• Scientist: change behavior to give mitigation technologies time to emerge

    One of the world’s foremost authorities on environmental says that there are only three options when it comes to climate change; mitigation, adaptation, and suffering; currently there are no technological quick fixes for global warming, so “Our best hope is to change our behavior in ways that significantly slow the rate of global warming, thereby giving engineers and scientists time to devise, develop, and deploy technological solutions where possible”

  • New kind of blast-resistant glass -- thinner and tougher -- developed

    Current blast-resistant glass technology — the kind that protects the windows of key federal buildings, the president’s limo, and the Pope-mobile — is thicker than a 300 page novel — so thick it cannot be placed in a regular window frame; DHS-funded research develops thinner, yet tougher, glass; the secret to the design’s success is long glass fibers in the form of a woven cloth soaked with liquid plastic and bonded with adhesive

  • WikiLeaks reveals U.S. anxious over infrastructure vulnerability

    Among the leaked documents released by WikiLeaks is a secret list of infrastructure-related facilities and topics, from pipelines to smallpox vaccine suppliers, whose loss or attack by terrorists could “critically impact” U.S. security in the view of the State Department; the February 2009 cable from the State Department requested overseas U.S. missions update a list of infrastructure and resources around the globe “whose loss could critically impact the public health, economic security and/or national and homeland security of the United States”; the list includes undersea cables, communications, ports, mineral resources, and firms of strategic importance in countries ranging from Austria to New Zealand

  • Artificial tornadoes created to test Japanese homes

    Japan suffers from many natural disasters, and over the past few years the number of tornados hitting the country has been on the rise; researchers have built a tornado simulator which can generate maximum wind velocity of 15 to 20 meters per second, enough to simulate an F3-size storm; on Japan’s Fujita Scale, an F3 storm is one powerful enough to uproot large trees, lift and hurl cars, knock down walls, and destroy steel-frame structures

  • It's official: asteroids did kill the dinosaurs

    The prevailing scientific consensus is that at least one asteroid — possibly more — hit the earth about sixty-five million years ago, showering the planet with dust and debris, blocking sunlight, causing firestorms, and marking the end of the Cretaceous Period and the beginning of the Paleogene Period; most scientists believe the impact was directly responsible for the mass extinction of many species of plants and animals — most famously, the dinosaurs; geological evidence buried deep in the soil of New Jersey offers support for the impact theory of dinosaur extinction

  • Container heist unrelated to Port of Los Angeles

    Investigators in Los Angeles described the heist of three containers as “terminal robbery” — but the heist had nothing to do with the Port of Los Angeles / Long Beach; the facility where the robbery occurred is located miles inland from the port, is not part of a federally regulated port area, and is not governed by the Maritime Transportation Security Act (MTSA) protocol; since stricter port regulations came into effect following the 9/11 attacks, zero containers have been stolen from the Port of Los Angeles

  • Royal Society paints unsettling picture of a world 4 °C warmer

    If present warming trends continue, the world could warm by 4 °C by 2060; a new, detailed study by the U.K. Royal Society would make global water shortages acute; most of sub-Saharan Africa will see shorter growing seasons, with average maize production will drop 19 percent and bean production by 47 percent compared with current levels; the extreme weather, sea-level rise, and water shortages will drive many people to migrate

  • LIDAR technology helps to map landslides

    Researchers use Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) to identify and accurately measure changes in coastal features following a catastrophic series of landslides that occurred in New Zealand in 2005; the findings are important for assessing geological hazards and reducing the dangers to human settlements

  • DHS to set cybersecurity standards for some private networks

    A new law — “The Homeland Security Cyber and Physical Infrastructure Protection Act of 2010” — will empower DHS to set cybersecurity standards for some private networks that are considered critical infrastructure

  • Panama Canal is due a big earthquake

    The Panama Canal is at greater risk of a catastrophic earthquake than previously assumed, a seismological survey of faults around the canal has warned; the survey estimate that quakes occur every 300 to 900 years. The most recent one was in 1621, so another could happen at any time

  • DHS official: Stuxnet a "game changer"

    The head of the Cybersecurity Center at DHS said Stuxnet is an incredibly large, complex threat with capabilities never seen before; “This code can automatically enter a system, steal the formula for the product you are manufacturing, alter the ingredients being mixed in your product, and indicate to the operator and your anti-virus software that everything is functioning as expected,” he said

  • Minneapolis bridge collapse spawning new bridge research

    Oregon State University developed a new system to analyze the connections that hold major bridge members together; the work also brings focus to a little-understood aspect of bridge safety — that most failures are caused by connections, not the girders and beams they connect, as many people had assumed. The issues involved are a concern with thousands of bridges worth trillions of dollars in many nations

  • Bacteria knit together cracked concrete

    Students at Newcastle University genetically modified a microbe, programming it to swim down fine cracks in the concrete; once at the bottom, it produces a mixture of calcium carbonate and a bacterial glue which combine with the filamentous bacterial cells to “knit” the building back together

  • Purdue engineers test effects of fire on steel structures

    Building fires may reach temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius, or more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit; at that temperature, exposed steel would take about twenty-five minutes to lose about 60 percent of its strength and stiffness; Purdue researchers experiment with ways to make steel more fire-resistant

  • The U.S. rare-Earth industry can rebound -- over time

    Rare-Earth elements are not that rare; the U.S. has plenty of the metals that are critical to many green-energy technologies, but engineering and R&D expertise have moved overseas; responding to China’s near monopoly, companies in the United States and Australia are ramping up production at two rich sites for rare earths, but the process will take years