• As demand for cybersecurity professionals grows, shortages are felt

    Federal agencies, contractors, and tech companies compete with each other for cyber security work force; measuring the size of the cyber security sector is difficult, but surveys show demand for technical expertise is skyrocketing; the number of jobs posted on ClearanceJobs.com by companies and recruiters looking for professionals with active federal security clearances has jumped 11 percent to 6,100 openings this year from fewer than 5,500 in the same time period last year; Maryland wants to become U.S. cybersecurity capital

  • 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