• New explosives detection technologies show promise

    An adversary who is willing to die trying to carry out a mission is one of the reasons why more conventional security organizations find it so difficult to pursue their protection mission effectively in an asymmetrical war — the kind of war terrorists engage in; new explosive detection technologies may be of help

  • High-tech opportunities of lab-produced silk

    Tougher than a bullet-proof vest yet synonymous with beauty and luxury, silk fibers are a masterpiece of nature whose remarkable properties have yet to be fully replicated in the laboratory; thanks to their amazing mechanical properties as well as their looks, silk fibers have been important materials in textiles, medical sutures, and even armor for 5,000 years; Tufts researchers are getting close to producing silk in the lab

  • The world (supposedly) safest locks easily defeated by paper clips, screw drivers

    Security experts demonstrate how locks which tout themselves as the safest lock available — fingerprints-based Biolock Model 333; Kwikset, a programmable “smartkey” lock , the innovative iLoq C10S which uses the action of a key being pushed into the lock to generate power for electronics that then checked data in a chip on the key to determine whether the user is cleared for access; AMSEC electronic safe Model es1014; KABA InSync deadbolt — can be easily defeated by using nothing more than wires, magnets, air, shock, paper clips, screw drivers, and other improvised tools

  • End to water-boarding: Using brain waves to reading terrorists minds about imminent attacks

    There may soon be no need for water-boarding or other “enhanced interrogation” to extract vital information about pending attacks from captured terrorists or terrorism suspects; Researchers at Northwestern university were able to correlate P300 brain waves to guilty knowledge with 100 percent accuracy in the lab

  • $1.4 million prize for best oil clean-up technology

    X Prize Foundation is offering $1.4 million in prize money for new technologies to clean up oil spills; competitors will be invited to test their technologies in 2011 in a 203- by 20-metre tank owned by the U.S. government’s Minerals Management Service (MMS); a moving bridge that simulates a boat pulling cleanup equipment and a wave generator create ocean-like conditions in the New Jersey-based facility

  • New funding, schedule agreed for nuclear fusion project

    The governing council of ITER, Europe’s fusion reactor project, reached the deal on the financing and timetable for the experimental reactor after a two-day meeting in Cadarache; Europe pledged to provide additional financing of a maximum €6.6 billion ($8.5 billion); the total estimated bill for the EU has doubled to €7.2 billion ($9.2 billion), with the overall cost now reckoned to be around €15 billion; the reactor will become operational in November 2019

  • Japanese rescue robot can sniff out, and help, buried disaster survivors

    Japanese emergency services are testing a search-and-rescue robot that can search rubble for survivors and deliver water, food, or cellphones in disaster zones; the device has a robotic arm that can be remote-controlled to turn doorknobs, maneuver through rubble and carry crucial survival items after an earthquake or other disaster

  • Detecting sticky bombs

    Sticky bombs — explosives affixed to a car, which explode when you turn the ignition key — as the stuff of movies dealing with the Mafia, but terrorists used them as well (as do the secret services of some countries); researchers at Argonne National Laboratory offer a way to detect surreptitiously placed sticky bombs

  • Engineering graduate schools address homeland security

    In response to a variety of recent disasters — including high-profile hurricanes, terrorist attacks, and structural collapses — some graduate engineering schools are creating new courses of study that teach students how to address these catastrophes

  • Good business: Developers make buildings more disaster-secure than building code requires

    A Florida developer hopes to get more business by making his building hurricane-proof; with debris-resistant windows on all thirty-five of its stories, the developer says the building would withstand a Category 5 hurricane without significant damage; the extra hurricane proofing built into the Miami building shows that sometimes the private market can overtake the public sector when it comes to building design and safety standards; for example, in New York and Washington, D.C., some developers have put in anti-terrorism safeguards that exceed building codes

  • 3,000 chemical-filled barrels washed into major northeast China river

    Severe floods in China’s Jilin Province carried about 3,000 barrels containing toxic chemicals into the Songhuajiang River in Jilin City; in addition, 4,000 empty barrels containing chemical residues were also washed into the river — a major source of drinking water and fishing; each chemical-filled barrel contains about 170 kilograms of chemicals

  • X Prize to offer millions for Gulf oil cleanup solution

    The X Prize Foundation will tomorrow launch its Oil Cleanup X Challenge promising millions of dollars for winning ways to clean up crude oil from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico; past X Prize categories include mapping genomes, making an incredibly fuel efficient car, and exploring the moon’s surface with a robotic vehicle

  • Snake-like robots dispose of IEDs

    Snakes are flexible, and they can crawl, slither, swim, climb, or shimmy through narrow spaces; the U.S. military wants to emulate these characteristics in snake-like robots that can replace soldiers in dangerous search and rescue missions, surveillance operations, and IED disposal

  • U.S. Army to buy additional explosive disposal robots

    Boeing, iRobot receive a follow-on order for 94 additional explosive disposal ground robots, bringing to total number of robots the U.S. Army has ordered to 323; the robot has the ability to perform reconnaissance during extremely hazardous explosive disposal missions involving unexploded ordnance and improvised explosive devices

  • Research shows promise for nuclear fusion test reactors

    Fusion powers the stars and could lead to a limitless supply of clean energy. A fusion power plant would produce ten times more energy than a conventional nuclear fission reactor, and because the deuterium fuel is contained in seawater, a fusion reactor’s fuel supply would be virtually inexhaustible