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Leak Suggests UN Agency Self-Censors on Climate Crisis after U.S. Pressure
Leaked communications suggest that the UN’s migration agency is censoring itself on the climate crisis and the global compact on migration, following pressure from the U.S. government. an email sent by a U.S.-based official of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on 28 August to colleagues around the world relayed that the U.S. state department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) told the agency documents related to program activities it funds “must not be in conflict with current [U.S. government] political sensitivities.” These sensitivities include mentioning climate change and the UN sustainable development goals.
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9/11 Mystery Solved: World Trade Center Building Didn't Collapse Due to Fire – Study Finds
Foreign interference and hostile state espionage are a bigger threat to Australia’s security than terrorism, one of the country’s top spy chiefs has warned. Duncan Lewis, the outgoing head of Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), identified three challenges security confronting Australians: terrorism, cyber warfare; and foreign interference and espionage. But the latter was on a “growth trajectory” and is a greater threat than terrorism, he told a Lowy Institute forum in Sydney.
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Bill Gates Is Funding a Chemical Cloud That Could Put an End to Global Warming
Whether you agree or not, global warming is happening. As reported by the minds at NASA, human activity continues to exacerbate the problem. Currently, there is more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere than in all of human history. Two-thirds of extreme weather events from the past 20 years can be tied back to human activity, while both our summers and winters are getting much warmer. Bill Gates is currently backing a potential solution to global warming that centers around the technology of solar geoengineering.
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Even for Non-Believers, These Are the Next Steps on Climate Change
Research indicates that we need to go beyond observing the wreckage of major storms and pondering trillion-dollar plans to attempt to mitigate carbon. Businesses, homeowners, and local governments must focus on what can be done today to address these direct threats to people and property. There are three major tools in the “what to do next” approach: probability, selection, and migration.
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Damage Estimates for Hurricanes Like Dorian Don’t Capture the Full Cost of Climate Change-Fueled Disasters
Scientists say climate change is causing powerful hurricanes like Dorian to increasingly stall over coastal areas, which leads to heavy flooding. The U.S. government’s Fourth National Climate Assessment offered a range of climate change-induced losses of U.S. GDP which range from as low as 6 percent to as high as 14 percent by 2090. Aa more meaningful assessment of the costs of climate change – using basic economic principles I teach to undergrads – is a hell of a lot scarier.
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Faster, Smarter Security Screening Systems
By now, attendees to sporting events, visitors to office buildings, and especially frequent fliers are all quite familiar with the technologies used at security checkpoints. You arrive at the security checkpoint, check your bags, show your ID and maybe your ticket or boarding pass, throw away the coffee or water you’ve been chugging, and then wait in a long line until it is your turn to be screened. The security lines can be inconvenient. S&T and partners are working to help security screening systems, whether at airports, government facilities, border checkpoints, or public spaces like arenas, to work faster and smarter.
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DOD Recognizes Virginia Tech’s Contribution to Counterintelligence
DOD’s Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency last month awarded Virginia Tech the 2018 Award for Excellence in Counterintelligence to the university. The award, given annually since 2010, recognizes up to four companies or institutions, out of about 10,000, which exhibit the best counterintelligence results and cooperation to support the U.S. government’s efforts to detect and stop foreign entities from stealing national security information.
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Designed Super Shrimp Could Increase Yield, Help Prevent Disease
Single-sex prawns could help alleviate poverty, reduce disease and protect the environment, according to researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) who have developed a monosex prawn that may make this winning trifecta possible.
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“100-year” Floods Will Happen Every 1 to 30 Years: Study
A 100-year flood is supposed to be just that: a flood that occurs once every 100 years, or a flood that has a one-percent chance of happening every year. But researchers have developed new maps that predict coastal flooding for every county on the Eastern and Gulf Coasts and find 100-year floods could become annual occurrences in New England; and happen every one to 30 years along the southeast Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico shorelines.
