• Cow backpacks trap methane gas

    Argentina has more than 55 million cows, making it a leading producer of beef; a standard 550 kg cow produces between 800 to 1,000 liters of emissions, including methane, each day; scientists: “Thirty percent of Argentina’s (total greenhouse) emissions could be generated by cattle”

  • Smart-card manufacturers sues to suppress security flaw information

    NXP Semiconductors is suing Radboud University Nijmegen to prevent university researchers from presenting a paper in an October conference on IT security; paper in question details serious security flaws in the company’s RFID chip

  • Bioterrorism target for ventilation research

    Designing new HVAC systems for buildings would help tackle major threats to public safety including the release of noxious chemicals and bio-agents into public buildings

  • Alternative fuels for the aviation industry

    Rolls-Royce, British Airways collaborate on developing and testing alternative fuels for aviation; testing is expected to be complete by the end of March 2009, after which the results will be analyzed and reported

  • Students compete in future airplane design competition

    Teams from fourteen colleges and universities around the world compete in imagining what the next generation of airliners and cargo planes may look like; Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist at NASA, and one of the judges, said: “The invention, imagination and engineering exhibited in these college proposals was extraordinary, and in parts superior to the concepts prevalent in the current professional literature”

  • Impinj acquires Intel's RFID assets

    Intel’s New Business Initiatives (NBI) incubator helped develop the award-winning R1000 RFID reader chip, which integrates onto a single chip 90 percent of the components required for a reader radio; Impinj acquires the R1000 reader chip

  • U.S. intelligence services aware of vast Chinese espionage campaign

    Multifaceted Chinese espionage campaign in the United States and other Western countries aims not only to steal military secrets, but also industrial secrets and intellectual property in order to help Chinese companies better compete in the global economy; Chinese government and state-sponsored industries have relied not only on trained intelligence officers, but also on the Chinese diaspora — using immigrants, students, and people of second- and third-generation Chinese heritage

  • Debate over environmental impact of border fence continues

    The San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area is part of the U.S.-Mexico border, and all agree that the area’s ecosystem is particularly delicate; DHS wants to build a fence there, but environmentalists object

  • UC researcher helps develop device to detect explosives

    Researchers from the University of California-Riverside and the University of Connecticut develop hand-held electronic device that can detect the presence of explosives in high-risk areas where bomb-sniffing dogs are now the best tools for detection

  • New method for generating enzymes will make biofuels cheaper

    If we are going to use biofuels as a meaningful alternative to fossil fuels, then enzymes which can break down plant material into usable source of fuel are required in industrial quantities and at a low cost; Aggies researchers offer new method of generating such enzymes

  • German-Japanese collaboration on carbon dioxide recovery

    Mitsubishi, E.ON to test a system which recovers carbon dioxide from flue-gas emissions at a coal-fired power plant in Germany

  • $30.5 billion U.S. loan guarantees for advanced energy technology

    The U.S. Department of Energy issues three solicitations for a total of up to $30.5 billion in loan guarantees for projects that employ advanced energy technologies that avoid, reduce, or sequester air pollutants or greenhouse gas emissions

  • Melting ice menaces Russia's critical infrastructure

    Russian scientists say that the hard permafrost covering the ground year-round across Russia’s far north will melt by 2030; government officials say that if this happens, critical infrastructure, including key airfields, oil storage facilities, and strategic oil reservoirs, could all be destroyed

  • Shape-shifting, self-powered skyscraper

    Architect unveils design for a moving, shape-shifting skyscraper; each floor would rotate independently; tower would be self-powered, generating its own electricity, as well as power for other nearby buildings

  • Purifying farm-yard waste water

    Scottish researchers develop a method for turning farm-yard waster into water fit to bathe in; new method also prevents loss of contaminants to rivers and lakes, where they may be detrimental to animal or human health