• Giving New Life to Old Concrete Structures Through “Vascularization”

    Concrete is a ubiquitous building material, and it is often cited as the most consumed commodity on Earth, second only to potable water. As this inherited concrete infrastructure continues to age, maintaining and repairing concrete is of increasing strategic importance to both defense and civilian infrastructure. DARPA’s BRACE program aims to revitalize legacy DoD infrastructure to extend its serviceability.

  • Tiny, Cheap Solution for Quantum-Secure Encryption

    A new kind of encryption could secure data in the age of quantum computers, ensuring medical records are destroyed after being read by a doctor, or to enforce time limits on software licenses. They can secure voting records or validate NFTs or just make sure no one is reading your email. Microchips with tiny clocks may hold key to future of computing security.

  • Protecting Picture Passwords Using Adjustable Distortion

    Researchers developed a new system for graphical authentication online using key images with adjustable levels of distortion to thwart over-the-shoulder and screen-capture snooping, which may make online sites more secure.

  • Pivotal Battery Discovery Could Benefit Transportation, the Grid

    Researchers uncover new avenue for overcoming the performance decline that occurs with repeated charge-discharge cycling in the cathodes of next generation batteries.

  • Coastal Home Buyers Are Ignoring Rising Flood Risks, Despite Clear Warnings and Rising Insurance Premiums

    Homebuyers along the U.S. coasts can check each property’s flood risk as easily as they check the size of the bedrooms – most coastal real estate listings now include future flood risk details that take climate change into account. In Apollo Beach, for example, many of the properties are at least 9 out of 10 on the flood risk scale. That knowledge isn’t stopping homebuyers, though.

  • Onset of Modern Sea-Level Rise Began in 1863, International Study Finds

    Researchers have found that modern rates of sea-level rise began emerging in 1863 as the Industrial Age intensified, coinciding with evidence for early ocean warming and glacier melt.

  • Predicting, Managing EV Charging Growth to Keep Electricity Grids Reliable, Affordable

    With a growing fleet of EVs on the road, grid planners depend on accurate estimates of charging patterns to calculate electricity demand. A team of researchers at Stanford University assembled a scalable probabilistic model for charging demand that can be applied to a flexible array of populations and account for a wide range of factors.

  • Targeted demand response reduces price volatility of electric grid

    To reduce the energy load during supply constraints on the Texas power grid, it is not necessary to reduce the energy load in high population centers such as Houston and Dallas. Instead, when supply is strained, focusing on a few strategic locations across the state outside of those high-population areas is much more cost-effective and can have a greater impact on the price volatility of the grid.

  • Groundwater Levels Fall Across Western and Central Kansas

    Average groundwater levels across western and central Kansas fell by more than a foot in 2021, with the greatest declines in the southwest portion of the state. “The entire state is currently in some stage of drought and even with recent snowfalls, I bet it remains that way,” one expert said.

  • Green Rare-Earth Recycling Goes Commercial

    Rare earths are essential ingredients in the magnets that power many technologies people rely on today, such as cell phones, computers, electric vehicles, and wind turbines. Researchers have  developed a novel way to extract rare earth elements (rare earths) from the high-powered magnets in electronic waste (e-waste).

  • Tornadoes, Climate Change Make Dixie the new Tornado Alley

    Studies do show tornadoes getting more frequent, more intense and more likely to come in swarms. Moreover, studies show that, statistically, there is an emergence of another center of tornado activity in the Southeast, centered around Alabama. Oklahoma still has tornadoes, of course. But the statistical center of Tornado Alley has moved eastward.

  • Ultrafast Devices to Protecting the Grid from EMPs

    Scientists from Sandia National Laboratories have announced a tiny, electronic device that can shunt excess electricity within a few billionths of a second while operating at a record-breaking 6,400 volts — a significant step towards protecting the nation’s electric grid from an electromagnetic pulse.

  • Un-Earthing Planetary Defense

    This summer, NASA will launch its first mission to a metallic asteroid, 16 Psyche, located in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Previous missions have explored rocky and icy asteroids, but Psyche’s composition is widely believed to consist of a considerable amount of metal. Studying extraterrestrial bodies could help defend Earth from future impact threats.

  • Drone Warfare Is Increasingly Sophisticated, Deadly

    Policymakers, legislators and military strategists must prepare for the consequences of other countries and actors such as the Islamic State using unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, in the Ukraine-Russia conflict and others.

  • Food Crisis Due to Ukraine War Calls for Demand-Side Action

    The global food system is impacted by the war in Ukraine, adding to the direct humanitarian and security crisis caused by the Russian aggression. Ukraine and Russia are major producers of grains and fertilizers. Experts say that focusing on short-term supply-side solutions is not the way to go. Rather, changes to the demand side of the global food system can lead to both a more resilient and more sustainable global food system.