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Welcome to the New Phase of U.S.-China Tech Competition
It came without a breaking news alert or presidential tweet, but the technological competition with China entered a new phase last month. Several developments quietly heralded this shift: Cross-border investments between the United States and China plunged to their lowest levels since 2014, with the tech sector suffering the most precipitous drop. U.S. chip giants Intel and AMD abruptly ended or declined to extend important partnerships with Chinese entities. The Department of Commerce halved the number of licenses that let U.S. companies assign Chinese nationals to sensitive technology and engineering projects.
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Rating Security of Internet-Connected Devices
If you’re in the market for an internet-connected garage door opener, doorbell, thermostat, security camera, yard irrigation system, slow cooker—or even a box of connected light bulbs—a new website can help you understand the security issues these shiny new devices might bring into your home.
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Making “Internet of Things” More Secure
Devices connected to the internet of things, now becoming standard components in new buildings, can increase energy performance while reducing costs. But such highly connected sensors can also bring potential security vulnerabilities. Several University of Washington schools and offices will team up to research how organizational practices can affect the interagency collaboration needed to keep the “internet of things” — and institutional systems — safe and secure.
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Leveraging Big Data for Enhanced Data-Driven Decisions
Defense Strategies Institute (DSI) announced the 7th annual Big Data for Intelligence Symposium, focusing on the theme “Harnessing the Power of Advanced Analytics to Support Enhanced Decision Making.”The symposium will focus on the challenges and opportunities of turning large amounts of raw data into actionable intelligence and the steps that should be taken in the future to improve this process in order to maintain U.S. operational advantage.
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Europe, U.S. Teaming up for Asteroid Deflection
Asteroid researchers and spacecraft engineers from the U.S., Europe and around the world will gather in Rome next week to discuss the latest progress in their common goal: an ambitious double-spacecraft mission to deflect an asteroid in space, to prove the technique as a viable method of planetary defense.
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Want to Avoid Climate-Related Disasters? Try Moving
The response to catastrophes — Katrina, Sandy, Harvey, Michael — tended to be a defiant vow to rebuild, turn loss into lesson by making protective seawalls higher and stronger to hold back floods, or raising homes onto stilts to stay clear of the encroaching waves. To this, experts say, “Enough.” The time has come to consider a different path: retreat. Abandon areas prone to repeated disaster in favor of those that are safer and do so in a deliberate, thoughtful way.
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More headlines
The long view
Autonomous Vehicle Technology Vulnerable to Road Object Spoofing and Vanishing Attacks
Researchers have demonstrated the potentially hazardous vulnerabilities associated with the technology called LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, many autonomous vehicles use to navigate streets, roads and highways. The researchers have shown how to use lasers to fool LiDAR into “seeing” objects that are not present and missing those that are – deficiencies that can cause unwarranted and unsafe braking or collisions.
Tantalizing Method to Study Cyberdeterrence
Tantalus is unlike most war games because it is experimental instead of experiential — the immersive game differs by overlapping scientific rigor and quantitative assessment methods with the experimental sciences, and experimental war gaming provides insightful data for real-world cyberattacks.
Prototype Self-Service Screening System Unveiled
TSA and DHS S&T unveiled a prototype checkpoint technology, the self-service screening system, at Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) in Las Vegas, NV. The aim is to provide a near self-sufficient passenger screening process while enabling passengers to directly receive on-person alarm information and allow for the passenger self-resolution of those alarms.
Falling Space Debris: How High Is the Risk I'll Get Hit?
An International Space Station battery fell back to Earth and, luckily, splashed down harmlessly in the Atlantic. Should we have worried? Space debris reenters our atmosphere every week.
Testing Cutting-Edge Counter-Drone Technology
Drones have many positive applications, bad actors can use them for nefarious purposes. Two recent field demonstrations brought government, academia, and industry together to evaluate innovative counter-unmanned aircraft systems.
Strengthening the Grid’s ‘Backbone’ with Hydropower
Argonne-led studies investigate how hydropower could help add more clean energy to the grid, how it generates value as grids add more renewable energy, and how liner technology can improve hydropower efficiency.