• Defending the Earth from asteroids

    A mere 17-20 meters across, the Chelyabinsk meteor caused extensive ground damage and numerous injuries when it exploded on impact with Earth’s atmosphere in February 2013. To prevent another such impact, researchers use a simple yet ingenious way to spot these tiny near-Earth objects (NEOs) as they hurtle toward the planet.

  • There’s a massive cybersecurity job gap – we should fill it by employing hackers

    Cybersecurity incidents are gaining an increasingly high profile. These attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, using psychological manipulation as well as technology. To face these challenges, society needs cybersecurity professionals who can protect systems and mitigate damage. There is already an active population with a strong passion for cybersecurity – hackers.

  • New sensors can sense and sort troublesome gases

    From astronauts and submariners to miners and rescue workers, people who operate in small, enclosed spaces need good air quality to work safely and effectively. Newly developed electronic sensors can simultaneously detect at least three critical parameters that are important to monitor to ensure human comfort and safety.

  • Accurately predicting harmful space weather’s “killer” electrons

    A new space weather model reliably predicts space storms of high-energy particles that are harmful to many satellites and spacecraft orbiting in the Earth’s outer radiation belt. The model can accurately give a one-day warning prior to a space storm of ultra-high-speed electrons, often referred to as “killer” electrons because of the damage they can do to spacecraft such as navigation, communications, and weather monitoring satellites.

  • New device creates electricity from snowfall

    Researchers and colleagues have designed a new device that creates electricity from falling snow. The first of its kind, this device is inexpensive, small, thin and flexible like a sheet of plastic.

  • Los Alamos nuclear waste successfully shipped to WIPP

    The first shipment in five years of Transuranic (TRU) waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory has been successfully delivered to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico.

  • Globally, rapid urbanization increases pressure on rural water supplies

    Around the world, water reallocation from rural to urban regions—the practice of transferring water from rural areas to cities to meet demand from growing urban populations – is intensifying. Researchers found that 69 cities with a population of 383 million people receive approximately 16 billion cubic meters of reallocated water per year—almost the annual flow of the Colorado River.

  • Predicting, understanding urban flooding

    Flooding is the natural hazard with the greatest economic and social impact on the population of the United States. Urban flooding is a complex and distinct kind of flooding, compounded by land use and high population density, and it requires a different approach to assess and manage.

  • Owners of unprotected coastal homes don’t rush to retrofit

    Many coastal homes have significant structural vulnerabilities that leave homeowners and their homes largely unprotected from storms. Additionally, the majority of coastal homeowners have little to no intention of reducing these structural vulnerabilities, even though they live in areas frequently affected by damaging hurricanes and flooding.

  • Driving force of volcanic super-hazards uncovered

    Volcanologists have discovered the driving force behind superheated gas-and-ash clouds from volcanic eruptions, which may help save lives and infrastructure around the globe. Endangering 500 million people worldwide, pyroclastic density currents (or pyroclastic flows) are the most common and lethal volcanic threat, causing 50 percent of fatalities caused  by volcanic activity.

  • Predicting impacts of extreme events on grids

    A new, free, open-source software reliably predicts how damage from hurricanes, ice storms, earthquakes, and other extreme events will restrict power delivery from utility grids. The Severe Contingency Solver for Electric Power Transmission is the only software available—commercially or open-source—that reliably supports analysis of extreme events that cause widespread damage.

  • A how-to guide for climate-proof cities

    Traditionally, Maurepas Swamp serves as a natural barrier against flooding that threatens New Orleans each year. Native flora soaks up the rainfall, spreading it across a network of cypress roots and cattail. But centuries of logging and canal construction have drastically altered the swamp’s ecological composition. The Mississippi levee system compounded the issue, isolating the swamp from vital sources of fresh water and nutrients. Flooded with saltwater, much of the existing cypress withered and died. Young trees, now, are few and scattered.

  • Melting glaciers causing sea levels to rise at ever faster pace

    Melting ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic as well as ice melt from glaciers all over the world are causing sea levels to rise. Glaciers alone lost more than 9,000 billion tons of ice since 1961, raising water levels by 27 millimeters.

  • Nagging security concerns over using Huawei’s tech in Europe

    New report urges NATO members to look to emulate Britain, which created an entire government office to scrutinize Huawei’s products for security problems.

  • Bigger than Huawei: U.S. broadens scrutiny of Chinese technology

    A flurry of seemingly disconnected actions by the U.S. government to curb the involvement of Chinese technology firms in the U.S. economy over the past year reflects the Trump administration’s intensifying concern that those firms could — now or in the future — abet espionage by Beijing’s intelligence services.