• Toshiba establishes U.S. unit to promote its nuclear power business

    Rising oil prices and worries about the environment have renewed interest in nuclear power generation; more than 30 new nuclear plants will be built in the United States in the coming years; Toshiba plans to benefit from this trend

  • New consortium to develop safety critical software

    High Integrity and Safety Critical Software (HI&SCS) is “the critical enabling technology” (U.K. Ministry of Defense’s words) for modern defense platforms, network enabled capability, and complex infrastructure; York University to lead a industry-academia consortium to develop such software; consortium will emulate the U.S. Software Engineering Institute

  • U.S., U.K. military secrets e-mailed to factory hand

    English factory hand bought a domain name which resembled the domain name of neighboring RAF base; for the last few years he has been receiving thousands of classified and highly sensitive e-mails from the U.S. Air Force — including the flight plan of Air Force One during President Bush’s visit to the U.K.; efforts to have the RAF or USAF address the problem failed; domain finally shut down last week

  • Vidsys, Objectvideo partner to offer security information solution

    Integration of ObjectVideo’s intelligent analytics with VidSys’ Physical Security Situation Management software would improve response by connecting intelligent monitoring to quick investigation

  • New material can find a needle in a nuclear waste haystack

    Nuclear power has advantages, but it also comes with a big problem: Nuclear waste; making nuclear power viable long term requires discovering new solutions to radioactive waste disposal and other problems

  • U.K. government lost more than 1,000 laptops in recent years

    The worries about how the U.K. government protects sensitive data continue: A report to parliament admits that the government has lost or had stolen more than 1,000 laptops in recent years

  • iRobot brings robotic WLAN to urban battlefield

    Everything you want a robot to be: Portable, small, inexpensive, intelligent, and robust; iRobot will develop robots to serve as relay node for urban battle-field WLAN

  • Where the wind is

    Seattle company issues the world’s first global wind map, showing where wind is powerful enough to justify building wind energy farms; more than 40 percent of the world’s land mass has wind speeds at more than 6 meter per second (the minimum for effective generation), even though some of that land is not accessible for commercial development

  • Resistance to a U.K. hedge fund's effort to control CSX

    Ever since the 2006 Dubai Ports World’s takeover of management operations in major U.S. seaports, Congress has shown increasing irritation with attempts by foreign companies to own U.S. critical infrastructure assets; there is a growing resistance in Congress to U.K.-based TCI to take control of rail operator CSX

  • San Antonio International Airport designated "first landing" airport

    The new status will allow private aircraft coming into the United States from foreign countries to fly directly to the airport and clear customs; boon to local businesses

  • Singapore embarks on water reclamation project

    Singapore suffers increasing water shortages; the country’s Public Utility Board (PUB) has joined with two specialists in the field in a joint development of wastewater reclamation technologies using separation membranes

  • Banking security measures can tackle terrorism and terrorist financing

    Mobile phones can be part of the banks’ security to prevent terrorist financing through fraud, but it can also be a direct tool in the pursuit of homeland security

  • VCs invest $3 billion in clean tech in 2007

    VCs investment in clean tech in 2007 increased 43 percent over similar investments in 2006; U.S.-based companies received $2.52 billion, or 83 percent of the total, in 159 clean-tech deals

  • Uniloc offers StrongPoint to protect critical infrastructure

    U.S. critical infrastructure is controlled by Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) networks; in the innocent pre-9/11 years, emphasis had been placed on performance, reliability, and safety, leaving these networks prone to attack; Uniloc shows physical device “fingerprint”-based solution to make SCADA networks more secure

  • Chevron, Weyerhaeuser to develop fuels from non-food sources

    Using food crops such as corn to produce fuel may not be such a good idea after all, as the contribution to pushing up the price of corn-based fuel would likely be greater than the contribution to reduce oil dependence or clean up the environment; two companies offer a way out