• Researchers spoof, bypass face-recognition authentication systems

    Vietnamese researchers have cracked facial recognition technology in Lenovo, Asus, and Toshiba laptops; the researchers demonstrated feat at this week’s Black Hat DC event

  • U.S. Army, law enforcement agencies, working on EMP grenades

    Electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, has been typically associated with high-altitude nuclear explosions — explosions which disable electronic devices hundreds of miles away from the explosion; militaries and law enforcement want a hand-grenade-size EMP device for use in war and crime-fighting

  • Flying stretcher can keep four patients and a medic aloft for hours

    The flying stretcher is a combination of a car and a helicopter, allowing for four wounded soldiers and a medic to be carried; it has an enclosed fan which allows for a vertical takeoff in areas tighter than a helicopter can manage

  • New threat to Earth: "Dark" comets

    There are 5,000 known near Earth objects (NEOs) orbiting between Mars and Venus, of which 789 have been identified as potentially hazardous objects because they might pass within 5 million miles of Earth; scientists say that with better observation techniques, we will likely find at least 66,000 NEOs, of which 18,000 will be potentially hazardous objects; scientists now say that there are also about 3,000 dark comets buzzing around, of which only 25 are known

  • DARPA can help slumping U.S. economy

    Expert: DARPA should be used in expanded ways to help the U.S. economy and American society

  • DARPA wants shrink-blade helicopters

    DARPA is looking at a helicopter — or “morphcopter” — with shrinking blades; adjustable shrinking blades would offer performance benefits and options such as whisper mode for easier operations in confined spaces

  • Stimulus package offers billions for scientific research

    Both House and Senate versions of the economic stimulus package direct billion of dollars toward scientific research; biomedical research is among the big winners, while physics appears to be among the losers

  • Iran's rocket more advanced than initially thought

    Iran used a Safir-2 rocket to launch a satellite into space last week; it now emerges that the rocket used a cryogenic fuel system involving liquid oxygen; this means that Iran has made an important step toward acquiring the ability to launch astronauts into space — and deliver nuclear weapons on Europe, Israel, and other targets of choice

  • DHS focuses on technology component of border network

    With a 700-mile section of the U.S.-Mexico fence almost complete, DHS shift its focus to the technology program designed to stop border crossings

  • Better detection with self-healing wireless sensor network

    New self-forming, self-healing wireless mesh sensor network can detect railway embankment landslides, humidity in art museums, water quality in water treatment facilities — and has military and security applications such as a perimeter network that can detect intrusion through breaking a light beam, or triggering a tripwire, or proximity sensor

  • Face recognition biometrics wedded to cell phones

    Face and iris recognition biometrics are good technologies, but people have to play along: They have to place their faces near the glass, look straight into the camera, make sure the light is just right; the U.S. intelligence community’s researchers want to solve this problem

  • Ocean water rising unevenly; Washington, D.C. may be submerged

    Rather than spreading out evenly across all the oceans, water from melted Antarctic ice sheets will gather around North America and the Indian Ocean;this is bad news for the U.S. East Coast, which could bear the brunt of one of these oceanic bulges

  • Qinetiq to lead effort to reduce friendly fire accidents

    Qinetiq, General Dynamics United Kingdom, and Rockwell Collins have been awarded £3 million by the U.K. Ministry of Defense to develop the Joint Data Network Combat Identification Server Technical Demonstrator

  • World's largest supercomputer will be used for nuclear stockpile research

    IBM to build a 20 petaflops supercomputer, called Sequoia, for the Lawrence Livermore lab; a petaflop stands for a quadrillion floating-point operations per second; to put Sequoia’s computing power in perspective, what it can do in one hour would take all 6.7 billion people on Earth with hand calculators 320 years, if they worked together on the calculation for 24 hours per day, 365 days a year

  • Day of flying cars nears

    MIT alumni are set to produce first commercially flying car (company prefers the designation “roadable plane”); DARPA is already searching for workable ideas for what it calls “Personal Air Vehicle Technology”