• Why SBINet has failed

    New report says SBINet failed because the U.S. government rushed into it without a well-thought-out plan and without a sufficiently tight supervision of the prime contractor, Boeing; “Instead, [SBINet] has been based more on dreams, hopes and fantasy — and on the widely shared, but faulty, assumption that technology provided by private contractors could meet the challenge of securing the country’s nearly 6,000 miles of land borders with remote surveillance systems”

  • The day of transportable, refrigerator-size nuclear reactor nears

    The need for more energy and the growing interest in energy not based on fossil material have led to a revival of interest in nuclear power; there is a competition afoot among several companies for designing and building — and receiving a operation license for — a refrigerator-size nuclear reactor; the $50 million, 25-megawatt unit is transportable by truck, and would put electricity into 20,000 homes

  • BP's emergency "plan" for the Gulf discusses impact on "seals, sea otters and walruses"

    BP’s 582-page emergency-response never anticipated an oil spill as large as the one now gushing on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico; a closer reading shows the document was not much than a boilerplate, cut-and-paste job used by BP from region to region; in a section titled “Sensitive Biological & Human-Use Resources,” the emergency plan lists “seals, sea otters and walruses” as animals that could be impacted by a Gulf of Mexico spill — even though no such animals live in the Gulf; the plan was approved in July by the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS), a toothless agency accused by lawmakers of being in the pocket of the oil industry

  • Investing in terrorism-resistant stock

    Terrorism attacks not only the safety of people, but their wealth; an investment consultant says that while it is impossible to make a conventional investment portfolio terrorism-proof, it is possible to select securities that are a bit resistant to it

  • Today's IT security professionals are expected to offer more than a school certificate

    Demand for IT security specialists in both the private sector and government grows steadily; IT security is the No. 1 growth industry in the government and government contractor sectors; employers, however, no longer see IT security certification as a sufficient qualification, and are looking for a broader set of skills

  • U.S. Army's XM25 smart grenade launcher described as "game changer"

    New smart grenade launcher described as a “game changer”; the XM25 can fire 25mm rounds that explode at any distance set by a soldier, effective at a range of up to 700 meters; the 14-pound, $25,000 gun can fire rounds in just seconds, it could replace the need to call in fire missions, artillery, or air strikes in some situations, which can take anywhere from several minutes to an hour to arrive

  • BP oil leak "much bigger" than official estimates'

    BP first asserted that the amount of oil its well releases into the Gulf is about 1,000 barrels daily; following the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency’s (NOAA) initial estimates, that figure has been increased to 5,000 barrels; ocean scientists and engineers now say that amount of oil released daily is more likely to be between five times and 14 times that — about 25,000 to 80,000 barrels a day

  • Scientists discover huge oil plumes deep in Gulf of Mexico; worry for marine life

    The news from the Gulf get worse: Scientists discover giant plumes of oil in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico; one of the plumes was ten miles long, three miles wide, and 300 feet thick; the plumes are depleting the oxygen in the Gulf, prompting fears that the process could eventually kill much of the sea life near the plumes

  • Foreign IT professionals in U.S. get paid more than American professionals

    Foreign IT professionals — holders of H-1B visas — working in the United States do not push down the pay of U.S.-born IT professionals; the reason: foreign-born professionals get paid more, not less, than their American counterparts; the damage too-low caps on H1-B professional visas cause American-born IT professionals comes from the fact that U.S. companies prefer to relocate offshore where they can hire the foreigners they want without paying the H-1B induced premium

  • Engineers to enhance crane-mounted cargo scanning system

    VeriTainer, a venture-backed specialist in crane-based radiation detection technology for scanning shipping containers, enters into a three-and-a-half years, $4 million n R&D agreement with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to enhance the gamma and neutron detection sensitivity of the company’s radiation scanners

  • Cobham develops more accurate, cost-effective landmine detector

    The Red Cross estimates that 60-100 million mines are in place in 62 countries, causing 800 deaths each month; clearing mines is an expensive proposition, averaging £1m/km2; much of this cost is owed to high number of false alarms from metal detectors; British company develops a dual-sensor mine detector that enables nearly 33 percent more land to be cleared within existing budgets

  • The boom (or is it a bubble?) in federal cybersecurity

    The Obama administration and Congress are allocating more funds to cybersecurity; much of that new spending, estimated at $6 to $7 billion annually just in unclassified work, is focused on the Washington region, as the federal government consolidates many of its cybersecurity-focused agencies in the area; some VCs warn of a cybersecurity bubble

  • BP tries new, smaller capping device to plug Gulf gusher

    BP is lowering a new device — the top-hat cofferdam — in an effort to plug the oil leak at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico; the top-hat is a 5-foot-tall, 4-foot-diameter structure and it weighs less than two tons; BP built the smaller dome after a much larger, four-story containment vessel, designed to cap the larger of two leaks in the well, developed glitches Saturday

  • General Dynamics acquires explosives disposal specialist

    General Dynamics assesses that anti-U.S. militants will increase their activities both at home and against U.S. troops abroad; the company acquires a specialist in demilitarization, incineration, and disposal of munitions, explosives, and explosive wastes

  • Operation targeting counterfeit network hardware from China yield convictions, seizures

    Departments of Justice and DHS announce 30 convictions, more than $143 million in seizures from initiative targeting traffickers in counterfeit network hardware made in China; this counterfeit network hardware is a technological sleeper cell: the Chinese have manufactured counterfeit Cisco routers and switches and offered them at exceedingly low prices; U.S. vendors upgrading or replacing U.S. government IT systems used these counterfeit devices — and the FBI and other government agencies are now worried that the gear offers the Chinese undetectable back-doors into highly secure government and military computer system