• Briefly noted

    The principles which should guide Obama’s $700 billion infrastructure plan… Cisco becomes infrastructure player on Obama tech focus… EU piracy mission chief calls for more surveillance equipment

  • Making older buildings safer during earthquakes

    Buildings being built now in earthquake-prone regions are designed better to withstand tremors; trouble is, for a long while yet, most of the buildings in which people live and work were built before new earthquake-related design concepts and new materials were available; UC San Diego researchers look for ways to make these buildings safer

  • FBI: Growing copper theft threatens U.S. critical infrastructure

    The FBI says that, individually, isolated instances of copper theft cause big enough headaches of their own, but taken together, they present a significant problem for the United States — a threat to public safety and to U.S. critical infrastructure

  • NIST releases final WTC 7 report

    NIST releases final version of its investigation into the collapse of World Trade Center building 7; heating of floor beams and girders caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced progressive collapse that brought the building down

  • Can China's future earthquakes be predicted?

    To predict earthquakes, China relied on GPS data, which showed movements of two millimeters per year in certain areas of Szechwan province where a May 2008 earthquake killed 70,000 people (20,000 are still missing) and destroyed more than eight million homes; scientists examine a better way to predict disasters

  • Briefly noted

    Obama administration looks to fill more than 300 IT positions… Larger inmate population is boon to private prisons… More attacks on critical infrastructure?

  • Energy industry likely prime cyber attack target

    Critical infrastructure insiders say the energy industry is also the most vulnerable to cyber attacks and would have the most detrimental breach

  • Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository too small

    Congress has placed a 77,000-ton limit on the amount of nuclear waste that can be buried in Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository (the repository will open in 2020 at the earliest); trouble is, the 104 active U.S. nuclear reactors, together with the Pentagon, produce that amount of waste in two years

  • DHS releases FY2009 guidance for $3 billion worth of grants

    FEMA requests applications for 14 programs for which it has allocated $3 billion; funded programs concentrate on state and local governments and strengthening community preparedness

  • New bridge-inspection software contributes to bridge security

    Inspecting a bridge for hairline cracks, flaking concrete, and rust has been a manual process — inspectors have always examined bridges for visible damage directly on site; German researchers develop software which allows digital inspection of bridges and other structures

  • Good code, bad computations: A computer security vulnerability

    Beware of return-oriented programming — that is, if you want to make sure your computer or server is not tricked into undertaking malicious or undesirable behavior

  • Cyberattacks target U.K. national infrastructure

    The computer systems of critical businesses in the United Kingdom, such as power companies and large financial institutions, are being repeatedly probed to steal information or uncover weaknesses that could take them down

  • Earthquake's trampoline effect

    During earthquakes the ground not only shakes from side to side, but also bounces up and down; this has important implications for designing quake-proof structures

  • Briefly noted

    Australia opens national tsunami warning center… Document requirements announced for visitors to international peace garden… European data breach laws could land in 2011… Aberdeen: Unified threat management can shave IT costs

  • Using laptops to detect earthquakes

    Laptops have a small accelerometer chip built into them in order to protect the delicate moving parts of the hard disk from sudden jolts; same chip is a pretty good earthquake sensor, too