• ‘Time for a Reckoning.’ Kansas Farmers Brace for Water Cuts to Save Ogallala Aquifer.

    in this region of Kansas where water is everything, they’ll have to overcome entrenched attitudes and practices that led to decades of overpumping. After decades of local inaction, Kansas lawmakers are pushing for big changes in irrigation.

  • As Reservoirs Go Dry, Mexico City and Bogotá Are Staring Down ‘Day Zero’

    In Mexico City and Bogotá, reservoir levels are falling fast, and the city governments have implemented rotating water shutoffs as residents are watching their taps go dry for hours a day. Droughts in the region have grown more intense thanks to warmer winter temperatures and long-term aridification fueled by climate change. In South Africa in 2018, Cape Town beat a climate-driven water crisis, and the way it did it holds lessons for cities grappling with an El Niño-fueled drought.

  • Utah FORGE Achieves Crucial Geothermal Milestone

    In $218 million DOE-funded research project, scientists aim to make enhanced geothermal a key part of world’s energy portfolio. “The ability to tap more of the Earth’s natural heat through enhanced geothermal systems will expand access to affordable, secure and resilient clean energy for everyone,” say one expert.

  • Before “Superstorm” Sandy, Investors Underestimated Risk, Impact of Hurricanes

    Weather experts are warning that this year’s Atlantic hurricane season could be among the most active on record. Hurricanes and other extreme weather events cause millions of dollars in damage , but they also create spikes in uncertainty that can linger in financial markets for affected firms for months.

  • Can Europe Secure Its Own Critical Raw Materials?

    With the EU’s Critical Raw Materials’ Act coming into force, the 27-nation bloc is looking to diversify its supplies of minerals away from China. But can it source enough of it at competitive prices?

  • Fool’s Gold: Overhyped Tech Startups Distract from Military Innovation

    Technology startups almost never live up to all the hype they generate. Much of this innovation is fool’s gold. Often, these solutions are not developed beyond an initial concept. It’s a missed opportunity for the U.S. military. Startup companies often present the Pentagon with more cost-effective, swift, and adaptable solutions compared to the weapons systems typically provided by the handful of major contractors the Pentagon usually turns to.

  • Why This Summer Might Bring the Wildest Weather Yet

    Summers keep getting hotter, and the consequences are impossible to miss: In the summer of 2023, the Northern Hemisphere experienced its hottest season in 2,000 years. Forecasts suggest that this year’s upcoming “danger season” has its own catastrophes in store. El Niño has been rough, but its departure could be even rougher.

  • Analysis of the IAEA’s Iran NPT Safeguards Report - May 2024

    For the second time in its quarterly safeguards reports on Iran’s compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has drawn attention Iran’s current ability to make nuclear weapons. Without strong and decisive action y the IAEA, Iranwill succeed in steadily augmenting its nuclear program penalty-free, enabling it to build a nuclear weapon more quickly than Western powers could detect and stop.

  • Reports: Russian Physicists Being Denied Entry to U.S.

    After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the US government attempted to make it easier for Russian scientists to enter the United States. But there are reports that it has actually become more difficult.

  • The ‘Dead Internet Theory’ Makes Eerie Claims About an AI-run Web. The Truth Is More Sinister

    Is most of the content on the internet fake? Here’s what the dead internet theory really means – and why we should be warier of how we’re manipulated for profit and political gain.

  • How Secure Is Gene Synthesizing Research?

    Critics warn that the benefits of gene synthesizing research are undermined by security measures which are not sufficiently tight to prevent such research form being used by bad actors to do harm. One expert writes: “The problem is that governments don’t mandate security across the industry — and even though it’s a crime to ship DNA sufficient to generate the entire infectious 1918 influenza, there’s no law against shipping pieces of it.” The International Gene Synthesis Consortium disagrees.

  • China’s Control and Coercion in Critical Minerals

    Markets for critical minerals are no longer shaping up to be the next components of the global economy to be dominated by China. They already are. While Western nations were sleeping, China built vertically integrated supply chains for several critical minerals vital to the energy transition and high technology applications, including defense equipment.

  • Autonomous Vessels Need to Be More Afraid of Dying

    Could the Helge Ingstad maritime accident have been avoided if the Royal Norwegian Navy’s warships had been equipped with artificial intelligence?

  • Dependable AI for National Security Applications

    AI is rapidly becoming one of the most important assets in global competition, including AI-assisted autonomy and decision-making in battlefield applications. But today’s AI models are vulnerable to novel cyberattacks and could be exploited by adversaries, and are not sufficiently robust and dependable to orchestrate and execute inherently human-centric, mission-critical decisions.

  • The Homeowner Mutiny Leaving Florida Cities Defenseless Against Hurricanes

    The only protection the town of Hendrickson, Florida, has from the Gulf of Mexico’s increasingly erratic storms is a pristine beach that draws millions of tourists every year — but that beach is disappearing fast. A series of storms have eroded most of the sand that protects Redington Shores and the towns around it, leaving residents just one big wave away from water overtaking their homes. The federal government is refusing to restore eroded beaches in Pinellas County unless homeowners agree to one condition: public access.