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Imagine a glass window that's tough like armor, a camera lens that doesn't get scratched in a sand storm, or a smart phone that doesn't break when dropped. Except it's not glass, it's a special ceramic called spinel {spin-ELL} that the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has been researching over the last 10 years. "Spinel is actually a mineral, it's magnesium aluminate," says Dr. Jas Sanghera, who leads the research. "The advantage is it's so much tougher, stronger, harder than glass. It provides better protection in more hostile environments—so it can withstand sand and rain erosion." As a more durable...

Google introduced a feature earlier this year that lets users download their entire search history, but some have pointed out that you can also completely delete it, which might be a good decision from a security or data tracking standpoint. According to Venture Beat, Google released this download feature in January, but it just recently got attention when it made it onto the Google Operating System blog, which is an unofficial Google news and tips website.

Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. sounded a battle cry Sunday, calling on law-enforcement agencies to battle Apple and Google over software that makes it impossible for authorities to “decrypt” cellphones seized in criminal investigations. The recently rolled-out “upgrades” haven’t attracted much general attention, which means police must start pressing elected officials to roll back the terrorist-friendly software, he said. “Apple has created a phone that is dark, that cannot be accessed by law enforcement even when a court has authorized us to look at its contents,” Vance warned on “The Cats Roundtable” show on WNYM/970 AM. “That’s going to be...

A protein which ‘turbo-charges’ the immune system so that it can fight off any cancer or virus has been discovered by scientists. In a breakthrough described as a ‘game-changer’ for cancer treatment, researchers at Imperial College found a previously unknown molecule which boosts the body’s ability to fight off chronic illnesses. Scientists at Imperial College London, who led the study, are now developing a gene therapy based on the protein and hope to begin human trials in three years. “This is exciting because we have found a completely different way to use the immune system to fight cancer,” said Professor...

Experts in health care and information technology agree on the future’s biggest opportunity: the creation of a new computational model that will link together all of the massive computers that now hold medical information. IBM is today staking its claim to be a major player in creating that cloud, and to use its Watson artificial intelligence to make sense of the flood of medical data that will result. The new effort uses new, innovative systems to keep data secure, IBM executives say, even while allowing software to use them remotely. Big Blue is certainly putting some muscle into medicine. Some...

Stanford University scientists have invented the first high-performance aluminum battery that's fast-charging, long-lasting and inexpensive. Researchers say the new technology offers a safe alternative to many commercial batteries in wide use today. "We have developed a rechargeable aluminum battery that may replace existing storage devices, such as alkaline batteries, which are bad for the environment, and lithium-ion batteries, which occasionally burst into flames," said Hongjie Dai, a professor of chemistry at Stanford. "Our new battery won't catch fire, even if you drill through it." Dai and his colleagues describe their novel aluminum-ion battery in "An ultrafast rechargeable aluminum-ion battery," in...

Seated at the head of a table for 12 with a view of the city’s soaring skyline, Peter Thiel was deep in conversation with his guests, eclectic scientists whose research was considered radical, even heretical. It was 2004 and Thiel had recently made a tidy fortune selling PayPal, which he co-founded, to eBay. He had spent what he wanted on himself — a posh penthouse suite at the Four Seasons Hotel and a silver Ferrari — and was now soliciting ideas to do good with his money. Among the guests was Cynthia Kenyon, a molecular biologist and biogerontologist who had...

Voyant’s diagnostic tool for hip-replacement surgery is just the latest that blurs the lines of how Apple devices are going far beyond consumer use. An app by Israeli health-tech firm Voyant, to help doctors plan hip replacement on mobile devices, was granted FDA approval this week as a Class II medical device (requiring regulatory controls to provide reasonable assurance of the device’s safety and effectiveness). With this app, doctors can import images from secure hospital networks, insert digital implant images to determine the best surgery techniques for each case, visualize an operation, and use the resulting data for review or...

News   Home  |  ORNL  |  News  |  News Releases  |  2015 SHARE   Media Contact: Dawn LevyCommunications865.576.6448   ORNL-led team demonstrates desalination with nanoporous graphene membrane    Researchers created nanopores in graphene (red, and enlarged in the circle to highlight its honeycomb structure) that are stabilized with silicon atoms (yellow) and showed their porous membrane could desalinate seawater. Orange represents a non-graphene residual polymer. Image credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US Dept. of Energy (hi-res image) OAK RIDGE, Tenn., March 25, 2015—Less than 1 percent of Earth’s water is drinkable. Removing salt and other minerals from our biggest available source of water—seawater—may help satisfy a growing...

