• Refinery in Central Tennessee Could Break Chinese Chokehold on Two Critical Minerals

    A solution to potential shortages of two critical minerals used in making semiconductors and advanced military equipment — exports of which were restricted by China this month — may be lying in some waste storage ponds in central Tennessee.

  • Using Quantum Computing to Protect AI from Attack

    Despite their incredible successes and increasingly widespread deployment, machine learning-based frameworks such as AI remain highly susceptible to adversarial attacks – that is, malicious tampering with their data causing them to fail in surprising ways. AI can thus be fooled into making mistakes, sometimes risking lives — but quantum computing could provide a strong defense.

  • Virtual City Prepares Students for Future of Cybersecurity

    CyberApolis is a virtual city used to train the next generation of cyber professionals to address national security concerns. The “city” includes a bank, hospital, large retailer, water company, power companies, an underground hacker community, an organized crime family and a growing number of smaller retailers.

  • Tech Breakthrough Could Increase States’ Use of Geothermal Power

    Lawmakers in some states have been laying the groundwork to add geothermal power to the electrical grid and pump underground heat into buildings. Now, a technological breakthrough could dramatically expand those ambitions — and perhaps unleash a new wave of policies to tap into geothermal sources. If the technology’s promise is fulfilled, geothermal could power as much as 20% of the U.S. grid.

  • What Is Most Likely Going on in Area 51? A National Security Historian Explains Why You Won’t Find Aliens There

    One of the reasons people can never be entirely sure about what is going on at Area 51 is that it is a highly classified secret military facility. It was not until 2013 that the U.S. government even acknowledged the existence and name “Area 51.” As a national security historian, I know there’s a long history of secrets at Area 51. I also know that none of those secrets have anything to do with space aliens.

  • Natural or Not? Identifying Genetically Engineered Organisms

    Ever since gene editing became feasible, researchers and health officials have sought tools that can quickly and reliably distinguish genetically modified organisms from those that are naturally occurring. Following the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, the world at large became aware of this need. Now, such tools are being built. The development of new tools to detect modified bacteria, viruses, and cells has bolstered national security against biological threats.

  • Develop 3D Printable Robots for Search-and-Rescue Operations

    Researchers are developing a small and flexible 3D-printed robots with integrated fluidic circuits that can be rapidly fabricated for specific disasters. These robots can aid rescue efforts by exploring areas that pose potential hazards to humans or are otherwise inaccessible, including earthquake debris, flooded regions, and even nuclear accident sites.

  • Multi-Billion-Dollar Risk to Economic Activity from Climate Extremes Affecting Ports

    More than $122 billion of economic activity - $81 billion in international trade - is at risk from the impact of extreme climate events, according to new research. Systemic impacts – those risks faced due to knock-on effects within global shipping, trade and supply chains network - will hit ports and economies around the world, even if the local ports are not directly affected by extreme events.

  • Record-Warm Sea Surface Temperatures to Cause “Above Normal” Atlantic Hurricane Season

    Scientists at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center have increased their prediction for the ongoing 2023 Atlantic hurricane season from a near-normal level of activity to an above-normal level of activity. The reason: current ocean and atmospheric conditions, such as record-warm Atlantic sea surface temperatures, are likely to counterbalance the usually limiting atmospheric conditions associated with the ongoing El Nino event.

  • New Message Encryption Scheme Inspired by the Sudoku Puzzle

    Researchers discuss a novel advance in data security in which the Japanese puzzle known as Sudoku promises a cryptographic system for text information that works even in situations where computational power is limited.

  • Freezing Out the Risk of Thermal Attacks

    Thermal attacks use heat-sensitive cameras to read the traces of fingerprints left on surfaces like smartphone screens, computer keyboards and PIN pads. Hackers can use the relative intensity of heat traces across recently touched surfaces to reconstruct users’ passwords. A team of computer security experts have developed a set of recommendations to help defend against ‘thermal attacks’ which can steal personal information.

  • Better Resources to Mitigate Explosive Threats

    Every second counts when responders encounter an explosive device, and critical decisions must be made quickly in order to neutralize the threat while also ensuring the security of civilians, property, and the responders themselves.

  • FEMA Maps Said They Weren’t in a Flood Zone. Then Came the Rain.

    The most common reference for flood risk are the flood insurance rate maps, also known as 100-year floodplain maps, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, produces. They designate so-called special flood hazard areas that have a roughly 1 percent chance of inundation in any given year. Properties within those zones are subject to more stringent building codes and regulations that, among other things, require anyone with a government-backed mortgage to carry flood insurance. Flaws in federal flood maps leave millions unprepared. Some are trying to fix that.

  • The New Technology Which Is Making Cars Easier for Criminals to Steal, or Crash

    There is much talk in the automotive industry about the “internet of vehicles” (IoV). This describes a network of cars and other vehicles that could exchange data over the internet in an effort to make transportation more autonomous, safe and efficient. There are many benefits to IoV, but some of these systems might also make our vehicles prone to theft and malicious attack, as criminals identify and then exploit vulnerabilities in this new technology. In fact, this is already happening.

  • The Impending Privacy Threat of Self-Driving Cars

    With innovations often come unintended consequences—one of which is the massive collection of data required for an autonomous vehicle to function. The sheer amount of visual and other information collected by a fleet of cars traveling down public streets conjures the threat of the possibility for peoples’ movements to be tracked, aggregated, and retained by companies, law enforcement, or bad actors—including vendor employees.