• Small thorium reactors could lead to fossil-fuel-free world within five years

    An argument is made that nuclear reactors which use thorium as an accelerator (hence the technical name: Accelerator Driven Thorium Reactors, or ADTR) could lead to fossil-fuel-free world within five years; thorium is an abundant mineral deposit, with 3 to 5 times more thorium in the world than uranium; more importantly, virtually all of the thorium mined can be used as fuel compared to only 0.7 percent of the uranium recovered in its natural state, this means, in energy terms, that one ton of thorium mined is equivalent to 200 tons of uranium mined, which is equivalent to 3.5 million tons of mined coal; ADTRs also enjoy proliferation resistance advantages compared to other reactor systems

  • Cisco buys Arch Rock, beefing up smart-grid business

    Cisco is beefing up its smart-grid and data center businesses by acquiring San Francisco-based Arch Rock, a maker of a system for collecting information from mesh networks of IP-based wireless sensors, routers, and servers; On Wednesday, Cisco announced a deal with meter maker Itron to develop communications products that use the Internet Protocol, rather than proprietary protocols for sending information from meters back to utilities

  • Seafood stewardship questionable: experts

    The world’s most established fisheries certifier — the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) — is failing on its promises as rapidly as it gains prominence, according the world’s leading fisheries experts; “The MSC is supposed to be a solution, but a lot of what they do has turned against biology in favor of bureaucracy,” says one expert

  • Illegal immigration to the U.S. dropped sharply since 2007

    Between March 2000 and March 2005, 850,000 illegal immigrants entered the United States annually; between March 2007 and March 2009, the number dropped to 300,000 annually; the flow of Mexicans, who represent 60 percent of all illegal immigrants in the United States, plummeted to 150,000 annually during the 2007-9 period, compared with the annual average of 500,000 during the 2000-5 period; experts say that the slowing economy and bleak job market for low-skill workers, not tighter border security, have played the biggest role in the drop in illegal entrants

  • Identifying faces in a crowd in real-time

    U.K. company develops a face recognition technology that can recognize individual faces in a crowd — and do so in seconds, even when they are moving, at a wide angle, or in poor light; the system captures and analyzes images and compares them to a database, and alerts security personnel if a match is made

  • U.S. nuclear power plants bolster defenses against cyberattacks

    The threat to digital systems at the U.S. nuclear power plants is considerable — especially for new nuclear power facilities that would be built in the United States and throughout the world, as control rooms would employ digital systems to operate the plants; these state-of-the-art instruments and systems make them targets for hackers

  • Need for digital security spurs growth of cyber security field

    The growing need for digital security has made the shortage of cyber security professionals in the United States even more apparent, and the U.S. government is now engaged in a campaign to train, hire, and retain thousands of cyber professionals; the private sector is doing its share, too: Raytheon initiated the MathMovesU program in 2005, to inspire middle school students to consider math, science, and engineering education and careers; Raytheon awards more than $2 million annually in scholarships and grants to students, teachers, and schools nationwide

  • Chinese government funds research based on stolen U.S. trade secrets

    Chinese national, Kexue Huang, charged with economic espionage involving theft of trade secrets from Dow AgroSciences, a leading U.S. agricultural company; Huang published an article without Dow’s authorization through Hunan Normal University (HNU) in China, which contained Dow trade secrets; the article was based on work supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), an agency of the Chinese government

  • Carnegie Mellon launches robotics start-up

    Carnegie Robotics LLC will partner with Carnegie Mellon to manufacture robotic components and systems; startup to create products based on technology from CMU’s National Robotics Engineering Center

  • India gives BlackBerry reprieve, saying Google, Skype are next

    BlackBerry users in India have received a 60-day reprieve: RIM has offered the Indian government a solution to interception issue (the Indian government wants to have the ability to intercept BlackBerry communications), and the government says it will examine the offer during the next two months; the government also said that services offered by Google and Skype are next, but unlike BlackBerry, Skype and Google Talk are both encrypted end-to-end, so intercepting communications is extremely difficult

  • DARPA awards additional $11 million for video search technology

    As a result of advancements in intelligence gathering technologies (think UAVs), the U.S. military and intelligence community have been accumulating video archives over the past decade which make YouTube look puny; it is not only the number of pictures, but their quality: mere HD movies and TV are small and tightly compressed compared to the high resolution, full-motion imagery which pours in like an avalanche from every Predator or Reaper drone — and dozens of these surveillance drones are airborne above southwest Asia every minute of every day; DARPA is looking for an effective, automated video search technology

  • Rapiscan in $12 million nuclear detection contract

    DHS’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) has contracted Rapiscan Systems for detection of shielded nuclear materials; the company has been tasked with developing a Liquefied Noble gas detector — in collaboration with Yale University — a threshold activation detector, a human portable system, and an aircraft inspection solution

  • U.S. Navy buys sensor system from FLIR to protect ships from terrorist attacks

    U.S. Navy ship systems designers needed electro-optical sensor systems for the Shipboard Protection System (SPS), which helps protect Navy surface vessels from terrorist attacks while moored to piers, at anchor, or during restricted maneuvering; they found their solution from Wilsonville, Oregon-based FLIR Systems

  • Wolfhound sniffs out contraband cell phones

    Wolfhound Cell Detector is a handheld, wireless sniffer specifically tuned to the RF signature of common cell phones; it helps universities, government and military installations, hospitals, law enforcement agencies, financial institutions, and prisons and correctional facilities enforce their No Wireless policies

  • 3M acquires biometric specialist Cogent for $943 million

    Cogent Systems participates in the $4 billion global biometric market, which is projected to grow at a rate greater than 20 percent per year; identification and authentication solutions from 3M include border management products; document manufacturing and issuance systems for IDs, passports, and visas; document readers and verification products; and security materials, such as laminates, to protect against counterfeiting and tampering; Cogent Systems provides finger, palm, face, and iris biometric systems for governments, law enforcement agencies, and commercial enterprises