• 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

    By Erin Matthews

    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

    By Shuang-Ye Wu

    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

    By Chris Patrick

    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

    By Antonia Hadjimichael

    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

    By Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Megan Hogan

    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

    By Clea Simon

    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.

  • Record Low Water Levels on the Mississippi River in 2022 Show How Climate Change Is Altering Large Rivers

    By Ray Lombardi, Angela Antipova, and Dorian J. Burnette

    In 2022, water levels in some of the world’s largest rivers, including the Rhine in Europe and the Yangtze in China, fell to historically low levels. The Mississippi River fell so low in Memphis, Tennessee, in mid-October that barges were unable to float, requiring dredging and special water releases from upstream reservoirs to keep channels navigable.

  • Ukraine War: Drones Are Transforming the Conflict, Bringing Russia on to the Frontline

    By Stefan Wolff and David Hastings Dunn

    Russia and Ukraine have deployed a wide range of military and commercial drones since the early days of the war. But their increasingly frequent – and effective – deployment indicates a potential new stage of escalation with important consequences for Ukraine and its western backers.

  • How Doctrine and Delineation Can Help Defeat Drones

    As Iranian-made drones continue to spread destruction across Ukraine, observers have been reminded once again of the dangers unmanned aerial systems pose. Nicholas Paul Pacheco writes that the United States, to its credit, has made significant progress in bolstering its capabilities to combat this threat, particularly through the investment of the Pentagon and the defense industrial base in counter-drone research and development. But “there remain two areas that have not been properly tackled: base defense and warfighter-policymaker synergy,” he writes.

  • Critical Minerals Repositories Discovered in Northern Maine

    A team of state and federal scientists have discovered an area in northern Maine that is high in critical mineral resources, highlighting for the first time the importance of this region to the U.S. mineral resource economy.