Underground tunnels and wireless communications have generally been mutually exclusive entities, much to the chagrin of emergency responders (or anyone who has had their favorite tunes interrupted by tunnel travel for that matter).But serious help may be on the way.
Read more
While copper thieves aren’t known for their brain power, a new depravity is infiltrating their ranks: stealing sometimes live ammunition from military bombing ranges.
Read more
Can the US really produce 20% of its electricity through wind farms?
The Department of Energy (DOE) thinks so and today issued what it called a first-of-its kind report that examines the technical feasibility of harnessing wind power to provide up to 20% of the nation’s total electricity needs by 2030.
Read more
The Federal Trade Commission will later this summer hold a Town Hall meeting to look at consumer protection issues stemming from the growing use of contactless devices, or pay-as-you-go systems for retail payments.
Read more

As the military and occasionally commercial aviation researchers look to fly aircraft higher, farther and faster - much faster, sonic booms such planes can create can cause problems on the ground.
Read more
NASA, Intel and SGI this week said they would team up to crank up the space agency’s supercomputing power, making it up to 16 times more powerful than it is today.
Read more
Being a mother can be a thankless job. Certainly there is no daily recognition of a job well-done (not in any place I know of anyway!). What we have here is a list or rather celebrations of what I would call "non-traditional" mothers. That is to say there are mothers of all sorts of things: bombs, vegetables, security, threats, excitement and even hype. I only include 10 here but I am sure there are others I haven't even considered. Include yours at the end.
Read more
Unmanned aircraft will be patrolling the skies of Southern California gathering data that will help scientists assess the region’s climate changes and sources of air pollution.
Read more
The first telemarketers charged with transmitting false Caller IDs (a process known as caller ID spoofing) to consumers were fined and barred from continuing their schemes by a New Jersey District Court judge.
Read more

Navy officials are at a loss to at least publically explain how the cockpit sections from three fighter aircraft were found on private property in Middletown, New Jersey.
According to the Asbury Park Press, it took a forklift, a flatbed truck and about 20 troops from a local Naval Weapons Station to remove the cockpits from the site and are being held as evidence by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
Read more
The NSF today granted The Echo Nest, a music intelligence company that offers enhanced music search, recommendation and interactivity technology to online music companies $500,00 to continue developing its unique data content technology.
Read more
On May 5, over 200 Purdue university scientists and IT folks will install their newest supercomputer in 24 hours or less in a massive electronic "barn-raising."
Read more
Canadian telemarketers who fraudulently pitched Visa and MasterCard credit cards have been ordered to pay back the nearly $5 million they garnered via the scheme.
Read more
Xerox’s famed Palo Alto Research Center, scientists put some of their most ambitious projects – everything from intelligent document technology to solar energy ventures -- on display this week .
Read more

NASA this week shut off one of most successful, unexpectedly long-living satellites, Polar, ahead of what NASA called a likely fatal encounter with the sun.
Read more
One thing is for certain in the scientific community; one can’t get too comfortable with the status-quo. Such is the case with quantum theory and the science around it.
Researchers today outlined an experiment they hope to conduct that would test atoms that would not only mean more accurate identifications of elements in everything from stars to environmental pollutants but also could change the modern theory of the atom, researchers said.
Read more

The FBI this week said it was opening two new US Regional Computer Forensics Laboratories where examiners are conducting a growing number forensic examinations of digital media, in support of an investigation and/or prosecution of a federal, state, or local crime.
With the addition of the new facilities in Los Angeles and Albuquerque, the FBI will have 16 RCFLs nationwide.
Read more

A new network of smart buoys is adding some much needed protection for endangered Right Whales in Massachusetts Bay's shipping lanes which see some 1,500 ships pass through every year.
Read more
Layer 8 is Network World's daily home for the not-just-networking news.
Contact Layer 8
Layer 8 archive![]()
|
|