• Chi-Nu Experiment Concludes with Data to Support Nuclear Security, Energy Reactors

    The Chi-Nu project, a years-long experiment measuring the energy spectrum of neutrons emitted from neutron-induced fission, recently concluded the most detailed and extensive uncertainty analysis of the three major actinide elements — uranium-238, uranium-235 and plutonium-239.

  • Why You Received a National Emergency Alert on Your Phone — and What the Cold War Has to Do with It

    The U.S. wireless providers that participated in the federal alert program sent alerts to their customers on Wednesday around 2:18 p.m. Eastern Time. The Emergency Alert System and the more recent Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) has its roots in the early days of the Cold War, when there was a concern that the president would need a means to directly communicate to the American people in the event of an imminent Soviet attack on the United States involving nuclear weapons. 

  • States Vary in Firearm Ownership, and the Storage and Carrying Habits of Owners

    Keeping a firearm in the home sharply increases the risk for injury and death. Researchers find firearm owning communities in five states are diverse, with risky behaviors more common in some than others.

  • Mobile Positioning-Based Population Statistics Make Crisis Management More Effective

    Human and economic losses inflicted by disasters are still growing in the world in spite of technological advances. A recent case study from Estonia shows that mobile positioning data can play a key role in improving the availability of emergency assistance, reducing the risk to human life and health in crisis situations.

  • Simultaneous large wildfires will increase in Western U.S.

    Simultaneous outbreaks of large wildfires will become more frequent in the Western United States this century as the climate warms, putting major strains on efforts to fight fires. This trend threatens to stretch firefighting resources.

  • Researchers Blow Whistle on Forensic Science Method

    Like fingerprints, a firearm’s discarded shell casings have unique markings. This allows forensic experts to compare casings from a crime scene with those from a suspect’s gun. Finding and reporting a mismatch can help free the innocent, just as a match can incriminate the guilty. But a new study reveals mismatches are more likely than matches to be reported as “inconclusive” in cartridge-case comparisons.

  • The Dark Figure of Crime

    “Extremely wicked, shockingly evil, and vile” – this is how the judge described serial killer Ted Bundy. Bundy was sentenced to death for killing 30 young women and girls between 1974 and 1978. He was executed in 1989. A new book offers a detailed analysis arguing that Bundy’s murder count was likely 100 or more, and that his first killing was in adolescence. It is estimated that there are 250,000 to 350,000 unsolved homicide cases in the U.S. Ted Bundy is a “microcosm of the unsolved murder epidemic he helped to set into motion,” the book’s author says.

  • Nationwide Test of Wireless Emergency Alert System Could Test People’s Patience – or Help Rebuild Public Trust in the System

    The Wireless Emergency Alert system is scheduled to have its third nationwide test on Oct. 4, 2023. Similar tests in 2018 and 2021 caused a degree of public confusion and resistance. We believe that concerns about previous tests raise two questions: Is public trust in emergency alerting eroding? And how might the upcoming test rebuild it?

  • Cities Should Act NOW to Ban Predictive Policing...and Stop Using ShotSpotter, Too

    Sound Thinking, the company behind ShotSpotter, is reportedly buying Geolitica, the company behind PredPol, a predictive policing technology. When companies like Sound Thinking and Geolitica merge and bundle their products, it becomes much easier for cities who purchase one harmful technology to end up deploying a suite of them without meaningful oversight, transparency, or control by elected officials or the public.

  • New Firearms Safety Grants Explore Reporting Systems, Safe Storage, Childhood Injuries, More

    As part of a broad federal investment focused on reducing firearm-related injuries and deaths, five research teams at the University of Michigan recently received grants totaling $2.1 million to launch new projects that identify the root causes of and find solutions for firearms injuries and deaths in the United States.

  • It's Easier to Get Valuable Metals from Battery Waste If You “Flash” It

    Demand for valuable metals needed in batteries is poised to grow over the coming decades in step with the growth of clean energy technologies, and the best place to source them may be by recycling spent batteries.

  • What Fuels Wildfires in Sierra Nevada Mountains

    Wildfires in California, exacerbated by human-driven climate change, are getting more severe. To better manage them, there’s a growing need to know exactly what fuels the blazes after they ignite. One of the chief fuels of wildfires in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains is the decades-old remains of large trees.

  • The Southern Border Poses Terrorism Risks. Homegrown Threats Still Loom Larger.

    The fears of terrorists entering the U.S. illegally can never be completely dismissed, but to date they have been mostly hypothetical, as there is scant evidence that illegal immigrants have committed acts of terrorism in the United States. For now, the most serious terrorist danger still comes from lone-actor racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs), radicalized online here inside the United States, attacking soft targets using firearms.

  • Is Myanmar About to Go Nuclear?

    The specter of the world’s first ‘Buddhist bomb’ still hangs over Myanmar. It has been given impetus by the coup in February 2021 and the military regime’s increasingly close relations with Russia. The question must be asked: why is the junta expending precious resources on a nuclear reactor of arguable utility when it is already struggling with a costly civil war, an economy in dire straits, the collapse of government services and widespread poverty and hardship?

  • The U.S. Government Should Stockpile More Critical Minerals

    The 2022 National Defense Strategy describes China as America’s “most consequential strategic competitor for the coming decades.” Yet, Gregory Wischer and Jack Little write, the United States is unprepared to fight a major war against the Chinese. “A longer, more intense U.S.-Chinese conflict over Taiwan would expose even deeper cracks in the defense industrial base and undermine the U.S. military’s ability to defeat the Chinese military: The United States lacks sufficient stocks of critical minerals to support the defense industrial base, from nickel in superalloys for jet engines to rare earth elements in magnets for guided munitions,” they write.