• Day of trained sniffing bees is here

    The bee’s discreet sense of smell, equivalent to a dog’s, is being exploited as a much cheaper way to detect various odors in the environment; a U.K. company is now training bees to sniff out explosives and land mines — but also to identify diseases and cancers in people and animals, detect rapidly spreading bacteria in food, and identify dry rot in buildings

  • Airport sensor detects explosives hidden in the body

    Smiths Detection says that the 16HR-LD model of its B-Scan technology can see everything; the machine’s low-dose security technology is able to see all internal body cavities for the detection of concealed threatening objects, such as bombs and detonators

  • Better explosives detection for soldiers, first responders in the field

    From a chemical viewpoint, developing a detector for nitroaromatic compounds such as TNT is difficult because such compounds have a low vapor pressure, meaning their concentration in air at room temperature is around six parts per billion; MIT researchers develop cantilever sensors which use functional coatings to transduce detection of chemicals into a signal; the coating, usually a polymer, swells up when it reacts with the target analyte and deflects the cantilever

  • TSA: Full-body scanner safe for prostheses

    Full-body scanners are safe for passenger with artificial body parts — from replaced hips to augmented breasts; TSA says the scaners uses low-energy X-rays that do not penetrate the skin: prosthetic devices, artificial limbs, and surgically replaced body parts will not show up on the body scan image

  • GAO raises questions about effectiveness of full-body scanners

    The Obama administration is aggressively pushing for deployment of full-body scanners: 450 of the scanners will be installed at U.S. airports by the end of 2010; 950 installed by the end of 2011; and 1,800 by the end of 2014; the cost of installing and maintaining the scanners: about $3 billion over eight years; concerns have been expressed about privacy (some of the technologies used - for example, active millimeter-wave radiation — generate anatomically accurate images of passengers’ bodies) and health (some technologies, for example, backscatter X-ray, inundate passengers with large amounts or radiation (although many physicians say the amount of radiation is not health-threatening); now questions are being raised about the effectiveness of these scanners; GAO: “While [TSA] officials said [the scanners] performed as well as physical pat downs in operational tests, it remains unclear whether the AIT [advanced imaging technology] would have detected the weapon used in the December 2009 incident”

  • Northrop Grumman, Luminex collaborate on autonomous biodetectors

    Luminex’s xMAP Technology will serve as the basis of the two companies’ effort to develop a fully automated biosensor which will continuously monitor the environment and serve as an early warning system to alert authorities regarding the release of potentially harmful airborne agents

  • TSA adds AS&E's X-ray inspection systems to qualified air cargo screening list

    Screening cargo on air planes is promising to be big business, and companies rush to have their screening cargo machines certified by TSA; AS&E has its Gemini 6040, Gemini 7555, and Gemini 100100 X-ray inspection systems added to TSA’s certified cargo screener list

  • CBP deploys radiation detection portals at Port Hueneme, California

    During fiscal year 2009, CBP deployed 179 new radiation portal monitors (RPMs) throughout the U.S. ports of entry, bringing the number of RPMs to 1,354 at the U.S. land and sea ports of entry; the latest RPM were deployed at Port Hueneme, California

  • DHS moving forward on cell-all smartphone chemical detection technology

    DHS wants to turn smartphones into chemical sensors; owners of smartphones would volunteer to have tiny chemical sensors embedded in their devices; millions of American could thus become roving chemical sensing nodes to alert authorities of terrorist — or accidental — chemical toxin release

  • Tiny, sensitive nano oscillator instantly detects pathogens in air or water

    Extraordinarily tiny sensors that can instantly recognize harmful substances in air or water; the device is just 200 nanometers thick and a few microns long with an oscillating cantilever hanging off one end; the cantilever is like a diving board that resonates at distinct frequencies

  • Religious leaders discuss body scanners with DHS

    Muslim, Jewish, and Christian leaders met with DHS officials to discuss the privacy aspects of whole-body scanning; Muslim religious organizations, the Pope, and Orthodox Jewish authorities declared body scanners to be in violation of their respective religions’ modesty strictures, especially for women, and urged their followers to opt for pat-downs instead

  • Smiths Detection's mid-sized X-ray system added to TSA's Air Cargo Screening Qualified List

    By August 2010, all cargo carried on passenger planes will have to be screened; Smiths Detection’s latest addition to its list of cargo screening machines — a pallet-sized scanner — is the company’s sixth technology approved to help shippers meet TSA August 2010 100 percent air cargo screening deadline

  • TSA: Alleged child molester did not train or use new full-body scanners at Logan

    A Boston man charged with multiple child sex crimes was a certified luggage and passengers screener at Logan Airport; TSA says the man was already missing from work for several days when full-body scanners were deployed at Logan on 1 March, and thus had no access to the machines; the man’s arrest adds fuel to the opposition to body scanners

  • The Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex uses a variety of means to detect WMD

    The Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex uses the latest — together with the simplest — technology in trying to prevent weapons of mass destruction from being smuggled through the port; among these means used: a $3 million high-tech screening ship, a radiation-detecting helicopter and a badge-carrying black Labrador retriever that can sniff out chemical and biological weapons

  • Passive millimeter-wave technology promoted as solving privacy, health concerns

    There are three leading technologies in whole-body scanning: backscatter X-ray, active millimeter wave, and passive millimeter wave; the first raises privacy issue; the second raises health concerns; Florida-based Brijot, a champion of passive millimeter wave, says its technology addresses both sets of concerns