• China's dominance in rare Earth elements to weaken

    China currently has a lock on the rare Earth elements market: in 2009 it provided 95 percent of the world’s supply, or 120,000 tons; other countries used to produce rare Earth elements, but environmental and economic considerations led to the near death of the industry outside of China; the growing unease with China’s dominance — and its willingness to exploit this dominance for political gain — have led to a renewed interest in reopening abandoned mines; U.S. company Molycorp has just secured the permits and funding to restart production at a mine in Mountain Pass, California, which would become the first U.S. source of rare Earth elements in more than a decade; full operations will start by the end of next year; by 2012, the revamped U.S. mine is expected to produce around 20,000 tons of rare Earth materials per year

  • Biting winters driven by global warming: scientists

    A string of freezing European winters scattered over the last decade has been driven in large part by global warming; the culprit, according to a new study, is the Arctic’s receding surface ice, which at current rates of decline could to disappear entirely during summer months by century’s end; the mechanism uncovered triples the chances that future winters in Europe and north Asia will be similarly inclement, the study reports

  • Engineers enhance building designs better to withstand earthquakes

    Earthquakes come in all sizes with varying degrees of damage depending on the geographic locations where they occur; even a small one on the Richter scale that strikes in an impoverished nation can be more damaging than a larger one that occurs in a city where all buildings have been designed to a stricter building code; the current building codes are insufficient because buildings designed according to these codes have evolved only to avoid collapse under very large earthquakes

  • Rep. John Mica urges airports to privatize security screening

    Representative John Mica (R-Florida), the incoming chairman of House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is urging U.S. commercial airports to consider private screening companies/contractors as an alternative to the TSA; he has labeled TSA a “bloated bureaucracy” in need of revamping and has emphasized that airports, according to federal law, still have other security options available to them

  • 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