• Medicago awarded $21 million for rapid vaccine development

    DARPA is putting money in a burgeoning Accelerated Manufacture of Pharmaceuticals, or AMP, program, which aims to revolutionize current, egg-based vaccine production models, and yield vaccines within three months of “emerging and novel biological threats”

  • Gartner: 11 percent software security revenue jump in 2010

    Thanks to compliance requirements and a threat environment marked by growing sophistication, sellers of software security products are expected to earn more than $16.5 billion in revenue this year, an 11.3 percent jump from 2009 revenue of $14.8 billion; the consumer security software market remains the largest security software segment, with 2010 revenue projected to reach $4.2 billion in 2010, up from $3.9 billion in 2009

  • Flir to acquire sensor maker ICx for $274 million

    Flir, maker of thermal imaging technology, is acquiring ICx for $274 million; the merger will give Flir the capability to expand into the market for advanced sensors for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear explosives (CBRN) detection for homeland security and defense

  • U.S. swarm satellites will scatter to avoid space-war strikes

    Many aspects of active space warfare — including attack on another nation’s spacecraft — is strictly forbidden by international law and treaty, but the United States intends to be ready for it anyway; new “fractionated” swarm satellites will see groups of small wirelessly linked modules in orbit replacing today’s large spacecraft; the swarm will be able to scatter to avoid enemy attacks and then reform into operational clusters

  • New airline safety worry: lithium-ion batteries

    In January, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) proposed stricter rules for companies that ship lithium batteries in cargo holds; lithium-battery experts, security analysts, and flight attendants wonder whether stricter rules are also needed in airline passenger cabins to prevent fires or worse: a possible attempt by a terrorist to bring down a plane by rigging a large number of batteries together to start a fire; right now, there is no limit to how many small lithium-ion batteries a passenger can carry aboard a flight; a materials scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory says that even a single cellphone battery could start a fire: “A smart terrorist can start fires with these things…. Any energy-storage device packs a lot of energy in a small space and can be used for good or evil”

  • Angel offers voice identification solution for the health care industry

    With its Customer Experience Platform, Angel aims to authenticate phone conversations for doctors, patients, and pharmaceutical sales reps using voice biometrics; the software-as-a-service technology is used by pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and AstraZeneca, companies in the financial industry such as Bank of America

  • AOptix unveils InSight VM iris recognition system

    InSight VM from AOptix Technologies features what the company describes as “an elegant and contemporary industrial design” that is appropriate for installation in public spaces such as modern airports and office buildings; The InSight VM operates at a nominal 2-meter stand-off distance and employs the company’s proprietary Adaptive Optics technology

  • Biometric vending machines come to the U.S.

    Trials are underway for next generation vending machines; users would be able to link their thumbprint to a credit card, so all they would have to do to buy a bag of chips would be their thumbprint on the reader, then off they go

  • High-altitude surveillance UAV completes maiden voyage

    The first flight of a stratospheric unmanned aircraft — the Global Observer — designed to provide uninterrupted surveillance over any point on the globe was completed successfully; the company’s CEO says that in the 20th century, conventional airplanes opened the lower atmosphere to practical use and satellites did the same for space — “Global Observer soon will establish the stratosphere as a valuable and practical area of operation”

  • Indian government: Google, Skype will follow BlackBerry in being forced to open networks

    The Indian government, in a meeting last month with representatives of network operators and Internet service providers, said that after RIM was forced to open BlackBerry-based communication to government eavesdropping, Google and Skype would be asked to do the same — or face bans on some of their services in India; It is unlikely that the Indian government is interested in Google’s search business, but about twenty million Indians are active on Google’s social networking service, Orkut, which encourages them to communicate with each other over Google Talk

  • U.S., too, uneasy with encrypted communication

    The U.S. said it hoped RIM and foreign governments would find a compromise over BlackBerry encryption, but successive U.S. administrations tried to limit the export of encrypted technologies so U.S. spy agencies would have unfettered access to government and private communications abroad; until 1996 encryption at the level commonly in use today was classified by U.S. export regulations as “munitions”

  • 3D, interactive X-ray to offer dramatic improvement in security scans

    The latest X-ray scanners can glean information about the atomic or molecular weight of a substance, and so help distinguish between materials, but the results are crude; the best they can manage is to show metal objects in one color, organic materials in another, and everything else in a third color; a new technique — called kinetic depth effect X-ray imaging, or KDEX — builds up a 3D image of the object which can be rotated and viewed from a wide range of angles

  • Obama panel recommends active U.S. backing for clean coal

    A panel appointed by President Obama calls for an active U.S. government role in promoting carbon capture and storage, or CCS, a largely undeveloped technology that aims to prevent carbon emissions blamed for global warming from entering the atmosphere; panel recommends government’s consideration of accepting liability over carbon storage sites for thousands of years to come

  • New baggage screening system from Morpho Detection evaluated

    Unlike most baggage-screening systems that create two-dimensional images of objects inside luggage, the CTX 9800 DSi scanners from Morpho Detection create three-dimensional images that can be digitally manipulated by personnel when a bag is deemed to be suspicious; the machines also use advanced software to detect suspicious items; Mineta San Jose International Airport once used 28 machines to process 1,800 bags an hour, but the new system will be able to process the same number of bags using eight machines and require fewer employees to supervise the process; the technology reduces reliance on human observation and interaction with the bags; for the majority of bags, employee contact is only required when a piece of luggage is placed on or taken off the conveyor belt

  • 100 percent air-cargo screening is going smoothly -- so far

    On 1 August a law mandating 100 percent screening of cargo transported on passenger aircraft took effect; the shipping industry says that, so far, are off to a good start; experts point out that August is relatively slow shipping month, and that the real test will come in mid-September, when the busy air cargo shipping season begins