• Solar-powered robot crawls on aging power lines to inspect the grid

    The U.S. grid infrastructure has two characteristics: it is vast and it is aging; now there is a cost-effective way to examine thousands of miles of power lines: a new, solar-powered, 140-pound, six-foot-long robot; the robot uses rollers to clamp onto and move along a line; it can maneuver past towers, known as pylons, using cables built into newer towers or retrofitted onto old ones

  • Aussies revamp cyberdefense strategy

    The Australian federal government has decided to stop supporting AusCERT in favor of a new computer emergency response team more focused on providing an early warning system for utilities, banks, and other critical infrastructure firms

  • Lookingglass named finalist for Best Cyber Security Company

    Lookingglass Cyber Solutions’s ScoutVision allows corporations to monitor networks and infrastructure they are not in control of, but rely upon for day-to-day operations; the company is finalist in Maryland Incubator of the Year Awards program

  • Attention to design details will make buildings withstand hurricanes

    One example of design ideas architects in hurricane-prone regions should follow: design buildings with square, hexagonal, or even octagonal floor plans with roofs of multiple slopes such as a four-sloped hip roof; these roofs perform better under wind forces than the gable roofs with two slopes; gable roofs are common only because they are cheaper to build; research and testing demonstrate that a 30-degree roof slope will have the best results

  • DHS considers merging infrastructure protection, cybersecurity units

    The connectedness between the U.S. critical infrastructure assets and the Internet steadily increases, so the missions of DHS’s infrastructure protection and cybersecurity units become more intertwined as well; the department considers merging the two units

  • Oregon town plans first tsunami-resistant building on stilts

    Geological findings in recent years suggest there is a one-in-three chance that in the next half century a mega-earthquake will tear the seafloor apart off the Oregon Coast; huge waves would surge onto coastal communities in as little as fifteen minutes; an Oregon city plans tsunami-resistant buildings on stilts

  • Berkeley quake demonstration shows bridge safety ideas

    Researchers demonstrate new bridge design that can withstand powerful earthquakes; the design concept relies on building segmented bridges with seismic isolators between the segments; the design would be particularly useful for long stretches of elevated freeways and high-speed rail lines that often run on elevated tracks

  • Crack-proof concrete developed

    Researchers develop crack-proof concrete; the construction industry has spent decades looking for materials that would not crack when they are used to repair and reinforce older materials, because even hairline cracks can let in pollutants and start disintegrating the concrete; BASF engineers offer a solution

  • Self-healing concrete developed

    University of Rhode Island researchers develop a new type of self-healing concrete that promises to be commercially viable and have added environmental benefits; a microencapsulated sodium-silicate healing agent is embedded directly into a concrete matrix; when tiny stress cracks begin to form in the concrete, the capsules rupture and release the healing agent into the adjacent areas

  • Cigarette butts may be used to prevent corrosion of oil pipes

    Cigarettes butts are so toxic, they kill fish; still, 4.5 trillion cigarette butts find their way into the environment each year; Chinese scientists find that chemical extracts from cigarette butts be used to protect steel pipes from rusting; rust prevention and treatment cost the oil industry millions of dollars annually

  • The boom (or is it a bubble?) in federal cybersecurity

    The Obama administration and Congress are allocating more funds to cybersecurity; much of that new spending, estimated at $6 to $7 billion annually just in unclassified work, is focused on the Washington region, as the federal government consolidates many of its cybersecurity-focused agencies in the area; some VCs warn of a cybersecurity bubble

  • Cybersecurity summit pays little attention to control system's security

    Despite threats of infrastructure attacks, scant attention was paid to control systems during a global security conference; the problem is safeguarding infrastructure’s control systems against attackers is that such protection requires a different approach to securing PCs or networks; Windows-based security products will not help; says one expert: “All the devices that sense things — temperature, pressure, flow, and things like that — are not Windows, those are proprietary, real-time or embedded, and there’s no security there”

  • How to protect Times Square -- and other highly traveled areas

    New Yorkers were lucky that a T-shirt vendor notices the suspicious SUV left by Faisal Shazad in Times Square, but there are ways to improve on luck in trying to secure highly traveled areas; more coordinated CCTV system, blast-mitigation, and more call boxes are a few of the measures

  • Remotely controlled robot inspects dangerous structures

    A remotely controlled robot uses laser sensors to look inside damaged structures to look for survivors; when inside the structure, the robot takes multiple scans using Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) unit that takes up to 500,000 point measurements per second. It also can scan through walls and windows

  • New California tremor map shows 50 new faults

    California has an estimated 15,000 faults; many of those are short, and experts have found no evidence that they have generated sizable temblors; others, though, can produce major quakes; the state’s geological agency have placed fifty new faults — all of them surface faults that have been discovered over the last two decades — on one map which will help educate the public and aid in planning and quake readiness