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Ukraine Needs U.S. Weapons. Trump Wants Its Rare Earth Minerals in Return.
President Donald Trump wants to condition future U.S. aid to Ukraine on getting more access to the country’s valuable “rare earth” minerals — minerals that are in increasing demand for batteries, computers, smart phones, and electric cars, not to mention weaponry.
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Volcanic Ash Can Be Used for Radiation Shielding
Radiation shielding is essential for hospitals, industrial sites, and nuclear facilities. Researchers have found a surprising new use for the copious amounts of volcanic ash scattered across the Philippines: it can be used to shield against harmful radiation.
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Marine Heatwaves: A Rising Challenge for Naval Warfare
We now know that rising sea temperatures will affect sonar performance, sometimes greatly affecting submarines’ ability to find ships and other submarines, and ships’ ability to find them. This leaves us wondering about the specific effects of another phenomenon: marine heatwaves, which can create large and sudden changes in temperatures.
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3 Questions: Modeling Adversarial Intelligence to Exploit AI’s Security Vulnerabilities
MIT Principal Research Scientist Una-May O’Reilly discusses how she develops agents that reveal AI models’ security weaknesses before hackers do.
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DeepSeek: How a Small Chinese AI Company Is Shaking Up U.S. Tech Heavyweights
For consumers, access to AI may also become cheaper. For researchers who already have a lot of resources, more efficiency may have less of an effect. It is unclear whether DeepSeek’s approach will help to make models with better performance overall, or simply models that are more efficient.
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DeepSeek Shatters Beliefs About the Cost of AI, Leaving U.S. Tech Giants Reeling
Society may benefit from less computationally intensive, and therefore more energy-efficient, AI. However, the geopolitical risk of a single country capturing the market, together with concerns about data privacy, intellectual property and censorship may outweigh the benefits.
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5 Israeli Innovations for Fighting Wildfires
As regions from California to the Mediterranean face wildfire threats, these innovations can help win the battle against out-of-control flames.
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Monitoring Space Traffic
AeroAstro Ph.D. student Sydney Dolan uses an interdisciplinary approach to develop collision-avoidance algorithms for satellites.
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Floating Solar Panels Could Support US Energy Goals
New study shows federally controlled reservoirs could host enough energy to power approximately 100 million U.S. homes a year.
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Reimagining Imaging at the Airport
The Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) are collaborating on Advanced Imaging Technology to improve the passenger screening experience.
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U-M Ends Partnership with Chinese University
The University of Michigan has announced it will end its Joint Institute with Chinese Shanghai Jiao Tong University, following growing concerns from lawmakers about national security.
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Nuclear Has Changed. Will the U.S. Change with It?
Fueled by artificial intelligence, cloud service providers, and ambitious new climate regulations, U.S. demand for carbon-free electricity is on the rise. In response, analysts and lawmakers are taking a fresh look at a controversial energy source: nuclear power.
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Mending Fences: Strengthening Homeland Defense through Integrated Civil-Military Air Surveillance
A 1953 advertisement for the U.S. Air Force’s civilian Ground Observer Corps described America’s air defenses as a “10 mile high fence full of holes.” Thane C. Clare argues that in the seventy years since then, not much has changed – and that the United States “is not currently prepared to face a growing number of national security threats and challenges, including from the air.”
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Critical Minerals, Waning Western Influence a Focus of Chinese FM’s African Tour, Analysts Say
Critical minerals and oil, a renewed focus on the Atlantic coast, and the West’s loss of influence in the Sahel are some of the reasons analysts believe Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has chosen the Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Chad and Namibia as the stops on his visit to Africa this week.
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To Prevent an Energy Crisis, Sandia Labs Cofounds New Microelectronics Research Center
Sandia National Laboratories is collaborating with other research institutions to head off a potential future energy crisis that could be driven in part by artificial intelligence.
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The long view
Nuclear Has Changed. Will the U.S. Change with It?
Fueled by artificial intelligence, cloud service providers, and ambitious new climate regulations, U.S. demand for carbon-free electricity is on the rise. In response, analysts and lawmakers are taking a fresh look at a controversial energy source: nuclear power.
Huge Areas May Face Possibly Fatal Heat Waves if Warming Continues
A new assessment warns that if Earth’s average temperature reaches 2 degrees C over the preindustrial average, widespread areas may become too hot during extreme heat events for many people to survive without artificial cooling.
Exploring the New Nuclear Energy Landscape
In the last few years, the U.S. has seen a resurgence of interest in nuclear energy and its potential for helping meet the nation’s growing demands for clean electricity and energy security. Meanwhile, nuclear energy technologies themselves have advanced, opening up new possibilities for their use.