates the acceleration of a real-life pike.

Underwater robots that mimic fish are usually designed for efficient movement at constant speed. Yahya Modarres-Sadeghi at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and colleagues instead aimed to build one to move off as fast as possible from a stationary start. A startled pike can accelerate at about 15 g for a tenth of a second. A robot with that kind of acceleration could be well suited to covert operations or navigating turbulent water.

The team made a 50-centimetre-long rubber fish modelled on a member of the pike family called the chain pickerel. Running lengthwise inside was a metal strip bent into a

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Drop by, plug in, pass it on

C-shape and kept that way by a clamping mechanism. When released by a pneumatic actuator, the potential energy of the bent strip is converted into kinetic energy, causing the model’s tail to whip one way and then the other. Under water this resulted in an acceleration of

just over 4 g, eight times that achieved by previous robotic fish (Biomimetics and Bioinspiration, DOI: 10.1088/1748-3182/5/3/035004).

“The beauty of our fish is that it is very simple, yet captures the essential physics that helps us understand the pike’s fast start,” says Modarres-Sadeghi.

THE ability to use a cellphone or Wi-Fi connection on an aircraft might become a casualty of the latest security scare.

It was revealed on 29 October that parcels containing a powdered explosive packed in laser printer cartridges had travelled undetected on aircraft to the UK and to Dubai in the UAE. A cellphone connected to a detonation circuit would have allowed a terrorist to initiate an explosion by calling or texting the phone.

This comes as the aviation industry is gearing up to provide broadband in-flight entertainment

security fears may stop in-flight Wi-Fi

systems that feature both cellphone and Wi-Fi connections. Market researcher InStat of Scottsdale, Arizona, says that 2000 aircraft are expected to have this technology by the end of this year, against just “a couple of dozen” in 2008.

Last week’s discovery casts doubt on the wisdom of this move, says Roland Alford, managing director of Alford Technologies, an explosives consultancy in Chippenham, Wiltshire, UK. “Wireless communications gives a bomber lots of options for contacting a device on an aircraft,” he says. Even if a regular cellphone connection is blocked, Wi-Fi allows voice-over-internet connections to reach a handset.

–A flick of the tail gets pike going–

graphics processors drive the Tianhe-1A, the world’s fastest supercomputer, at the Tianjin computing centre, China

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One of many Apple Insider reader complaints after phone alarms failed to automatically adjust for the end of daylight saving time in the UK. Users in the US are expected to have similar problems on 7 November, when daylight saving ends there (AppleInsider.com, 1 November)

“Both iphones in my house failed to go off this morning”

“The beauty of our fish is that is is very simple, yet captures the essential physics of the fast start”

1/11/10 18:14:39