• Barrier systems, robots reduce security costs

    High-security compounds have traditionally employed security guards to protect buildings and facilities, deter intrusion, and prevent theft, but as budget cuts continue to force both private and government organizations to cut staff, some agencies are deploying portable barrier systems and robots tasked with securing organizations and their assets.

  • One step closer to nuclear fusion power station

    Researchers have made a technological breakthrough crucial to the success of nuclear fusion reactors, allowing for clean, inexhaustible energy generation based on the workings of the stars in our galaxy. At the heart of the new development is an ingenious and robust superconducting cable system. This makes for a remarkably strong magnetic field that controls the very hot, energy-generating plasma in the reactor core, laying the foundation for nuclear fusion. The new cables are far less susceptible to heating due to a clever way of interweaving, which allows for a significant increase in the possibilities to control the plasma.

  • Sea level rise, shoreline changes leading influences on flooding from hurricanes

    Recent studies into coastal flooding have focused on climate change impacts on the intensity and frequency of tropical cyclones themselves, but researchers say that two other factors contribute even more to the growing threats to coastal communities: sea level rise and shoreline retreat. Researchers highlight sea level rise and its potential dramatically to change the coastal landscape through shoreline erosion and barrier island degradation, and say that it is an under-appreciated and understudied factor that could lead to catastrophic changes in flood risk associated with tropical cyclones, known as hurricanes in the North Atlantic.

  • Asteroid hunter spacecraft returns first images after reactivation

    In 2010 and early 2011, NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE), a spacecraft that made the most comprehensive survey to date of asteroids and comets, discovered more than 34,000 asteroids and characterized 158,000 throughout the solar system. It was reactivated in September following thirty-one months in hibernation, to assist NASA’s efforts to identify the population of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects (NEOs).

  • NERC’s critical infrastructure protection standards ambiguous, unclear: analysts

    In January 2008, to counter cybersecurity threats to critical infrastructure assets such as bulk electricity supply (BES), North American Electric Reliability Corp.’s (NERC) launched its Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) standards for BES cybersecurity. The NERC-CIP is marked by uncertainties and ambiguous language, raising concerns in the industry and among industry observers as companies try to enforce the standards. “Industry now screams for a defined control set with very specific requirements that don’t permit subjective and ambiguous interpretations,” comments one analyst.

  • 2014 Cybersecurity Forum to focus on Trusted Computing

    The 2014 Cybersecurity Innovation Forum, to be held 28-30 January 2014, at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, Maryland, will focus on the existing threat landscape and provide presentations and keynotes on current and emerging practices, technologies and standards to protect the nation’s infrastructure, citizens and economic interests from cyberattack.

  • Exploring geoengineering research, ethics, governance

    Hacking the Earth’s climate to counteract global warming — a subject that elicits strong reactions from both sides — is the topic of a December special issue of the journal Climatic Change. A dozen research papers include the most detailed description yet of the proposed Oxford Principles to govern geoengineering research, as well as surveys on the technical hurdles, ethics, and regulatory issues related to deliberately manipulating the planet’s climate.

  • Japan tsunami exacerbated by landslide

    The 2011 Japan tsunami, which killed up to 20,000 people and caused the partial meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear plant, was made worse by an underwater landslide, according to scientists. “The earthquake alone cannot explain the height of the waves along the Sanriku coast of northern Honshu Island,” says one scientist. “They were generated by a submarine landslide.” The research poses a big problem for early-warning systems, because where the risk of landslides goes unrecognized, tsunamis generated by similar earthquakes could be seriously underestimated.

  • Enjoy it while you can: 850 million more years before oceans boil away

    Scientists had estimated that the Earth’s oceans would boil away in about 150 million years. The reason: the sun expands as it runs out of hydrogen fuel, and that expansion, 150 million years from now,would cause “runaway” global warming leading to the boiling of the oceans. Scientists have now found that the Earth’s “Goldilocks Zone” — where it is neither too hot nor too cold for liquid to exist on a planet orbiting a star— is slightly larger than previously thought, meaning Earth has bought itself some additional time — about 700 million years – before the oceans evaporate.

  • Cybersecurity giants adapt to changing cyberthreat landscape

    McAfee and Symantec, the two technology giants of traditional firewall and antivirus protection software, are shifting their attention to focus more on cybersecurity challenges. A rapidly changing landscape for computer networks, in which data is transmitted and stored via mobile devices and cloud computing, has created demand for products and services that can secure information against state-sponsored or organized cyber terrorism.

  • DHS announces expansion of cyber student volunteer initiative

    DHS the other day announced the launch of the 2014 Secretary’s Honors Program (SHP) Cyber Student Volunteer Initiative for college students. Through the program, more than 100 unpaid student volunteer assignments will be available to support DHS’ cyber mission at local DHS field offices in over sixty locations across the country.

  • Guards at U.K. nuclear weapons facility slept on the job, skipped routine patrols

    Police officers of the U.K. Ministry of Defense police, assigned to guard Britain’s nuclear weapons, are under investigation after it has been reported that they had slept on the job and failed to complete routine patrols at a nuclear weapons facility. The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Burghfield, Berkshire, is the location of the complex final assembly of nuclear weapons, and also where the U.K. nuclear warheads are maintained and decommissioned.

  • Upper Rio Grande to experience growing gap between water supply and demand

    Increasing temperatures and changes in the timing of snowmelt runoff could impact the amount of water available on the upper Rio Grande in the future, says a news study. Temperatures will increase four to six degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the twenty-first century, according to the climate modeling used in the study. Although the modeling projects that total annual average precipitation in the basin will not change considerably, we are likely to see a decreasing snowpack, an earlier and smaller spring snowmelt runoff and an increase in the frequency, intensity and duration of both droughts and floods.

  • U.S. loses clean electricity as nuclear power plants keep closing

    Four nuclear power plants, sources of low-emissions electricity, have announced closings this year. The main reason: the increasing availability of cheap natural gas as a result of fracking. If plants continue to shut down instead of extending operations, the United States risks losing 60 percent of its clean electricity starting in 2030, according to a new report by the American Physical Society (APS). The APS calls on socially responsible investors to encourage utilities to consider carbon emissions in business decisions.

  • Post-Sandy study shows a polluted but largely intact barrier system off Long Island

    As coastal communities continue to rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, scientists last week reported some encouraging news: The storm did not seriously damage the offshore barrier system that controls erosion on Long Island. Long-term concerns remain about the effects on the region of sea-level rise, pollutants churned up by the storm within back-barrier estuaries, and the damage closer to shore, but in the near-term, Long Island residents can rebuild knowing that Hurricane Sandy did not significantly alter the offshore barrier systems that control coastal erosion on the island.