• Benefits and risks of close science-defense collaboration

    This week was National Science and Engineering week in the United Kingdom — and the London events and exhibit emphasized the contribution scientists and engineers make to the defense of the kingdom; a venerable engineering magazine says we should be just a bit cautious here lest we turn the battlefield of the future into a publicly funded industrial testing ground, where commercial pressure would overwhelm the sober considerations of defense decision makers

  • Age-old communication problem solved using quantum entanglement

    One of the major problems in communication is known as the Byzantine agreement: Messages between three different parties are subject to faulty information; researchers succeeded in overcoming the qutrit difficulties by setting up a system that creates four-qubit entangled states

  • U.K., U.S. work together toward shared goals // Sir Alan Collins

    The shared goal of both the United States and the United Kingdom is safeguarding our citizens and the security of key national assets. Our governments are working collaboratively and have long recognized the need to work closely on science and technologies for security

  • Converting CO2 into fuel

    Scientists suggest mimicking the photosynthetic system of green plants to address the twin needs of readily available fuel and a clean environment: Reacting carbon dioxide with water, two of the major components used to extinguish fire, and turning them into a fuel

  • European consortium to make RFID tags more affordable

    To make RFID more popular, there is a need to make them cheaper; a team of major technology companies is confident that the cost will be reduced once the tags can be printed because electrically conductive and semiconducting plastics can be used in high-volume printing processes

  • Climate change to affect U.S. transportation system

    Flooding of roads, railways, transit systems, and airport runways in coastal areas because of rising sea levels and surges will require significant changes in the planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of transportation systems

  • With biological warfare, real-time detection is key

    The largest improvements in any biowarfare identification system’s performance will come in the form of smaller packages, more automated measurement, and faster measurement

  • EPA to help ports become greener

    Ports are vital to the U.S. economy; port-related activities also pose major environmental challenges, and the EPA wants to help ports and their transportation network in reducing air emissions, improving water quality, and protecting the health of communities near port facilities

  • New nonlethal weapons uses light flashes to disorient adversary

    As the debate over nonlethal weapons continue — are they more humane because they do not kill? Are they instruments of torture? — DHS funds the development of flash-light-based system which incapacitates by flashing LED lights at several specific frequencies

  • Beyond fingerprinting: Alternative biometric technologies advance

    As more organizations turn to biometric technology to help them perform their missions, they show interest in a variety of technologies — vein architecture, retinal scan, facial recognition, and more; these are good times for innovative biometric companies

  • U.S. to lose a generation of young medical, biology researchers

    Five consecutive years of flat funding the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is deterring promising young researchers and threatening the future of U.S. health, a group of seven preeminent academic research institutions warn

  • Invention turns trash into ethanol

    Two University of Maryland researchers develop a process which turns trash into ethanol; the researchers found that a Chesapeake Bay marsh grass bacterium has an enzyme that could quickly break down plant materials into sugar, which can then be converted to biofuel

  • ThruVision shows T5000 T-ray security imaging system

    T-rays operate in the terahertz region of the electromagnetic spectrum; T-ray-based detection system can see through clothing of still or moving individuals at a distance of up to twenty-five meters to reveal hidden objects

  • Fuel cell joint venture formed

    In an effort to accelerate the development of fuel cells, two companies form a JV to target the light industrial, commercial, and residential markets in the United Kingdom and Ireland

  • New camera vastly improves surveillance

    Revolutionary camera design could have far-reaching implications for the military, crime prevention, and enforcement as well as traffic analysis and emergency response support; design is based on an array of light sensitive chips placed at the focal plane of a large multiple-lens system