• Engineers to build Australia’s first bushfire resistant straw house

    With Australia’s bushfire season fast approaching, construction of the first bushfire resistant straw bale house tested by engineers from CSIRO has begun in rural Victoria; the house is based on design principles that minimize environmental impact and it is set to withstand temperatures equal to that of a worst case bushfire scenario

  • Technology emulates the Blind Cave Fish to help underwater vessels navigate with ease

    Scientists have invented a “sense-ational” device, similar to a string of feelers found on the bodies of the Blind Cave Fish, which enables the fish to sense their surrounding and so navigate easily; using a combination of water pressure and computer vision technology, the sensory device is able to give users a 3-D image of nearby objects and map its surroundings

  • Target of limiting global warming to 2°C recedes as CO2 emissions grow

    A new report shows that global CO2 emissions have increased by 58 percent since 1990, rising 3 percent in 2011, and 2.6 percent in 2012; the most recent figure is estimated from a 3.3 percent growth in global gross domestic product and a 0.7 percent improvement in the carbon intensity of the economy; these latest carbon dioxide emission figures continue to track at the high end of a range of emission scenarios, expanding the gap between current trends and the course of mitigation needed to keep global warming below 2°C

  • Terahertz waves for explosives detection

    The chips generate and radiate high-frequency electromagnetic waves, called terahertz (THz) waves, which fall into a largely untapped region of the electromagnetic spectrum — between microwaves and far-infrared radiation — and which can penetrate a host of materials without the ionizing damage of X-rays; when incorporated into handheld devices, the new microchips could enable a broad range of applications in fields ranging from homeland security to wireless communications to health care, and even touchless gaming

  • Wind and solar power, paired with storage, would be cost-effective way to power grid

    Renewable energy could fully power a large electric grid 99.9 percent of the time by 2030 at costs comparable to today’s electricity expenses, new research says; a well-designed combination of wind power, solar power, and storage in batteries and fuel cells would nearly always exceed electricity demands while keeping costs low, the study authors found

  • Climate models still struggle with medium- term climate forecasts

    Scientists have evaluated twenty-three climate models and concluded that there is still a long way to go before reliable regional predictions can be made on seasonal to decadal time scales; none of the models evaluated is able today to forecast the weather-determining patterns of high and low pressure areas such that the probability of a cold winter or a dry summer can be reliably predicted

  • Marine robot completes 9,000 mile cross-Pacific journey, setting new world record

    A wave-powered robot completes a 9,000 nautical mile (16,668 kilometers) scientific journey across the Pacific Ocean to set a new world record for the longest distance traveled by an autonomous vehicle

  • U.S. faces more – and more intense – wildfire

    Scientists using NASA satellite data and climate models have projected drier conditions likely will cause increased fire activity across the United States in coming decades; the researchers calculated results for low and high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios; in both cases, results suggest more fire seasons that are longer and stronger across all regions of the United States in the next 30-50 years; specifically, high fire years like 2012 would likely occur two to four times per decade by mid-century, instead of once per decade under current climate conditions

  • Geoengineering could disrupt global rainfall patterns

    Tackling climate change by reducing the solar radiation reaching our planet using climate engineering, known also as geoengineering, could result in undesirable effects for the Earth and humankind; in particular, new research shows that disruption of global and regional rainfall patterns is likely in a geoengineered climate

  • Revamped DARPA inventor mentorship programs increases funding

    DARPA says it wants to ensure that young scientists with novel ideas which may advance U.S. national security receive the funding and mentorship needed to investigate them; as the DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) program enters its seventh year, changes in scope mean that 2013 recipients can expect higher levels of funding — up to $1 million available for elite young researchers — for a potentially longer duration in a program that has been reworked to involve even more direct interaction with DARPA program managers

  • Two small, long-endurance UAVs unveiled

    Danvers, Massachusetts-based CyPhy Works, a new robotics company, the other day unveiled two revolutionary small unmanned air vehicles (UAVs): EASE and PARC; the Extreme Access System for Entry (EASE) is an indoor flying UAV to help police, soldiers, and inspectors remain at safe standoff distances; the Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance and Communications (PARC) is designed to fly vertically and remain hovering for unprecedented long durations without operator intervention

  • TVA considering raising height of dams to prevent future floods

    The dams located on the upper Tennessee River never had flood waters top them, and government officials want to keep it that way, saying that due to recent disasters such as the 2010 Nashville flood and the 2011Fukushima tsunami, they need to prepare the worst possible situation

  • Removing sea defenses may reduce impact of coastal flooding

    Coastal defenses put in place over the last century or so have re-shaped the U.K. coastline, artificially protecting some areas, but at the expense of beaches in adjacent areas; this man-made situation increases the risk of flooding in low lying coastal settlements where beaches act as a natural flood defense; beach levels can be artificially recharged, but maintaining this indefinitely along large stretches of coastline is costly and likely to be unsustainable

  • Pulverized rocks used to strip CO2 from emissions of steel, coal, cement plants

    Researchers in Quebec are developing a process which would see steel, coal, and cement plants as well as oil and gas facilities remove most of the carbon dioxide (CO2) from their emissions through chemical reactions with various types of crushed rocks in the stacks

  • Critics: post-Fukushima nuclear power may be safer, but it is still not cost effective

    The Southern Company wants to show its customers that it has learned from the Fukushima disaster in Japan and has protected its nuclear reactors to make sure the same thing does not happen in the United .States’ critics of nuclear power are not convinced – and also, they say, alternative energy sources, such as natural gas, are much cheaper to produce