• Faster anthrax detection could speed bioterror response

    The fall 2011 anthrax attacks cost $3.2 million in cleanup and decontamination. At the time, no testing system was in place that officials could use to screen the letters. Currently, first responders have tests that can provide a screen for dangerous materials in about 24-48 hours. Now, researchers have developed a new method for anthrax detection that can identify anthrax in only a few hours.

  • How dogs detect explosives: New training recommendations

    Researchers have helped determine the science behind how canines locate explosives such as Composition C-4 (a plastic explosive used by the U.S. military). The study found the dogs react best to the actual explosive, calling into question the use of products designed to mimic the odor of C-4 for training purposes.

  • Remote explosives detection may see the end of full-body scanners

    Standing in a full-body scanner at an airport is not fun, and the process adds time and stress to a journey. It also raises privacy concerns. Researchers now report a more precise and direct method for using terahertz (THz) technology to detect explosives from greater distances. The advance could ultimately lead to detectors that survey a wider area of an airport without the need for full-body scanners.

  • Cost of plutonium disposal facility skyrockets

    The Mixed Oxide (MOX) nuclear fuel factory at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, being built to help dispose of cold war-era weapon-grade plutonium, would cost up to $30 billion in addition to the $4 billion spent on construction so far. The staggering cost overruns have led many to call for a new, less expensive solution. Matthew Bunn, a former Clinton White House official who helped develop the plutonium disposal program, agrees that the cost of the MOX factory is excessive. “The things we’re trying to accomplish aren’t worth that amount of money,” he said.

  • After failing 5 February deadline, Syria wants 100-day extension to remove chemicals

    After missing the 5 February deadline to have all its chemical weapons removed from its territory, Syria has submitted a new 100-day plan for their removal. The international group monitoring the operation says the completion of the removal can be accomplished in less time than that. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) executive committee met on Friday in The Hague to discuss the joint OPCW and UN mission at a time when there is a growing international frustration with Syria over its failure to live up to its commitments.

  • DHS warns airlines of renewed shoe-bomb risk

    DHS has alerted airlines flying to the United States to the possibility that terrorists might try to bring explosives n board in their shoes. The airlines were told that there were no specific plots, and that the information was based on information collected in the United States and abroad that bomb makers affiliated with terrorist groups were working on a shoe-bomb design. Hiding explosives in shoes is not new. In December 2001, passengers aboard an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami prevented a U.K. citizen, Richard Reid, from detonating explosives hidden in his sneakers.

  • IAEA: Iran's stockpile of 20% enriched uranium shrunk under interim nuclear agreement

    The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports in its quarterly inspections assessment that the quantity of 20 percent enriched uranium in Iran’s hands has been reduced since last November, when the world’s six powers (P5+1) and Iran have reached an interim agreement on Iran’s nuclear activities. Iran now has 354 pounds of the material — or about one-fifth less than what it had in November. With the right type of centrifuges, it is quicker to enrich uranium from 20 percent to weapon-grade 90 percent than it is to enrich uranium from 1 or 2 percent to 20 percent, so that the smaller the amount of 20 percent uranium a country has, the longer the “breakout” time — the time it would take a country to assemble a nuclear bomb once a decision to do so has been made.

  • Operations at a New Mexico nuclear waste repository suspended because of leaks

    Operations at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, a New Mexico burial site for military nuclear waste, were suspended for the fourth day, the Department of Energy said, after sensors picked up radiation leaks inside salt tunnels where the radioactive material is entombed.Officials said no radiation escaped to the surface.This is the second time this month the facility had to suspend operations. Earlier this month operations were halted after a truck caught fire in an underground tunnel.

  • Y-12 protestors receive lengthy prison terms from judge

    Judge Amul R. Thapar sentenced three peace protestors who breached the Y-12 Nuclear Security Complex at Y-12 National Security Complexat Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to lengthy sentences in federal prison. Judge Thapar stated that he did not believe the three defendants — Sister Megan Rice, 84. Michael R. Walli, 65, and Greg Boertje-Obed, 59 — were terrorists but, nevertheless, they had broken the law and must serve sentences which demonstrated that the law should be taken seriously.To reach the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF) building at Y-12, the three peace activists, led by the octogenarian Sister Rice, cut through four fences and escaped detection by security guards authorized to use lethal force, and by ground sensors, sophisticated surveillance cameras, and other security equipment described by Y-12 as “…the most stringent security system in the world.”

  • Sandia Lab leading multidisciplinary effort to counter WMD

    Threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction do not seem as imminent today as they did after the 9/11 attacks, but Jill Hruby, vice president of International, Homeland, and Nuclear Security at Sandia Labs, says that scientists, industry, and universities working on technological solutions to national security challenges must anticipate what could come next. Speaking at AAAS annual meeting, Hruby said that in an environment of lower public interest — due, in part, to the success of early efforts to combat terrorism that resulted in fewer major incidents in recent years — continued collaboration between national security laboratories, academia, and industry is needed.

  • Sensors would spot structural weaknesses in bridges, stadiums before they collapse

    A team of engineers, with a grant of $1 million from the government of Qatar, will work to develop a wireless sensor network which will monitor vibrations, sagging, and stresses to assess a structure’s ability to carry its load. The proposed system would not only detect damage after it occurs, but would aim to predict it before it takes place.

  • Gaining better understanding of tularemia, aka “rabbit fever”

    Tularemia, aka “rabbit fever,” is endemic in the northeastern United States, and is considered to be a significant risk to biosecurity — much like anthrax or smallpox — because it has already been weaponized in various regions of the world. Despite its importance for both public health and biodefense, F. tularensis pathogenesis is not entirely understood, nor is it fully understood how the organism persists in the environment.

  • Tracking spilled oil

    A newly developed computer model holds the promise of helping scientists track and predict where oil will go after a spill, sometimes years later. Scientists developed the model as a way of tracking the movement of sand and oil found along the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The new tool can help guide clean-up efforts, and be used to aid the response to future oil spills.

  • Floods caused lead poisoning in U.K. cattle

    Massive floods in England and Wales have forced thousands to evacuate their homes and destroyed railways and roads. Scientists say the U.K. floods of recent years carry yet another danger with them: lead poisoning. Silage cut from fields soon after they were inundated in the 2012 floods and then fed to cattle raised the lead levels in the animals, killing some of them. Blood samples taken from cattle showed that all of them had lead levels beyond the safe limit for human consumption. An autopsy carried out on one of the casualty animals found lead concentrations 79 times the safe level in its kidney. The contaminated material is thought to originate from historical metal mining in the area. Scientists say a number of river catchments throughout England and Wales face a similar risk.

  • 33 A.D. Old Jerusalem earthquake helps determine age of Shroud of Turin

    The Shroud of Turin has been at the center of scientific controversy and questions ever since Secondo Pia took the first photograph of it in 1898: whether it is Jesus’s purported burial cloth, how old it might be, and how the image was created. Scientists who conducted radiocarbon dating of the cloth in 1988 determined that the shroud was only 728 years old at the time, and thus that it could not have been in existence during Jesus’s life. Other scientists have since suggested that the shroud is much older, and thus that it could have been produced during Jesus’s time, and that the dating process was incorrect because of neutron radiation — a process which is the result of nuclear fusion or nuclear fission during which free neutrons are released from atoms — and its interaction with the nuclei of other atoms to form new carbon isotopes. No plausible physical reason, however, had been proposed to explain the origin of this neutron radiation – until now: Italian scientists say the source of the neutron emission is a historical earthquake in 33 A.D. in Old Jerusalem, which measured 8.2 on the Richter scale.