On the Edge

The federal government should develop more complex weather radar technologies, according to a report from the National Academy of Sciences. The primary weather radar system used by the government today is the WSR-88D, or Nexrad, comprised of about 150 radars worldwide. It supports the National Weather Service, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Defense Department. "Since the design of the Nexrad system, there have been important developments of new radar technologies and methods of designing and operating radar systems," the report said. It is available at www.nationalacademies.org/topnews/#0606.Opterna Inc., Quakertown, Pa., has released a device that can detect when a fiber-optic line has been tapped. Called FiberSentinel, this unit monitors for signatures produced in optical data streams when they are intercepted midcourse by clip-on, non-invasive couplers. When it detects an interception, it automatically reroutes the affected signal to a back-up path.

Whitaker Brothers Inc., Rockville, Md., long a manufacturer of paper shredders, has now introduced devices that destroy smart cards and compact discs. The $2,500 Datastroyer shaves off the surface "data" layers of the discs, leaving only the plastic disc itself. The SMARTCard Shredder, priced at $333, slices cards into thin strips. Both items are on the company's General Services Administration schedule.Contracts worth about $3 million each went to Cray Inc., Seattle; IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y.; Silicon Graphics Inc., Mountain View, Calif.; and Sun Microsystems Inc., Palo Alto, Calif., from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop components for next-generation high-performance computers. The contracts were issued under the High Productivity Computing Systems program, which fosters development of tera- and peta-scale computer designs that the agency hopes will be commercially deployed between 2007 and 2010. The contract covers an initial 12-month technical assessment phase.