• Using sports-TV technology to help the military in the field

    One thing which would help soldiers in the field is the application of sports-TV technology — instant replays, high-definition views of targets shot from multiple angles, audio feeds to accompany the video, a digital map that could be laid over images to pinpoint locations, and more — to UAV video analysis; each day commercial broadcasters create and successfully manage 30 times the volume of video and other digital content that the military struggles with

  • Maryland's science city development to be approved

    Montgomery County, Maryland will build a science city which official say could create a scientific research center that would rival North Carolina’s Research Triangle or Palo Alto, California; the number of jobs in the area west of Interstate 270 could triple to at least 60,000, many of them high-paying; the county council, heeding the concerns of people who live in neighboring communities, voted to reduce the size of the development from as much as 20 million square feet to a maximum of 17.5 million square feet

  • Researcher builds ultra-dense nanodot memory

    North Carolina State researcher develops a way to store binary data on dots 6 nm in size — possibly leading to a one-square-inch chip holding 2 TB of data; the nanodots are magnetic sensors integrated into a semiconductor and can be made as small as 6 nm in size using semiconductor manufacturing processes

  • New Zealand, Chinese teams win 2010 VEX Robotics World Championship

    Major robotic competition for middle and high school aged students is a resounding success; more than 400 teams competed across four divisions for numerous trophies and awards; the tournament champions were an alliance of two New Zealand teams and one Chinese team

  • Pentagon looking for augmented cognition troop trainer

    Today’s troops need to be as cognitively ready as they are physically — if not more; they have also got to spend more time on the ground in urban settings, interacting with locals and canvassing for information; the Pentagon is looking for an immersive troop trainer, one that includes voice-recognition technology, and picks up on vocal tone and facial gestures

  • Drivers can now guide a car using their eyes, not hands

    German researchers develop a system which allows drivers to steer their cars using only their eyes: the wheel is turned in the direction the driver is looking; if the driver is distracted, the car begin to drive autonomously; and this, too: drivers may opt to use an iPhone application which lets them to control the car remotely

  • Scent of a man: Odor-killing machine for hunters may aid terrorists

    A Texas-based company has developed a device for hunters which eliminates human odor, thus allowing hunters to get much closer to their prey unnoticed; trouble is, the same device may be used by terrorists to destroy the odor of explosives, thus allowing them to evade bomb-sniffing dogs at airports

  • Laser decontamination for post-chemical attacks, accident clean-up

    Many building materials — like cement and brick — are extremely porous; getting contaminants off surfaces like these is difficult, since they can inhabit cracks and pores; cleaning up chemical-contaminated structures can be difficult, costly, and time-consuming; what if terrorists attacked an urban center with chemicals? Researchers say the answer is to use laser to decontaminate an area after a terrorist attack or an industrial accident

  • Acoustic surveillance for border, critical infrastructure security

    A Montana company offers a new way to secure U.S. borders and critical infrastructure facilities: TerraEchos teams up with IBM to embed new IBM technology into a system of fiber-optic sensors; the sensors are capable of gathering real-time acoustic information, alerting of a possible security breach in remote and often unmanned areas

  • A pen-like device as a sensitive explosives detector

    Researchers develop a pen-size explosive detector; the sensitive detector can detect TATP, a peroxide bomb detonator used in many major terror attacks worldwide; the device is a disposable item that can be used by non-experts, like U.S. troops in the field, customs police, regular police, and even environmentalists

  • Breakthrough: new record bit rate for quantum key distribution

    Quantum encryption is the ultimate in unbreakable encrypted communication; it is based upon sending encoding single photons (particles of light) along the fiber; the laws of quantum physics dictate that any attempt by an eavesdropper to intercept and measure the photons alters their encoding, meaning that eavesdropping on quantum keys cannot not be detected; the major problem quantum encryption faces is the relatively short distance of encrypted transmissions

  • Smart plastic to be used in food packaging to monitor freshness of food

    New type of smart plastic could be used for packaging supermarket products or transporting produce; the new material has sensors embedded in it which will be used for measuring basic parameters such as temperature and humidity and more advanced markers that indicate produce quality; the new smart packaging will also measure the amount of hexanol — an indicator of deterioration in food — in the vapors emitted from foods

  • The real battle over Iran's nuclear weapons program takes place in courts, intelligence centers

    Iran has a voracious appetite for technology to feed its nuclear, missile, and other military programs; while diplomats in striped suits debate the fine points of new UN sanctions on Tehran because of its nuclear weapons program, the real struggle over Iran’s capabilities is taking place in courtrooms and intelligence centers, via sting operations, front companies, and falsified shipping documents

  • Laptops to serve as roaming earthquake detectors

    Newer models of laptops contain accelerometers — motion sensors meant to detect whether the computer has been dropped; if the computer falls, the hard drive will automatically switch off to protect the user’s data; researchers say this motion sensing ability allows laptop to serve as roaming earthquake detectors — even though laptop accelerometers are not as sensitive as professional-grade seismometers, so they can only pick up tremors of about magnitude 4.0 and above

  • DHS's researchers receive a 2-year, $2.3 billion appropriation

    In a vote of confidence, the House Homeland Security Committee unanimously passes a 2-year, $2.3 billion appropriation to fund the push-the-envelope R&D efforts of DHS’s Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate; among other things, the bill would create an Office of Public-Private Partnerships inside S&T to make sure that promising private-sector products and solutions get the support they need; to ensure good ideas do not fall through the cracks, S&T would also establish a Rapid Response Division