• New simulation tool for handling hazardous situations

    Irish, Israeli companies develop new simulation tool which immerse trainees in a scene which has been designed for them; new tool will help first responders and law enforcement familiarize themselves with situations before they occur

  • Floods strip Midwest of tons of valuable topsoil

    Floods are stripping the Midwest of its most valuable resource: soil; farmers and environmentalists are at odds over what to do with erosion-prone land — take their chances planting crops on marginal land in hopes of good yields and high grain prices, or plant trees, native grasses, or ground cover that act as a natural flood buffer

  • Security research

    Imperial College London launches the Institute for Security Science and Technology; new outfit will research techniques for preventing identity theft to safeguarding transport infrastructure, energy supplies, and communication networks

  • Earth's surface features predict earthquakes

    Seismologists could make better use of the surface features of mountains to detect the troubles which lurk beneath

  • New round of mass Web attacks

    Attack tool kit aliased as Asprox is still doing damage to Web sites; kit launches SQL injection attacks to append a reference to the malware file using the script tag, which makes it an efficient crimeware tool

  • WHO, IAEA is simulated nuclear accident drill

    The World Health Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency collaborate in a nuclear accident drill at the Laguna Verde nuclear power plant in Mexico

  • Better picture of what lies beneath the Earth's surface

    A tool which measures minute changes in the planet’s gravity field from the air allows a cheaper alternative to seismic surveying

  • The crisis of U.S. infrastructure, III

    The crisis of U.S. infrastructure is one of political will — the will, that is, to vote for money to maintain this elaborate infrastructure; the true political divide lie between Americans who are willing and able to pay up front for the nation’s needs — whether through taxes or tolls — and those who would rather skimp or burden their children

  • The crisis of U.S. infrastructure, II

    The U.S. infrastructure is elaborate — 4 million miles of roads, 600,000 bridges, 26,000 miles of commercially navigable waterways, 11,000 miles of transit lines, 500 train stations, 300 ports, 19,000 airports, 55,000 community drinking water systems, and 30,000 wastewater plants; maintaining this infrastructure costs money

  • French authorities ban water use following nuclear leak

    Safety agencies in France are playing down the risk to public health from Tuesday’s uranium leak at the Tricastin nuclear plant, but water-usage bans have worried skeptical residents and environmental organizations

  • Homeland security experts on priorities for next administration

    Experts: The next administration’s top four homeland security priorities should be border security, emergency response, development of medical counter-measures to weapons of mass destruction, and port security

  • Aussies review e-security

    The Rudd government undertakes a wide review of e-security measures; review could lead to changes in funding committed to a number of agencies in 2007 by the Howard government in its four-year, $73.5 million e-security national agenda

  • California unveils GIS initiative

    Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) enhance the technology for environmental protection, natural resource management, traffic flow, emergency preparedness and response, land use planning, and health and human services; California wants to avail itself of the technology’s benefits

  • Global warming will cause storms to intensify

    Daniel Bernoulli’s eighteenth-century equation basically says that as wind speed increases, air pressure decreases; his equation leaves out variables that were considered difficult to deal with such as friction and energy sources; Wolverines researchers now include these additional variables and find that for every 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit that the Earth’s surface temperature warms, the intensity of storms could increase by at least a few percent

  • Security flaw prompts major Web alert

    Internet security specialist discovers major flaw in the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS); the flaw allows hackers to inject themselves into the URL-typing process, intercepting the name entered by the user and mapping it to a different Internet address than the one intended