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DHS to address climate change as homeland security issue
DHS has a new task force to battle the effects of climate change on domestic security operations; DHS secretary Janet Napolitano explained that the task force was charged with “identifying and assessing the impact that climate change could have on the missions and operations of the Department of Homeland Security”; a June 2010 DHS Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan states: “climate change has the potential to accelerate and intensify extreme weather events which threaten the nation’s sustainability and security”
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U.S. will carefully watch, but not regulate, synthetic biology
White House commission says biologists can engineer custom organisms from synthetic genomes, with the government watching but not regulating the research; critics claim synthetic biology will create unnatural organisms likely to wreak havoc on the larger ecosystem if they got loose in the wild — to say nothing of the risks of bioterrorists using design pathogens; self-regulation, say the critics, is equivalent to no regulation
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China to step up efforts to control Mother Nature
China is facing increasingly sever water shortages; the Chinese government is expanding it activities to combat extreme weather such as droughts, exploring airborne water resources, bringing water from he sea inland, and other measures to secure stable water supplies for cities, industry and agriculture
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BAE develops vehicles for ground war of the future
A range of technologies could improve the effectiveness and fuel efficiency of current military vehicles, while laying the groundwork for future fighting vehicles; BAE looked at 567 technologies and 244 vehicle concepts, which had to fit only two criteria — the vehicle could weigh no more than 30 tons, and had to carry an equivalent punch to a Challenger 2 tank; the company settled on seven future vehicles
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Engineers enhance building designs better to withstand earthquakes
Earthquakes come in all sizes with varying degrees of damage depending on the geographic locations where they occur; even a small one on the Richter scale that strikes in an impoverished nation can be more damaging than a larger one that occurs in a city where all buildings have been designed to a stricter building code; the current building codes are insufficient because buildings designed according to these codes have evolved only to avoid collapse under very large earthquakes
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Hope for terahertz: laser operates at higher temperatures than thought possible
Terahertz rays — radiation between microwaves and infrared rays on the electromagnetic spectrum — are a promising means of detecting explosives, but they have proven hard to generate cost effectively. So far, solid-state lasers — the cheap, miniature type of laser found in CD players — have been unable to produce terahertz rays unless they are super-cooled, which makes them impractical for mass deployment; now a group of researchers report a solid-state terahertz laser that operates at nearly twice the temperature that putative proportionality would have predicted
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General Atomic says its Blitzer rail gun already "tactically relevant"
Last Friday the U.S. Navy tested a rail gun with muzzle energies of 64 megajoules; the gun aims to deliver a projectile to a target 200 miles away at speeds of up to Mach 7+; not to be outdone, General Atomics has just released information about how, back in September, it tested its own rail gun — dubbed the Blitzer; while the Navy researchers are still preoccupied with the velocity of the projectile and muzzle energy, GA says it is farther along in weaponizing its system, which it describes as already “tactically relevant”
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DoE report warns of U.S. vulnerability to China's rare-earth supplies
A U.S. Department of Energy report draws attention to the need to diversify the supply of rare Earth metals needed for clean technology and defense; China currently supplies 97 percent of the world’s rare Earth elements; the largest U.S. producer of rare earths last week announced a $130 million funding deal with Japanese company Sumitomo that promises the financier “substantial quantities of rare-earth products”
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Quake experiments may lead to sturdier buildings
Johns Hopkins researchers will study how seismic forces affect mid-rise cold-formed steel buildings, up to nine stories high; the cold-formed steel pieces that are commonly used to frame low- and mid-rise buildings are made by bending about 1-millimeter-thick sheet metal, without heat, into structural shapes; these components are typically lighter and less expensive than traditional building systems and possess other advantages
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Underground security tech to revolutionize border security
The University of Arizona College of Engineering is testing an invisible border monitoring system that could revolutionize the way the U.S. conducts homeland security; the border-monitoring system, known as Helios, consists of laser pulses transmitted through fiber-optic cables buried in the ground that respond to movements on the surface above; a detector at one or both ends of the cable analyzes these responses; Helios is sensitive enough to detect a dog and can discriminate between people, horses, and trucks
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U.S. Navy demonstrates 100-mile hypersonic rail gun test shot
The latest test by the U.S. Navy of a rail gun saw a trial firing which pushed muzzle energy to a blistering 33 megajoules (MJ); the Navy wants to achieve lab trials at 64 MJ, potentially offering 200 mile range with projectiles striking at Mach 5, before trying to build an actual weapon
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Police robot ends Wisconsin standoff
Last Friday, a Northrop Grumman police robot was sent to investigate an SUV parked on the shoulder of a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, highway; the robot approached the two potentially dangerous suspects holed up in an SUV, transmitted instructions from a hostage negotiator sitting safely in a nearby truck, and punched out the rear window of the suspects’ stolen car, helping police end the standoff peacefully
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Freshwater sustainability challenges shared by Southwest and Southeast
Twenty-five years ago, environmentalist Marc Reisner published Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, which predicted that water resources in the West would be unable to support the growing demand of cities, agriculture, new research offers new support for most of Reisner’s conclusions, using data and methods unavailable to him in 1986
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Scientist: change behavior to give mitigation technologies time to emerge
One of the world’s foremost authorities on environmental says that there are only three options when it comes to climate change; mitigation, adaptation, and suffering; currently there are no technological quick fixes for global warming, so “Our best hope is to change our behavior in ways that significantly slow the rate of global warming, thereby giving engineers and scientists time to devise, develop, and deploy technological solutions where possible”
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Fully robotic, remotely controlled bomb-disposal hand nears
Engineers have developed a robotic hand that offers remotely controlled, highly dexterous movements that could lead to a breakthrough in areas such as bomb disposal; the robotic hand can be remotely controlled by a glove worn by an operator connected to a computer; this can then communicate via a wireless connection with the hand offering real time comparable movements
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More headlines
The long view
Autonomous Vehicle Technology Vulnerable to Road Object Spoofing and Vanishing Attacks
Researchers have demonstrated the potentially hazardous vulnerabilities associated with the technology called LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, many autonomous vehicles use to navigate streets, roads and highways. The researchers have shown how to use lasers to fool LiDAR into “seeing” objects that are not present and missing those that are – deficiencies that can cause unwarranted and unsafe braking or collisions.
Tantalizing Method to Study Cyberdeterrence
Tantalus is unlike most war games because it is experimental instead of experiential — the immersive game differs by overlapping scientific rigor and quantitative assessment methods with the experimental sciences, and experimental war gaming provides insightful data for real-world cyberattacks.
Prototype Self-Service Screening System Unveiled
TSA and DHS S&T unveiled a prototype checkpoint technology, the self-service screening system, at Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) in Las Vegas, NV. The aim is to provide a near self-sufficient passenger screening process while enabling passengers to directly receive on-person alarm information and allow for the passenger self-resolution of those alarms.
Falling Space Debris: How High Is the Risk I'll Get Hit?
An International Space Station battery fell back to Earth and, luckily, splashed down harmlessly in the Atlantic. Should we have worried? Space debris reenters our atmosphere every week.
Testing Cutting-Edge Counter-Drone Technology
Drones have many positive applications, bad actors can use them for nefarious purposes. Two recent field demonstrations brought government, academia, and industry together to evaluate innovative counter-unmanned aircraft systems.
Strengthening the Grid’s ‘Backbone’ with Hydropower
Argonne-led studies investigate how hydropower could help add more clean energy to the grid, how it generates value as grids add more renewable energy, and how liner technology can improve hydropower efficiency.