See how the San Francisco Bay Area has developed over the last century.

From the Scout Report:

The University of California Berkeley's Earth Science's and Map Library has produced a Website that highlights historical maps of the San Francisco Bay area from 1895 to the present. The maps, produced by the US Geological Survey, are scanned topographic 7.5 and 15-minute quadrangles and can be zoomed to impressively fine detail. The site allows visitors to choose from the quadrangle index, search by place name, or browse by clicking on the general overview map. Researchers in cartography, general history, or the San Francisco Bay area should find this site enjoyable and informative.

Historic Topographic Maps of San Francisco

Caffeine for the Sustainment of Mental Task Performance: Formulations for Military Operations

Here's the latest research from the Institute of Medicine regarding the use of caffeine in military operations.

From the executive summary:

The goal of any employer, regardless of the field of endeavor, is optimal job performance without compromising the health and well-being of the worker. Intermittent or prolonged physiological and psychological stressors that employees bring to the workplace have an impact not only on their own performance but also on those with whom they work and interact. These stressors are compounded by the physical and mental stressors of the job itself. Military personnel in combat settings endure highly unpredictable timing and types of stressors, both personal and job related, as well as situations that require continuing vigilance for extended periods of time.

Changes in military operations over the last 50 years have required continued assessment and adoption of technologies that will sustain or enhance physical and cognitive performance of the individual service member. This urgency in maintaining and enhancing performance is fostered by increased reliance on the individual's cognitive skills in the operation and maintenance of complex military equipment in an increasing variety of environmental conditions. [...]

These scenarios can have severe impacts on the individual's level of fatigue, alertness, response time, mood, judgment, reliability in decision making, and other cognitive skills. Increased likelihood of decrements in cognitive function coincides with greater dependence on the individual's performance, and both have a profound impact on the success or failure of a mission.

Caffeine for the Sustainment of Mental Task Performance

Equal parts fragile and tenacious, development continues unabated across the entire life span through five specific stages: gestation, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. [...] The Secret Life of the Brain explores each of these five stages in detail. Like the PBS series of the same name, the complex subject of leading-edge brain science is presented in terms accessible to all and brought to life through anecdotes and real-life stories. Told by best-selling author Dr. Richard Restak, the majesty and the mystery of human intelligence are unveiled.

The Secret Life of the Brain

Last week, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in New Mexico finished testing the system on human volunteers. The Air Force now wants to use this Active Denial Technology (ADT), which it says is non-lethal, for peacekeeping or riot control at "relatively long range" - possibly from low-flying aircraft.

Microwave beam weapon to disperse crowds (New Scientist)

In the Northeast, the E-ZPass system, which has six million tags in circulation, is being tested at the drive-through windows at two McDonald's locations on Long Island, and the agency that oversees the system is studying whether to expand elsewhere, including gas stations and parking garages."

It's the Cars, Not the Tires, That Squeal

Conference to be held in Philly early this November.

"This workshop will consider technical problems faced by rights holders (who seek to protect their intellectual property rights) and end consumers (who seek to protect their privacy and to preserve access they now enjoy in traditional media under existing copyright law)."

Papers of interest include:

On Crafty Pirates and Foxy Tracers
A Cryptanalysis of the High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection System (Ian Goldberg and David Wagner)
Secure Open Systems Protecting Privacy and Digital Services
From Copyright to Information Law ? Implications of Digital Rights Management

Workshop on Security and Privacy in Digital Rights Management

This paper examines the ideological and policy consensus that shaped computing research funded by the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) within the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). This historical case study of the period between Sputnik and the creation of the ARPANET shows how military, scientific, and academic values shaped the institutions and relations of a foundational period in the creation of the Internet.
The paper probes three areas: the ideology of the science policy consensus, the institutional philosophy of IPTO under J. C. R. Licklider, and the ways that this consensus and philosophy shaped IPTO research in the period leading to the creation of the ARPANET. By examining the intellectual, cultural, and institutional details of the consensus that governed IPTO research between 1957 and 1969, we can understand the ways that these values defined the range of possibilities for network computing.

Ideological and Policy Origins of the Internet, 1957-1969

A well-designed authoritative web site devoted to biodefense operated by Johns Hopkins University. The site includes a comprehensive library on related subjects containing publications, testimonies, book reviews, reading lists, and online resources.
In particular, I would point out an article in the News section entitled "The Changing Face of International Security: Challenges for the New Millennium." This is a speech given earlier this year by John Steinbrunner, who is author of a Brookings publication _Principles of Global Security_, which I own and also recommend. Read it online at

http://www.brookings.edu/press/books/global_security.htm

JHU Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies

I bought this book a month or so ago. It's a good history of the government's role in the development of personal computing and internetworking.

"COMPUTER SCIENCE:
Visionary Architect of the Net
A review by John Naughton

The Dream Machine J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal
M. Mitchell Waldrop
Viking, New York, 2001. $29.95, C$43.99. 512 pp. ISBN 0-670-89976-3.

Waldrop tells the story of the MIT psychologist who inspired and laid the groundwork for the discipline of computer science and the networking and computer technology we now take for granted."

(Subscription to Science required to read full text)

Review of _The Dream Machine_ in Oct 25 Science

Amazon doesn't have any details on this book, so I've collected below a number of comments from elsewhere on the web.

In this book an international team of authors explore themes of depth and surface, of real and conceptual space and of human/ machine interaction. The collection is organized around the concept of 'technospace' -- the temporal realm where technology meets human practice. In exploring this intersection, the contributors initiate debate on a number of important conceptual questions:

* Is there a clear distinction between the 'real' spaces of the body or the city and the conceptual space of 'virtual' reality?
* How are the real and metaphorical spaces of electronic cultures quantified and regulated?
* Is there an ethic of technospace?

Historically the reception of new technologies has been invested with romantic idealism on the one hand and panic on the other. The authors argue that in order for utopian dreams to be tempered by ethical, humanistic needs, we have an urgent need to reveal, reflect upon and evaluate technospace and our relationship to it.

Science and technology have had a profound affect on the way humans perceive space and time -think, for example of the way information technologies such as the telephone have reduced our former perception of the world as inaccessible, unknowable and exotic to a sensibility of nearness, friendliness, fellowship and instantaneity (the so-called "global village"). The scientific knowledge which produces technology remains a system of beliefs, the perspectives of science are thought-structures, that is ideologies, which organise the world into sets of believable fictions. Although science has tried to define "the thing in itself", it ends up exploring "the thing for me", through the practical postulate - the praxis - of space/time paradigms. This had had a practical effect upon our invention, and our use, of new technologies.

People meet technology in technospaces, places outside the body and the city and reality -- or are they? Contributors reflect on Luddite concerns and the possibilities of a tech-driven Utopia.

Technospaces : Inside the New Media