New tech news:

* “For the second consecutive day, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) took off from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in Palmdale, Calif., to map the fires that are burning across Southern California. Equipped with infrared sensors that can pierce smoke and soot, the aircraft will provide thermal imagery that emergency management officials will use to deploy firemen and water bombers battling the fires.”

* “A world without both spam and AIDS would be a much better place, and it turns out that one may lead to the other. How exactly? The ability of a computer to recognize that “Viagra” is the same as “V1agra” or “Vi@gra” requires the same skills needed for a vaccine to recognize the constantly evolving AIDS virus. In other words, spam-fighting pioneer David Heckerman of Microsoft Research says, an immune system is just like a spam filter.”

* “Today’s prosthetics are medical miracles, controlled by impulses from the user’s own muscles. But one myoelectric hand can cost $35,000 and up—a daunting, if attainable, figure for patients with health insurance, but more of a concept than an option for many amputees around the world. So when a team of students at ITESO Graduate School in Guadalajara, Mexico, began working on a new prosthetic hand, their goal was simple: Cut costs. “We wanted to help people, not make some cool-looking toy,” says Gabriel Herrera, the team’s firmware engineer. That meant prowling a scrap yard for metal and spending just $2000 to make two prototypes in four months. This past summer the students won top honors and $10,000 in an international design contest sponsored by Texas-based Freescale Semiconductor, beating out 775 other entries.”

* “WASHINGTON - Two Senators on Friday called for a congressional hearing to investigate reports that phone and cable companies are unfairly stifling communications over the Internet and on cell phones. Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said the incidents involving several companies, including Comcast Corp., Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc., have raised serious concerns over the companies’ “power to discriminate against content.”

* “LOS ANGELES - When the Pentagon’s research arm first called for innovators to design and race a self-driving car to make warfare safer, a ragtag bunch of garage tinkerers, computer geeks and even high school students answered.” …”this year’s is modern: The field is more savvy, the terrain is urban and corporate sponsors and public relations machines have entered the fray. “They’ve become like NASCAR teams with multiple sponsors and stickers on everything,” said Peter Singer, a Brookings Institution senior fellow who has followed the DARPA competitions. “It shows that it’s becoming big business.”

* “Sipera Systems, a VoIP security company, said on Tuesday that users of VoIP services and equipment from Vonage, Globe7 and Grandstream were vulnerable to eavesdropping, spam, spoofing, and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.”

* “The Lewis Group, at Caltech, has worked out a unique approach to the idea of an electronic nose. They use arrays of simple, readily fabricated, chemically sensitive conducting polymer films.”

* “The Pantech A1407PT cell phone has a unique ability to let you listen. It allows you to listen to your calls with your bones.”

* “TOKYO — In the race for ever-thinner displays for TVs, cell phones and other gadgets, Sony may have developed one to beat them all — a razor-thin display that bends like paper while showing full-color video.”

* “Moves are afoot to try and reinstate the now defunct NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC), or something like it.”

Danger–overload. Continue tomorrow.