• Your Smart Watch May Be Sharing Your Data

    You may not realize it, but your internet-connected household devices such as the Ring doorbell, Peloton exercise bike and Nest thermostat are all exchanging data with other devices and systems over the network. These physical objects, all part of the Internet of Things (IoT), come with sensors and software, and they often use cloud computing. Most people would consider the information contained in these household items as highly private.

  • System Brings Deep Learning to “Internet of Things” Devices

    By Daniel Ackerman

    Deep learning is everywhere. This branch of artificial intelligence curates your social media and serves your Google search results. Soon, deep learning could also check your vitals or set your thermostat. Advanced could enable artificial intelligence on household appliances while enhancing data security and energy efficiency.

  • Smart Concrete Could Pave the Way for High-Tech, Cost-Effective Roads

    By Luna Lu and Vishal Saravade

    Of the 614,387 bridges in the U.S., for example, 39% are older than their designed lifetimes, while nearly 10% are structurally deficient, meaning they could begin to break down faster or, worse, be vulnerable to catastrophic failure. The cost to repair and improve nationwide transportation infrastructure ranges from nearly US$190 billion to almost $1 trillion. Repairing U.S. infrastructure costs individual households, on average, about $3,400 every year. Traffic congestion alone is estimated to cost the average driver $1,400 in fuel and time spent commuting, a nationwide tally of more than $160 billion per year.

  • Putting Games to Work in the Battle Against COVID-19

    By Sara Frueh

    While video games often give us a way to explore other worlds, they can also help us learn more about our own — including how to navigate a pandemic. That was the premise underlying “Jamming the Curve,” a competition that enlisted over 400 independent video game developers around the world to develop concepts for games that reflect the real-world dynamics of COVID-19.

  • Policy Approaches to Climate Migration: Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean

    As climate change has gained more attention and governments have developed policies to reduce carbon emissions and manage increasing environmental risks, climate migration—the movement of people primarily due to changes in the environment that result from climate change—has become a key issue for research and policy.

  • Foreign Students Look Forward to Visa Stability

    By Madeline Joung

    International students in the U.S. whose studies and immigration status have undergone changes during President Donald Trump’s administration say they hope their stays will stabilize with President-elect Joe Biden.

  • New Body Armor Offers Better Knife Protection

    The number of knife attacks in Britain has increased over the past few years, while police officers and correctional personnel must contend with an increasing threat from makeshift weapons, such as shanks and spikes. PPSS Group the other day announced a replacement for their polycarbonate-based stab resistant body armor. According to company CEO Robert Kaiser, the new body armor is lighter, thinner, more effective, and more functional.

  • Cloud-Based Framework Improves Efficiency in Disaster-Area Management

    Researchers have, for the first time, designed a cloud-based autonomous system framework utilizing the standard messaging protocol for the internet-of-things (IoT). This framework is robust to network-denied environments by utilizing each vehicle, along with a clustering algorithm, to maximize the network coverage area. Also for the first time, researchers have implemented a cloud-based, highly efficient control system to aid first responders in disaster-area management.

  • World's Fastest Open-Source Intrusion Detection Is Here

    Intrusion detection systems are the invisible intelligence agencies in computer networks. They scan every packet of data that is passed through the network, looking for signs of any one of the tens of thousands of different types of cyberattacks they’re aware of. A newly developed intrusion detection system achieves speeds of 100 gigabits per second using a single server.

  • Policy, Not Tech, Spurred Danish Dominance in Wind Energy

    In emerging renewable energy industries, are producers’ decisions to shut down or upgrade aging equipment influenced more by technology improvements or government policies? It’s an important long-term question for policymakers seeking to increase renewable electricity production, cost-effectiveness and efficiency with limited budgets. Anew study focused on Denmark, a global leader in wind energy found that government policies have been the primary driver of that industry’s growth and development.

  • More Rainfall in Florida During Flooding Season

    Rising Atlantic Ocean temperatures haven increase Florida’s late summertime rainfall. The increase in rainfall will make summer flooding in the state worse.

  • FBI: Boogaloo Extremists Acquired 3D-Printed Machine Gun Parts

    Depending on their configuration, 3D-printed guns contain no metal parts, and thus can be smuggled into metal detectors-protected venues. In a criminal complaint filed against a West Virginia men selling 3D-printed gun components, the FBI says his customers included multiple members of the Boogaloo movement, a heavily armed extremist anti-government group.

  • A New World of Warcraft

    By Leda Zimmerman

    In the past decade, high tech tools have proliferated in the world’s fighting forces. At least 80 nations can now deploy remote-controlled drones. Will the widespread use of digitally enhanced arsenals prove a destabilizing, if not destructive, element in the complex struggles among states? Not necessarily, argues MIT assistant professor Erik Lin-Greenberg.

  • Tricking Fake News Detectors with Malicious User Comments

    Fake news detectors, which have been deployed by social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to add warnings to misleading posts, have traditionally flagged online articles as false based on the story’s headline or content. However, recent approaches have considered other signals, such as network features and user engagements, in addition to the story’s content to boost their accuracies.

  • Building European Cities with Wood Would Sequester, Store Half of Cement industry’s Carbon Emissions

    Buildings around us create a whopping one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions – that’s about ten times more than air traffic worldwide. In Europe alone about 190 million square meters of housing space are built each year, mainly in the cities, and the amount is growing quickly at the rate of nearly one percent a year. Slowly increasing the use of wood in European construction could increase the carbon storage of buildings by 420 million CO2 tons over the next 20 years.