• Israeli clean-car project largest recipient of VC clean-tech funding in 2007

    Israeli electric car venture raises $200 million in first round financing — the largest single recipient of VC cleantech funding in 2007; total VC 2007 investment in cleantech: More than $3 billion

  • DHS defends handling of Project 28

    Project 28, built by Boeing along twenty-eight miles of the Arizona-Mexico border, was meant to showcase advanced border security technologies which DHS would use in the more ambitious $8 billion border surveillance system along the U.S.-Mexico border; DHS initially said that the project’s technology failed to deliver on its promise, and gave Boeing a three-year extension; DHS now defends its handling of the project

  • Northrop Grumman’s Guardian

    Northrop Grumman’s AAQ-24 Nemesis DIRCM antimissile system has been installed on 400 military aircraft representing 33 types of aircraft, both fixed and rotary wing; the company’s Guardian system, which is adapted from Nemesis, aims to protect commercial aviation against shoulder-fired missiles

  • Robots designed to search disaster areas for survivors

    Researchers to build robot that uses vision and tactile sensors to navigate homes, buildings, and the outdoors; robot will be equipped with a small camera and a vision algorithm that will allow it to see, recognize and avoid running into objects; goal is to send swarms of these robots to crawl over the rubble of disaster areas in search of survivors

  • MPRI to help CDC prepare for disasters

    Simulation and virtualization are becoming more popular as tools for preparedness; MPRI, a subsidiary of L-3 company, will use its simulation and training expertise to help CDC prepare for all-hazard disasters, including bioterrorism and pandemic outbreaks

  • Can robots commit war crimes?

    As the move continues toward autonomous killing machines — robots which spot, identify, and kill on their own, without human intervention — questions are raised about moral, ethical, and legal aspects of this trend

  • Asteroid-tracking proposal wins $25,000 prize

    Depending on the direction it takes as it nears Earth in 2029, the asteroid Apophis may hit Earth in 2036, with what scientists fear would be an impact similar to that which caused the extinction of dinosaurs sixty-two million years ago; scientific and engineering organizations compete for funding of proposals on how to deal with the threat

  • BAE’s JETEYE

    Of the various technologies and configurations proposed for defending commercial aviation against shoulder-fired missiles, the leading candidates are plane-mounted directed infrared countermeasures systems; BAE’s JETEYE is such a system

  • Decision-making killer robots to be used by armies -- and terrorists

    More and more militaries and law enforcement services rely on unmanned machines to perform more and more missions; currently, human beings are still in the decision loop — but this is changing, as the U.S. and Israel lead the march toward the employment of robots which will determine for themselves who,where, and when to kill; also: It is only a question of time before terrorist organizations begin to use robots to carry out their nefarious plans

  • NSF, Google, IBM in strategic relationship on Internet-scale computing

    To bridge the gap between industry and academia, it is important that academic researchers are exposed to the emerging computing paradigm behind the growth of Internet-scale applications

  • Project 28 falls short of promise, requiring three year extension

    After Boeing delivers Project 28 — a system of cameras, sensors, towers, and software to secure a twenty-eight-mile stretch of the Arizona border — to DHS, department concludes that the project lacks the operational capabilities DHS and Congress expected it to have; first phase of project now extended by three years

  • Experts: Australia must take lead on climate change

    Australia is more economically vulnerable than any other wealthy nation to the effects of global warming; new report says: “Australia would be a big loser — possibly the biggest loser among developed nations — from unmitigated climate change”

  • Study: Costs of solar panels far exceeds benefits

    There is growing interest in solar power, but the cost of solar panels still exceeds their benefits, a University of California economist says; even under the most extreme assumptions — a 5 percent annual increase in electricity costs and 1 percent interest rate — the cost of solar PV is about 80 percent greater than the value of the electricity it will produce

  • Computer science helps in combating terrorism

    The University of Maryland develops the SOMA Terror Organization Portal (STOP); SOMA (Stochastic Opponent Modeling Agents) is a formal, logical-statistical reasoning framework which uses data about past behavior of terror groups in order to learn rules about the probability of an organization, community, or person taking actions in different situations

  • Face reading software

    Spanish researchers develop algorithm capable of reading facial expressions from video images; by applying the algorithm, the system is capable of processing thirty images per second to recognize a person’s facial expressions in real time before categorizing them as expressing anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, or surprise