NASA engineers say they're making progress in their efforts to help the U.S. Forest Service design a better emergency fire shelter for wildland firefighters.

The NASA Convective Heating Improvement for Emergency Fire Shelters or CHIEFS project started because of the deadly Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona in 2013. Nineteen firefighters were trapped in a raging, wind-driven wildfire and the emergency shelters they carried and used were unable to save them.

Locusts came to fame as agents of destruction during the eighth plague of Egypt in the Bible, but some researchers envision a new occupation for the humble insects: cyborg bomb detectors.

Yes, you read that correctly. The Office of Naval Research has given Washington University in St. Louis associate biomedical engineering professor Baranidharan Raman and his team a $750,000, three-year grant to continue his research into turning ordinary locusts into military tools.

Terrorist attacks, including mass shootings and bombings, have dramatic physical and emotional impact on a community. Terrorists often use inexpensive but deadly bullets and bombs to maximize the number of casualties and the lethality of injuries compared to conventional blunt trauma. Significantly increased severity of injuries have been observed in terrorist bombing incidents compared to “conventional” casualty incidents.

President Obama signed into law the first overhaul to the nation's chemical laws in nearly 40 years, a milestone in the history of environmental legislation and a feather in the caps of Democrats and Republicans alike.

"Most Americans would expect that we could come together to fix this law and do a better job of protecting the American people," Obama said at the signing ceremony in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. "Well, here's the good news: That's exactly why we're here today."