• Biometrics replaces traditional means of identification

    Access cards, PINs, and passwords, designed to protect end-users, are not only ineffective against modern day threats, but often end up being used to perpetrate crime; card-based systems will only control the access of authorized pieces of plastic, but not who is in possession of the card; one of the benefits of a biometric technology is that only authorized people — not merely their credentials — are granted access to, for example, a building, a specific part of a building or even a computer or an account

  • Police robot seeks out the bad guys

    Police units in California use DHS grants to buy a robot to go into dangerous places to look for bad guys; the $12,000, 25-pound robot is waterproof, equipped with a 360-degree camera and tracks for movement; it climbs stairs, runs on grass and gravel, and can right itself if it flips over

  • Businesses cope with Mexico security risks, pass costs to consumers

    Faced with the threat of smuggling attempts by criminal organizations in Mexico, foreign companies are simply doing more, spending more, and in the process charging consumers more to shore up security in a country where killings, kidnappings, and extortions have become a part of daily life

  • Shape-shifting UAV for maritime search and rescue missions

    Use of morphing flight surfaces has enabled the development of a shape-shifting UAV that can operate in extreme weather conditions; cutting-edge avionics ensure a smooth flight for extended rescue and surveillance missions, while reducing risks to material and crews

  • RIM proposes industry encryption forum to demands for access to e-mail, messages

    RIM has proposed that an industry forum be established to help governments manage lawful intercept, in the hope of forestalling India’s threatened ban, due this coming Wednesday; the proposed body would be led by RIM, but the company is hoping that others companies threatened by bans — Google, Skype, and others — will join in

  • "Smart Potty": medical check ups, automatic seat-lowering

    Japanese “intelligent” toilets offer users an array of functions — heated seats, water jets with pressure and temperature controls, hot-air bottom dryers, perfume bursts, ambient background music, and noise-masking audio effects for the easily embarrassed; the latest model also offers instant health check-up every time a user answers the call of nature

  • Explore the geometry of cleaning up the Gulf coast

    Fueled by oxygen, naturally occurring bacteria can slowly destroy blobs and slicks of crude oil without the use of additional chemicals; Virginia Tech researchers hope to determine whether the shape of crude oil remnant — be it a flat syrupy sheet or a tar ball — can affect deterioration rates

  • Under Obama: company audits up, illegal worker arrests way down

    Under Obama, employer audits are up 50 percent, fines have tripled to almost $3 million, and the number of executives arrested is slightly up over the Bush administration; the numbers of arrests and deportations of illegals taken into custody at work sites, however, plummeted by more than 80 percent from the last year of the Bush; both administrations agree that jobs are the magnet that attracts illegal immigrants to the United States, but critics of the Obama approach say it makes no sense to allow employees known to use fake or stolen identification to go free to duplicate the fraud again

  • DARPA looking for VTOL UAV to plant covert spy devices

    The Pentagon is looking for a VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) UAV/UASs - or V-Bat - which will autonomously plant such surveillance devices as remote cameras/bugs, communications relays, marker beacons, small battery powered ground-crawler, or inside-buildings flying robots

  • DARPA funds giant space nets to scoop up space trash

    One legacy of the space age is the growing amount of debris — defunct satellites, fragments of rockets, and any unused object originally built and launched by humans — accumulating in space; currently there are 2,465 identified objects of more than two kilograms in low Earth orbit, and these objects threaten projects such as the space elevator; a futuristic company proposes collecting the debris with a dozen space vehicles, each equipped with 200 nets, which would scoop up the debris and then either fling them into the South Pacific, send them closer to Earth where they would eventually decay, or recycle the materials

  • Intel wants security built directly into silicon

    A consensus is emerging that the main reason for Intel’s acquisition of McAfee is that Intel wants to build directly into its hardware the kind of security features more traditionally provided by software like McAfee’s

  • Small bridge sensors will give early warnings of anomalies, weaknesses

    University of Maryland researchers devised a lightweight, low-power, wireless, credit card-sized sensor that will detect weaknesses in bridges and other infrastructure before they can turn into calamities; the sensors would detect anomalies in the structure of even the most inaccessible parts of bridges and send alerts via cellular frequencies to its human masters. Among the things it would measure would be stress loads, vibration, temperature and the creation and growth of cracks

  • Technological challenges to Intel's embedded security approach

    Embedding security in silicon faces many challenges, among them: how much can be placed into a chip, and the fact that patching hardware or firmware is when a security vulnerability is discovered, is much harder than patching software

  • The reason for Intel's acquisition of McAfee

    The merger between the two companies takes place ahead of the release in 2011 of new — and as yet undisclosed — products developed by a joint venture the two companies have operated in the past eighteen months; those undisclosed products may be part of the reason why Intel decided to purchase McAfee instead of extending or expanding the two companies’ joint venture; says one analyst: “If what came out of that joint venture was revolutionary it could be that Intel wanted to lock that [intellectual property] down”

  • Undersea oil remains in Gulf of Mexico

    A study of the effects of the Deepwater Horizon spill has confirmed the presence of a toxic chemical residue one kilometer below the sea surface; the investigation shows a plume of crude oil-based chemicals up to 200 meters high and 2 kilometers wide, extending 35 kilometers from the spill site