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Costs of changing U.S. passport system to reach $1 billion
Congress, DHS want Amercians traveling to Western Hemisphere countries to carry passports; the administration initially figured it would cost $289 million between 2006 and 2008 to handle the increase in demand for passports; in fact, it will cost about 1 billion
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Company shows new non-lethal weapon
Intelligent Optical Systems unveils its LED Incapacitator, a non-lethal defense system for law enforcement and antiterrorism
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Elbit Systems reports second quarter 2007 results
Innovative defense contractor acquires Tadira Communication, shows 36 percent revenue growth over second quarter 2006
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Jammers increasingly used to fight IEDs
From July 2003 to July 2007, 1,565 coalition forces were killed by IEDs; by the end of 2007, the Pentagon will have funded more than 30,000 jammers for Marine and Army units; DOD has spent $1.6 billion on jamming technology for this fiscal year; opportunities for technology companies
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DARPA outlines technologies in which it is most interested
From chip-scale atomic clock to real-time accurate language translation to Newton’s laws for biology, DARPA is funding research along a broad front
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3,000 life-saving radios go unused in Chicago
Motorola supplies city with sophisticated emergency radios, but aging radio towers can not take heavy digital equipment, so emergency communication upgrades must wait
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Analyzing intentions and behavior from afar
Security firms working on devices to spot would-be terrorists in crowd; emphasis on analyzing behavior and physiology from afar
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DHS increases size of Nanomix grant
In January DHS awarded a grant to a specialist in nanoelectronic detection; the department liked the company’s progress, and increased the amount of the grant
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Bush administration upholds phone ban in Qualcomm patent dispute
Bush administration upholds import ban on phones which contain Qualcomm chips; DHS review finds no justification to oppose the ban on public safety grounds
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Proxy demonstrates cooperative UAV performance
Maryland UAV specialist, USAF offers the first successful demonstration of multiple UAVs performing fully autonomous cooperative flight
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Metamaterials make levitation thinkable
Purdue University researchers have created a metmaterial that bends infrared light with a wavelength of 813 nm; such metameterials make two things possible: Invisibility cloak and quantum levitation
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Armed robots deployed to Iraq
Three armed robots — called SWORDS — have been deployed to Iraq; Army hopes that safety and control improvements will make the robots an effective urban fighting tool
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Researcher offers new method for analyzing pictures, videos
New error-level analytical techniques allows for detecting authenticity of pictures and videos — for example, those released by al Qaeda; retouched and added images may indicate coded messages to operatives
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New source of energy: People-powered "crowd farms"
These boots are made for walking: Two MIT students propose harvesting the energy of human movement in urban settings
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Versar awarded ISO 9000 certification for its protective suits
The market for personal protective gear is growing, and Versar receives important certification for its PPE products
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The long view
9/11 Mystery Solved: World Trade Center Building Didn't Collapse Due to Fire – Study Finds
Foreign interference and hostile state espionage are a bigger threat to Australia’s security than terrorism, one of the country’s top spy chiefs has warned. Duncan Lewis, the outgoing head of Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), identified three challenges security confronting Australians: terrorism, cyber warfare; and foreign interference and espionage. But the latter was on a “growth trajectory” and is a greater threat than terrorism, he told a Lowy Institute forum in Sydney.
Bottled Water Is Sucking Florida Dry
Florida has the largest concentration of freshwater springs in the world, but they are being devastated by increasing pollution and drastic declines in water flow. Some springs have dried up from overextraction; others have shown signs of saltwater intrusion and harmful algae blooms. The answer to this problem is simple: No more extraction permits should be granted, and existing permits should be reduced with the goal of eliminating bottled water production entirely in Florida. But that simple solution is not being implemented. In the next few months, Nestlé, the largest bottled-water company in the world, is set to renew its permit at Ginnie Springs, one of the most popular recreational attractions along the Santa Fe River,” Sainato and Skojec write. “The permit allows Nestlé to take one million gallons per day at no cost, with just a one-time $115 application fee.”
The Water Wars Are Here
Everyone remembers the scene in Chinatown when Jack Nicholson almost gets his nose sliced off, but many do not recall what the dispute was about. It wasn’t drug smuggling or gun running that got Nicholson’s character slashed. It was water rights. Since the film was released in 1974, the question of who will get the limited water in the American West, particularly the all-important flow of the Colorado River, has grown even more contentious. Dystopian novels and movies predict a future in which people fight it out for every last drop of water to quench the thirst of expanding cities, parched agriculture, and wasteful suburban grass lawns. But the future is already here.
Can We Engineer Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis?
The Climate Apocalypse is upon us. More carbon monoxide has been discharged into the atmosphere in the last 50 years than in the whole of human history that went before. Carbon traps heat and the world is getting hotter. Heat holds water vapor and so rainfall is getting more frequent while heat waves last longer. Ice at the poles melts and coastal cities face inundation as sea levels rise. The doom confidently predicted by many climate scientists around the world is being met by optimism among other scientists who are employing innovative technologies that may transform the debate and offer hope for us all. These technological breakthroughs will impact all aspects of climate change from carbon emissions to food production and all forms of energy.
In the Event of a Killer Asteroid, Volcanic Apocalypse, or Nuclear Holocaust, Mushrooms Could Save Humanity from Extinction
About 66 million years ago, an asteroid plummeted through Earth’s atmosphere and crashed into the sea floor, creating an explosion over 6,500 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima. The impact sent clouds of debris and sulfur into Earth’s atmosphere, blocking the sun’s light and warmth for about two years. Photosynthesis ground to a halt, which meant no more plant growth. The surviving dinosaurs starved to extinction. But fossil records show that fungi thrived in the aftermath. “Blot out the sun, and even the best-prepared survivalist, a master of the wilderness, will starve to death along with everyone else,” Bryan Walsh writes in his new book, End Times. In order to survive, he says, people would need to adopt sunlight-free agriculture — cultivating mushrooms, rats, and insects.
The Secret History of Fort Detrick, the CIA’s Base for Mind Control Experiments
Suburban sprawl has engulfed Fort Detrick, an Army base 50 miles from Washington in the Maryland town of Frederick. seventy-six years ago, however, when the Army selected Detrick as the place to develop its super-secret plans to wage germ warfare, the area around the base looked much different. In fact, it was chosen for its isolation. For decades, much of what went on at the base was a closely held secret. Directors of the CIA mind control program MK-ULTRA, which used Detrick as a key base, destroyed most of their records in 1973. Some of its secrets have been revealed in declassified documents, through interviews and as a result of congressional investigations. Together, those sources reveal Detrick’s central role in MK-ULTRA and in the manufacture of poisons intended to kill foreign leaders.