Sheldon Greenberg, Johns Hopkins School of Education professor and a former patrol officer for the Howard County Police Department, has developed COVID-19 guidelines for police patrol officers, security officers, and campus police. These guidelines include personal protection measures; incorporating information about COVID-19 contacts in incident reports; preparing patrol vehicles with protection and sanitation equipment; developing quarantine protocols; and considerations when protecting medical facilities and hospitals.
FLIR Systems Inc. announced it has won an additional $20.6 million contract from the U.S. Army to deliver its FLIR Black Hornet® 3 Personal Reconnaissance Systems (PRS). The advanced nano-unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will support platoon- and small unit-level surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities as part of the Army’s Soldier Borne Sensor program.
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have identified a straightforward change to the formula for radiation-detecting plastic. The change prevents “fogging,” which reduces the lifetime of the plastics used to detect nuclear material transiting through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s radiation detectors.
The Open Science Grid is a network of organizations that provides computing services for science research. The Department of Energy’s Fermilab partnered with the Open Science Grid to be part of a larger COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium. This consortium is designed to provide access to the world’s most powerful high-performance computing resources in support of COVID-19 research.
A new X-ray detector prototype is on the brink of revolutionizing medical imaging with dramatic reduction in radiation exposure and the associated health risks. The detector also boosts resolution in security scanners and research applications, thanks to a collaboration between Los Alamos National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory researchers.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Foundation for the NIH are bringing together more than a dozen leading biopharmaceutical companies, the Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency to develop an international strategy for a coordinated research response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate joined Israel’s Ministry of Public Security and the Israel National Police Bomb Disposal Division to develop a new accessory arm as part of the Upgrade Explosives Ordnance Disposal Robot Project. The robot accessory arm facilitates research, development, testing, and evaluation activities and delivers enhanced capabilities to law enforcement and public safety personnel in both countries.
Fast containment is key to halting the progression of pandemics, and rapid determination of a diagnosed patient’s locations and contact history is a vital step for communities and cities. Smartphones can aid in this process. A team led by MIT Media Lab Associate Professor Ramesh Raskar is designing and developing Safe Paths, a citizen-centric, open source, privacy-first set of digital tools and platforms to slow the spread of pandemics, like COVID-19.
In the aftermath of a disaster, emergency responders regularly rely on mutual aid support from neighboring towns to help response and to cover the area while recovery efforts continue. In its research on improving mutual aid partnerships, the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate developed an application to help jurisdictions create better mutual aid plans.
A new model developed by National Science Foundation-funded researchers at Princeton and Carnegie Mellon improves tracking of epidemics by accounting for mutations in diseases. Now the researchers are advancing their model to allow leaders to evaluate the effects of countermeasures to epidemics ¬– before they deploy them.
