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A Non-Proliferation Solution: Using Antineutrinos to Surveil Nuclear Reactors
Antineutrinos generated in nuclear fission can be measured to remotely monitor the operation of nuclear reactors and verify that they are not being used to produce nuclear weapons, scientists report. Thanks to a newly developed method, it is now possible to estimate a reactor’s operation status, fuel burnup, and fuel composition based entirely on its antineutrino emissions. This technique could contribute massively to nuclear non-proliferation efforts and, in turn, safer nuclear energy.
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The Challenge of Cheap Drones: Finding an Even Cheaper Way to Destroy Them
The sudden proliferation of inexpensive drones in Ukraine is a revolution in warfare. While they vary in size and capability, the economics of defense are particularly stressed by the very cheapest ones, those adapted from civilian models or made with commercially available components.
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Hydrogen Power Takes Drones to the Next Level
Most drones run on electric batteries and can stay aloft no more than about 45 minutes when carrying just a few kilograms. HevenDrones has another solution.
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5 Technologies Keeping Cargo Ships Safe in Turbulent Times
Due to Houthi attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea, worldwide shipping is in trouble and the global supply chain faltering. These technologies can help.
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Creating the Self-Healing Grid of the Future
Self-healing electrical grids: It may sound like a concept from science fiction, with tiny robots or some sentient tech crawling around fixing power lines, but in a reality not far from fiction, a team of researchers is bringing this idea to life. What’s not hard to imagine is the potential value of a self-healing grid, one able to adapt and bounce back to life, ensuring uninterrupted power even when assailed by a hurricane or a group of bad guys.
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Investors Are “Flying Blind” to Risk of Climate Lawsuits
Polluting companies could be liable for trillions in damages from climate lawsuits. But few investors and regulators are taking these risks into account when evaluating companies’ climate-related financial risks. Experts call for an overhaul in how climate litigation risks are assessed and provides a new framework for doing so.
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A Drone with Ears
When a region is hit by a natural disaster, searching for survivors is complex work as buildings and roads may be damaged. The use of drones equipped with daylight cameras and thermal imaging cameras is therefore becoming increasingly widespread – except that if victims are trapped under rubble, they cannot be seen by these imaging sensors. Equipping drones with acoustic sensors allows rescue teams to identify and locate cries for help, clapping, or knocking signals.
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Central Asia Key to Breaking China's Rare Earth Monopoly
U.S. officials hoping to break China’s near monopoly on the production of rare earth elements needed for many cutting-edge technologies should engage the governments of Central Asia to develop high concentrations of REEs found in the region, says a new report.
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Using Idle Trucks to Power the Grid with Clean Energy
After analyzing energy demand on Alberta’s power grid during rush hour, researchers propose an innovative way to replenish electrical grids with power generated from fuel cells in trucks. Idled electric vehicles can act as mobile generators and help power overworked and aging electricity grids.
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From New York to Jakarta, Land in Many Coastal Cities Is Sinking Faster Than Sea Levels Are Rising
Sea level rise has already put coastal cities on notice thanks to increasing storm surges and even sunny day flooding at high tide. These challenges will continue to grow because global projections point to a mean sea level rise of at least one foot above year-2000 levels in a few decades. many cities are facing another factor making them even more vulnerable to rising waters: land subsidence.
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Fake Biden Robocall to New Hampshire Voters Highlights How Easy It Is to Make Deepfakes − and How Hard It Is to Defend Against AI-Generated Disinformation
Robocalls in elections are nothing new and not illegal; many are simply efforts to get out the vote. But they have also been used in voter suppression campaigns. Compounding this problem in this case is what I believe to be the application of AI to clone Biden’s voice.
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Military AI: New Book Anticipates a World of “Killer Robots” — and the Need to Regulate Them
As artificial intelligence advances, the weapons of war grow evermore capable of killing people without meaningful human oversight, raising troubling questions about the manner today’s and tomorrow’s wars will be carried out, and how autonomous weapons systems could weaken accountability when it comes to the potential violations of international law that attend their deployment.
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Taking Robots and AI to War at Sea
Emphasizing that combination of AI and autonomous systems working in concert with crewed platforms—and with critical human oversight ‘on the loop’—is the logical path to meet a potential challenge of a much more capable and assertive adversary with ambitious plans across the Indo-pacific, and with a potential ability to interfere with Australia’s critical maritime trade.
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Predicting Flood Risk from Hurricanes in a Warming Climate
Coastal cities and communities will face more frequent major hurricanes with climate change in the coming years. Using New York as a test case, a model developed by MIT scientists predicts flooding at the level experienced during Hurricane Sandy will occur roughly every 30 years by the end of this century.
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Groundwater Levels Are Falling Worldwide — but There Are Solutions
The world’s groundwater aquifers are taking a beating. Decades of unrestrained pumping by thirsty farms and fast-growing cities have drained these underground rock beds, which hold more than 95 percent of the planet’s drinkable water. New research shows how to protect the aquifers that hold most of the world’s fresh water.
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More headlines
The long view
Autonomous Vehicle Technology Vulnerable to Road Object Spoofing and Vanishing Attacks
Researchers have demonstrated the potentially hazardous vulnerabilities associated with the technology called LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, many autonomous vehicles use to navigate streets, roads and highways. The researchers have shown how to use lasers to fool LiDAR into “seeing” objects that are not present and missing those that are – deficiencies that can cause unwarranted and unsafe braking or collisions.
Tantalizing Method to Study Cyberdeterrence
Tantalus is unlike most war games because it is experimental instead of experiential — the immersive game differs by overlapping scientific rigor and quantitative assessment methods with the experimental sciences, and experimental war gaming provides insightful data for real-world cyberattacks.
Prototype Self-Service Screening System Unveiled
TSA and DHS S&T unveiled a prototype checkpoint technology, the self-service screening system, at Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) in Las Vegas, NV. The aim is to provide a near self-sufficient passenger screening process while enabling passengers to directly receive on-person alarm information and allow for the passenger self-resolution of those alarms.
Falling Space Debris: How High Is the Risk I'll Get Hit?
An International Space Station battery fell back to Earth and, luckily, splashed down harmlessly in the Atlantic. Should we have worried? Space debris reenters our atmosphere every week.
Testing Cutting-Edge Counter-Drone Technology
Drones have many positive applications, bad actors can use them for nefarious purposes. Two recent field demonstrations brought government, academia, and industry together to evaluate innovative counter-unmanned aircraft systems.
Strengthening the Grid’s ‘Backbone’ with Hydropower
Argonne-led studies investigate how hydropower could help add more clean energy to the grid, how it generates value as grids add more renewable energy, and how liner technology can improve hydropower efficiency.