• Rebuilding dried-up swamps to protect New Orleans from hurricanes

    During the past four decades, swamps and wetlands which used to offer New Orleans a natural defense against hurricane, were dried and paved over. The city has launched a new project to restore a key area of cypress swampland near the Lower 9th Ward, an effort they called essential to protecting the metro area in the event of another major hurricane.

  • White House: no evidence of, contact with extra terrestrials

    Two petitions, signed by 17,000, were submitted to the White house; the first demanded immediate disclosure of the U.S. government’s knowledge of and communications with extraterrestrial beings, the second a formal acknowledgement from the White House that extraterrestrials have been engaging the human race; in response, the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy wrote that the U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race

  • Making counter-hacking cool

    NYU-Poly will, for the first time, open cyber security awareness week events on 11-12 November to student guests interested in digital privacy and security — not just the so-called “cyber ninjas” who qualified as national finalists in feats of digital forensics, ethical hacking, and research; the event is expected to attract up to 400 student finalists, professionals, academics, and guests

  • Tiny robot can survey hard-to-reach places

    A flying robot the size of a dinner plate can zoom to hard-to-reach places; the tiny propeller-powered robots can be packed away into a suitcase; they have multiple cameras which enable them to see the world around them as they navigate their way through buildings

  • Hybrid power plants: cost effective way to go green

    Hybrid cars, powered by a mixture of gas and electricity, have become a practical way to “go green” on the roads; now researchers at Tel Aviv University are using the hybrid approach to power plants as well

  • New tech could turn clothes into touch sensors

    Everything from clothes and headphone wires to coffee tables could soon become interactive touch devices thanks to the development of new sensor technology; researchers at the University of Munich and the Hasso Plattner Institute are working to integrate technology originally designed to detect damaged underwater cables into touch sensors that can be installed in virtually anything

  • Researchers fire 1,000th shot on laboratory railgun

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    Scientists reached a milestone in the Electromagnetic Railgun program when they fired a laboratory-scale system for the 1,000th time on 31 October, the raygun is a long-range weapon that launches projectiles using electricity instead of chemical propellants

  • Anthropomorphic robot testing chemical protection

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    Boston Dynamics is showing its PETMAN — an anthropomorphic robot for testing chemical protection clothing used by the U.S. Army

  • Gecko-inspired tank robot has many applications

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    Researchers have developed a tank-like robot that has the ability to scale smooth walls, making it suitable for a range of applications such as inspecting pipes, buildings, aircraft, and nuclear power plants, and also for search and rescue operations

  • Competition for reassembling shredded documents

    Today’s troops often confiscate the remnants of destroyed documents in war zones, but reconstructing these documents is a daunting task; DARPA, the Pentagon’s research arm, is conducting a competition to find the best technology for reassembling shredded documents

  • Printing a building -- additive manufacturing research moves into construction

    Additive manufacturing — commonly known as 3-D printing — has been used for a surprisingly large range of products and projects, while the devices themselves have continually declined in cost and size; now the technology turns its attention to concrete and building

  • New partnership to promote cybersecurity education

    There will be a need of more than 700,000 new information security professionals in the United States by 2015; the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimate that there will be 295,000 new IT jobs created in the United States by 2018 — many of which will require cybersecurity expertise; new partnership focuses on cybersecurity training and education

  • Large rare earth deposit discovered near California mine

    Molycorp Minerals recently announced that it had discovered significant deposits of heavy rare earth minerals near its mine in Mountain Pass, California and production could begin in as little as two years

  • Cyber Challenge encourages teen hackers to seek security jobs

    In the eyes of the organizers of the Maryland Cyber Challenge and Conference, today’s hacker could be tomorrow’s cybersecurity hero; a recent two-day conference at the Baltimore Convention Center, which ended 22 October 2011, was part career fair, part talent show to give college and high school students an idea of how to turn their interest in computers into high-paying jobs

  • Sandia Labs seeking responses to cyberattacks

    To address the growing cyber threat, Sandia National Lab is increasing cybersecurity research over the coming year through a new Cyber Engineering Research Institute (CERI) which will coordinate with industry and universities and have a presence on both Sandia campuses in New Mexico and California