• Nature's desalination: bacteria turn salty water fresh

    The growing global shortage of water has led to a growing interest in desalination to produce fresh water from seas and estuaries; conventional desalination plants, however, consume large amounts of energy; the solution: a bug-powered desalination cell that takes salt out of seawater

  • Royal Society paints unsettling picture of a world 4 °C warmer

    If present warming trends continue, the world could warm by 4 °C by 2060; a new, detailed study by the U.K. Royal Society would make global water shortages acute; most of sub-Saharan Africa will see shorter growing seasons, with average maize production will drop 19 percent and bean production by 47 percent compared with current levels; the extreme weather, sea-level rise, and water shortages will drive many people to migrate

  • Police radar can identify suicide bombers

    The radar guns police use to spot speeding motorists fire microwave pulses at a car and measures the Doppler shift of the reflected signal to calculate its velocity; researchers found that the strength and polarization of the reflected signal — the “radar cross section” — can also measure the reflected signal created by the most common arrangements of looped wiring typically used by suicide bombers

  • Game-changing rifle arrives in Afghanistan

    A new smart rifle can be programmed so that its 25-mm. ammunition does not explode on impact; instead, it can be set to detonate either in front of or behind a target, meaning it literally will go through a wall before it explodes and kills the enemy; the Army says that enemy soldier can run, but they can no longer hide

  • American Military University: meeting the needs of the security community

    AMU promises a learning community of like-minded adult professionals with established careers in law enforcement, emergency services, national security, and intelligence; the current student body of 70,000 students worldwide is divided between 60 percent military and 40 percent non-military; in terms of program satisfaction, 98 percent of the 3,631 students surveyed between January 2010 and September 2010 reported that they were either satisfied or very satisfied with their overall experience at AMU

  • DARPA looking for a game interface to end all interfaces

    A soldier in the field has his or her hands and voice fully taken up managing their weapons, sensors, and communications; DARPA wants to help: the Pentagon’s push-the-envelope research unit asks for idea on how to develop an interface which would allow soldiers to run, leap, or otherwise navigate about virtually without needing to do so physically

  • Rare Earth elements in U.S. not so rare: report

    Approximately 13 million metric tons of rare Earth elements exist within known deposits in the United States, according to the first-ever nationwide estimate of these elements by the U.S. Geological Survey; despite their name, these elements are relatively common within the Earth’s crust, but because of their geochemical properties, they are not often found in economically exploitable concentrations

  • DARPA: Break-up of hypersonic airplane/missile no big deal

    DARPA first test of its hypersonic airplane/missile — Falcon HTV-2 — failed after the prototype broke up on re-entering the atmosphere; after investigating the causes of the accident, the agency said it is ready for another test; the HTV-2 unmanned test vehicle had no propulsion of its own, being intended rather to try out new airframe and control technologies for use in hypersonic weapons or aircraft of the future

  • Experts: rare Earths elements headed for 2011 supply crunch

    The prices of rare-Earth elements remained static for decades due to plentiful supplies, lulling the high-tech industry into a false sense of security; this is no longer going to be the case, with a 300 percent spike in prices over the past year alone; with China currently producing 95 percent of the world’s supply. Japan, the United States, and other top consumers, however, are scrambling to find new sources

  • Purdue engineers test effects of fire on steel structures

    Building fires may reach temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius, or more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit; at that temperature, exposed steel would take about twenty-five minutes to lose about 60 percent of its strength and stiffness; Purdue researchers experiment with ways to make steel more fire-resistant

  • The U.S. rare-Earth industry can rebound -- over time

    Rare-Earth elements are not that rare; the U.S. has plenty of the metals that are critical to many green-energy technologies, but engineering and R&D expertise have moved overseas; responding to China’s near monopoly, companies in the United States and Australia are ramping up production at two rich sites for rare earths, but the process will take years

  • Time to find a second Earth: WWF

    In 2007 Earth’s 6.8 billion humans were living 50 percent beyond the planet’s threshold of sustainability, according to a WWF report; the report says that even with modest UN projections for population growth, consumption, and climate change, by 2030 humanity will need the capacity of two Earths to absorb CO2 waste and keep up with natural resource consumption; if everyone used resources at the same rate per capita as the United States or the United Arab Emirates, four and a half planets would be needed

  • BAE tests defense software based on ALADDIN project

    Coordinating military attacks, managing aerial drones, and monitoring terrorists online could all become easier with new software under trial by BAE Systems; a team of researchers from BAE and the universities of Southampton, Oxford, Bristol and Imperial College London spent five years developing a series of algorithms that allow different computer systems to co-ordinate their actions without a central authority

  • Sucking up oil spills is a cinch

    Cleaning up oil spills is a time consuming, difficult process, but a novel approach uses a new kind of vacuum cleaner that blows bark or other absorbent material onto oil spills, and then sucks the material up again. The vacuum cleaner is four times more efficient in cleaning up after oil accidents than conventional techniques

  • Blood camera detects invisible stains at crime scenes

    At present, blood stains in a crime scene are detected using the chemical luminol; luminol is toxic, however, and can dilute blood samples to a level at which DNA is difficult to recover; it can also smear blood spatter patterns that forensic experts use to help determine how the victim died; luminol can also react with substances like bleach, rust, fizzy drink, and coffee, causing it to produce false positives; University of South Carolina rese3archers offer a better solution