• U.S. Congress anxious about shortages of rare earth materials

    Rare earth materials are key to advanced technology — they are used in devices ranging from wind turbines to cell phones; trouble is, almost all of these materials come from China; Congress is worried that one day they could be subject to tight export controls by that country’s government

  • DHS moving forward on cell-all smartphone chemical detection technology

    DHS wants to turn smartphones into chemical sensors; owners of smartphones would volunteer to have tiny chemical sensors embedded in their devices; millions of American could thus become roving chemical sensing nodes to alert authorities of terrorist — or accidental — chemical toxin release

  • Software turns laptops, PCs into earthquake early-warning system

    Harnessing the power of accelerometers — tiny devices that detect movement, allowing, for example, iPhones to flip from vertical to horizontal and Wii devices to function as tennis rackets — and embedding them in laptops and PCs would create a local, regional, or even global network of “quake catchers” who would use their computers to map tremors

  • U.K. Home Offices praises University of Reading CCTV research

    The Computational Vision Group at the University of Reading has developed computer systems which emulate human vision and is currently working on improving the effectiveness of CCTV for safety, security, and threat assessment purposes; the systems will be used in crowd image analysis, spotting unattended luggage, and detecting threats to aviation both on the ground and in the air

  • Tiny, sensitive nano oscillator instantly detects pathogens in air or water

    Extraordinarily tiny sensors that can instantly recognize harmful substances in air or water; the device is just 200 nanometers thick and a few microns long with an oscillating cantilever hanging off one end; the cantilever is like a diving board that resonates at distinct frequencies

  • Flying ambulance: UAV will extract wounded soldiers from the battlefield

    There is one more mission being added to the ever-expanding list of operational, intelligence, surveillance, law-enforcement, first response, and disaster recovery missions assigned to UAVs: evacuating critically injured casualties directly from the battlefield to the hospital

  • Underground intelligence satellite navigation will work off lightning strikes

    The U.S. ubiquitous eye-in-the-sky satellites have driven more and more people and things of interest to disappear underground (just think Iran’s nuclear weapons program); deep tunnel complex shields an organization from the prying eyes of satellites, and it is also good protection against a sudden bombing raid; the U.S. military wants to be able to peek and conduct operations underground

  • World's first practical jetpack commercially available for $75,000

    Kiwi company Martin Aircraft is offering the world’s first commercial jetpacks; the machine is expected to revolutionize the military and be taken up by emergency services; the jetpack travels for about 30 minutes on a five-gallon tank of premium gasoline, has top speeds of 60 mph, and reaches heights of 2,400 meters (about 1.5 miles)

  • New surveillance camera offers panoramic view, zoom-in capabilities

    Not unlike the surveillance cameras that tracked Will Smith’s every move in the movie “Enemy of the State,” Adaptive Imaging Technologies’ “panoramic telescope” may yet revolutionize the field of surveillance: the camera can, at the same time, monitor a panoramic field of view and zoom in on any spot in real time with exceptional clarity

  • Tiny sensor "listens" to gunshots to identify source of fire and type of weapon

    The sensor, developed by a Dutch company, is smaller than the head of a match, made of two 200-nanometer-thick, 10-micrometer-wide platinum strips that are heated to 200 degrees Celsius; the sensor does not truly “listen” to sounds; rather, it senses air particles that flow past the platinum strips and cool them unevenly

  • Charles Thacker wins Turing Award

    Inventor Charles Thacker wins computer industry’s most prestigious award for his contributions to the field; Thacker built a prototype of a desktop computer, called the Alto, which featured a number of innovations that have since become commonplace: a television-like screen, a graphical user interface, and a WYSIWYG text editor; Thacker was also co-inventor of the Ethernet networking technology

  • German fails to prove atom-smasher will end world

    A German woman sued to prevent the Large Hadron Collider from being started because, she argued, the Earth would be sucked into oblivion in a black hole; a German Constitutional Court threw out her appeal, ruling plaintiff was “unable to give a coherent account of how her fears would come about”

  • ISC West: Premier security event, showcase for the latest security technology

    ISC West is the premier showcase for security technology and solutions; more than 20,000 attendees, and nearly 1,000 exhibitors will meet in Las Vegas to exhibit — and to examine — the best and the latest in security technology

  • Nanomaterial in shoes, cloths converts movement into power

    New nanomaterials achieve 80 percent efficiency at converting mechanical energy (as that being generated from walking) into electricity; a single PZT crystal, implanted into a shoe, could theoretically generate 10 milliwatts of power: enough to operate 10 iPods; the goal is to embed the crystals in shoes and cloths of both soldiers and civilians so that the wearer’s movements would power whatever electronic gear he or she carries

  • High school students offer engineering solutions to everyday challenges

    Milwaukee high school participates in Project Lead the Way program, a national curriculum that offers mathematics, science, engineering, and technology education courses to middle and high schools students; students in the program solve everyday problems using engineering technology; they are also mentored by industry insiders, and are encouraged to patent their inventions