The enemies of freedom never rest — and neither do we. Every day Frontpage tells the truth about the leftists and jihadists who want to take away our freedom. And they will do anything to silence us.

The Serbian government asked people on Tuesday not to dispose of hand grenades and other munitions in the garbage, hoping to minimize accidents as it imposes tighter controls over privately held weapons. Hundreds of thousands of unregistered arms, many stashed away after the wars in the former-Yugoslavia in the 1990s, are estimated to be at large in the country with a population of 7.3 million. That is in addition to over 1 million registered weapons.

Tuesday on MSNBC’s Hardball,” while discussing Hillary Clinton’s refusal to turn over her email server to a neutral third party to end the controversy over her use of a private system while serving as secretary of state, host Chris Matthews pondered with former RNC chair Michael Steele that in this scenario, has Clinton cast herself in the role of Rose Mary Woods, the Nixon secretary who erased the 18 minute gap in the infamous Watergate tapes.

I’ve raised in prior posts (here and here) the issue of physical security of the clintonemail.com e-mal server, which is why were it was located and how it was set up matters. Last night, Mitch LaKind — who has experience setting up secure military e-mail servers — wrote me about the detailed issues surrounding Clinton’s approach. I’ll let him speak for himself (emphasis mine, though): As a former contractor to the Air Force, I personally managed the Microsoft Exchange servers that were installed at Thule Air Base. My experience with Microsoft Exchange goes back to 1997, when the earliest versions...

She dodged legitimate accusations, parried accusations that were never in play, and coolly laid out a defense that you could boil down to five words: "Trust me, I'm a Clinton."

Privacy seems like such a quaint 20th Century concept, doesn’t it? Unbox Therapy has posted a video of the CX-10 Mini Drone, which is described as the world’s smallest drone and is a definite harbinger of things to come. In other words, it looks like privacy is finally toast. The good news with this particular drone is that Unbox Therapy says you’ll have to fly it indoors since it’s so small and light that a good gust of wind could blow it down. This means that you can’t use it to secretly peep on into your neighbor’s window, for instance,...

BOSTON (CBS) – There’s little question that blue eyes, for whatever reason, are considered an attractive facial feature, and only 17% of the world’s population has them. The vast majority of us have brown eyes. But apparently, for the right price, you, too, can have blue eyes. The only way to change your eye color has been to wear colored contact lenses, but now there’s a new procedure that change brown eyes to blue. According to ophthalmologists, we all have blue eyes below our brown eyes, under a thin layer of pigment. A California company has now developed a laser...

On March 19, the world's largest company will join the world's most famous stock index, replacing AT&T. According to Dow Jones, "a stock typically is added only if the company has an excellent reputation, demonstrates sustained growth, and is of interest to a large number of investors," and so on some level, Dow Jones is reaffirming Apple's corporate reputation with this addition. Following Friday's announcement, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told Bloomberg Radio that Apple's inclusion was a "historic moment." It also just makes sense: Apple's market cap is over $750 billion, making it about twice as big as the...

Lockheed Martin turned up the heat on its laser weapon technology and destroyed a truck from one mile away. The Maryland-based company’s test of the ATHENA laser weapon was the highest power ever recorded of a laser weapon of its type. The Advanced Test High Energy Asset’s March 3 test destroyed its target in a “matter of seconds,” the company said in a statement. An image of the smoking vehicle accompanied its announcement. “This test represents the next step to providing lightweight and rugged laser weapon systems for military aircraft, helicopters, ships and trucks,” said Keoki Jackson, chief technology officer...

Loosely referencing Smartflash’s dubious moniker as a patent troll, Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said “Smartflash makes no products, has no employees, creates no jobs, has no U.S. presence, and is exploiting our patent system to seek royalties for technology Apple invented. We refused to pay off this company for the ideas our employees spent years innovating and unfortunately we have been left with no choice but to take this fight up through the court system.” Speaking to Bloomberg about the decision, Rutgers University law professor Michael Carrier said “This award won’t hold up. If there’s a large verdict in the...

A Democrat on the Federal Communications Commission wants to see changes that could narrow the scope of new net neutrality rules set for a vote on Thursday. Mignon Clyburn, one of three Democrats on the FCC, has asked Chairman Tom Wheeler to roll back some of his provisions before the full commission votes on them, FCC officials said. The request — which Wheeler has yet to respond to — puts the chairman in the awkward position of having to either roll back his proposals, or defend the tough rules and convince Clyburn to back down. It’s an ironic spot for...