• U.S. Nonfuel Mineral Production Jumps $3.6 Billion in 2022

    U.S. mines produced approximately $98.2 billion in nonfuel mineral commodities in 2022—an estimated $3.6 billion increase over the 2021 revised total of $94.6 billion.

  • Creating Buildings That Can Withstand the Most Extreme Stress Loads

    Combined ballistic impacts pose a major challenge for engineers who build structures that must withstand extreme stresses. An explosion can hurtle fragments and debris at enormous velocities so they strike the surroundings. Then comes the shock wave. It’s a scary combination.

  • There’s a Deal to Save the Colorado River — If California Doesn’t Blow It Up

    After months of tense negotiation, a half-dozen states have reached an agreement to drastically cut their water usage and stabilize the drought-stricken Colorado River — as long as California doesn’t blow up the deal. The plan would cut water use on the river by roughly a quarter, drying up farms and subdivisions across the Southwest.

  • Electric Cars Reach Peak EU Market Share in 2022

    Battery electric vehicles have climbed to a record share of new car sales in the EU, albeit still a modest 12.1%. In the last quarter, alternatively powered vehicles outsold petrol and diesel for the first time.

  • Grant to Support High-Potential Computer Science Students

    The University of Texas at El Paso received a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to provide financial support and professional development experiences to talented students in the field of computer science.

  • Rats Sniff for Victims Under Rubble

    Rats are commonly known as pests and spreaders of disease and many people’s worst nightmare. Yet they are very clever creatures, and can be trained just as well as dogs. Researchers train African hamster rats to search for earthquake victims under rubble.

  • Restoring Power to the Grid

    Computer scientists have been working on an innovative computer model to help grid operators quickly restore power to the electric grid after a complete disruption, a process called a black start.

  • Sandia, AMD Collaborate to Support Nuclear Stockpile Mission

    Sandia National Laboratories, in partnership with Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national labs, has awarded a contract to AMD that funds research and development of advanced memory technologies expected to accelerate high-performance simulation and computing applications in support of the nation’s stockpile stewardship mission.

  • Illuminating the Barrier to Next-Generation Battery That Charges Very Quickly

    In the race for fast-charging, energy-dense lithium metal batteries, researchers discovered why the promising solid electrolyte version has not performed as hoped. This could help new designs – and eventually battery production – avoid the problem.

  • Exxon Disputed Climate Findings for Years. Its Scientists Knew Better.

    Projections created internally by ExxonMobil starting in the late 1970s on the impact of fossil fuels on climate change were very accurate, even surpassing those of some academic and governmental scientists. The oil company executives sought to mislead the public about the industry’s role in climate change, contradicting the findings of the company’s own scientists and drawing a growing number of lawsuits by states and cities.

  • What Is Microstamping, and Can It Help Solve Shootings?

    Laws to expand the technology’s use have passed in three states and the District of Columbia. But some are questioning its effectiveness.

  • Aces-High Frontier: Space War in 2053

    There are good reasons why the best science and speculative fiction ranks high on the reading lists of many military scholars and leaders. Done well, speculative military fiction projects thoughtfully beyond the here and now, and renders real operational and strategic concepts in terms of plausible future technologies.

  • Lots of People Believe in Bigfoot and Other Pseudoscience Claims – This Course Examines Why

    In an effort to combat misinformation, a new course looks at some of the common scientific reasoning failures which pseudoscience exploits. These include hand-picking anecdotes to support a belief, developing a set of beliefs which explain every possible outcome, promoting irrelevant research, ignoring contradictory information, and believing in unsubstantiated conspiracies. The course particularly highlights motivated reasoning, that is, the tendency for people to process information in  a way that helps them confirm what they already want to believe.

  • Why Did So Many Buy COVID Misinformation? It Works Like Magic.

    Misinformation and disinformation about COVID and government-led health measures to combat the pandemic hampered efforts to form a unified national response to the disease. Public health officials, who struggled to convince doubters and skeptics, are still working through how and why it happened. Harvard Law panelists say both misinformation and magic exploit how brains process information.

  • Batteries Are the Battlefield

    The United States is one of many countries pursuing the clean energy revolution, and which have ramped up investment in electric vehicles manufacturing and renewable energy sources to power the shift away from fossil fuels. Christina Lu and Liam Scott write that this is an industry that has already been staked out by another power: China.