• Locating criminals by tracking their cell phones’ digital fingerprints

    To keep from being tracked and getting caught, criminals use evasion tactics such as modifying the built-in ID code in their cell phone or swapping out SIM cards, making it impossible for law enforcement to track the criminals down by relying solely on cell phone signals. German engineers found, however, that the radio hardware in a cellphone — a collection of components like power amplifiers, oscillators, and signal mixers — all introduce radio signal inaccuracies. When these inaccuracies, or errors, are taken together, as seen in the digital signal sent to a cell tower, the result can be read as a unique digital signal –a digital fingerprint. These digital fingerprints do not change even if the built-in ID code has been modified, or the SIM card has been swapped out.

  • Largest annual homeland security exercise to star Monday in Indiana

    DHS will be conducting its largest training event of the year next week in Butlerville, Indiana. The event will involve 5,500 people from twenty-three states, and will start next Monday.

  • U.S. Appeals Court: govt. does not need search warrant to track cellphones

    Law enforcement agencies have won a victory Tuesday when a federal appeals court ruled that government authorities could extract historical location data directly from telecommunications carriers without a search warrant. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is the first ruling directly to address the constitutionality of warrantless searches of historical location data stored by cellphone service providers. He appeals court said that historical location data is a business record which is the property of the cellphone provider. The appeals court also said that the collection of such data by authorities does not have to meet a probable cause standard as outlined under the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unlawful search and seizure and requires a search warrant.

  • Quake Summit 2013: showcasing research on earthquakes, tsunamis

    Members of a national earthquake simulation research network next week will gather at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), for Quake Summit 2013, a scientific meeting highlighting research on mitigating the impact of devastating earthquakes and tsunamis. Titled “Earthquake & Multi-Hazards Resilience: Progress and Challenges,” the annual summit of the 14-site George E. Brown Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), will run from 6 August through 8 August at UNR’s Joseph Crowley Student Center.

  • Online tools accelerate progress in earthquake engineering, science

    A new study has found that on-line tools, access to experimental data, and other services provided through “cyberinfrastructure” are helping to accelerate progress in earthquake engineering and science. The cyberinfrastructure includes a centrally maintained, Web-based science gateway called NEEShub, which houses experimental results and makes them available for reuse by researchers, practitioners, and educational communities. NEEShub contains more than 1.6 million project files stored in more than 398,000 project directories and has been shown to have at least 65,000 users over the past year.

  • Simulations help in studying earthquake dampers for structures

    See video

    Researchers have demonstrated the reliability and efficiency of “real-time hybrid simulation” for testing a type of powerful damping system that might be installed in buildings and bridges to reduce structural damage and injuries during earthquakes. The magnetorheological-fluid dampers are shock-absorbing devices containing a liquid that becomes far more viscous when a magnetic field is applied.

  • Hazmat Challenge tests skills of hazmat response teams from three states

    Twelve hazardous materials response teams from New Mexico, Missouri, and Oklahoma will test their skills at the 17th annual Hazmat Challenge, which will be held 30 July through 2 August at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

  • The arithmetic of gun control and gun violence

    The most comprehensive statistical study of gun violence in the United States – examining data going back to the First World War – finds that, in more common domestic and one-on-one crimes, reduced legal gun availability, if properly enforced, is likelier to lower deaths. In rare mass shootings, armed citizens might save lives if sufficiently trained to avoid accidentally shooting fleeing bystanders. The authors note, though, that key parts of their equations should be studied more closely: the fraction of offenders who illegally possess a gun, the statistical degree of protection provided by legal gun ownership, and the number of people who are legally carrying a gun when attacked. Comprehensive data in those areas, they say, could further aid the development and implementation of effective policies.

  • Research priorities for understanding public health aspects of gun-related violence

    A new report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and National Research Council (NRC) proposes priorities for a research agenda to improve understanding of the public health aspects of gun-related violence. The committee which wrote the report said significant progress can be achieved in three to five years through a research program that addresses five high-priority areas: the characteristics of gun violence, risk and protective factors, prevention and other interventions, gun safety technology, and the influence of video games and other media.

  • Humanoid robot ready for DARPA’s Robotics Challenge trials

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    A Korean research institution joins with nine U.S. universities to enter the team’s DRC-HUBO, a humanoid robot, in DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC). The competing robots will have to fulfill eight tasks at the competition, among them driving a utility vehicle, walking across rough terrain, climbing a ladder, and using hand tools.

  • Ukrainian man in U.K. court charged with anti-Muslim terrorism

    Pavlo Lapshyn, a 25-year-old postgraduate student from Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, appeared in a Westminster, U.K. court Tuesday and charged with the terror-related April murder of an 82-year-old Mohammed Saleem as Saleem was walking home from a mosque. Lapshyn has also been charged with three additional offenses related to three explosions near mosques in Walsall, Wolverhampton, and Tipton.

  • Bloomberg vetoes bills aiming to curb NYPD’s stop-and-frisk

    New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg vetoed two bills aiming to limit the NYPD’s stop and frisk policy. The policy has been criticized by civil rights advocates, and has also been highlighted by those opposing Police Commissioner Ray Kelly’s candidacy to replace Janet Napolitano as DHS secretary.

  • Non-toxic fire retardants developed

    Fire retardants are often extremely harmful to health. Despite this, they are found in many types of synthetic materials which would otherwise ignite quickly. Researchers have now succeeded in producing non-harmful flame retardants.

  • Using invasive trees to develop jet fuel for U.S. Navy fighter jets

    In western U.S. rangelands, native juniper and pinyon pine trees are spreading beyond their historical ecological niches and disrupting the environmental balance of their expanded range. Preliminary estimates suggest harvesting some of these hardy invaders every year could supply enough biomass to produce millions of gallons of renewable jet fuel for the U.S. Navy fighter jets.

  • Are nuclear weapons safe from cyber-attacks?

    Research will look into whether today’s nuclear weapons are safe from computer hacking. Specifically, the research seeks to address the question of whether the ability to use and the confidence in nuclear weapons is being eroded by new cyber capabilities being developed by an increasingly large range of actors.