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Israel successfully tests David’s Sling mid-range missile defense system
During the just-ended Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel made military history by successfully employing a missile defense system to protect the country’s population: during the 8-day war, Hamas and Islamic Jihad launched 1,506 rockets and missiles at Israeli towns and cities; of those, 1,057 fell harmlessly in empty fields, but 449 were headed toward populated centers; of the 449, Israel’s Iron Dome system intercepted 421, and 28 hit buildings, killing five; yesterday Israel announced the successful test of David’s Sling, a mid-range missile defensive system; the system is designed to protect against missile with a range of up to 180 miles, like the missiles in the hands of Syria and Hezbollah
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Improved technology to detect hazardous chemicals
Scientists have developed a system quickly to detect trace amounts of illegal drugs, explosives, pollutants in rivers, or nerve gases released into the air; the new system can pick out a single target molecule from 10,000 trillion water molecules within milliseconds, by trapping it on a self-assembling single layer of gold nanoparticles
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Nanotech detection device emulates dog's nose to detect explosives
Inspired by the biology of canine scent receptors, scientists develop a chip capable of quickly identifying trace amounts of vapor molecules; the chip is part of a device which is both highly sensitive to trace amounts of certain vapor molecules, and able to tell a specific substance apart from similar molecules
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Chemists convert greenhouse gas to fuel
What if you could take greenhouse gas and convert it to fuel for an energy-hungry world? Scientists, using modern genetics, accomplished exactly this; the researchers’ findings are just a first step toward converting carbon dioxide, one of the most abundant emissions from fossil fuel use, into usable hydrocarbons
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DARPA seeking surveillance technology to predict future behavior
DARPA has teamed up with scientists from Carnegie Mellon University to create an artificial intelligence system that can watch and predict what a person will “likely” do in the future, using specially programmed software designed to analyze various real-time video surveillance feeds; the system can automatically identify and notify officials if it recognized that an action is not permitted, detecting what is described as anomalous behaviors
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Scanning social media as a tool for biosurveillance
DHS is considering observing and scanning social media Web sites to collect and analyze health-related data which could help identify outbreaks of infectious diseases and other public health and national security risks
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Improving the sensitivity of airport security screening
Scientists are reporting a simple way to improve the sensitivity of the test often used to detect traces of explosives on the hands, carry-ons, and other possessions of passengers at airport security screening stations; scientists concluded that swab fabrics could be improved to collect smaller amounts of explosives by peppering them with hydroxyl, phenyl and amine functional groups
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Stunt kites raise wind power to another level
Researchers are sending stunt kites into the skies to harness the wind and convert the kinetic energy generated into electricity; the kites fly at a height of 300 to 500 meters, positioned to be caught by strong winds; cables, about 700 meters in length, tether the kites to vehicles and pull them around a circuit on rails; a generator then converts the kinetic energy of the vehicles into electricity
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The world’s first circuit breaker for high voltage direct current (HVDC) will enable future DC grid
A Swiss company solves a 100-year-old electrical engineering puzzle by developing the world’s first circuit breaker for high voltage direct current (HVDC); it combines very fast mechanics with power electronics, and will be capable of “interrupting” power flows equivalent to the output of a large power station within 5 milliseconds – this is thirty times faster than the blink of a human eye; the solution will help shape the grid of the future
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Nanostructured material stronger than a speeding bullet
Providing protection against impacts from bullets and other high-speed projectiles is more than just a matter of brute strength; while traditional shields have been made of bulky materials such as steel, newer body armor made of lightweight material such as Kevlar has shown that thickness and weight are not necessary for absorbing the energy of impacts; new tests of nanostructured material could lead to better armor against everything from gunfire to micrometeorites
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DARPA seeks multi-band, portable sensor to provide soldiers with clear images
Clip-on or helmet-mounted camera system would fuse useful aspects of visible, near infrared, and infrared images into a single shot under all weather and visibility conditions; the Pixel Network for Dynamic Visualization program, or PIXNET, technology would ingest the most useful data points from each component sensor and fuse them into a common, information-rich image that can be viewed on the soldier’s heads-up display, and potentially be shared across units
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New strategy for fingerprint visualization
Identifying fingerprints on paper is a commonly used method in police forensic work, but it is not easy to make those fingerprints visible. Now, scientists have developed a new approach for making such fingerprints more readily readable
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Quick-cook method turns algae into oil
It looks like Mother Nature was wasting her time with a multimillion-year process to produce crude oil; University of Michigan engineering researchers can “pressure-cook” algae for as little as a minute and transform an unprecedented 65 percent of the green slime into biocrude
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"Stutter jump" could improve performance of search and rescue robots
A new study shows that jumping can be much more complicated than it might seem; in research that could extend the range of future rescue and exploration robots, scientists have found that hopping robots could dramatically reduce the amount of energy they use by adopting a unique two-part “stutter jump”
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Improving high-speed rail ties against freezing, thawing conditions
Research project is helping high-speed rail systems handle the stress of freezing and thawing weather conditions; the 3-year study looks at the freeze-thaw durability of concrete railroad ties; the research is essential to developing safe and durable high-speed rail systems
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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
By Trina West
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?
By Zulfikar Abbany, Julia Vergin, and Katja Sterzik
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
By Michael Matz
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.
The Tech Apocalypse Panic is Driven by AI Boosters, Military Tacticians, and Movies
By Matthew Guariglia
From popular films like a War Games or The Terminator to a U.S. State Department-commissioned report on the security risk of weaponized AI, there has been a tremendous amount of hand wringing and nervousness about how so-called artificial intelligence might end up destroying the world. There is one easy way to avoid a lot of this and prevent a self-inflicted doomsday: don’t give computers the capability to launch devastating weapons.
The Tech Apocalypse Panic is Driven by AI Boosters, Military Tacticians, and Movies
By Matthew Guariglia
From popular films like a War Games or The Terminator to a U.S. State Department-commissioned report on the security risk of weaponized AI, there has been a tremendous amount of hand wringing and nervousness about how so-called artificial intelligence might end up destroying the world. There is one easy way to avoid a lot of this and prevent a self-inflicted doomsday: don’t give computers the capability to launch devastating weapons.