• Suicide bombers: expedient tactics, not expression of Islam

    New study argues that female suicide bombing is a political and military tactic, not a religious act; according to mainstream scholars of Islam, the Qur’an, the Hadith (traditions and practices of the Prophet Muhammad), and other principles of Shari’a (Islamic law) clearly condemn terrorist acts and oppose suicide operations; in order to justify suicide bombings, leaders of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and al Qaeda have formulated their own interpretations of Islam, which are based more on military strategy than theology

  • House drastically cuts DHS science and technology

    The Republican majority in the House last week passed a proposed DHS budget which drastically cuts the department’s Science & Technology Directorate’s (S&T) budget by 52 percent, from $827 million to $398 million; the Obama administration has requested $1.2 billion for that program in fiscal year 2012, which begins on 1 October; the S&T reductions are part of a $1.1 billion reduction in DHS’s overall budget, now $43.4 billion; the proposed DHS budget is $1 billion lower than the FY 2011 funding level, and $3 billion lower than the Obama administration’s request ; DHS officials say the decrease in S&T’s budget will wipe out dozens of programs, stalling the development of technologies for border protection, detection of bio-hazards, cargo screening; also cut will be research into domestic IED detection, leaving mass transit vulnerable to attacks

  • WWI, WWII-era dazzle camouflage of benefits in modern warfare

    Warships in both the First and Second World Wars were painted with dazzle camouflage: startling geometric patterns aimed at confusing the enemy rather than concealing the vessel; while dazzle camouflage would probably not have successfully distorted ships’ speeds in the two World Wars, it could play a role in today’s battlefields where fast-moving army vehicles frequently come under attack from shoulder-launched, rocket-propelled grenades

  • Bacteria designed for sleuthing

    Seven Cambridge University undergraduates spent the summer of 2009 genetically engineering bacteria to secrete a variety of colored pigments, visible to the naked eye; they designed standardized sequences of DNA, known as BioBricks, and inserted them into E. coli bacteria — so the bacteria can now change its color to red, yellow, green, blue, brown, or violet; the bacteria can be programmed to do useful things, such as indicate whether drinking water is safe by turning red if they sense a toxin; other uses for the design bacterium include monitoring food additives, patenting issues, personalized medicine, terrorism, and new types of weather

  • Deadly tornado kills four in Massachusetts

    On Wednesday, as many as seven tornadoes tore through Massachusetts resulting in the state’s first twister related deaths in sixteen years; the tornadoes touched down in the western and central part of the state, but hit Springfield, located ninety miles west of Boston, the hardest; more than forty people have been admitted to hospitals after sustaining injuries from the tornado and four people have been confirmed dead so far; emergency responders are currently picking through the wreckage to rescue any survivors trapped in the rubble

  • Surprise: Thomas Edison also invented the concrete house

    Historians say Thomas Edison invented and patented in 1917 an innovative construction system to mass produce prefabricated and seamless concrete houses; most people associate this style of architectural design and type of building technology with the European avant-garde of the early twentieth century; originally motivated by the objective of providing a cost-effective prototype for the working-class home, Edison’s 1917 experiment in mass-production was one of Modernism’s first attempts to construct a building with a single material

  • Ports unprepared for increase in Katrina-like storms

    A recent report by Stanford University researchers found that the majority of seaports around the world are unprepared for rising sea levels and increasingly violent storms; a majority of ports surveyed listed sea level rise and increasing extreme storms as some of their top concerns; only 6 percent of respondents said they have plans to build hurricane barriers in the next ten years, and less than 18 percent said they had plans to build dikes or other storm protection structures; to ease uncertainty among port authorities, researchers developed a computer model to provide cost estimates that take into account a port’s specific location as well as the cost of labor, materials, and equipment for fortifying a structure against rising sea levels

  • Former world leaders say global water crisis must be addressed

    In March 2008, the U.K. intelligence services, in a report to then-prime minister Gordon Brown, warned that the deteriorating fresh water situation around the world would soon lead not only to tensions over water between states, but to “water wars”; world leaders, at least former world leaders, agree that the global water situation is dire, and twenty of them, led by Bill Clinton, meet to discuss solutions

  • Human impact of rising oceans will extend well beyond coasts

    Identifying the human impact of rising sea levels is far more complex than just looking at coastal cities on a map; rather, estimates that are based on current, static population data can greatly misrepresent the true extent — and the pronounced variability — of the human toll of climate change; a new study focuses on four regions identified as highly susceptible to flooding: the tip of the Florida peninsula, coastal South Carolina, the northern New Jersey coastline, and the greater Sacramento region of northern California; the study finds that by 2030, more than nineteen million people will be affected by rising sea levels just in their four study areas

  • DHS completes tests on mind reading technology

    DHS officials recently completed an initial round of tests for its new intent detecting technology; with the Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) program, DHS hopes to be able to identify terrorists or criminals before they execute an attack; FAST relies on remote sensors to measure several physical indicators like heart rate and how frequently one’s eyes flit back and forth; so far the technology has only been tested in a laboratory setting, but DHS says that it has been able to achieve a 70 percent accuracy rate; in the next battery of tests, officials will examine how FAST fares in more realistic settings; many scientists criticize the program for the dubious science behind it

  • Germany to scrap nuclear power by 2022

    Germany yesterday announced plans to become the first major industrialized power to shut down all its nuclear plants in the wake of the disaster in Japan; phase-out due to be wrapped up by 2022; it means that the country will have to find the 22 percent of its electricity needs currently covered by nuclear reactors from another source; Monday decision is a U-turn for Chancellor Angela Merkel, and means that the current government has adopted the timetable for a nuclear phase-out set by the previous Social Democrat-Green coalition government a decade ago; it also cancels Merkel’s decision from November 2010 to extend the lifetime of Germany’s seventeen reactors by an average of twelve years, which would have kept them open until the mid-2030s

  • Future UAVs will emulate birds

    Engineers at UC San Diego are mimicking the movement of bird wings to help improve the maneuverability of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs); this is important, because UAVs are quickly becoming popular tools for the armed forces, and there are also a myriad of civilian applications which are rapidly developing, such as border control, wildfire monitoring, search and rescue, and traffic observation

  • DARPA crowd-source next-gen UAV design

    DARPA has announced its UAVForge competition for the design of a user-intuitive, backpack-portable UAV which is also quiet, can stay aloft for at least three hours, and can fly in harsh condition; in addition to the $100,000 prize, the winning team will have the opportunity to showcase its design in an overseas military exercise

  • Global carbon emissions at record high

    Global carbon emissions are at their highest ever levels, increasing fears of a global temperature rise over the “dangerous” two degrees Celsius threshold; unpublished estimates from the International Energy Agency revealed that the world economy’s return to growth in 2010 coincided with a 1.6 gigaton rise in carbon dioxide emissions, the highest ever recorded jump

  • Global warming: Arctic access by land will diminish, but improve by sea

    Global warming over the next forty years will cut through Arctic transportation networks like a double-edged sword, limiting access in certain areas and vastly increasing it in others in absolute terms; winners are expected to be coastal communities, coastal resource-extraction operations, tourism, fishing, and shipping concerns; potential losers include inland mining and timber operations, inland oil and gas drilling, and smaller inland communities, often inhabited by indigenous peoples; Canada and Russia stand to lose the most winter-road potential as rising temperatures will prevent up to 400,000 square miles from hardening into potential roadways