• A Mississippi river diversion helped build Louisiana wetlands

    The extensive system of levees along the Mississippi River has done much to prevent devastating floods in riverside communities; the levees, however, have also contributed to the loss of Louisiana’s wetlands; by holding in floodwaters, they prevent sediment from flowing into the watershed and rebuilding marshes, which are compacting under their own weight and losing ground to sea-level rise

  • Corps: absolute flood protection along the Missouri River is impossible

    A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report said that absolute flood protection along the Missouri River is impossible, so the basin needs to prepare and plan for flooding in the future

  • Sen. Rockefeller asks Fortune 500 CEOs for cybersecurity best practices

    Last month, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) sent a letter to the CEOs of fortune 500 companies asking them what cybersecurity practices they have adopted, how these practices were adopted, who developed them, and when they were developed; many saw Rockefeller’s letter as an admission that the Obama administration does not have a basis for trying to impose cybersecurity practices on the private sector through the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, now stalled in Congress

  • More companies adopt cloud disaster recovery solutions

    More and more companies adopt a cloud disaster recovery solution; in a recent 2012 TechTarget Cloud Pulse survey, a majority of the 926 companies that responded have said they are now using a cloud disaster recovery system or plan to in the next six months

  • Scientists say it is too late to stop global warming: better to focus on adaptation, mitigation

    Two scientists argue that governments and institutions should focus on developing adaption policies to address and mitigate against the negative impact of global warming, rather than putting the emphasis on carbon trading and capping greenhouse-gas emissions; they say that attempts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions through carbon cap-and-trade schemes and to promote renewable and sustainable energy sources are probably too late to arrest the inevitable trend of global warming

  • States may join feds in regulating infrastructure cybersecurity

    Dealing with cybersecurity issues relating to U.S. inmfrastructure has largely been a federal responsibility, carried out through the North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Requirements (NERC-CIP)’ the limitations of these requirements have led state regulators to consider increasing state role in infrastructure protection

  • Rehabilitating historical structures using laser scanning technology

    The Carmel Mission Basilica in California is undergoing a restoration using cutting-edge laser scanning technology; earlier this year, engineers the from Blach Construction Company  teamed up with CyArk, a non-profit foundation that digitally preserves historical sites, to shoot laser beams at and within the basilica to create precise digital maps of the building from different angles

  • Water level gauges failed during Hurricane Isaac

    As Hurricane Isaac beat down on New Orleans, the damage it caused was nowhere near as severe as that of Katrina, but it lasted longer than most people expected and for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, it provided a field test of a multi-billion dollar investment in flood protection

  • China’s Mekong River dams undermine neighbors’ economies, food production

    Five Chinese dams on the Mekong River’s upper portions have caused rapid changes in water level, and other adverse effects, downstream, especially in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos, where millions of people rely on the river for water, food, and transportation

  • Carbon dioxide “corrodes” ice, causing glaciers, ice caps to crack

    The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from roughly 280 ppm shortly before the industrial revolution to about 390 ppm today; now researchers done atom-level simulations that suggest that increased concentrations of the gas causes ice to become more brittle, and so more likely to break up or crack; this explains the cracking of glaciers and ice caps

  • Study maps greenhouse gas emissions down to building, street level for U.S. cities

    Researchers have developed a new software system capable of estimating greenhouse gas emissions across entire urban landscapes, all the way down to roads and individual buildings. Until now, scientists quantified carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at a much broader level

  • Congressional panel says two Chinese telecom companies pose “national security threat” to U.S.

    A report by the House Intelligence Committee recommended that the U.S. government be barred from doing business with two Chinese telecommunications firms – Huawei and ZTE – and that American companies should avoid buying their equipment; a committee report said the two companies pose a threat to U.S. national security; installing these companies’ technology in U.S. communication network will not only allow these companies, acting on behalf of the Chinese military and intelligence, to steal sensitive national security information and trade secrets of private U.S. companies – it will also allow China to attack and paralyze large portions of U.S. critical infrastructure

  • Infrastructure security market to reach a value of $32.55 billion in 2012

    The infrastructure security market has rapidly developed over the past decade, with the formation of a host of governmental and international organizations dedicated to homeland security and critical infrastructure protection; a new report says growth trends in the infrastructure protection market will continue

  • CO2 emissions as a result of economic growth, decline not symmetrical

    Estimating the trajectory of CO2 emissions, an important part of planning for climate change mitigation and adaptation, depends in part on understanding how these emissions are influenced by the economy; new study finds that in years when GDP per capita shrinks, CO2 emissions per capita do not decline in equal proportion to the amount by which they increase with economic growth

  • Camera for long-range gas leak detection

    New infrared gas imaging camera equipped with a 75 mm lens; it iscertified for use in Class I Div 2 hazardous locations, enabling remote detection and visualization of gas leaks from a great distance