• New microfluidic chip useful in counterterrorism, water and food safety

    A new process for making a three-dimensional microstructure that can be used in the analysis of cells could prove useful in counterterrorism measures and in water and food safety concerns. Researchers developed a new microfabrication technique to develop three-dimensional microfluidic devices in polymers. Microfluidics deals with the performance, control, and treatment of fluids that are constrained in some fashion.

  • Airport baggage scanning: slow, steady pace yields better results

    Next time you are doing a slow burn in security screening at the airport, calm yourself with the assurance that a more deliberate baggage scanner may do a better job. Researchers find that systematic searching frees up memory to do a better job at scanning.

  • Detecting explosives, not toothpaste

    Researchers want airports, border checkpoints, and others to detect homemade explosives made with hydrogen peroxide without nabbing people whose toothpaste happens to contain peroxide. This is part of the challenge faced in developing a portable sensor to detect a common homemade explosive called a FOx (fuel/oxidizer) mixture, made by mixing hydrogen peroxide with fuels.

  • U.S. confirms: Assad used chemical weapons against Syrian rebels, civilians

    The Obama administration has informed Congress a few minutes ago that the U.S. intelligence community has determined that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons on several occasions against both rebel forces and Syrian civilians. The U.S. intelligence community says these attacks, each using small quantities of sarin gas, have killed about 150 Syrians.

  • Fast, reliable identification of pathogens

    Life-threatening bacterial infections cause tens of thousands of deaths every year in North America, but current methods of culturing bacteria in the lab can take days to report the specific source of the infection, and even longer to pinpoint the right antibiotic that will clear the infection. Researchers have created an electronic chip that can analyze blood and other clinical samples for infectious bacteria with record-breaking speed.

  • California’s San Onofre nuclear power plant retired due to safety concerns

    Southern California Edison (SCE) has decided it will retire the San Onofre nuclear power plant located on the California coast. The decision comes after officials debated for over a year whether the twin reactors could be safely restarted. The power plant is located in a populated area, with millions living near it.

  • Highly sensitive polymer detects IEDs

    A chemical which is often the key ingredient in improvised explosive devices (IEDs) can be quickly and safely detected in trace amounts by a new polymer created by a team of Cornell University chemists. The polymer, which potentially could be used in low-cost, handheld explosive detectors and could supplement or replace bomb-sniffing dogs.

  • France weighing military options after French lab confirms Syrian use of sarin gas

    Laurent Fabius, France’s foreign minister, said yesterday (Tuesday) that samples taken from Syria and tested in France confirm that sarin gas has been used by the Assad regime in several attacks in March and April. The U.K. Foreign Office said that samples from Syrian victims tested in British labs also confirmed the use of sarin. A UN investigative panel released its report yesterday, saying its experts had “reasonable grounds” to suspect small-scale use of toxic chemicals. Fabius said that France was not ruling out a military strike on the place where the gas is being stored.

  • Laser-driven neutrons to detect nuclear smuggling

    Researchers have successfully demonstrated for the first time that laser-generated neutrons can be enlisted as a useful tool in the war on terror, as Los Alamos shows first nuclear material detection by single short-pulse-laser-driven neutron source.

  • Fukushima-derived radioactivity in seafood poses minimal health risks

    Researchers find that the likely doses of radioactivity ingested by humans consuming fish contaminated by radioactive radiation escaping from the debilitated Fukushima reactors fish, are comparable to, or less than, the radiological dosages associated with other commonly consumed foods, many medical treatments, air travel, and other background sources.

  • Health impact of Chernobyl accident overestimated: study

    The impact of the Chernobyl nuclear accident has been seriously overestimated, while unfounded statements presented as scientific facts have been used to strangle the nuclear industry, according to Russian researchers.

  • Letters containing ricin sent to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, gun-control advocacy group

    Two letters sent to Mayor Michael Bloomberg – one to his office in New York, the second to the Washington, D.C. offices of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a non-profit gun-control group he has founded — contained traces of the deadly poison ricin.

  • Spokane, Wash. biolab could be closed due to budget cuts

    Just two weeks ago, law enforcement agencies credited a bioterrorism laboratory in Spokane, Washington with quickly identifying the substance in several letters mailed to people in town as ricin. These same agencies now say that the biolab could close as a result of budget cuts.

  • Smartphone technology to accelerate development of unattended sensors

    DARPA wants to develop low-cost, rapidly updatable intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) sensors – to be used by the military on the ground, in the air, at sea, and undersea – in less than a year, a marked improvement to the current three-to-eight year development process. It hopes to do so by using an original design manufacturer (ODM) process similar to that of the commercial smartphone industry.

  • Smartphone turned into handheld biosensor

    Scientists and physicians in the field could soon run on-the-spot tests for environmental toxins, medical diagnostics, food safety and more with their smartphones. Researchers have developed a cradle and app for the iPhone that uses the phone’s built-in camera and processing power as a biosensor to detect toxins, proteins, bacteria, viruses, and other molecules.