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Sandia Marks 20-year Partnership with DHS
In response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Department of Homeland Security was created and began operations in 2003. Sandia has been involved with the homeland security mission from the department’s inception.
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AI Should Be Better Understood and Managed – New Research Warns
AI and algorithms are not just tools deployed by national security agencies to prevent malicious activity online, but can be contributors to polarization, radicalism and political violence - posing a threat to national security.
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Biden Administration Executive Order Tackles AI Risks, but Lack of Privacy Laws Limits Rach
The comprehensive, even sweeping, set of guidelines for artificial intelligence that the White House unveiled in an executive order on Oct. 30, 2023, show that the U.S. government is attempting to address the risks posed by AI. The order is only a step, however, and it leaves unresolved the issue of comprehensive data privacy legislation.
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Engineers Develop an Efficient Process to Make Fuel from Carbon Dioxide
The approach directly converts the greenhouse gas into formate, a solid fuel that can be stored indefinitely and could be used to heat homes or power industries.
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Semiconductor War: Assessing the Strategies and Impact of US Led Technology Decoupling
The United States and its allies have taken significant policy measures including sweeping export control regulations to make it hard for China to obtain advanced chips and chip making equipment. China though continues to be an important player in the globalized supply chain. China is directing its efforts towards manufacturing cutting-edge processors as also attempting to become competitive in legacy chip manufacturing. India is also seeking to build a vibrant semiconductor and display design and innovation ecosystem.
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Governing Artificial Intelligence: A Conversation with Rumman Chowdhury
Artificial intelligence, and its risks and benefits, has rapidly entered the popular consciousness in the past year. Kat Duffy and Dr. Rumman Chowdhury discuss how society can mitigate problems and ensure AI is an asset.
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Biden’s $8 Billion Quest to Solve America’s Groundwater Crisis
A looming depletion of groundwater across the U.S. has drawn nationwide attention in recent years, as local officials in states from Kansas to Arizona struggle to manage dwindling water resources even as homes and farms get thirstier. With little fanfare, the administration is using infrastructure funding to revive dormant plans for pipelines and reservoirs in rural areas across the U.S. West.
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AI Bots Are Helping 911 Dispatchers with Their Workload
In the middle of a storm, 911 call centers often find themselves inundated with reports of fallen trees, flooded roads and panicked residents. Every call matters, but with multiple reports of the same incident pouring in, the pressure on emergency services can become overwhelming. Amid the chaos, a technological ally has emerged: artificial intelligence. AI is quietly revolutionizing non-emergency calls in 911 dispatch centers.
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Securing Ports of Entry, One Scan (or Thousands) at a Time
Every year, millions of cargo containers make their way to U.S. ports of entry via maritime, roadways, and railways. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), more than 100,000 commercial cargo trucks cross U.S. POEs daily. To combat the threat of human and drug trafficking, it is imperative that their methods for cargo screening and physical examination are as thorough as they are efficient.
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Machine Learning and Gene Editing at the Helm of a Societal Evolution
What are the key advancements at the intersection of ML and GE? What is the connectedness between policy and technology and what we learn from trends over time? What kind of policy considerations are needed to govern converging technologies bearing in mind international drivers of collaboration and competition?
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“Surveillance: From Vision to Data” Explores History of Surveillance
The term surveillance may suggest images of high-tech cameras or George Orwell’s ever-watching Big Brother, but surveillance involves more than watching and being watched. To understand surveillance and its consequences, look to data: who collects it, what information is compiled, how it is interpreted, and ultimately, why it matters.
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Floridians Believe in Climate Change, Want Government Action
The latest edition of the Florida Climate Resilience Survey found that 90 percent of Floridians believe climate change is happening, a higher figure than in the nation as a whole: a recent Yale University survey found that 74 percent of Americans as a whole think climate change is happening.
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Navigating the Risks and Benefits of AI: Lessons from Nanotechnology on Ensuring Emerging Technologies Are Safe as Well as Successful
Twenty years ago, nanotechnology was the artificial intelligence of its time. The specific details of these technologies are, of course, a world apart. But the challenges of ensuring each technology’s responsible and beneficial development are surprisingly alike.
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Happy 60th Birthday to Vela, Watchman for Nuclear Detonations
Sixty years ago last week, on Oct. 16, 1963, the United States launched a pair of satellites whose primary purpose was to determine the feasibility of using satellites to detect nuclear detonations in outer space. The satellites were part of the Vela program, initiated in 1959 to provide a nuclear detonation detection capability to verify compliance with nuclear treaties. On Sept. 27, 1984, the last of the Vela satellites were turned off.
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Arizona Is Evicting a Saudi Alfalfa Farm, but the Thirsty Crop Isn’t Going Anywhere
As Arizona struggles to adapt to a water shortage that has dried out farms and scuttled development plans, one company has emerged as a central villain. The agricultural company Fondomonte, which is owned by a Saudi Arabian conglomerate, has attracted criticism over the past several years for sucking up the state’s groundwater to grow alfalfa and then exporting that alfalfa to feed cows overseas. Now Arizona has cancelled one of the company’s leases and says it will not renew the others, but the decision will do little to solve a water shortage largely driven by irrigated agriculture.
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More headlines
The long view
Autonomous Vehicle Technology Vulnerable to Road Object Spoofing and Vanishing Attacks
Researchers have demonstrated the potentially hazardous vulnerabilities associated with the technology called LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, many autonomous vehicles use to navigate streets, roads and highways. The researchers have shown how to use lasers to fool LiDAR into “seeing” objects that are not present and missing those that are – deficiencies that can cause unwarranted and unsafe braking or collisions.
Tantalizing Method to Study Cyberdeterrence
Tantalus is unlike most war games because it is experimental instead of experiential — the immersive game differs by overlapping scientific rigor and quantitative assessment methods with the experimental sciences, and experimental war gaming provides insightful data for real-world cyberattacks.
Prototype Self-Service Screening System Unveiled
TSA and DHS S&T unveiled a prototype checkpoint technology, the self-service screening system, at Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) in Las Vegas, NV. The aim is to provide a near self-sufficient passenger screening process while enabling passengers to directly receive on-person alarm information and allow for the passenger self-resolution of those alarms.
Falling Space Debris: How High Is the Risk I'll Get Hit?
An International Space Station battery fell back to Earth and, luckily, splashed down harmlessly in the Atlantic. Should we have worried? Space debris reenters our atmosphere every week.
Testing Cutting-Edge Counter-Drone Technology
Drones have many positive applications, bad actors can use them for nefarious purposes. Two recent field demonstrations brought government, academia, and industry together to evaluate innovative counter-unmanned aircraft systems.
Strengthening the Grid’s ‘Backbone’ with Hydropower
Argonne-led studies investigate how hydropower could help add more clean energy to the grid, how it generates value as grids add more renewable energy, and how liner technology can improve hydropower efficiency.