Narrator:        This is Science Today. Engineers and scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have developed an award-winning, low-cost, reliable system to improve the security of cargo containers during shipping. The radar-based device, called SecureBox, can detect intrusion through any of the six walls of a container.

Romero:         Common methods right now are either door tags or some sort of seal to see whether somebody's come into the cargo container. So that only protects you if you're trying to detect an intrusion through the door and not through the other sides.

Narrator:        Kique Romero, one of the developers of the technology behind SecureBox, says it can also discriminate between an actual intrusion or a disruption caused by shock loading or cargo shifting inside.

Romero:         You'd like to know before you get to the shore whether there's been an intrusion, so somebody like the Coast Guard can then inderdict the ship and find out why there's been an intrusion and what effect that it's had.

Narrator:        Finally, the low cost of the device is also a plus for the shipping industry. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.