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Monday's edition of the Federal Register contains new rules for government-sponsored school meal programs, disclosing the compensation of senior executives at certain banks, and acquisitions regulations for government agencies. Here's what is happening: Global warming: The Obama administration is proposing new acquisitions regulations for the Department of Defense, General Services Administration and National Aeronautics and Space Administration. These federal agencies will try to procure materials that do not contain high global warming potential hydrofluorocarbons. "This will allow agencies to better meet the greenhouse gas emission reduction goals and reporting requirements," the agencies wrote. The public has 60 days to comment....

Love the new MacBook's svelte design, but not a fan of OS X 10.10 Yosemite? There's good news: According to a new test, Windows 10 apparently runs more smoothly on the new MacBook. Alex King, a computer science student studying at Tufts University, spent a month with the new 12-inch MacBook and provided some insightful new details about running the beta version of Windows 10 on it. See also: 5 things Apple didn't say about the new MacBook King installed Windows 10 using Boot Camp, meaning his new MacBook boots natively into Windows 10, as opposed to being emulated in...

If the U.S. intelligence community believes that Russia poses a greater cyber spying threat than China, what will it make of this? Russia and China signed a cyber-security deal on Friday, which experts say could firm up Russia’s ties with the east and may become a foundation for binding cyber security ties in the future. According to the text of the agreement posted on the Russian government’s website on Wednesday, Russia and China agree to not conduct cyber-attacks against each other, as well as jointly counteract technology that may “destabilize the internal political and socio-economic atmosphere,” ”disturb public order” or...

Former Department of Defense Official and Author Releases New Cyber Security Book New book, “Essays in Technology, Security and Strategy,” now available on KindleThis press release was originally distributed by ReleaseWireOlympia, WA -- (ReleaseWire) -- 04/28/2015 -- Technology security visionary Dr. Stephen Bryen has published a new collection of pivotal essays on national security and cyber security to help policy makers and citizens understand the real threats facing the security of the United States. "Essays in Technology, Security and Strategy," provides unique insight and new information from Dr. Bryen who has more than 40 years of experience in government and...

A US air strike in Yemen has killed the senior Al-Qaeda official who appeared in a video claiming the deadly January attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo. Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, who was killed in the April strike along with his eldest son and other fighters in the port city of Mukalla, also appeared in Al-Qaeda videos claiming the holding and death of US hostage Luke Somers, SITE Intelligence Group said. The announcement of his death came in a video posted on Thursday on Twitter by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula - which Washington considers the international terror network's deadliest...

Credit: NASA Langley/David C. Bowman A team at NASA's Langley Research Center is developing a concept of a battery-powered plane that has 10 engines and can take off like a helicopter and fly efficiently like an aircraft. The prototype, called Greased Lightning or GL-10, is currently in the design and testing phase. The initial thought was to develop a 20-foot wingspan (6.1 meters) aircraft powered by hybrid diesel/electric engines, but the team started with smaller versions for testing, built by rapid prototyping. Imagine a battery-powered plane that has 10 engines and can take off like a helicopter and fly...

Microsoft expects its newest operating system, Windows 10, to be running on 1 billion computers within two to three years. The figure, which includes desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones, was repeatedly touted Wednesday at Microsoft’s annual conference for application developers. Microsoft has struggled to get companies to make apps for Windows mobile devices, part of a self-perpetuating cycle that makes Windows smartphones less attractive to consumers.

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...