• Administration Commits $3.46 Billion to Reduce Effects of Climate Change

    Communities across the country have been impacted by the effects of hurricanes, floods, wildfires, earthquakes, and other events. The increasing duration, intensity, and severity of such disasters—which are exacerbated by climate change as well as changes in population, land use, and weather patterns—are alarming and devastating. New funds made available by the government for hazard mitigation.

  • Hybrid Cars Twice as Vulnerable to Supply Chain Disruptions as Gas-Powered Cars

    The global computer chip shortage has hit car manufacturers especially hard, indicating the importance of supply chain resilience. But hybrid and electric cars contain many other scarce elements and materials, making them more vulnerable to supply chain problems than gas-powered models.

  • Warming to Affect Water Availability for Hydropower, Public Water Supply in Wales

    New research shows that as the temperature increases, water supplies in Wales dwindle, leading to shortages for both the hydropower industry and public water consumptions. As the temperature rises, more water will have to be released from reservoirs to satisfy consumer demands – but such releases will lower water levels in the reservoirs below the needs of hydropower generation.

  • DHS S&T Selects Two Industry Partners for Second Phase Wildland Fire Sensor Research

    DHS S&T selected two industry partners for the second phase of research on wildland fire sensor. The first phase research was conducted in June 2021, and the next phase of the program will focus on hardening the sensors for longer-term field deployments.

  • U.S. Gov. Facing a Severe Cyber Workers Shortage When They Are Needed the Most

    The U.S. government is struggling to find and hire cybersecurity workers precisely at the time it needs such workers most in order to protect the government and its cyber systems from an unprecedented, and ever-more-menacing, wave of cyberattacks.

  • Imaging Tool under Development Reveals Concealed Detonators — and Their Charge

    A Sandia Lab researcher is working on building a new kind of neutron-based imaging system which will enable people to safely examine sealed metal boxes when opening them could be dangerous, whether this is because inside is an explosive weapon or a malfunctioning, high-voltage fire set at a missile range.

  • Ensuring Reliability of Air Cargo Screening Systems

    DHS, which is responsible for ensuring the security of air cargo transported to the United States, says the threat from explosives in air cargo remains significant. A new GAO report addresses how DHS secures inbound air cargo, and the extent to which TSA’s field assessment of a CT screening system included key practices for design and evaluation.

  • A Backdoor in Mobile Phone Encryption from the 1990s Still Exists

    Researchers have discovered a security gap in modern mobile phones which is very unlikely to have been created by accident. In fact, it should have been removed back in 2013.The researchers say that the properties that render the cipher so insecure can’t have happened by accident.

  • Compact Lifesaving Drone for Beach Rescue Teams

    A student designs compact lifesaving drone for beach rescue teams after witnessing teenage surfer battle dangerous waves. As part of his final year project, the student designed a small, compact drone that flies above hazardous waters to locate individuals in distress and deploys a buoyancy aid that automatically inflates when hitting the water, helping casualties stay afloat while they wait for a rescue team to reach them.

  • “Less Than 1% Probability” that Increase in Earth’s Energy Imbalance Occurred Naturally

    The fundamental energy balance sheet for our planet is straightforward: Sunlight in, reflected and emitted energy out. If the Earth’s oceans and land surfaces send as much energy back up to space as the sun shines down on us, then our planet maintains equilibrium. But for decades the system has been out of balance, resulting in the growing number, intensity, lethality, and damage of extreme weather events. The reason: The increasing emission of greenhouse gases.

  • Investigating Materials for Safe, Secure Nuclear Power

    A longstanding interest in radiation’s effects on metals has drawn Michael Short into new areas such as nuclear security and microreactors.

  • How Summer 2021 Has Changed Our Understanding of Extreme Weather

    A series of record-breaking natural disasters have swept the globe in recent weeks. Many of these events have shocked climate scientists. Some scientists are beginning to worry they might have underestimated how quickly the climate will change. Or have we just misunderstood extreme weather events and how our warming climate will influence them?

  • Honeypot Security Technique Can Also Stop Attacks in Natural Language Processing

    Borrowing a technique commonly used in cybersecurity to defend against these universal trigger-based attacks, researchers at the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology have developed a machine learning framework that can proactively defend against the same types of attacks in natural language processing applications 99 percent of the time.

  • Maximum Privacy for Sharing Files Online

    People who share documents or pictures online, or organizations which share confidential documents with employees and others, have little to no control over who views the information which is being sent and where it is being viewed. An FAU researcher has received a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a novel invention that controls how and when shared documents are displayed.

  • Preventing Human-Induced Earthquakes

    When humans pump large volumes of fluid into the ground, they can set off potentially damaging earthquakes, depending on the underlying geology. This has been the case in certain oil- and gas-producing regions. have developed a method to manage such human-induced seismicity, and have demonstrated that the technique successfully reduced the number of earthquakes occurring in an active oil field.