• Tethered drone tested in securing Trump’s vacation golf course in New Jersey

    DHS has announced it will test a tethered drone for surveillance over the Trump National Golf Course in New Jersey, where the president is on a 17-day vacation which started on Friday. Tethered drones fly at altitudes of 300-400 feet. The fly autonomously, but an operator on the ground can control the cameras.

  • Hacking functional fabrics to aid emergency response

    Hazardous environments such as disaster sites and conflict zones present many challenges for emergency response. But the new field of functional fabrics — materials modified to incorporate various sensors, connect to the internet, or serve multiple purposes, among other things — holds promise for novel solutions. Over the weekend, MIT became a hotbed for developing those solutions.

  • Experimental box to track nuclear activity by rogue nations

    Researchers are carrying out a research project at Dominion Power’s North Anna Nuclear Generating Station in Virginia that could lead to a new turning point in how the United Nations tracks rogue nations that seek nuclear power. The years-long project centers on a high-tech box full of luminescent plastic cubes stacked atop one another that can be placed just outside a nuclear reactor operated by, say, Iran. The box would detect subatomic particles known as neutrinos produced by the reactor, which can be used to track the amount of plutonium produced in the reactor core.

  • Syrian opposition shoots down Israeli “spy” eagle near Idlib

    Opposition forces in Syria the other said they had captured a dead eagle which had a camera and surveillance equipment strapped to its belly. Arab neighbors of Israel have occasionally accused the Jewish state of using trained animals for surveillance and disruption purposes. In December 2010, the Egyptian tourism minister accused Israel of training sharks to attack European tourists at Egyptian Red Sea resorts in order to deter European tourists from coming to Egypt.

  • Undocumented immigration does not worsen drug, alcohol problems in U.S.: Study

    Despite being saddled with many factors associated with drug and alcohol problems, undocumented immigrants are not increasing the prevalence of drug and alcohol crimes and deaths in the United States, according to a new study. According to the study, rather than increasing substance abuse problems, a 1 percent increase in the proportion of the population that is undocumented is associated with 22 fewer drug arrests, 42 fewer drunken driving arrests and 0.64 fewer drug overdoses — all per 100,000 people. The frequency of drunken driving fatalities was unaffected by unauthorized immigration rates.

  • George Mason’s new Center of Excellence for Criminal Investigations and Network Analysis

    DHS S&T has selected George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia to lead a consortium of U.S. academic institutions and other partners for a new Center of Excellence (COE) in Criminal Investigations and Network Analysis (CINA). The Center’s research will focus on criminal network analysis, dynamic patterns of criminal activity, forensics, and criminal investigative processes.

  • Breakthrough in countering deadly VX

    First developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1950s, VX is one of the most toxic chemical weapon threats facing soldiers on the battlefield – and civilians as well, as the use by VX by Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad shows. DoD currently uses the Reactive Skin Decontamination Lotion (RSDL) for broad-spectrum agent elimination on unbroken skin, but a capability gap exists for treating chemical agent exposure to large affected areas or open wounds.

  • Testing communication systems for public safety use

    DHS S&T says that by partnering with first responders to gauge capability gaps and leverage existing technologies, it can develop new technologies, test and evaluate existing technologies, and work with industry and the innovation community to ensure solutions are available to first responder agencies. For example, S&T’s First Responder Group (FRG) recently examined a couple of noteworthy existing communications technologies and evaluated them for public safety use.

  • North Korean missiles can reach major U.S. cities beyond West Coast

    Based on current information, the recent missile test by North Korea could easily reach the U.S. West Coast and a number of major U.S. cities beyond the West Coast. News reports say that North Korea again launched its missile on a very highly lofted trajectory, which allowed the missile to fall in the Sea of Japan rather than overflying Japan. The reports also say the maximum altitude of the launch was 3,700 km (2,300 miles) with a flight time of about 47 minutes. If those numbers are correct, the missile flown on a standard trajectory would have a range 10,400 km (6,500 miles), not taking into account the Earth’s rotation.

  • Identifying, analyzing drone-collected evidentiary data

    DHS awards nearly $1 million to a Colorado company to develop ways to increase law enforcement capabilities to identify, collect, and analyze evidentiary data from consumer and professional drones. The award is part of S&T’s Cyber Forensics, a project which focuses on development of new capabilities to help law enforcement with the forensic investigations of digital evidence from various devices such as mobile phones and automobile infotainment systems.

  • Treating gun-shot victims: Initial hospital costs just “tip of the iceberg”

    Gun violence resulted in initial hospitalization costs of more than $6.6 billion nationwide from 2006 through 2014 — an average of $734.6 million per year, according to a new study.The $6.6 billion figure is just the tip of the iceberg: It does not include costs of emergency room visits or hospital readmissions.American tax payers bear about 40 percent of the total costs of treating victims of gun violence.

  • “Time is running out” for diplomatic solution of North Korean problem: U.S. general

    General Mark Milley, the chief of staff of the Army, warned that North Korea’s ability to launch a missile capable of reaching the United States is advancing more significantly and faster than expected. Milley warned that “time is running out” for a diplomatic solution to the North Korean crisis. “North Korea is extremely dangerous and more dangerous as the weeks go by,” he said in a talk at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

  • Community racial bias predicts use of lethal force by police

    Researchers developed a predictive model of lethal force by integrating crowd-sourced and fact-checked lethal force databases with regional demographics and measures of geolocated implicit and explicit racial biases collected from 2,156,053 residents across the United States. They found that the racial biases of Whites in a community predict how many African-Americans are killed by police in a given area.

  • A spate of acid attacks in London is part of an international problem

    A series of five acid attacks in one night in London has created a moment for the British government to take a more public stance on this growing problem. Available statistics suggest a sharp rise in attacks with corrosive substances in the United Kingdom. Data produced by the Metropolitan Police reveal that there were 455 crimes involving corrosive substances in London alone in 2016. Dozens of incidents have been reported so far this year. It is also clear that acid violence is a global problem. Acid Survivors Trust International reports a significant number of attacks in India, Colombia, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Uganda, and Cambodia. There is thus a need to think about how to identify and support good practice internationally – in terms of prevention and supporting victims. This can help the efficient sharing of expertise and resources globally.

  • Optimal policing: When should the police use confrontational tactics?

    Citizens depend on police to provide public safety while maintaining the trust of the community. How can democratic societies balance these two, often conflicting, aims — given citizens’ often divergent views over basic tenets of criminal justice policy? Researchers outline a “formal model of optimal policing” that can be used to resolve tensions between public safety and community trust — and that also can help a public that is prone to privileging one over the other, depending on the circumstances, to keep both in mind.