Sci-Tech

  • GAO lauds U.S. Navy's science and technology R&D

    The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is the Department of the Navy’s science and technology (S&T) provider, charged with discovering, developing, and transitioning innovative S&T to meet soldier needs. Since its inception in 1946, ONR research efforts have supported the development of the laser, GPS, transistors, fiber optics, radar, cell phones, and more. A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report cites ONR’s Future Naval Capabilities (FNC) as an example of efficient, cost-effective program for making science and technology research functional.

  • Arab Spring protests an isolated occurrence, not new Arab world trend

    As the long-term impact of the Arab Spring continues to take shape, researchers warn that the protests that swept across the Middle East and North Africa could mark more of an isolated occurrence than a permanent rise of people power in the region.

  • Water treatment plant ozone upgrade wins civil engineering award

    The Ozone Upgrade and Expansion Project of the Alvarado Water Treatment Plant in San Diego, California, was named the winner of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 2013 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement (OCEA) Award. In addition to expanding plant capacity by 67 percent, the city of San Diego converted from chlorine to ozone disinfection. The incorporation of ozone enabled the city to provide not only safer water with lower levels of carcinogenic disinfection by-products, but also water that is odorless and better tasting.

  • Tactile helmet helps first responders in challenging conditions

    A specially-adapted “tactile helmet,” developed by researchers at the University of Sheffield, could provide fire-fighters operating in challenging conditions with vital clues about their surroundings. The helmet is fitted with a number of ultrasound sensors which are used to detect the distances between the helmet and nearby walls or other obstacles.

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  • Americans support preparation for extreme weather, coastal challenges: survey

    The challenges posed by rising sea levels and increasingly severe storms will only intensify as more Americans build along the coasts. A just-released NOAA report predicts that already crowded U.S. coastlines will become home to an additional eleven million people by 2020. A Stanford survey finds that the majority of Americans support stronger coastal development codes. Among the most popular policy solutions: stronger building codes for new structures along the coast to minimize damage, and preventing new buildings from being built near the coast.

  • Genetically engineered multi-toxin crops make insects insecticide-resistant

    The popular new strategy of planting genetically engineered crops that make two or more toxins to fend off insect pests rests on assumptions that do not always apply, researchers have discovered. Their study helps explain why one major pest is evolving resistance much faster than predicted and offers ideas for more sustainable pest control.

  • Instructors’ hand gestures help students learn math

    U.S. students lag behind those in many other Western countries in math and have a particularly hard time mastering equivalence problems in early grades. Researchers find that students perform better when their instructors use hand gestures — a simple teaching tool that could yield benefits in higher-level math such as algebra.

  • Using waste heat to capture CO2 before it goes up in smoke

    Power plants fired by coal and natural gas account for about half of the CO2 that humans add to the atmosphere each year; these power plants are prime candidates for new technology that captures CO2 before it goes up in smoke. Researchers seek to optimize CO2 removal from power plant emissions by employing waste heat. This is just one example of looking to improve upon a tried-and-true technology for CO2 capture. That technology — a two-phase chemical process — has been used for decades to remove naturally occurring CO2 from natural gas.

  • U.S. suffered $119 billion in disaster-related losses in 2012

    Natural and man-made disasters contributed to $186 billion in economic losses around the world last year. The United States took the biggest hit with $119 billion in losses. Insurance claims for weather-related losses in 2012 totaled $77 billion dollars, the third most expensive losses on record. Nine of the top ten most expensive insured loss events which occurred last year happened in the United States.

  • A more powerful terahertz imaging system developed

    Low-energy terahertz radiation could potentially enable doctors to see deep into tissues without the damaging effects of X-rays, or allow security guards to identify chemicals in a package without opening it. An electrical engineering research team has developed a laser-powered terahertz source and detector system which transmits with fifty times more power and receives with thirty times more sensitivity than existing technologies. This offers 1,500 times more powerful systems for imaging and sensing applications.

  • Suppressing naturally occurring blazes increases wildfire risk

    According to the National Interagency Fire Center, 9.3 million U.S. acres burned in wildfires in 2012 compared with 3.57 million acres affected in 2001 and 2.95 million in 1991. One reason for the increase in the number of acres consumed by wildfires is the U.S. government’s policy of suppressing of naturally occurring blazes. Researchers say that this policy can have unintended consequences, including making wildfires more severe.

  • DHS seeking student hackers

    DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano  on Tuesday said that due to “new and rapidly growing threats” of a cyberattack, hundreds of college-age hackers are needed to help deal with the massive number of daily incursions into the nation’s electrical grid and other critical infrastructure.

  • More than 10,000 pesticides approved by EPA without rigorous review

    Congress allowed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to use what is called “conditional registration” to approve pesticides deemed especially beneficial for food production – even before all the toxicity tests have been completed. Congress intended conditional registration to be used only sparingly, but the EPS has been using the loophole in a wholesale fashion to approve 65 percent – or more than 10,000 – of the 16,000 pesticides submitted to it for approval. The EPA cannot easily track the history of conditionally approved pesticides to determine whether required toxicity data was submitted, whether that caused a dangerous use of a pesticide to be cancelled, or whether the uses or restrictions should be modified based in such data.

  • Focusing on climate’s impact on fisheries leads to misguided conclusions

    In the early 1940s, California fishermen hauled in a historic bounty of sardine at a time that set the backdrop for John Steinbeck’s novel Cannery Row. By the end of the decade, however, the nets came up empty and the fishery collapsed. Where did they all go? A new study argues that the problem in seeking answers to this – and similar – questions lies in the fact that researchers typically try to find the answers by focusing on one factor at a time. What is the impact of climate on sardines? What is the effect of overfishing on sardines? Focusing on single variables in isolation can lead to misguided conclusions, the authors of the study say. The authors argue that climate, human actions, and ecosystem fluctuations combine to influence sardine and other species populations, and therefore such factors should not be evaluated independently.

  • Fluctuating wind power as a solution rather than a problem

    Incorporating wind power into existing power grids is challenging because fluctuating wind speed and direction means turbines generate power inconsistently. Coupled with customers’ varying power demand, many wind-farm managers end up wasting power-generation capacity and limiting the service life of turbines through active control in order to avoid any possible damage to the power grid from spikes in supply.