Japan PM says ready to be more assertive against China

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in an interview published on Saturday, said

Japan was ready to be more assertive towards China Beijing threatened to strike back if provoked.

A top retired Chinese diplomat said any move by Tokyo to contain China could amount to an attempt to conceal ulterior motives in the region and prove to be "extremely dangerous". And the defence ministry warned Japan not to underestimate China's resolve to take whatever measures were needed to protect itself.

Abe, interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, said Japan should take the lead in guarding against what he said might be an attempt by China to use force to attain its diplomatic goals.

He said he had realised at recent meetings with South East Asian leaders that the region sought leadership from Tokyo in terms of security amid China's more forthright diplomacy.

"There are concerns that China is attempting to change the status quo by force, rather than by rule of law. But if China opts to take that path, then it won't be able to emerge peacefully," he told the newspaper.

"So it shouldn't take that path and many nations expect Japan to strongly express that view. And they hope that as a result, China will take responsible action in the international community."

"Don't underestimate the Chinese army's resolute will and determination to protect China's territorial sovereignty," Defence Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said on the ministry's website. "If Japan does resort to enforcement measures like shooting down aircraft, that is a serious provocation to us, an act of war.

"We will undertake decisive action to strike back, with every consequence borne by the side that caused the trouble," Geng added.

Source: Reuters

Dolphins inspire a new bomb-detecting system

Chances are, you know that dolphins use sonar to locate and stun prey underwater. You might also know that they create "bubble nets," in which they trap fish inside a ring of air bubbles that they blow while swimming in a circle. With all those distracting bubbles suspended in the water, though, their sonar needs to work in a special way in order to pick out the fish. Scientists have copied that sonar system, to create a type of radar that could differentiate between ordinary objects and things like explosive devices.

Prof. Tim Leighton, of the University of Southampton in the UK, led the research. His team started out by developing a dolphin-inspired system known as twin inverted pulse sonar, or TWIPS, which we covered in 2010.

In this system, two sonar pulses are sent out in quick succession. Those pulses are identical to one another, except for the fact that they're phase-inverted. When those pulses hit a solid target, it scatters the reflected sound in a linear pattern. Bubbles, on the other hand, produce non-linear scattering. By suppressing the non-linear return signals, TWIPS is therefore able to locate underwater targets amidst bubbles.

The team then decided to see if the same thing would work using electromagnetic waves, as opposed to the sound pulses used in sonar. It did work, the result being what is called twin inverted pulse radar, or TWIPR. In this case, however, the target produces non-linear scattering, while the "clutter" signals are linear.

The researchers successfully used TWIPR to pick out a tiny dipole antenna with a diode across its feedpoint (the sort of electronics often found in bombs or covert communications devices), which was located amidst an aluminum plate and a rusty bench clamp.

It is hoped that once fully developed, the technology could not only locate things such as explosives, but that it could also be used to monitor the whereabouts of people in hazardous environments who are wearing tags that TWIPR can detect.

Source: University of Southampton