• First U.S. hydrokinetic wave energy license granted

    Federal regulator grants Canadian company Finavera conditional five-year license to build and operate wave energy farm off the shore of Washington State; wave energy buoy farm is first in the U.S.

  • Wireless sensors to monitor bridges' health

    There are about 597,000 bridges exceeding 20 feet in length on public roads in the United States; more than 50,000 of them were found to be deficient in load-bearing ratings; wireless sensors embedded in the bridge’s concrete will monitor structure’s health

  • Eight-day IT outage would cripple most companies

    Survey finds that most companies could not withstand a regional disaster because they are built to overcome severe outages lasting only up to seven days; experts say companies must make the business continuity plans more robust so they endure outages of at least thirty days

  • Information technology to create more efficient power grid

    Creating a smarter grid through information technology could save $80 billion over 20 years nationally by offsetting costs of building new electric infrastructure; 300 Pacific Northwest volunteers take part in smart-appliance trial

  • Day of ultra-clean engine nears

    One of the major obstacles facing the development of ultra-clean car engines is the need for permanent-magnet electric motors to operate well at temperatures up to 200 degrees Celsius; Iowa researchers offer a way to create such magnets

  • Reviewing -- and fixing -- Open Source code security holes

    Popular open source projects such as Samba, the PHP, Perl, Tcl dynamic languages, and Amanda were found to have dozens or hundreds of security exposures; some are quicker than others in fixing the problem

  • Tiny sensors detect toxic gasses

    MIT researchers developed a small detector the size of a match box which will detect minute quantities of hazardous gases, including toxic industrial chemicals and chemical warfare agents, much more quickly than current devices

  • Australia's biggest wind farm to be built in western New South Wales

    Germany’s EPURON and local company will develop, finance, and construct Australia’s biggest wind farm; Between 400 and 500 wind turbines with a peak capacity of 1,000 MW will supply 4.5 percent of the annual energy needs of NSW

  • Towns overhauling infrastructure maps

    The GIS Consortium was established in 1999; it enables police, fire, and public works employees the ability to bring computer-based mapping applications onsite, and allows mapping and updating of towns’ infrastructure — everything from sewer and water lines to the location of valves, fire hydrants, street lights, trees and signs

  • Interim government review of U.K. summer flooding published

    Interim review addresses the issues of managing flood risk, groundwater monitoring, local and national planning and response, public information, and public preparedness; the Review draws seventy-two interim conclusions, awaiting further information and evidence before being put forward in firm recommendations next summer

  • CN expands rail holding, banking on increasing northern oil production

    As the price of oil increases, the attractiveness of extracting oil from oil sands in Canada’s northern regions increases apace; CN acquires yet more rail to ensure rail links to Alberta’s oil sands region

  • Weapon-grade plutonium shipped cross-country

    The Department of Energy plans to scale down U.S. nuclear weapons program by consolidating special nuclear materials — read: weapon-grade material — at five federal sites by the end of 2012 and reducing the square footage and staff within those sites by 2017; nuclear materials will have to be shipped from different labs around the country to these five sites

  • DOE IG offers details of 24 October Oak Ridge security breach

    Certain areas of the U.S. nuclear labs are designated “limited areas” by DOE; employees are prohibited from bringing into these secure areas any equipment capable of transmitting data wirelessly; at Oak Ridge, 38 laptops had been allowed into restricted areas, and IG finds that nine of these laptops had later been taken on foreign travel — two of them to countries on DOE’ sensitive countries list

  • Storage offers investors intriguing opportunities

    More and more surveillance cameras are placed around critical infrastructure facilities, above city streets, and long highways; these cameras generate mountains of visual material — and there is a need to store all this material; storage solutions will be a major business in the coming years

  • SSE acquires wind farm operator Airtricity

    Dublin-based Airtricity develops and operates wind farms in the United Kingdom, Ireland, continental Europe, and China; Scottish and Southern Energy, eager to have more of a presence in renewable energy, acquires it