• Engineers educate lawmakers about aging U.S. infrastructure

    Two hundred members of the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) fanned out across Capitol Hill last month for the annual Legislative Fly-In with a message: U.S. infrastructure problems are solvable if we have strong leadership in Congress. The ASCE members highlighted the nation’s need to eliminate the backlog of infrastructure deficiencies, modernize roads, bridges, water systems, and energy grid – and reminded Congress that to promote commerce and protect public safety, welfare, and the environment, infrastructure investment is a priority issue.

  • Tech companies pull April Fools’ Day pranks

    April Fools’ day brings out the prankster in all of us, and companies like Google, Hulu, and Twitter are no exception. Twitter, for example, said it will eliminate vowels on its site to make for more efficient conversation. If users want to use vowels, they will have to pay a $5 fee (Twitter did say that it will continue to allow customer to use the “Y” for free, because that letter doubles as a consonant).

  • FBI wants 1994 online surveillance law updated

    The FBI said the agency’s top priority this year is to update a surveillance law so authorities can monitor in real time Web activities of Americans suspected of committing crimes. The 1994 law, known as the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), applies to telecommunication companies, but only partially to Web-based companies.

  • Americans support preparation for extreme weather, coastal challenges: survey

    The challenges posed by rising sea levels and increasingly severe storms will only intensify as more Americans build along the coasts. A just-released NOAA report predicts that already crowded U.S. coastlines will become home to an additional eleven million people by 2020. A Stanford survey finds that the majority of Americans support stronger coastal development codes. Among the most popular policy solutions: stronger building codes for new structures along the coast to minimize damage, and preventing new buildings from being built near the coast.

  • Obama promotes private-public infrastructure investment plan

    President Barack Obama spent Friday afternoon at the Port of Miami where he announced his plan to attract private investment for big infrastructure projects. One such project is  a $2 billion upgrading plan for the port. Obama also he would continue his push for a $100 billion infrastructure bank.

  • Using waste heat to capture CO2 before it goes up in smoke

    Power plants fired by coal and natural gas account for about half of the CO2 that humans add to the atmosphere each year; these power plants are prime candidates for new technology that captures CO2 before it goes up in smoke. Researchers seek to optimize CO2 removal from power plant emissions by employing waste heat. This is just one example of looking to improve upon a tried-and-true technology for CO2 capture. That technology — a two-phase chemical process — has been used for decades to remove naturally occurring CO2 from natural gas.

  • U.S. suffered $119 billion in disaster-related losses in 2012

    Natural and man-made disasters contributed to $186 billion in economic losses around the world last year. The United States took the biggest hit with $119 billion in losses. Insurance claims for weather-related losses in 2012 totaled $77 billion dollars, the third most expensive losses on record. Nine of the top ten most expensive insured loss events which occurred last year happened in the United States.

  • New foot-and-mouth vaccine shows promise

    The 2001 foot and mouth outbreak in Britain was devastating and cost the economy billions of pounds in control measures and compensation. One recommendation in a Royal Society report following the epidemic recommended the development of new approaches to control the virus. Scientists have used a new method to produce a vaccine which does not rely on inactivating the live, infectious virus which causes the disease — and is therefore much safer to produce.

  • U.S. water infrastructure is in a serious state of disrepair

    The U.S. water system is in a state of disrepair, and is deteriorating further every year for lack of money for maintenance and upkeep. The results include an estimated 240,000 water main breaks each year and nearly 14,000 dams — or one out of every seven dams — in the United States rated as “high hazard,” meaning that the flush of water from a broken dam would likely kill people.

  • More than 10,000 pesticides approved by EPA without rigorous review

    Congress allowed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to use what is called “conditional registration” to approve pesticides deemed especially beneficial for food production – even before all the toxicity tests have been completed. Congress intended conditional registration to be used only sparingly, but the EPS has been using the loophole in a wholesale fashion to approve 65 percent – or more than 10,000 – of the 16,000 pesticides submitted to it for approval. The EPA cannot easily track the history of conditionally approved pesticides to determine whether required toxicity data was submitted, whether that caused a dangerous use of a pesticide to be cancelled, or whether the uses or restrictions should be modified based in such data.

  • U.K. outlines its long-term nuclear future

    Over the next two decades it is forecast that, globally, there will be £930 billion investment in building new reactors and £250 billion in decommissioning those that are coming off line. The nuclear new build program in the United Kingdom alone could generate up to 40,000 jobs in the sector at its peak. Government publishes industrial strategy to enable the UK to seize the opportunities for economic growth in the nuclear industry.

  • Automakers help Detroit emergency services

    General Motors, Ford Motors, and the Chrysler Group joined Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Quicken Loans, and several other businesses in the Detroit area to donate $8 million for new ambulances and police cars, on the same day that emergency manager Kevyn Orr started his job.

  • In 2012, Microsoft received 70,665 law-enforcement requests for customer information

    On Thursday, Microsoft released the number of law enforcement requests it has received for information on its hundreds of millions of customers. By releasing the information, Microsoft is now putting itself on the same team as Google, Twitter, Yahoo, and other Web businesses which have published reports on law-enforcement request for customer information. In 2012 Microsoft received a total of 70,665 law-enforcement requests for customer information.

  • Justice Department agrees 1986 snooping law should be reviewed

    The U.S. Justice Department said earlier this week that it supports reviewing legislation which allows U.S. law enforcement officials to read someone’s e-mails without a search warrant. The 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) states that federal authorities only need a subpoena issued by a federal prosecutor, not a judge, to search through a person’s e-mails which are older than 180 days or which have already been opened.

  • Gun manufacturer to leave Colorado after governor signs gun bill

    Colorado governor John Hickenlooper on Wednesday signed a state gun control bill which will expand background checks and limit ammunition magazine capacity. The measure is notable because Colorado has been considered a firearm-friendly state.