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iRobot and ICx team up for $16 million Army contract
Popular PackBot model will carry ICx’s Fido explosives detection system; deal shows iRobot’s popularity among the military; 100 combined systems will be produced, most likely for use in Iraq and Afghanistan
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RAE Systems introduces handheld radiation detectors
Cell phone-sized DoseRae suite provides a rugged alternative for both personal and professional use; units provide accurate dose readings with a resolution of less than 0.02 microSieverts; SAIC lends a hand
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Optosecurity nets $14 million in new funding
Known for its optical threat detection systems, the Canadian company finds new friends in the VC market; Innovatech Quebec continues to have faith in this homegrown company; company prepares for a big 2008
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Morphix mounts a methamphetamine detector to a UGV
Developed with a USMC grant, New York, Chicago, and other cities show interest in a chemical sensing system that can be worn on the clothing or attached to a robot; Chameleon system relies on armbands and disposable cartridges to provide a reading
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Japanese scientists use radio waves to detect TNT
Airport luggage screening to benefit from this breakthrough approach; nitrogen nuclear quadrupole resonance solves the problem of low nitrogen resonance levels; distinghuishing between cocaine and explosives the key challenge
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Smiths joins Birmngham U. to develop next-generation IMS systems
Ion mobility spectrometery has already proven itself in Smiths Detection’s Sentinel portals, but all agree that improvement in chemical detection is neccesary; £1 million project will take a close look at ionization chemistry
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Congress looks to expands America's K-9 ranks
Canine Detection Improvement Act of 2007 sets out standards for an increased push at explosives detection; airports and other critical infrastructure suffer from a lack of trained dogs; “breed American” is the new watchword, as congressmen try to take the German out of German shepherd
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Coda Octopus announces new Underwater Inspection System
Device creates real-time 3D images of subsea objects; port security the primary market for this intriguing new sonar product; company already known for its oil exploration-enhancing echoscope; government delivery pending
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Moths inspire explosives-hunting alorithim
Scent-tracking behavior provides a model for uncertain robot sniffers; Infotaxis algorithim developed by U.S. and U.K. researchers helps the robot develop and react to a “probability map”; exploration and exploitation tendencies are coordinated
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Sandia looks to the terahertz spectrum for next-gen explosives detection
Sitting between microwave and infrarerd, terahertz has long been neglected; technology is already used to detect chemical compounds in space, and so researchers look to miniaturize the system and create a library of spectral signatures
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ScanTech wins Chesapeake Innovation Center contest
Company, developer of X-ray technology capable of detecting uranium, explosives, and drugs, wins $50,000 but declines to put down roots in Maryland; other finalists include TIRF Technologies, Armada Group, and Riverglass
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SET Corp. to marry radar-imaging to gait recognition technology
Virginia company’s CounterBomber is proven effective at identifying hidden weapons on moving individuals; addition of gait recognition will allow constant surveillance of suspects, as well as point out a few new ones as well
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Smiths Group plays its cards tight
Smiths Groups sells its aerospace division to GE for $4.8 billion, proposing investors a £2.1 billion return — and then forms a detection JV with that company, with both companies hopingt o benefit from increased spending on WMD dection
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ICRC delivers first responder vehicles to Michigan National Guard
Heavy-duty truck is first to incorporate IRCS’s national guard vehicle information system for interoperability and networking; flexible communications, NBS detection, and nighttime surveillance among the features of this interesting vehicle
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Implant Science explores teaming up with RAE's senor networks
Companies will discuss technology-sharing possibilities; RAE’s AreaRAE system looks to expand into the explosives detection business; ISC’s device identifies TNT, black powder, ammonium nitrate, and more
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More headlines
The long view
A Meltdown in Nuclear Security
A commando raid on a nuclear power plant seems the stuff of Hollywood. So why are nuclear security experts so worried? It ranks among the worst-case scenarios for a nuclear power plant: an all-out assault or stealth infiltration by well-trained, heavily armed attackers bent on triggering a nuclear blast, sparking a nuclear meltdown or stealing radioactive material. Under pressure from a cash-strapped nuclear energy industry increasingly eager to slash costs, the commission in a little-noticed vote in October 2018 halved the number of force-on-force exercises conducted at each plant every cycle. Four months later, it announced it would overhaul how the exercises are evaluated to ensure that no plant would ever receive more than the mildest rebuke from regulators – even when the commandos set off a simulated nuclear disaster that, if real, would render vast swaths of the U.S. uninhabitable. Nuclear security experts, consultants, law enforcement veterans and former NRC commissioners are nothing short of alarmed. “You can’t afford to be wrong once,” says one expert.
Can American Values Survive in a Chinese World?
The People’s Republic of China bounds from strength to strength. Every year sees increases in its wealth and power relative to the world. But what do its leaders hope to achieve with their newfound clout? Jonathan D. T. Ward’s book China’s Vision of Victory traces the Chinese desire to shape the future of all mankind (not just the East Asian part of it) to a national myth taught to schoolchildren across China. According to this narrative, China was once the center of the world; China was the mother of invention, the seat of global wealth, and the beacon of civilization. This is China’s natural role in the world order—a role disrupted by the “century of humiliation” between the Opium Wars and World War II, when China suffered at the hands of foreign powers. But now that age of suffering is over. China’s destiny, according to its leaders, is to reclaim its natural perch as the leading force of human civilization. Tanner Greer writes that these global ambitions raises serious questions for the United States – questions which go beyond whether Americans will be willing to live in a world where China is the supreme economic and military power. The “hardest question may be whether we are willing to live in a world where dominant economic and military power is wielded by an insecure regime whose leaders believe that the same authoritarian techniques used to control enemies within their society must be used to surveil, coerce, and corrupt those enemies outside it.”
The U.S. Wants to Bury SC’s Plutonium Stockpile Forever. Its New Home Isn’t Sure It Wants It.
How long will it take for weapons-grade plutonium stockpile, temporarily stored at the South Carolina’s Savanah River nuclear weapons complex, to decay, that it, to have its radioactivity reduced to a level at which it will no longer pose radiation risks or turned into nuclear weapons? About seven billion years, or a little more than double the age of planet Earth. The government’s plutonium plan calls for expanding a nuclear waste burial ground located inside an abandoned salt mine near Carlsbad, New Mexico, which is known as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP. But New Mexico objects.