• Wetlands capture more carbon than earlier thought

    New study shows that wetlands in temperate regions are more valuable as carbon sinks than current policies imply; the study found that the stagnant wetland had an average carbon storage rate per year that is almost twice as high as the carbon storage rate of the flow-through wetland

  • New concrete corrosion sensors developed

    Scientists have made a major breakthrough in developing sensors which dramatically improve the ability to spot early warning signs of corrosion in concrete

  • Hackers attack U.S. railways

    Last month hackers took control of passenger rail lines in the Northwest, disrupting signals twice and creating delays

  • New material removes radioactive gas from spent nuclear fuel

    Worldwide efforts to produce clean, safe nuclear energy and reduce radioactive waste are aided by researchers who showed that metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) can be used to capture and remove volatile radioactive gas from spent nuclear fuel

  • Restored wetlands rarely equal condition of original wetlands

    Wetlands provide many societal benefits such as biodiversity conservation, fish production, water purification, erosion control, carbon storage; along the coast, they also serve as natural barrier which moderate and slow down hurricanes as the hit land; a new analysis of restoration projects shows that restored wetlands seldom reach the quality of a natural wetland

  • Helping utilities predict service life of pipeline infrastructure

    Scientists develop regression models to help utility companies predict the service life of wastewater pipeline infrastructure and take an active approach to pipeline replacements and maintenance

  • Critical flaws in SCADA give hackers edge

    In an effort to improve critical cybersecurity flaws in industrial control systems, last week researchers released exploit modules that take advantage of security gaps in six major control systems, but in doing so, have made it easy for hackers to infiltrate these systems as none of them have been patched or taken offline

  • Infrastructure security market to see robust growth

    A combination of ageing infrastructure, smart grid adoption, rising compliance and regulations, and utilities becoming a target for criminal exploitation has created a robust growth in the utility infrastructure security market

  • Booz Allen calls for greater critical infrastructure investment

    In advance of President Obama’s State of the Union Address, defense contractor Booz Allen is urging the president to focus on critical infrastructure investment

  • GAO: critical infrastructure operators need more coherent regulations

    A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that the bulk of U.S. critical infrastructure is inadequately protected as operators lack a coherent set of guidelines

  • Slowing down sea-level rise vs. reducing surface temperature change rate

    Scientists say that reducing the amount of solar radiation hitting Earth (for example, by satellites that block the sun, making the Earth’s surface more reflective, or emulating the effects of volcanoes by placing aerosol particles in the upper atmosphere) would be a cheaper way to halt or reverse climate change than reducing carbon dioxide emissions

  • Water pumps and terrorism-related information sharing systems

    With thousands of local law enforcement agencies, critical infrastructure operators, and concerned citizens reporting suspicious incidents, Homeland Security officials are inundated with data; effectively sorting through that information is a problem, as was illustrated last November by a report that a water pump at an Illinois water utility was broken by Russian hackers; the preliminary report caused panic about U.S. infrastructure vulnerability, but ultimately proved incorrect; it took more than a week for federal investigators to reach its conclusion, showing DHS ongoing problems with streamlining information sharing processes with its Fusion Centers

  • Stuxnet and Duqu part of assembly line: researchers

    Stuxnet, the highly sophisticated piece of malicious code that was the first to cause physical damage, could just be the tip of the iceberg in a massive cyberweapon manufacturing operation; according to cybersecurity researchers at Kaspersky Labs and Symantec, Stuxnet appears to be part of a larger cybersecurity weapons program with fully operational and easily modified malicious code that can be aimed at different targets with minimal costs or effort

  • Digital images used to prevent bridge failures

    A new/old method has been developed to assure the safety of hundreds of truss bridges across the United States; researchers have been testing the use of a thoroughly modern version of an old technique — photographic measurement or “photogrammetry” — to watch the failure of a key bridge component in exquisite detail

  • New Orleans flood defense system nears completion

    The Army Corps of Engineers is rapidly nearing the completion of its upgrades to the massive levee and flood defense system designed to protect the greater New Orleans area from another Hurricane Katrina