Training the Super Dog
Detection dogs coming out of Auburn’s rigorous training program can locate explosives in a moving crowd –just by scenting the vapor wake an explosive leaves behind- or find IEDs in a dense urban environment. Some can find infected trees in an otherwise healthy forest, or track down evasive pythons in the Everglades. They’re at work everywhere from Washington DC to Afghanistan.
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Using a Laser to Illuminate the Invisible
Auburn engineer Brian Thurow and his team use wind tunnels in their work to create airflows, but while traditional wind tunnel testing focuses on measuring the forces and mapping the flows, Thurow’s method helps pinpoint the causes behind them.
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Reducing Bird Strikes at the Airport
“Hit birds. We’ve lost thrust on both engines.” That was the radio transmission from US Airways Flight 1549 on January 15, 2009. The Airbus A320 hit a flock of birds a mere two minutes after takeoff. Unfortunately, that’s not an unusual occurrence.
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Nature’s Mysteries Revealed with New DNA Libraries
Hundreds of drugs available today were derived from compounds scientists originally found in microbes. The development of these drugs relied on isolating microbial species in pure cultures — that is, cultures containing only a particular species of microbe. But less than 1 percent of the millions of microbial species on Earth have been cultured in [...]
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Bomb Detection Robots Take the Field
Here in the U.S., there are roughly 11 million acres contaminated with unexploded ordnance—an area about the size of Florida. It gives a whole new importance to the policy “Call before you dig.” The EPA calls unexploded ordinance an “imminent and substantial” threat, and estimates that it may take more than $14 billion to clean up.
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Lab Challenges, Protects Information Security
Students in Auburn’s Information Assurance Laboratory figure out how to crack government software, find messages encoded in images and music, and combat insider threats to corporate network security.
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Weathering the Financial Crisis
“The financial crisis,” writes James Barth, “initially resulted from excessive credit flowing into the housing sector based on informational problems and bad incentives…” Unfortunately, home prices don’t go up year in and year out forever. Good thing Barth’s got a key to making it through financial crisis.
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