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Unmanned copter to deliver supplies to troops in forward positions
The U.S. military will award Lockheed Martin a contract to build an unmanned helicopter which will deliver supplies to forward-positioned troops; in trials earlier this year, a prototype has shown that it can shift 3,000lb of cargo across 150 nautical miles in two flights within six hours — all without any input from ground operators other than specifying the destination and route
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Unmanned helicopter enters restricted airspace after losing communication
An MQ-8 Fire Scout lost communication with its operators and flew into restricted airspace around Washington, D.C.; typically during a lost communications event, an autonomous vehicle is preprogrammed based on its last waypoint to conduct certain activities, take a holding pattern, and wait for operators to reconnect; the Pentagon says: “We found a software anomaly that allowed aircraft not to follow its preprogrammed flight procedures”
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New Florida museum is glass-covered hurricane-proof fortress
The new Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg is designed to withstand category 5 hurricanes; the roof is 12-inch thick solid concrete; the walls are even thicker, at eighteen inches; the glass, which makes up big sections of the outside of the museum, can hold up to a category 3 hurricane; if that glass breaks, letting rain, wind, and debris into the facility, the art will still be safe: storm doors will shield the galleries on the third floor, and the vault, which is on the second floor (all of the art is placed on the second and third floors, above the 30-foot storm surge of a category 5 storm)
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Elevated super bus to solve Beijing's traffic woes
Beijing and Mexico City vie for the title of the city with the worst traffic jams in the world; Beijing is now looking at an elevated “super bus” as a possible solution; the bus travels on rails and straddles two lanes of traffic, allowing cars to drive under its passenger compartment, which holds up to 1,400 people
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University's homeland security program comes with job guarantee
Misericordia University is introducing a new bachelor of arts degree program in Government, Law, and National Security; the program comes with a job guarantee;: if graduates of the program do not find a job or gain admission to a graduate school within six months of finishing the program, the school will pay for internships in their field of choice
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"Smart Potty": medical check ups, automatic seat-lowering
Japanese “intelligent” toilets offer users an array of functions — heated seats, water jets with pressure and temperature controls, hot-air bottom dryers, perfume bursts, ambient background music, and noise-masking audio effects for the easily embarrassed; the latest model also offers instant health check-up every time a user answers the call of nature
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China's Three Gorges Dam's showing cracks
The Three Gorges Dam is China’s largest construction project since the Great Wall; the dam was hailed as an engineering feat that could withstand the worst flood in 100 years, but this year’s torrential rains have severely tested its capacity to control the surging Yangtze
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Humans will be extinct in 100 years: Fenner
Eminent Australian scientist Frank Fenner, who helped to wipe out smallpox, says humans will probably be extinct within 100 years because of overpopulation, environmental destruction, and climate change; he said he believes the situation is irreversible, and it is too late because the effects we have had on Earth since industrialization
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Mankind must abandon earth or face extinction: Hawking
Stephen Hawking says mankind’s only chance of long-term survival lies in colonizing space, as humans drain Earth of resources and face a terrifying array of new threats
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Explore the geometry of cleaning up the Gulf coast
Fueled by oxygen, naturally occurring bacteria can slowly destroy blobs and slicks of crude oil without the use of additional chemicals; Virginia Tech researchers hope to determine whether the shape of crude oil remnant — be it a flat syrupy sheet or a tar ball — can affect deterioration rates
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New computer chip computes probabilities, not logic
A new type of chip has been unveiled that uses probability inputs and outputs instead of the conventional 1’s and 0’s used in logic chips today; crunching probabilities is much more applicable to many computing task performed today rather than binary logic
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Testing rayguns
Technologies for using laser energy to destroy threats at a distance — these weapons known as directed energy weapons — have been in development for many years; before these weapons can be used in the field, the lasers must be tested and evaluated at test ranges, and the power and energy distribution of the high-energy laser beam must be accurately measured on a target board, with high spatial and temporal resolution
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Tracking algorithms for multiple targets win Australia's prestigious Eureka Prize
A University of Western Australia team — including two borthers who are professors at the school — have won the Eureka Prizes, Australia’s “science Oscars,” for a tracking system that has revolutionized the surveillance and monitoring of potential threats in the vast air, sea, and land space of Australia — and of other countries
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DARPA looking for VTOL UAV to plant covert spy devices
The Pentagon is looking for a VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) UAV/UASs - or V-Bat - which will autonomously plant such surveillance devices as remote cameras/bugs, communications relays, marker beacons, small battery powered ground-crawler, or inside-buildings flying robots
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Emergency Managers and Homeland Security are distinct, if related, disciplines
Emergency Management and Homeland Security do share some of the same principles, but they are also distinct: they have different philosophies about prevention vs. mitigation and response vs. recovery
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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.