• Foreign Students Look Forward to Visa Stability

    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

    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.

  • Mobile Flood Tool

    The U.S. Geological Survey announced Friday the completion of a new mobile tool that provides real-time information on water levels, weather and flood forecasts all in one place on a computer, smartphone or other mobile device. The new access anywhere interactive map helps minimize loss of life and property.

  • Most Surprising Thing about a New Report Showing Climate Change Imperils the U.S. Financial System Is That the Report Even Exists

    As an expert on the impacts of climate change, I contributed to a recent report that examined what climate change means for the U.S. financial system. Our report includes many important findings and recommendations, perhaps most notably that the U.S. financial system is imperiled by climate change. The report’s greatest significance, though, may be that it exists at all.

  • Detecting “Deepfake” Videos by Checking for the Pulse

    With video editing software becoming increasingly sophisticated, it’s sometimes difficult to believe our own eyes. Did that actor really appear in that movie? Did that politician really say that offensive thing? Some so-called “deepfakes” are harmless fun, but others are made with a more sinister purpose. But how do we know when a video has been manipulated?

  • Improving Security, Usability of Zoom's End-to-End Encryption Protocol

    During the global coronavirus pandemic, many people have been working, teaching and learning from home and utilizing Zoom as a way to have face-to-face communication. Although this is a main resource for virtual human interaction, there are still concerns for back-end security issues and meeting hackings.

  • EU Uses Chinese Technology Linked to Muslim Internment Camps in Xinjiang

    In the fight against coronavirus, the EU is using thermal cameras produced by Chinese tech giant Hikvision. The firm has been linked to the oppression of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in China’s Xinjiang province.