• New detection device for forensic and security applications

    A new biological sampling and detection device could soon be used by first responders in the forensic and security sectors; the patented technology allows for rapid sampling of up to eight targets simultaneously, testing powder, liquids, or surfaces directly and has applications across the forensic and security areas

  • World facing increasingly challenging water situation

    New measure developed for sustainability of global groundwater water supply points to overuse of water in Asia and North America; approximately 1.7 billion people, most residing in Asia, live in areas where groundwater resources or groundwater-dependent ecosystems are under threat

     

  • Wynyard Group takes New Zealand Police forensics solution global

    Developed in 2007, New Zealand Police technology called EVE (Environment for Virtualized Evidence) allows enforcement officers rapidly to analyze seized electronic goods such as mobile phones, PCs, and other storage devices for evidence and intelligence

  • July flooding in China causes $8.3 billion of economic losses

    Insurance industry faces agriculture losses from China to the United States in July 2012: flooding caused more than $8.3 billion in economic losses across China during July, while the worst drought in decades worsened across much of the United States; severe weather also prompted widespread damage in parts of the United States and Europe

  • Rising temperature reduces economic activity

    It is relatively straightforward to see how droughts and hot weather might hurt agriculture, but a new study shows that hot spells have much wider economic effects; the study finds that higher temperatures substantially reduce economic growth in poor countries: every 1-degree-Celsius increase in temperature in a poor country, over the course of a given year, reduces that country’s economic growth by about 1.3 percentage points

  • California’s hydropower is vulnerable to climate change

    Fifteen percent of California’s electricity comes from hydropower, a cheap and relatively clean energy source; .about 75 percent of this hydropower comes from high-elevation units, located above 1,000 ft.; with most of them located in Northern California and the Sierra Mountains; if California loses snowpack under climate warming, these high-elevation reservoirs might not be able to store enough water for hydropower generation in summer months when the demand is much higher

  • Dropping lake levels in Michigan are a cause for concern

    In a state that boasts 11,000 lakes, Michigan is going through a year long drought that has residents and businesses scrambling as water levels continue to decrease; the low waters is the result of low snowpack last winter and a hot dry summer this year

  • Improved disaster resilience is imperative for U.S: report

    A new report from the National Academies says that it is essential for the United States to bolster resilience to natural and human-caused disasters, and that this will require complementary federal policies and locally driven actions that center on a national vision – a culture of resilience; improving resilience should be seen as a long-term process, but it can be coordinated around measurable short-term goals that will allow communities better to prepare and plan for, withstand, recover from, and adapt to adverse events

  • Seeing through walls with the help of laser systems

    Inspired by the erratic behavior of photons zooming around and bouncing off objects and walls inside a room, researchers combined these bouncing photons with advanced optics to enable them to “see” what is hidden around the corner

  • UAVs with dexterous arms to help in infrastructure repair and disaster recovery

    With current technology, most UAVs perform passive tasks such as surveillance and reconnaissance missions, tasks which are performed well above ground; researchers are interested in how UAVs might interact with objects at or near ground level; a UAV with dexterous arms could perform a wide range of active near-ground missions, from infrastructure repair and disaster recovery to border inspection and agricultural handling

  • Extreme summer heat events, global warming linked: research

    Since the late 1980s researches have been asserting that global warming would reach a point in the coming decades when its connection to extreme events would become more apparent; while some warming should coincide with a noticeable boost in extreme events, the natural variability in climate and weather can be so large as to disguise the trend; to distinguish the trend from natural variability, NASA researchers turned to statistics; the researchers did not focus on the causes of temperature change, analyzing instead surface temperature data

  • Study finds correlation between injection wells and small earthquakes

    Most earthquakes in the Barnett Shale region of North Texas occur within a few miles of one or more injection wells used to dispose of wastes associated with petroleum production such as hydraulic fracturing fluids, according to new research

  • Study finds substantial water pollution risks from fracking

    The Marcellus Shale region covers approximately 124,000 square kilometers from New York to West Virginia and is being intensely developed; a new study finds that the disposal of contaminated wastewater from hydraulic fracturing — commonly known as fracking — wells producing natural gas in the Marcellus Shale region poses substantial potential risks of river and other water pollution

  • Seeing through walls, clearly

    Research and tests show, for the first time, the ability to use t passive WiFi radar for through-the-wall (TTW) detection of moving personnel – and do so covertly

  • New forensic tool automates RAM forensic investigations

    New tool enables computer forensic investigators to analyze and make use of information contained in volatile memory; memory analysis produces important, case-relevant data for investigators that cannot be obtained from disk analysis, such as running applications, open files, and active network connections