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Marine Organisms as Underwater Detectives
Because marine organisms observe changes in their environment using a combination of senses, they offer unique insights into the underwater world that are difficult to replicate using traditional engineering techniques. DARPA wants to leverage marine organisms for persistent monitoring and detection of underwater vehicles to bolster shores and harbors protection.
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Mini Nuclear Reactor to Solve the E-Truck Recharging Dilemma
Electric semitrucks sound like a great idea, leading to cleaner, carbon-free skies. But the largest cross-country 18-wheel truck needs five to 10 times more electricity than an electric car to recharge its battery. And these trucks often need to recharge far from high-power transmission lines. Where will that electricity come from? Engineers will tell you the answer is clear — microreactors.
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Rapid Rescue of Buried People
When someone is buried by an avalanche, earthquake or other disaster, a rapid rescue can make the difference between life and death. Researchers have developed a new kind of mobile radar device that can search hectare-sized areas quickly and thoroughly.
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Global Food Production Poses an Increasing Threat to the Climate
The significant use of nitrogen fertilizers in the production of food worldwide is increasing concentrations of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere—a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide—which remains in the atmosphere longer than a human lifetime.
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Two's a crowd: Nuclear and Renewables Don't Mix
If countries want to lower emissions as substantially, rapidly and cost-effectively as possible, they should prioritize support for renewables, rather than nuclear power. That’s the finding of new analysis of 123 countries over 25 years.
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Election Manipulation Threatens Democracy, but There Are New tools to Combat Disinformation
The spread of false narratives about the election through social media poses a serious threat to American democracy. The Observatory on Social Media at Indiana University has a collection of tools and studies that aid in the fight against election manipulation and disinformation.
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SOCOM, U.S. Air Force Enlist Primer to Combat Disinformation
Information overload is one of the most pressing challenges facing the U.S. military. Every day, humanity creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data, and less than one percent of the total amount of global data has ever been analyzed. Primer secures Phase II SBIR contract to enhance its natural language processing platform to counter disinformation.
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De-Identifying Public Safety Data Sets
For critical applications such as emergency planning and epidemiology, public safety responders may need access to sensitive data, but sharing that data with external analysts can compromise individual privacy. NIST) has launched a crowdsourcing challenge to spur new methods to ensure that important public safety data sets can be de-identified to protect individual privacy.
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As Atmospheric Carbon Rises, So Do Rivers, Exacerbating Flooding
When it comes to climate change, relationships are everything. That’s a key takeaway of a new study that examines the interaction between plants, atmospheric carbon dioxide and rising water levels in the Mississippi River.
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Finger Veins-Based 3D Biometric Authentication Almost Impossible to Fool
Biometric authentication, which uses unique anatomical features such as fingerprints or facial features to verify a person’s identity, is increasingly replacing traditional passwords for accessing everything from smartphones to law enforcement systems. A newly developed approach that uses 3D images of finger veins could greatly increase the security of this type of authentication. Combining light and sound adds depth information that boosts security of biometric authentication.
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UWF’s Master’s in Cybersecurity Online Program Ranks among Best Values in Nation
In only its second year of existence, the University of Florida’s (UWF) nationally designated Master of Science in Cybersecurity online program – recognized as a leading program in cybersecurity education and workforce development — has been ranked as one of the best values in the nation, according to the 2020 Cybersecurity Guide rankings.
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NSA Grant to Angelo State for Cyber Security Capacity Building Project
Angelo State University has been awarded a $295,402 grant from the National Security Agency (NSA) to fund the new “ASU Cybersecurity Capacity Building Project” that will expand the cybersecurity program in ASU’s Department of Computer Science.
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Addressing Risk, Safety in Fire Containment
As 2020 has shown, wildfire frequency, size and severity are threatening communities and natural resources across the western U.S. As a result, there is a high demand for decision-making to mitigate risk, improve firefighter safety and increase fire containment efficiency.
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Using Drones for Better Prediction of Urban Flooding
The University of Luxembourg and the start-up RSS-Hydro are working together to optimize the prediction of flooding in Burange in the south of Luxembourg. Supported by the City of Dudelange, the project aims at building a unique and precise urban terrain model with the help of drones, aerial and satellite images to feed state-of-the art flood models.
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Energy security The Promise of California Offshore Wind Energy
As California aims to provide 60 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030 and 100 percent by 2045, a Cal Poly study provides some good news: Offshore winds along the Central Coast increase at the same time that people start using more energy — in the evening.
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More headlines
The long view
Machine Learning Algorithm May Be Key to Timely, Inexpensive Cyberdefense
Zero-day attacks can overwhelm traditional defenses, costing organizations money and resources. A machine learning algorithm may give organizations a powerful and cost-effective tool for defending against attacks on vulnerable computer networks and cyber-infrastructure, often called zero-day attacks, according to researchers.
Chinese Presence in U.S. Academic Institutions
When talking about the intensifying U.S.-China competition, most people think of trade battles, tariffs, human-rights abuses in Xinjiang, the militarization of the South China Sea, China’s growing nuclear arsenal, and similar issues. In many ways, however, U.S. universities and research institutions are a more immediate battleground for the U.S.-China rivalry.
The Biden Administration Should Review and Rebuild the Trump Administration’s China Initiative from the Ground Up
In mid-January an MIT engineering professor Gang Chen was arrested as part of the Trump administration’s China Initiative, which was launched in November 2018 as a prosecutorial response to China’s persistent, pervasive, and well-documented campaign of economic espionage and illicit knowledge transfer. The Chen case demonstrates why the initiative’s overly broad focus on China has been met with relentless criticism from academic institutions and Asian American advocacy groups.
Integrated Approaches to Disease Elimination
The novel coronavirus pandemic has demanded an unprecedented, coordinated global response, which has culminated in increased global funding, and more importantly, increased attention to healthcare. But whilst efforts to produce and rollout effective diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines in record time are being widely acclaimed, there is a danger that this focus on COVID-19 threatens to derail decades of progress in the control and elimination of preventable infectious diseases, including malaria, polio and Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs).
Climate Change May Have Driven the Emergence of SARS-CoV-2
Global greenhouse gas emissions over the last century have made southern China a hotspot for bat-borne coronaviruses, by driving growth of forest habitat favored by bats.
Erratic Weather Slows Down the Economy
If temperature varies strongly from day to day, the economy grows less. Through these seemingly small variations climate change may have strong effects on economic growth. In a new study, researchers juxtapose observed daily temperature changes with economic data from more than 1,500 regions worldwide over 40 years – with startling results.