• A Water War Is Brewing Over the Dwindling Colorado River

    Diminished by climate change and overuse, the river can no longer provide the water states try to take from it.

  • Pathogen Early Warning

    When COVID-19 struck in late 2019 and early 2020, governments worldwide were caught off guard. The systems that countries and international institutions established, particularly those designed to spot novel threats before they metastasized into something more dangerous, proved insufficient to halt COVID-19’s spread. Since then, the importance of effective early warning systems has only increased.

  • A Simmering Revolt Against Groundwater Cutbacks in California

    In 2014, California legislators, focused on groundwater’s accelerating decline during a prolonged drought, passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. New agencies find making sustainability plans is hard, but easier than persuading growers to accept them.

  • Successful Sounding Rocket Campaign Advances Hypersonic Weapon Tech for Navy, Army

    Hypersonic weapons are weapons travelling at hypersonic speed – at between 5 and 25 times the speed of sound, about 1 to 5 miles per second (1.6 to 8.0 km/s). Sandia Lab’s researchers use a new vehicle which imitates boost-glide trajectory for over a minute.

  • Preparing More STEM Students for Careers in Nuclear Science and Security

    New funds will support efforts to educate and train the next generation of scientists and engineers and provide innovative solutions to challenges related to nuclear security.

  • Better Batteries for a Better Future

    A team of scientists from the United States, Canada and Germany are tackling one of the largest challenges of our generation — reliable energy storage.

  • 2022’s U.S. Climate Disasters: A Tale of Too Much Rain – and Too Little

    The year 2022 will be remembered across the U.S. for its devastating flooding and storms – and also for its extreme heat waves and droughts, including one so severe it briefly shut down traffic on the Mississippi River.

  • Revised Guidelines for Digital Identification in Federal Systems

    NIST’s draft publication features updates intended to help fight online crime, preserve privacy and promote equity and usability.

  • Flameproofing Lithium-Ion Batteries with Salt

    Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries power phones, laptops, other personal electronics and electric cars, and are even used to store energy generated by solar panels. But if the temperature of these batteries rises too high, they stop working and can catch fire. A polymer-based electrolyte makes for batteries that keep working – and don’t catch fire – when heated to over 140 degrees F.

  • Flash Droughts Becoming Big Concern for Farmers, Water Utilities

    Many people are familiar with flash floods – torrents that develop quickly after heavy rainfall. But there’s also such a thing as a flash drought, and these sudden, extreme dry spells are becoming a big concern for farmers and water utilities.

  • Drought Encouraged Attila’s Huns to Attack the Roman Empire, Tree Rings Suggest

    Hunnic peoples migrated westward across Eurasia, switched between farming and herding, and became violent raiders in response to severe drought in the Danube frontier provinces of the Roman empire.

  • Washington’s Semiconductor Sanctions Won’t Slow China’s Military Build-Up

    Advanced semiconductors underpin everything from autonomous vehicles to hypersonic weapon systems. Chips are imperative to the defense industry and technologies of the future. By targeting this critical input, the Biden administration aims to freeze China’s semiconductor suite at 2022 levels and impede its military development. Despite the bleak short-term outlook, it is wrong to assume that US controls will hobble China for years.

  • The Right Time for Chip Export Controls

    On Oct. 7, the U.S.-China tech competition heated up dramatically when the Biden administration imposed wide-ranging semiconductor-related export controls on China. Martijn Rasser and Kevin Wolf write that “There is no crystal ball that can divine the outcome, given how unprecedented and wide ranging these actions are.” They add: “The Biden administration made the right call by acting now, particularly if it is successful at getting allied cooperation on the essence of the rules soon.”

  • Why Nuclear Fusion Is So Exciting

    The Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California last week achieved fusion with a net energy gain. Harvard scientist Adam Cohen breaks down breakthrough that might prove major turning point in clean energy efforts — but not any time soon.

  • Software Tracking Pandemics

    DHS has awarded $5 million to create tools to increase the nation’s level of preparedness for biological threats — including an infection rate tracking program for COVID-19 developed by a Sandia National Laboratories team in 2020.