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USDA releases requests for applications for the AFRI food safety challenge
The Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture says that this year’s grants under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative will focus on promoting and enhancing the scientific discipline of food safety, with an overall aim of protecting consumers from microbial, chemical, and physical hazards that may occur during all stages of the food chain, from production to consumption
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First-of-its-kind CO2 sensor network deployed in Oakland
The City of Oakland will be ground zero for the first urban sensor network to provide real-time, neighborhood-by-neighborhood measurements of carbon dioxide and other air pollutants; the prototype network, being installed by chemists at the University of California, Berkeley, will employ forty sensors spread over a twenty-seven square-mile grid
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STEMx launched to advance STEM education
Yesterday (Wednesday), Battelle and thirteen state STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education networks officially launched STEMx at the U.S. News STEM Solutions Summit in Dallas, Texas; STEMx aims to accelerate the growth of policies, practices, and partnerships which are needed to expand the number of STEM teachers and increase student achievement in STEM education
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Teaching about Islam in the U.S. military
U.S. Islamic groups complained that course material used by the joint Forces Staff College portrayed Islam in an unflattering light; they also complained about the views of Joint Staff terror analyst Stephen Coughlin, a specialist on Islamic law; the Pentagon last week announced it had completed its review of the issue
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Biometrics proves 1 percent of applicants to enter U.S. are unsuitable
Chris Archer, the online content editor at IDGA (the Institute for Defense & Government Advancement), talked with James Loudermilk, Senior Level Technologist, FBI Science and Technology Branch, about biometrics and biometrics and homeland security; Loudermilk says that biometrics applications helped the FBI determine that about 1 percent of people who seek visa to visit the United States as tourists have previously done things that make them unsuitable guests; the conversation examines the application of biometrics for homeland security, issues relating to privacy and civil liberties, and what can be learned from international biometrics projects, including India’s UID scheme
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Crowd dynamics explains disaster at cultural, sports events
Physicists investigating a recent crowd disaster in Germany found that one of the key causes was that at some point the crowd dynamics turned turbulent, akin to behavior found in unstable fluid flows
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Long-term priorities for U.S. nuclear physics program
Nuclear physics is a discovery-driven enterprise aimed at understanding the fundamental nature of visible matter in the universe; for the past hundred years, new knowledge of the nuclear world has also directly benefited society through many innovative applications
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Predicting wave power helps double marine energy
The energy generated from the oceans could be doubled using new methods for predicting wave power; researchers have devised a means of accurately predicting the power of the next wave in order to make the technology far more efficient, extracting twice as much energy as is currently possible
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Growing interest in prairie cordgrassas a biofuel source
Until recently, prairie cordgrass (Spartina pectinata) has received comparatively little attention because, unlike the other types of switchgrass, it is not a good forage crop; as interest in energy crops and in feedstock production for cellulosic biofuels increases, however, prairie cordgrass is receiving more attention because it grows well on marginal land
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Loo turns poo into power
Researchers have invented a new toilet system that will turn human waste into electricity and fertilizers and also reduce the amount of water needed for flushing by up to 90 percent compared to current toilet systems
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Turf wars: math model shows crimes cluster on borders between rival gangs
A mathematical model that has been used for more than eighty years to determine the hunting range of animals in the wild holds promise for mapping the territories of street gangs; among other things, the research demonstrates that the most dangerous place to be in a neighborhood packed with gangs is not deep within the territory of a specific gang, as one might suppose, but on the border between two rival gangs
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Greater L.A. to heat up an average 4 to 5 degrees by mid-century
A groundbreaking new study shows that temperatures in the Los Angeles region to rise by an average of 4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit by the middle of this century, tripling the number of extremely hot days in the downtown area and quadrupling the number in the valleys and at high elevations
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Significant sea-level rise in a 2-degree warming world
Sea levels around the world can be expected to rise by several meters in coming centuries, if global warming carries on; even if global warming is limited to 2 degrees Celsius, global-mean sea level could continue to rise, reaching between 1.5 and 4 meters above present-day levels by the year 2300
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Finding the best ways to protect infrastructure, recover from disasters
Researchers at Sandia National Lab bring the quantitative methods they have developed to the analysis of disasters and how best to recover from them; the researchers look at interdependencies among systems and supply chains, the resilience of various systems, how infrastructure systems fail, cascading effects, and how results might differ if a series of disasters hits instead of just one; the Sandia researchers say they can better quantify the results of such resiliency studies by taking a mathematically rigorous approach to objective assessments
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California coastal infrastructure at risk from rising sea levels
An exhaustive study by the National research Council finds projects that the sea level off most of California is likely to rise about one meter over the next century, an amount slightly higher than projected for global sea levels; this will place much of the state coastal infrastructure at risk, because significant development along the coast — such as airports, naval air stations, freeways, sports stadiums, and housing developments — has been built only a few feet above the highest tides; for example, the San Francisco International Airport could flood with as little as 40 centimeters of sea-level rise
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More headlines
The long view
Autonomous Vehicle Technology Vulnerable to Road Object Spoofing and Vanishing Attacks
Researchers have demonstrated the potentially hazardous vulnerabilities associated with the technology called LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, many autonomous vehicles use to navigate streets, roads and highways. The researchers have shown how to use lasers to fool LiDAR into “seeing” objects that are not present and missing those that are – deficiencies that can cause unwarranted and unsafe braking or collisions.
Tantalizing Method to Study Cyberdeterrence
Tantalus is unlike most war games because it is experimental instead of experiential — the immersive game differs by overlapping scientific rigor and quantitative assessment methods with the experimental sciences, and experimental war gaming provides insightful data for real-world cyberattacks.
Prototype Self-Service Screening System Unveiled
TSA and DHS S&T unveiled a prototype checkpoint technology, the self-service screening system, at Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) in Las Vegas, NV. The aim is to provide a near self-sufficient passenger screening process while enabling passengers to directly receive on-person alarm information and allow for the passenger self-resolution of those alarms.
Falling Space Debris: How High Is the Risk I'll Get Hit?
An International Space Station battery fell back to Earth and, luckily, splashed down harmlessly in the Atlantic. Should we have worried? Space debris reenters our atmosphere every week.
Testing Cutting-Edge Counter-Drone Technology
Drones have many positive applications, bad actors can use them for nefarious purposes. Two recent field demonstrations brought government, academia, and industry together to evaluate innovative counter-unmanned aircraft systems.
Strengthening the Grid’s ‘Backbone’ with Hydropower
Argonne-led studies investigate how hydropower could help add more clean energy to the grid, how it generates value as grids add more renewable energy, and how liner technology can improve hydropower efficiency.