Engineering

  • InfrastructureNew Florida museum is glass-covered hurricane-proof fortress

    The new Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg is designed to withstand category 5 hurricanes; the roof is 12-inch thick solid concrete; the walls are even thicker, at eighteen inches; the glass, which makes up big sections of the outside of the museum, can hold up to a category 3 hurricane; if that glass breaks, letting rain, wind, and debris into the facility, the art will still be safe: storm doors will shield the galleries on the third floor, and the vault, which is on the second floor (all of the art is placed on the second and third floors, above the 30-foot storm surge of a category 5 storm)

  • InfrastructureChina's Three Gorges Dam's showing cracks

    The Three Gorges Dam is China's largest construction project since the Great Wall; the dam was hailed as an engineering feat that could withstand the worst flood in 100 years, but this year's torrential rains have severely tested its capacity to control the surging Yangtze

  • Black Hat-DefCon round-upThe world (supposedly) safest locks easily defeated by paper clips, screw drivers

    Security experts demonstrate how locks which tout themselves as the safest lock available -- fingerprints-based Biolock Model 333; Kwikset, a programmable "smartkey" lock , the innovative iLoq C10S which uses the action of a key being pushed into the lock to generate power for electronics that then checked data in a chip on the key to determine whether the user is cleared for access; AMSEC electronic safe Model es1014; KABA InSync deadbolt -- can be easily defeated by using nothing more than wires, magnets, air, shock, paper clips, screw drivers, and other improvised tools

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  • Gulf of Mexico oil spill$1.4 million prize for best oil clean-up technology

    X Prize Foundation is offering $1.4 million in prize money for new technologies to clean up oil spills; competitors will be invited to test their technologies in 2011 in a 203- by 20-metre tank owned by the U.S. government's Minerals Management Service (MMS); a moving bridge that simulates a boat pulling cleanup equipment and a wave generator create ocean-like conditions in the New Jersey-based facility

  • InfrastructureGood business: Developers make buildings more disaster-secure than building code requires

    A Florida developer hopes to get more business by making his building hurricane-proof; with debris-resistant windows on all thirty-five of its stories, the developer says the building would withstand a Category 5 hurricane without significant damage; the extra hurricane proofing built into the Miami building shows that sometimes the private market can overtake the public sector when it comes to building design and safety standards; for example, in New York and Washington, D.C., some developers have put in anti-terrorism safeguards that exceed building codes

  • Climate conundrumParticle injection into the stratosphere could mitigate effects of climate change

    In what scientists describe as Plan D, or an insurance policy for the situation in which Earth hits a tipping point in climate change quickly, a 20-kilometer pipe -- "garden hose to the sky" -- would be deployed to spray a shield of sulphate particles into the stratosphere; the idea is to emulate the eruption of volcanoes which spew sulphur-rich gas that spread worldwide, blocking sunlight and lowering temperatures

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  • Gulf of Mexico oil spillLeaking well may be sealed ahead of schedule

    The Deepwater Horizon may be sealed a month or so ahead of schedule -- during the second half of July rather than the second half of August -- owing to three positive developments: one of two relief wells being drilled will be in a position to engage in "bottom kill" in several days; the containment ship Helix Producer, capable of capturing an additional 53,000 barrels of oil a day, is on station; BP is pressing ahead with plans to swap the current leaky containment cap with a new, no-leak, bolt-down cap

  • Gulf of Mexico oil spillU.K. approves well-capping and containment study; new prevention, mitigation solutions sought

    In response to BP's Gulf disaster, the U.K. offshore oil and gas advisory group charged its technical review group to proceed with developing new solutions for preventing or mitigating similar catastrophes in the future; over the past twenty years nearly 7,000 wells have been successfully drilled in the U.K. continental shelf

  • Gulf of Mexico oil spillLouisiana, coastal scientists in bitter dispute over how to limit damage of oil spill

    Louisiana leaders, desperate to prevent oil from the hitting Barataria Bay, a vast estuary in southeast Louisiana that boasts one of the most productive fisheries in the country, want to build a rock dikes across several major tidal inlets between the bay and the Gulf of Mexico to block and then capture the oil; about 100,000 tons of rock began being loaded onto 75 barges on the Mississippi River for transport to the coast; scientists say the dikes would do irreversible damage to existing barrier islands and coastal wetlands, and the Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit for the project

  • InfrastructureDetecting buried plastic pipes

    As the utility infrastructure ages, metal pipes, such as cast iron gas mains, are rapidly being replaced with plastic ones; buried plastic pipes are notoriously difficult to detect using current methods which are expensive, inefficient, and in many cases do not produce the quick and accurate results required; an Oxford University spin-out offers a solution

  • Gulf of Mexico oil spillSecond pipe may have crippled BP well's defenses

    The discovery of a second drill pipe joins a list of clues that is helping scientists understand the complexities of the Deepwater Horizon accident, and learn lessons which will inform changes in how deep-water drilling is conducted; evidence emerges that BP cut safety corners because the drilling fell behind schedule; one expert says: the accident "absolutely was preventable--[the rig lacked] "a regulatory presence onboard that said, "I don't care how late it is, you do it right or you go home."

  • X Prize Foundation may offer $3 to $10 million award for Gulf Oil Spill solutions

    X Prize Foundation, known for offering prizes to innovative and future-oriented innovations, is considering offering a prize of between $3 and $10 million for a viable solution to stopping the oil spill in the Gulf; the foundation in the process of developing a multi-million dollar competition to help alleviate the effects of the oil spill in the Gulf; the X Prize Foundation is best known for what was originally called the Ansari X Prize -- a $10 million competition open to anyone who could build a reusable, privately built craft capable of reaching outer space

  • Gulf of Mexico oil spillUGI proposes innovative clean-up plan for Gulf

    BP's oils spill now covers an area the size of Luxembourg; a U.K. clean-tech company joins with an Ohio-based partner to offer boat towing technology platforms specifically designed to remove the oil threatening the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico and the waters around the Deepwater Horizon well; a towed membrane acts like blotting paper in attracting oil that can then be released only by mechanical pressure

  • In the trenchesMarines to use autonomous vehicles built by Virginia Tech students

    Virginia Tech engineering students designed an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) which the U.S. Marines Corps will test in a war game in Hawaii; the unmanned vehicles are designed to resupply troops, to reduce the actual loads manually carried by Marines, and to provide an immediate means for the evacuation of any casualties in combat

  • Cap temporarily removed from gushing well

    The lower marine riser package (LMRP) containment cap was taken off the failed Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer (BOP) earlier today after a vent on the cap accidentally got closed; it appears that a remotely operated vehicle accidentally bumped into the LMRP cap and closed a vent; the cap was taken off the well because with the vent closed, dangerous pressure was beginning to build up inside the well, raising the specter of another explosion, similar to the one on 20 April which destroyed the well

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The Long View

  • Shape of things to comeA simpler route to invisibility

    Two years ago Duke University researchers built an invisibility cloak -- a device that can make objects vanish from sight, at least when viewed using a narrow band of microwave frequencies; researchers now show how to create cloaks that work across a wider range of frequencies

  • Shape of things to comeNew reactor design lessens risk of weapon proliferation

    Nuclear materials for power reactors cannot be stolen by those interested in using it for nuclear weapons while the material is in the reactor -- it is too hot to handle; the risks of diversion are during the enrichment process, and while the material is being transported; to lessen the risk, researchers offer innovative reactor design