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Washington Raises Stakes in War on Chinese Technology
The Biden administration is expanding its list of technology-focused sanctions on China, drawing parallels to U.S. controls targeting the Soviet Union during the Cold War – and the new U.S. sanctions are in some ways more restrictive than Cold-War era controls.
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Searching for Critical Minerals
The U.S. Geological Survey announced that, thanks to substantial funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, it will invest about $2.8 million to collect a large swath of geophysical data focusing on critical mineral resources in northeastern Washington State.
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A Machine Learning-Based Solution May Help Firefighters Avoid Deadly Backdrafts
A lack of oxygen can reduce even the most furious flame to smoldering ash. But when fresh air rushes in, say after a firefighter opens a window or door to a room, the blaze may be suddenly and violently resurrected. Researchers have devised a plan for informing firefighters of what dangers lie behind closed doors.
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Method for Decoding Asteroid Interiors Could Help Aim Asteroid-Deflecting Missions
Knowing how the density is distributed inside an asteroid could help scientists plan the most effective defense. For instance, if an asteroid were made of relatively light and uniform matter, a DART-like spacecraft could be aimed differently than if it were deflecting an asteroid with a denser, less balanced interior. Astronomers have found a way to determine an asteroid’s interior structure based on how its spin changes during a close encounter with Earth.
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Killer Robots Will Be Nothing Like the Movies Show—Here's Where the Real Threats Lie
Killer robots won’t be sentient humanoid robots with evil intent. This might make for a dramatic storyline and a box office success, but such technologies are many decades, if not centuries, away. Indeed, contrary to recent fears, robots may never be sentient. It’s much simpler technologies we should be worrying about. And these technologies are starting to turn up on the battlefield today in places like Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh.
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Improving Recovery of Critical Systems after Cyberattacks
Researchers aim to develop fast, accurate and efficient recovery mechanisms that, when coupled with the expeditious damage assessment techniques he has already developed, will offer an “integrated suite solution.” This will allow affected CI systems to continue running while providing as many critical functionalities as possible.
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Drone Piloting Proficiency Takes Flight with Certification Course
Competent drone piloting is critical when lives are on the line; these devices are used in numerous law enforcement operations including search and rescue and counter IED (improvised explosive device) efforts.
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China’s Challenge: Why the West Should Fear President Xi’s Quest to “Catch and Surpass It’ with Technology
Beijing’s bid for technological dominance is a threat to global security and liberty. The Western democracies must not shirk the task of confronting it.
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China Faces Major Challenges in Achieving Goal of Global Technological Pre-Eminence
China has overtaken the United States to top the world in the number of high-quality scientific papers it is producing, and there has been a marked improvement in the quality of China’s scientific and technological development over the past two decades. But at the same time, China has attempted to become fully self-sufficient in core technologies – a policy which is creating its own dilemma: The more the Chinese leadership promotes self-sufficiency, the harder it will be to maintain an open-door policy—and to realize its dream of becoming a science and technology great power.
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Hurricane Ian Shows That Coastal Hospitals Aren’t Ready for Climate Change
As rapidly intensifying storms and rising sea levels threaten coastal cities from Texas to the tip of Maine, Hurricane Ian has just demonstrated what researchers have warned: Hundreds of hospitals in the U.S. are not ready for climate change.
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Extreme Heat Could Make Parts of Asia, Africa Uninhabitable
Extreme heat events foreshadow a less habitable world. In the coming decades, heatwaves are predicted to meet and exceed human physiological and social limits in regions such as the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and South and South-West Asia.
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NASA Successfully Shifted an Asteroid’s Orbit – DART Spacecraft Crashed Into and Moved Dimorphos
NASA recently crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in an attempt to push the rocky traveler off its trajectory. The test was a great proof-of-concept for many technologies that the U.S. government has invested in over the years. And importantly, it proves that it is possible to send a craft to intercept with a minuscule target millions of miles away from Earth and change its orbit.
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Nobel-Winning Quantum Weirdness Undergirds an Emerging High-Tech Industry, Promising Better Ways of Encrypting Communications and Imaging Your Body
There are several emerging technologies which rely on the non-intuitive quantum phenomenon of entanglement: Unhackable communications devices, high-precision GPS and high-resolution medical imaging. For the most part, quantum entanglement is still a subject of physics research, but it’s also a component of commercially available technologies, and it plays a starring role in the emerging quantum information processing industry.
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The Next Generation of Explosives Trace Detection is Here
Launched in fiscal year 2020, NextGen Explosives Trace Detection (ETD) expands the scope of aviation checkpoints technology, resulting in the advancement of technologies that can quickly and accurately collect and analyze samples in a variety of ways, including from direct contact with the subject, non-contact sampling via vapors, and even through barriers.
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Greater Resilience Through Nature-Inspired Power Grids
Researchers are looking to nature to build better power grids that are more resistant to various potential disturbances like natural disasters or cyberattacks.
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The long view
Nuclear Has Changed. Will the U.S. Change with It?
Fueled by artificial intelligence, cloud service providers, and ambitious new climate regulations, U.S. demand for carbon-free electricity is on the rise. In response, analysts and lawmakers are taking a fresh look at a controversial energy source: nuclear power.
Huge Areas May Face Possibly Fatal Heat Waves if Warming Continues
A new assessment warns that if Earth’s average temperature reaches 2 degrees C over the preindustrial average, widespread areas may become too hot during extreme heat events for many people to survive without artificial cooling.
Exploring the New Nuclear Energy Landscape
In the last few years, the U.S. has seen a resurgence of interest in nuclear energy and its potential for helping meet the nation’s growing demands for clean electricity and energy security. Meanwhile, nuclear energy technologies themselves have advanced, opening up new possibilities for their use.