• Less-lethal 12-gauge shotgun round for law enforcement unveiled

    Innovative new round flattens, or “pancakes,” across a subject’s body on impact rather than keeping its shape as other rounds do

  • Downloadable, printable gun technology may change gun-ownership landscape

    An Austin, Texas-based Defense Distributed says its mission is to create the WikiWeapon: a downloadable Internet file which will allow users to print their gun on a 3D printer; when the development process is complete, “any person has near-instant access to a firearm through the Internet,” the company says;the company adds: “This project might change the way we think about gun control and consumption. How do governments behave if they must one day operate on the assumption that any and every citizen has near instant access to a firearm through the Internet? Let’s find out”

  • Ninth-grader wins award for solar-powered water purification system

    Ninth-grader Deepika Kurup of Nashua High School in New Hampshire won $25,000 and named America’s Top Young Scientist for her innovative new water-purification system; her prototype, which harnesses solar energy to disinfect contaminated water, can help improve the lives of the 1.1 billion people around the world who lack access to clean drinking water

  • UV offers hope for safer drinking water

    Recent changes in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) surface water treatment rules mandate, among other things, more aggressive monitoring and control of various pathogens, notably including Cryptosporidium; this microbe, which can cause severe illness or death, is highly resistant to chlorine-based disinfection practices; as one means to reducing the threat, the EPA has called for treating water with ultraviolet (UV) radiation, which also serves as a “secondary barrier” to inactivate (prevent reproduction of) other key pathogens such as adenovirus and other viruses, as well as bacteria and parasites such as Giardia

  • Laws of traditional physics would foil Santa's effort to carry out mission

    Santa has 31 hours to visit 378 million Christian children; at the rate of 3.5 children per household, and assuming at least one good child per home, this comes to 108 million homes; if each child receives no more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh would be carrying more than 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself; Santa would thus need at least 360,000 Reindeer to pull the sleigh; since Santa must visit 108 million homes in 31 hours, he will have to travel at 650 miles per second — 3,000 times the speed of sound; at that speed, the lead pair of Reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each and vaporize — indeed, the entire Reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second; Santa himself would be subjected to forces of 17,500 Gs; a 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, and be crushed

  • Army engineers develop new roadway threat detection system

    Explosives along roadways remain an unrelenting hazard for deployed soldiers; U.S. Army engineers have developed a system for detecting possible threats by identifying potential threat locations on unimproved roads; the system can perform region of interest cueing of threats at greater standoff distances, which can be further interrogated by the radar as the vehicle gets closer to the threat

  • Maintaining robust communications in congested and contested environments

    Radios are used for a wide range of tasks, from the most mundane to the most critical of communications, from garage door openers to military operations’ as the use of wireless technology proliferates, radios and communication devices often compete with, interfere with, and disrupt the operations of other devices; a new DARPA challenge is looking for innovative approaches that ensure robust communications in such congested and contested environments

  • Bricks made from paper waste

    Spanish researchers have mixed waste from the paper industry with ceramic material used in the construction industry; the result is a brick that has low thermal conductivity meaning it acts as a good insulator; its mechanical resistance, however, still requires improvement

  • Fuels, household chemicals made from sugar

    Scientists at the University of Manchester have identified a biocatalyst which could produce chemicals found in ice-cream and household items such as soap and shampoo — possibly leading to the long-term replacement of chemicals derived from fossil fuels

  • New, quick way to ID people exposed to dirty bomb, radioactive radiation

    Research conducted by scientists from the Berkeley Lab could lead to a blood test that detects if a person has been exposed to radiation, measures their dose, and separates people suffering from inflammation injuries — all in a matter of hours

  • Deployable RF data backbone which matches fiber optic capacity

    DARPA envisions 100-Gigabit per second RF communications link between airborne and ground assets; the goal is for the data link to achieve a range greater than 200 kilometers between airborne assets and a range greater than 100 kilometers between an airborne asset (at 60,000 feet) and the ground

  • U.S. Navy scientists honored for significant portfolio of newly patented discoveries and inventions

    U.S. Navy scientists and engineers in 2012 once again had the world’s most significant government portfolio of newly patented discoveries and inventions, according to a November report published by the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

  • Technology emulates the Blind Cave Fish to help underwater vessels navigate with ease

    Scientists have invented a “sense-ational” device, similar to a string of feelers found on the bodies of the Blind Cave Fish, which enables the fish to sense their surrounding and so navigate easily; using a combination of water pressure and computer vision technology, the sensory device is able to give users a 3-D image of nearby objects and map its surroundings

  • Terahertz waves for explosives detection

    The chips generate and radiate high-frequency electromagnetic waves, called terahertz (THz) waves, which fall into a largely untapped region of the electromagnetic spectrum — between microwaves and far-infrared radiation — and which can penetrate a host of materials without the ionizing damage of X-rays; when incorporated into handheld devices, the new microchips could enable a broad range of applications in fields ranging from homeland security to wireless communications to health care, and even touchless gaming

  • Revamped DARPA inventor mentorship programs increases funding

    DARPA says it wants to ensure that young scientists with novel ideas which may advance U.S. national security receive the funding and mentorship needed to investigate them; as the DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) program enters its seventh year, changes in scope mean that 2013 recipients can expect higher levels of funding — up to $1 million available for elite young researchers — for a potentially longer duration in a program that has been reworked to involve even more direct interaction with DARPA program managers