A 500-member forum of industry, government and academic technical experts, led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has released a new draft set of cyber security requirements for industrial control systems.* These security requirements, developed by the Process Control Security Requirements Forum (PCSRF), are intended to be used in procurement documents for new industrial control systems or components. The implementation of these requirements will help protect the nation&

Intergovernmental organisation urges scientists to present a unified coherent vision for large, expensive projects

The OECD Global Science Forum has developed findings and recommendations regarding future large projects in astronomy. Some of the recommendations are directed towards the international scientific community, others pertain more to the work of government funding agencies. Among the conclusions are: the need for a globally-coordinated scientific vision of the most imp

Light is so fast that it takes less than 2 seconds to travel from the Earth to the moon. This blazing fast speed is what makes the Internet and other complex communications systems possible. But sometimes light needs to be slowed down so that signals can be routed in the right direction and order, converted from one form to another or synchronized properly.

Now, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have proposed a new way to slow light down to

On Jan. 14, 2005, the Huygens probe will plow into the orange atmosphere of Saturn’s moon, Titan, becoming the first spacecraft to attempt to land on a moon in our solar system since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 touched down on Earth’s moon in 1976.

Though scientists hope that Huygens will survive the plunge, it will be flying blind through hydrocarbon haze and methane clouds to a surface that could consist of seven-kilometer-high ice mountains and liquid methan

On Wednesday 6 October 2004 a team of UK astronomers from Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Hertfordshire used the world’s largest robotic optical telescope, the Liverpool Telescope, to detect the optical light, or afterglow, from a Gamma Ray Burst (GRB).

“Gamma ray bursts are the most energetic explosions in the Universe and it is very exciting to have detected a Gamma Ray Burst afterglow for the first time with the Liverpool Telescope and then to watch i

University of California scientists working at Los Alamos National Laboratory have begun to analyze data from an instrument aboard the joint U.S.-European spacecraft Cassini. Although Cassini has only been orbiting the planet Saturn since July 1, data from the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) has already begun to provide new information about the curious nature of Saturn’s space environment.

CAPS had been detecting advance readings for several days before Cassini finally

Purdue University physicists have built a critical component for the development of quantum computers and spintronic devices, potentially bringing advances in cryptography and high-speed database searches a step closer.

A team of researchers including Leonid P. Rokhinson has created a device that can effectively split a stream of quantum objects such as electrons into two streams according to the spin of each, herding those with “up” spin in one direction and corralling those tha

Researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) are putting a 21st century spin on a 19th century technology to make the nation’s ports and coastal waters safer. Airships — known today mainly for advertising flyovers at football games — are the core of a new coastal surveillance system in development for the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) of the U.S. Department of Defense. But the new models will bear little resemblance to their predecessors. These High Altitude Stratospheric Air

British astronomers are providing a vital component to the world-wide effort of identifying and monitoring rogue asteroids and comets. From this month, the UK Astrometry and Photometry Programme (UKAPP) for Near-Earth Objects, based at Queens University, Belfast, will track Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) and feed their crucial information into the international programme of protecting the Earth from any future impact by a comet or asteroid.

On average 30-40 NEOs are discovered each

A Finnish company has launched a product that can be used to prevent children and young people from visiting adult pages on the Internet.

In addition to pages in Finnish, the Block! software of the company Hitback.fi Oy also identifies offensive European pages. ”The problem with other than Finnish software is that it blocks access to, e.g., the pages of the Finnish municipality Pornainen or the OKO Bank of Pornainen,” states Mr Kimmo Junttila, the company’s managing director.

These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show a part of the southern highlands of Mars, called Promethei Terra.

The images were taken during orbit 368 in May 2004 with a ground resolution of approximately 14 metres per pixel. The displayed region is centred around longitude 118° East and latitude 42° South.

They show an area in the Promethei Terra region, east of the Hellas Planitia impact basin. The smo

Smart watch system could help busy, forgetful people keep track of necessities

In the not-so-distant future, your wristwatch could stop you if you try to run out the door without the necessities you need for the day, like your keys, wallet or cell phone. At work, it could prompt you for important items needed for a meeting or a business lunch. In an academic setting, it could remind students which books to take as they hurry out the door for class. Think of it as a technologica

Within three years one of the most advanced data encryption systems developed to date could go into commercial use thanks to the work of OCCULT, and its gigantic strides forward in laser-based chaotic carriers to transmit data through fibre-optics.

The cutting-edge technique, which employs synchronised laser emitters and receivers to encrypt information at the hardware level, represents an important qualitative upgrade to existing security systems for protecting the transmission o

UK radio astronomers at the Jodrell Bank Observatory, working with colleagues from Europe and the USA, have demonstrated a new technique that will revolutionise the way they observe. To create the very best quality images of the sky, they routinely combine data from multiple telescopes from around the world – a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). They have now combined this with the power of dedicated internet resources to send data from all the telescopes to a special com

One of sport’s greatest scientific mysteries has been solved, sort of. Two University of Northern British Columbia physicists have explained the centuries-old question of why a curling stone curls, or moves laterally, in a counter-intuitive direction.

The solution – published in the current issue of the Canadian Journal of Physics – isn’t an elegant equation of the kind mathematicians adore, say the scientists, but rather one that involved a lot of experimental sweeping.

Johns Hopkins team examines Kepler’s supernova using NASA’s three Great Observatories

On the night of October 9, 1604, sky watchers – including Johannes Kepler, an astronomer best known for discovering the laws of planetary motion – were startled by the sudden appearance in the western sky of a “new star” which rivaled the brilliance of the nearby planets. Now, exactly 400 years later, a pair of astronomers at The Johns Hopkins University is using NASA’s three Great Observatories to