• What Dragonflies Can Teach Us about Missile Defense

    Dragonfly brains might be wired to be extremely efficient at calculating complex trajectories: Dragonflies catch 95 percent of their prey, crowning them one of the top predators int he world. Sandia Lab scientists are is examining whether dragonfly-inspired computing could improve missile defense systems, which have the similar task of intercepting an object in flight, by making on-board computers smaller without sacrificing speed or accuracy.

  • Keeping First Responders Safe

    When two powerful earthquakes rocked southern California earlier this month, officials’ attention focused, understandably, on safety. How many people were injured? Were buildings up to code? How good are we at predicting earthquakes? Not a lot of people were thinking about urine, blood, and spit. But those substances are key to a PNNL effort to learn more about the health and safety of first responders.

  • Machine-learning Competition Improves Earthquake Prediction Capabilities

    Current scientific studies related to earthquake forecasting focus on three key points: when the event will occur, where it will occur, and how large it will be. The Kaggle competition, hosted by Los Alamos National Laboratory, provided a challenging dataset that was based on previously published laboratory analysis, to give the competitors a taxing project to explore. Competitors’ success predicting quake timing in the online Kaggle competition could help save lives, infrastructure.

  • Epigenetic Tool for Detecting Exposure to WMD

    With a $38.8 million award from DARPA, researchers are working on developing a field-deployable, point-of-care device that will determine in 30 minutes or less whether a person has been exposed to weapons of mass destruction or their precursors. The device will be capable of detecting the health effects of a number of substances associated with weapons of mass destruction, including biological agents, radiation, chemicals and explosives. The detection devices will scan potential exposure victims for epigenetic changes, that is, chemical modifications that affect genes, altering their expression while leaving the genetic code intact.

  • Climate Is Warming Faster Than It Has in the Last 2,000 Years

    In contrast to pre-industrial climate fluctuations, current, anthropogenic climate change is occurring across the whole world at the same time. In addition, the speed of global warming is higher than it has been in at least 2,000 years.

  • “No Doubt Left” about Scientific Consensus on Global Warming, Say Experts

    The scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming is likely to have passed 99 percent, according to the lead author of the most authoritative study on the subject, and could rise further after separate research that clears up some of the remaining doubts. The pushback has been political rather than scientific. Among academics who study the climate, the convergence of opinion is probably strengthening, according to one expert. “As expertise in climate science increases, so too does agreement with human-caused global warming,” says one expert.

  • 40 U.S. Diplomats in Cuba Have Suffered Brain Damage: Medical Report

    Brain imaging of 40 U.S. government personnel who served at the U.S. embassy in Havana in 2016, and who experienced a host of neurological symptoms after possible exposure of an unknown source, revealed significant differences in brain tissue and connectivity when compared to healthy individuals, according to a new report. Images reveal key brain differences, particularly in the cerebellum, between impacted patients and healthy individuals, which may underlie clinical findings previously reported by brain experts.

  • New Chip Device Identifies Miniscule Blood Residues for Forensic Applications

    Criminologists use luminol to identify microscopic blood drops, as well as low hydrogen peroxide concentrations, proteins and DNA. These are all invisible to the naked eye but become visible through a chemical reaction known as “chemiluminescence.” Detecting biological residues using this method is cost effective and advantageous since the detected signal does not depend on an external light source.

     

  • Developing ‘Smart City’ Floodwater Management

    In a world of smart watches, smart homes and smart appliances that monitor their environments to keep users safe and informed, can whole cities be smarter? Short answer: Probably, using cutting-edge information technologies to keep citizens and property safer.

  • New Approach Needed to Address Anthropocene Risk

    Scientists are calling for a new approach to understanding environmental risks in the Anthropocene, the current geological age in which humans are a dominant force of change on the planet.

  • Climate Change Will Strain Federal Finances

    The federal government is ill-prepared to shoulder what could be a trillion-dollar fiscal crisis associated with extreme weather, floods, wildfires and other climate disasters through 2100, federal investigators have found. In the latest of a series of reports, the Government Accountability Office says that costs of disaster assistance to taxpayers since 2005 have swelled to nearly $500 billion—and they keep getting higher.

  • China's War Chest of Rare Earth Patents Give an Insight into Total Domination of the Industry

    China is strengthening its grip on the rare earths supply chain and could use its dominant position as a bargaining chip in its trade war with the U.S. China has been investing heavily on facilities to do the bulk of the dirty and environmentally damaging mining and ore processing work for the world, systematically turning its know-how and methodologies into patents that could give it a competitive edge against its rivals. As of October, China had filed for 25,911 patents on all the rare earth elements, far ahead of 9,810 by the US, 13,920 by Japan and 7,280 by the European Union since 1950 when the first U.S. filing was made.

  • Gallium: China Tightens Grip on Wonder Metal

    Did you know that a 5G base station can be squeezed into a casing the size of a shoebox? It’s thanks to gallium, a soft, bluish metal that makes it possible. The chipsets that generate powerful bursts of high frequency radio waves are not made with silicon, but gallium nitride. Gallium is one of the 35 technology-critical elements listed by the U.S. government as a national security concern. Like rare earths, the global supply of gallium is under Chinese control. China produced 390 tons of raw gallium last year, or more than 95 percent of the world output, according to the United States Geological Survey.

  • Q&A: How Ridgecrest Earthquakes Helped Scientists with ShakeAlert

    U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Sarah Minson was in the thick of efforts to develop an earthquake warning system in California when a series of major temblors struck the sparsely populated community of Ridgecrest in the Mojave Desert this summer. The largest, a magnitude 7.1 quake on July 5, was the biggest to hit the state in decades. The Mercury News asked her about her work — and how this month’s big quakes is helping scientists refine California’s fledgling earthquake alert system.

  • What If a Hurricane Pushed a Surge up an Already High Mississippi River? No One Is Certain.

    The Mississippi River has always been the lifeblood of New Orleans. It’s the reason for the city’s existence, and an awe-inspiring if sometimes forgotten feature of its landscape. One thing it hasn’t been, at least in recent memory, is a threat. That is, until this month, when wary residents caught a glimpse of the old Mississippi, a face of the river that’s been hidden since it was almost completely caged by man nearly a century ago. The compliant river had become a beast scaling its walls.