• California's Wildfire Season Has Lengthened, and Its Peak Is Now Earlier in the Year

    California’s wildfire problem, fueled by a concurrence of climate change and a heightened risk of human-caused ignitions in once uninhabited areas, has been getting worse with each passing year of the 21st century.Researchers have found that the annual burn season has lengthened in the past two decades and that the yearly peak has shifted from August to July.

  • Mathematics Professor and University Researcher Indicted for Grant Fraud

    A federal grand jury in Carbondale, Ill. On Wednesday returned an indictment charging a mathematics professor and researcher at Southern Illinois University – Carbondale (SIUC) with two counts of wire fraud and one count of making a false statement. The prosecution is part of the Justice Department’s ongoing China Initiative. Led by the Department’s National Security Division, the China Initiative is a broad, multi-faceted effort to counter Chinese national security threats and safeguard American intellectual property.

  • Antibiotic Development, Stewardship Advocates See Window of Opportunity

    The pandemic isn’t over yet, but with more and more Americans getting vaccinated against COVID-19 and the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel becoming a little brighter every day—at least in the United States—many clinicians, scientists, and public health advocates are calling for renewed attention to an infectious disease threat that was in the spotlight before the pandemic arrived.

  • U.K.'s First Recycling Plant for High-Performance Rare Earth Magnets to Open

    The U.K.’s first re-manufacturing line for high-performance sintered rare earth magnets for use in electric vehicles, aerospace, renewable energy technologies and low carbon technologies will be developed by the University of Birmingham.

  • Demand for Rare-Earth Metals Is Skyrocketing, So We’re Creating a Safer, Cleaner Way to Recover Them from Old Phones and Laptops

    Rare-earth metals are critical to the high-tech society we live in as an essential component of mobile phones, computers and many other everyday devices. But increasing demand and limited global supply means we must urgently find a way to recover these metals efficiently from discarded products.

  • New Tool Could Guide Floodwater Management and Combat Ongoing Drought

    Using a new computer framework, scientists are able to project future floodwaters under a changing climate. The approach could help California water managers plan for and redirect floodwaters toward groundwater aquifers, alleviating both flood and drought risks.

  • UWF Re-Designated as Cybersecurity Regional Hub for the Southeast U.S., with Expanded Mission

    The University of West Florida has been re-designated by the National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security as the Southeast Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (CAE-C) Regional Hub. The UWF Center for Cybersecurity has served as the Southeast regional hub since 2017, providing leadership in cybersecurity education among colleges and universities in five states and Puerto Rico.

  • DHS S&T Launches Hacking for Homeland Security Program

    DHS S&T is launching Hacking for Homeland Security(H4HS)  to provide DHS with the capability to drive innovative solutions and identify future interns with applied knowledge to work on DHS mission-relevant topics.H4HSis modeled on Hacking for Defense (H4D). The national academic course is taught at 54 universities and represents a new platform for national service, teaching teams of university students how to use modern entrepreneurial tools and techniques to solve critical national security and intelligence community problems at start-up speed.

  • NSA Awards $6 Million for Cybersecurity Workforce Development

    The Purdue University Northwest (PNW) College of Technology has been awarded a grant of $5,971,053 for Cybersecurity Workforce Development from the National Security Agency (NSA). PNW says that with the funded projects, PNW will be able to contribute significantly to national workforce development in the field of AI and cybersecurity. The U.S. Department of Labor reports that the need for IT and cybersecurity professionals is projected to grow 12 percent from 2018 to 2028 with multi-million shortages.

  • Advancing Applied Research in Cybersecurity

    The Forge Institute, along with the University of Arkansas Fayetteville (UA-Fayetteville) and University of Arkansas Little Rock (UA-Little Rock), jointly announced a partnership to advance applied research in areas that support our national defense, including cybersecurity.

  • A Growing Problem of “Deepfake Geography”: How AI Falsifies Satellite Images

    There is a growing problem with “location spoofing” – the manipulation of satellite images so that fake images look like genuine images of real places. With the more sophisticated AI technologies available today, researchers warn that such “deepfake geography” could become a growing problem.

  • How Much Regulation of the Tech Industry Is Too Much?

    As prominent figures, including former President Donald Trump, are banned from social media platforms for posting disinformation or inflammatory remarks, technology regulation has become a hot topic of debate. “We are living in times where technology has fundamentally changed almost all aspects of our lives,” says UCLA’s Terry Kramer. “It is within this context that we must carefully balance and enable the advantages of technology, which can improve our lives, improve our connectedness, lower the cost of critical goods and services, and improve health care against forces that can create negative externalities. Developing a critical understanding of the trade-offs is essential.”

  • 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.

  • Creating a National Network of Cybersecurity Institutes

    DHS S&T, in partnership with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), awarded $2 million to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) to develop a plan that CISA can execute to build a national network of cybersecurity technical institutes. “CISA sees the growing cybersecurity workforce shortage in the United States as a national security risk,” said Bryan Ware, CISA assistant director of cybersecurity.

  • A More Robust Model for Assessing Bridge Repairs

    As President Biden’s $2 trillion American Jobs Plan places the nation’s infrastructure in the spotlight, new research from the University of Georgia suggests states can save money and extend the life of their bridges by taking a fresh approach to how they prioritize maintenance.