• U.K. police equipped with additional helicopters

    The U.K. government has created a capital grant to buy helicopters for local police units; Oxford-based Eurocopter benefits

  • BNS wins £13 million Dounreay decommissioning contract

    Dounreay was the site of a brave, new idea — a fast breeder nuclear reactor which would convert an unusable form of uranium to plutonium which could be recycled and turned into new reactor fuel; it would, that is, breed its own fuel, offering the prospect of electricity in abundance; it has not worked out that way; now it is the site of a big decommissioning effort

  • New anti-crime approach: vigilant windows

    Windows are coated with special polymer which contains nanoparticles that convert light into fluorescent radiation; this radiation is channeled to the edges of the window where it is detected by sensors; when a person approaches the window, the sensors wirelessly relay this currency information to a computer program, which alerts security officials of the potential intruder

  • EC court: Airlines must publicize banned-items list

    The EC Court of Justice ruled that airlines cannot remove items from passengers’ baggage unless these items have been included in a publicly available banned-items list; rule comes as a result of a passenger suing an Austrian airline for removing his tennis rackets from his baggage

  • Of facts and wishful thinking in the Iran debate

    Dennis Blair, the new DNI, said today that it will be “difficult” to convince Iran to give up its quest for nuclear weapons through diplomatic means; he also repeated the November 2007 NIE assessment that Iran had “halted” its weaponization work in 2003

  • DHS's stimulus projects to create 3,000 Jobs

    DHS has received $1 billion for air travel security under President Obama’s stimulus package; money will be used to enhance checked baggage security and liquid threats in carry-on baggage

  • Obama's budget cuts off most funds for Yucca Mountain repository

    The future of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository appears grim; Obama campaigned against the project, which is already more the 10 years behind schdule; new scientific evidence showing that water flows through Yucca Mountain much faster than initially believed raises the prospect that the nuclear waste would leach over time

  • RAND: Organized crime, terrorists embrace film piracy

    New RAND report says that organized crime and terrorists turn to film piracy for financing their activities; in Malaysia, a pirated DVD costs 70 cents to make and sells on a corner in London for $9, more than 1,000 percent markup

  • New reactor design solves waste, weapon proliferation problems

    A new nuclear reactor design — called Traveling-Wave reactor — is noteworthy for three things: it comes from a privately funded research company, not the government; it would run on what is now waste, thus reducing dramatically the nuclear waste and weapon proliferation problems; and it could theoretically run for a couple of hundred years without refueling

  • Economists: copyright and patent laws killing innovation, hurting economy

    Two Washington University researchers argue that innovation is key to reviving the economy; trouble is, the current patent/copyright system discourages and prevents inventions from entering the marketplace

  • Economists: Markets outperform patents in promoting intellectual discovery

    Researchers say that the problem with patents is that they give the prize to the winner only; whoever comes in second or third walks away empty-handed; allowing people to benefit even if they only tackle a part of a problem might well lead to more collaboration, and to the faster development of an ultimate solution to the whole problem

  • U.K. government shelves multi-million intelligence net project

    The project, dubbed Scope, was designed to move security intelligence into the twenty-first century with the replacement of a systems for distributing reports by paper with an electronic system; government abandons project for unspecified technical problems

  • Personal information of 80,000 NYPD officers stolen

    A NYPD pension telecommunications director swiped backup tapes that contained addresses, Social Security numbers, medical records, and direct-deposit information on nearly 80,000 current and retired police officers

  • Researchers develop plutonium which is good for power but not for weapons

    Israeli researcher finds that adding the rare-earth isotope Americium-241 in due proportion during reprocessing “declaws” plutonium, making suitable for power generation but not for weapons

  • Canada's next UAVs will carry bombs

    The UAVs Canadian forces are using in Afghanistan will soon do more than surveillance duty; Canada has leased Heron UAVs from Israel for the purpose of using them in offensive operations