• Megawatt tidal turbine completed

    U.K. maritime energy specialist completes installation of 1.2 MW tidal energy system off the shore of Northern Ireland; system to provide clean electricity equivalent to that used by 1,000 homes

  • Nanotechnology-based biosensor

    NASA develops nanotechnology-based biosensor that can detect trace amounts of specific bacteria, viruses, and parasites; New York-based Early Warning, Inc. will initially market the sensor to water treatment facilities, food and beverage companies, industrial plants, hospitals, and airlines

  • "Fibrous" steel withstands extremely cold temperatures

    Steel is very strong, except that in cold temperatures it becomes brittle; new method of making steel withstand cold temperatures could make steel structures in Arctic areas, like ships or oil rigs, cheaper to construct

  • Grasshopper robot breaks high-jump record

    Researchers develop small - very small: it is 5 centimeters tall and weighs just 7 grams — hopping robot; swarms of such hopping robots could spread out to explore disaster areas, or even the surfaces of other planets

  • New London mayor approves desalination plant

    Boris Johnson has just been elected mayor of London, and one of his first acts in office was to withdraw of the legal challenge launched by his predecessor, Ken Livingstone, against a desalination plant to be built on the banks of the Thames; the plant will be the first in London to take water from the tidal stretch of the Thames, removing salt from the water

  • DHS to keep an eye on access to IT systems

    DHS to create a database of employees, contractors, and consultants with access to DHS computer systems; database will contain names, business affiliations, positions, phone numbers, citizenship, home addresses, e-mail addresses, access records, date and time of access, logs of Internet activity, and Internet protocol address of access

  • UAE upgrades security of energy infrastructure

    UAE is the third-largest oil exporter in OPEC; emirate wants to protect its oil and gas infrastructure

  • IT chiefs warn of cyber-terrorism threat to critical infrastructure

    UN expert dismissed as a dangerous myth the idea that events in the virtual world have only a limited impact on the physical world, saying that technology has “changed the dynamics of terrorism”

  • Hackers to concentrate on moving targets

    Security maven Howard Schmidt says more must be done to bolster mobile defenses

  • Power plants open to hacker attack

    Power plants, dams, and many other critical infrastructure assets are controlled by a system called supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA; a Boston technology specialist finds serious vulnerability in the system

  • Civilian nuclear facilities in Sichuan confirmed safe

    The Chinese government has identified 32 radioactive sources in the earthquake-devastated Sichuan area - hospitals, research centers, factories, but no power plants; 30 sources have already been located and removed; the two remaining sources have been cordoned off and are being excavated

  • Alarming open-source security holes found

    A programming error introduced serious security vulnerabilities in millions of computer systems; many systems affected

  • Permanent denial-of-service attack sabotages hardware

    HP’s Rich Smith to demonstrate a permanent denial-of-service (PDOS) attack that remotely wipes out hardware via flash firmware updates

  • Chinese lakes may burst

    Last Monday’s earthquake, and subsequent aftershocks, weaken large dam and raise fears of man-made lake bursting, causing massive floods in the already ravaged region

  • Verizon, AT&T win DHS contracts

    Verizon, AT&T win contracts worth nearly $1 billion to provide DHS with IP and security services as well as emergency communication services