• Police can now get information from water-logged phones

    Mobile phones are a vital part of police investigations these days — the second thing a cop checks a body for, after checking for a wallet; if the phone has been dropped into water (or if the dead body with the phone on it is in the water), retrieving phone information is much more difficult; a British company offers law enforcement a solution for water-logged phones

  • App developed to find crooks

    University of Nebraska researchers are developing an app for iPhone and Droid which will allow police to locate sex offenders, parolees, known gang members, and people with arrest warrants; the Nebraska team is planning to combine police GIS and GPS data into a program that would instantly create maps tailored to officers’ specific locations

  • Debate intensifies over warrantless GPS tracking devices

    A-20 year old student took his car for a routine oil change — and the mechanic servicing the car found a GPS device attached to it; the two took the device off; FBI agents visited the student two days later, demanding the return of their property; debate intensifies about whether or not GPS devices can be used to track people with a warrant issued by a court

  • Technology helps find missing persons

    Project LifeSaver provides tracking bracelets to caregiver of people with certain medical conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease, autism, or traumatic brain injury, that make them more vulnerable to becoming lost

  • Mexican cartels' assassins operate in Arizona

    Drug smuggling gangs in Mexico have sent well-armed assassins, or sicarios, into Arizona to locate and kill bandits who are ambushing and stealing loads of cocaine, marijuana, and heroin headed to buyers in the United States; the drug cartels have posted scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills surrounding the Vekol Valley smuggling corridor; says the country sheriff: “They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has—- This is going on here in Arizona. This is 70 to 80 miles from the border — 30 miles from the fifth-largest city in the United States”

  • NIST data enabling evacuation planning of high-rise buildings

    NIST researchers made video recordings of evacuation drills in stairwells at nine buildings ranging in height from six to sixty-two stories tall; the drills are part of a wide-ranging study to track the movement of people on stairs during high-rise building evacuation; the data sets created will ensure that architects, engineers, emergency planners, and others involved in building design have a strong technical basis for safer, more cost-effective building evacuations

  • Unease grows about China's rare Earth elements monopoly

    Rare Earth elements are quite abundant in the Earth’s crust, but environmental concerns and aggressive subsidies by China’s government to Chinese manufacturers have led to a Chinese near-monopoly: 90 percent of the world’s rare Earth elements are now being mined and processed in China; growing unease with this Chinese dominance has led to renewed efforts around the world to develop alternatives to rare Earth elements, and find environmentally sound ways to mine them

  • Collaborators sought for emergency communications network demo

    NIST and NTIA are seeking partners in the telecommunications industry to help create a demonstration broadband communications network for the U.S. emergency services agencies; the demonstration network will provide a common site for manufacturers, carriers, and public safety agencies to test and evaluate advanced broadband communications equipment and software tailored specifically to the needs of emergency first responders

  • Uniform bomb suits standard being developed

    Several federal agencies are now working with first responders to create the first nationwide standard for minimum bomb suit performance requirements; having a standard will give some assurance of quality to DHS and other agencies that award grants to bomb squads for equipment purchases; if the standard is adopted, DHS will change its grants process to ensure awards are spent on bomb suits that meet the requirements

  • DARPA seeks self-aiming, one-shot sniper rifle

    Lockheed Martin awarded $6.9 million to develop a sniper rifle to operate over a range of visibilities, atmospheric turbulence, scintillation, and environmental conditions; the company’s objective is to deliver fifteen field-testable and hardened prototype systems by October 2011

  • Satellite images show Hezbollah training in Syria missile base

    Syria’s Assad has been presenting himself to Europe and the United States as a peace-seeker, but he continues to maintain his strategic alliance with Iran and Hezbollah; Google Earth photos show Scuds at base near Damascus, and also show Hezbollah militants being trained in maintaining and firing the missiles

  • Initial tests for buried victims rescue device completed

    New victim detection device has been developed as part of a project aiming to enable people to be found quickly from under collapsed buildings or from natural elements like mud or snow; the detection device could literally be a lifeline for victims of future earthquakes, landslides, or terrorist attacks

  • Inverted prisms make ray guns practical

    Lasers can be powerful weapons — they can take down an aircraft at long ranges and in unstable conditions, for instance; they are hampered, though, by power and size limits, so they are not yet widely used by the military; Lockheed Martin says it has a solution

  • Cole's legacy: a different U.S. Navy

    The terrorist bomb attack on the destroyer Cole on 12 October 2000 was a watershed moment in modern Navy history; it was also a wake-up call on the need for better force protection, damage-control training, intelligence sharing, shipboard equipment, and mass-casualty response

  • Russia's inflatable military

    Russia is building inflatable weapons which, to an enemy radar or satellite imagery, appear like real weapons; they are easy to transport and quick to deploy — and they cost far less to produce then real weapons