If we could see the future, we would be able to head off potential nuclear strikes. Now researchers have discovered how to use a crystal ball to protect homeland security: They’ve developed crystals that can be used to detect nuclear threats, radioactive material or chemical bombs. If this technology had been in place in Oslo, the bomb that was detonated in the center of the city might have been detected ahead of time.
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Congress just passed the extension of the Patriot Act with hardly a murmur and it was signed into law on May 27. Now Senator Ron Wyden (D Oregon) says that what the public has been led to believe the act allows and how the government secretly interprets it are two different things. The reason is that the government’s interpretations of the act are classified, so there is no way to know how it is being used–or abused–by the FBI, the CIA and other enforcement and investigative agencies.
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Perhaps we could have killed Osama bin-Laden with a drone, but since he rarely left his compound, our soldiers had to go in and get him instead. In Whitley’s new novel Hybrids, he writes about machine-men who are engineered to be soldiers. The US seems pretty complacent about using drones for warfare, but the UK isn’t quite so sanguine about it: They think that growing use of unmanned aircraft in combat situations raises huge moral and legal issues. They also worry that wars will become more common once armed robots take over the fighting.
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The recent Japanese nuclear power plant meltdown has spurred scientists on to find better ways to detect radiation. They could also use these methods to search for countries (like Iran) that are secretly making nuclear weapons–as well as terrorists who want to use "dirty bombs." The International Atomic Energy Agency mandates nuclear safeguard systems to on these reactors, but one thing they DON’T show is how much plutonium or uranium is present in the fuel rods of these reactors, some of which could be diverted to use for manufacturing weapons. With nuclear reactors supplying large amounts of the power used on this planet–especially in Europe–this is not a small problem. read more