• NASA going asteroid hunting

    The NASA Asteroid Robotic Retrieval Mission concept involves the capture of an asteroid, and dragging it onto a new trajectory that traps it in the Earth–Moon system where it will be further investigated by astronauts. The current mission design requires the target asteroid to have a diameter of seven to ten meters.

  • How effective are renewable energy subsidies? It depends

    Renewable energy subsidies have led to explosive growth in wind power installations across the United States, especially in the Midwest and Texas. Electricity produced by wind is emission free, so the development of wind-power may reduce aggregate pollution by offsetting production from fossil fuel generated electricity production. Emission rates of fossil fuel generators, however, vary greatly by generator (coal-fired, natural gas, nuclear, hydropower). Thus, the quantity of emissions offset by wind power will depend crucially on which generators reduce their output. In other words, the quantity of pollutants offset by wind power depends crucially on which generators reduce production when wind power comes online.

  • Scientists predicted size, location of 2012 Costa Rica earthquake

    The Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica is one of the few places where land sits atop the portion of a subduction zone where the Earth’s greatest earthquakes take place. Costa Rica’s location therefore makes it the perfect spot for learning how large earthquakes rupture. Because earthquakes greater than about magnitude 7.5 have occurred in this region roughly every fifty years, with the previous event striking in 1950, scientists have been preparing for this earthquake through a number of geophysical studies. The most recent study used GPS to map out the area along the fault storing energy for release in a large earthquake. The study accurately forecasted the size and location of the magnitude 7.6 Nicoya earthquake that occurred in 2012 in Costa Rica.

  • Curbing climate change requires more attention to livestock

    While climate change negotiators struggle to agree on ways to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, they have paid inadequate attention to other greenhouse gases associated with livestock. Researchers say that cutting releases of methane and nitrous oxide, two gases that pound-for-pound trap more heat than does CO2, should be considered alongside the challenge of reducing fossil fuel use. Ruminant livestock (cattle, sheep, goats, and buffalo) produce copious amounts of methane in their digestive systems. CO2 is the most abundant greenhouse gas, but the international community could achieve a more rapid reduction in the causes of global warming by lowering methane emissions through a reduction in the number of ruminants, the researchers say, than by cutting CO2 alone.

  • Natural gas saves water, reduces drought vulnerability

    A new study finds that in Texas, the U.S. state that annually generates the most electricity, the transition from coal to natural gas for electricity generation is saving water and making the state less vulnerable to drought. Even though exploration for natural gas through hydraulic fracturing requires significant water consumption in Texas, the new consumption is easily offset by the overall water efficiencies of shifting electricity generation from coal to natural gas. The researchers estimate that water saved by shifting a power plant from coal to natural gas is 25 to 50 times as great as the amount of water used in hydraulic fracturing to extract the natural gas.

  • 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.