• Support for Carbon Capture and Sequestration Key to Greener, More Reliable Grid

    Existing fossil-fuel capacity can play a significant role in reaching net-zero with both current and modified “Section 45Q” tax incentives for carbon capture and storage (CCS).

  • For Advance Drought Warning, Look to the Plants

    Among the extreme weather impacts resulting from climate change, drought is a growing problem around the globe, leading to frequent wildfires, threats to water resources, and greater food insecurity. Researchers find signals in vegetation can help forecast devastating ‘flash’ droughts.

  • When the Hardware Traps Criminals

    Up to now, protecting hardware against manipulation has been a laborious business: expensive, and only possible on a small scale. And yet, two simple antennas might do the trick.

  • Making Muons for Scientific Discovery, National Security

    The Pentagon and other agencies have sought advanced sources that generate gamma rays, X-rays, neutrons, protons, and electrons to enable a variety of scientific, commercial, and defense applications – from medical diagnostics, to scans of cargo containers for dangerous materials, to non-destructive testing of aircraft and their parts to see internal defects. The problem: None of these sources can image through concrete walls several meters thick, map the core of a volcano from the outside, or peer deep underground to locate chambers and tunnels. Muons — deeply penetrating subatomic particles – can do all those things. DARPA seeks a compact source for muons.

  • Drones Approved for Aerial Inspections of Power Facilities

    Drones have allowed companies new ways to stretch the boundaries of current regulations. One of the latest wins for drone technology is a waiver from the FAA that gives Dominion Energy, one of the U.S. largest energy companies, permission to use drones to inspect power-generation facilities in seven states.

  • A Key Role for Quantum Entanglement

    A method known as quantum key distribution has long held the promise of communication security unattainable in conventional cryptography. An international team of scientists, including ETH physicists, has now demonstrated experimentally, for the first time, an approach to quantum key distribution that uses high-quality quantum entanglement to provide much broader security guarantees than previous schemes.

  • Hack Post-Quantum Cryptography Now So That Bad Actors Don’t Do It Later

    In February, the cryptography community was stunned when a researcher claimed that an algorithm that might become a cornerstone of the next generation of internet encryption can be cracked mathematically using a single laptop. Edward Parker and Michael Vermeer write that this finding may have averted a massive cybersecurity vulnerability, but it also raises concerns that new encryption methods for securing internet traffic contain other flaws that have not yet been detected.

  • Regenerate: Biotechnology and U.S. Industrial Policy

    By Ryan Fedasiuk

    A revolution in biotechnology is dawning at the precise moment the world needs it most. Amid an ongoing climate crisis, fast-paced technological maturation, and a global pandemic, humans must find new ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve food security, develop new vaccines and therapeutics, recycle waste, synthesize new materials, and adapt to a changing world. The United States needs some form of industrial policy to promote its bioeconomy—one that is enshrined in democratic values and focused on improving access to four key drivers of bioeconomic growth: equipment, personnel, information, and capital.

  • Doubts Grow Over Turkey's Discovery of Huge Rare Earths Deposits

    By Nik Martin

    Turkey has announced the world’s second-largest deposit of rare earth elements (REEs) — critical metals needed to build electric cars, wind turbines, weapon systems, among other things. But is the Turkish REE grade good enough, and are the deposits found large enough to allow Ankara to end China’s REEs dominance?

  • Coming Soon: Solar-Powering First Responders?

    Fabric woven to harness solar power recently completed weaving trials. The fabric will ultimately be used to design high-functioning gear that can keep responders’ tech charged and ready.

  • Climate Change Is Making Flooding Worse: 3 Reasons the World Is Seeing More Record-Breaking Deluges and Flash Floods

    By Frances Davenport

    Although floods are a natural occurrence, human-caused climate change is making severe flooding events more common. I study how climate change affects hydrology and flooding. In mountainous regions, three effects of climate change in particular are creating higher flood risks: more intense precipitation, shifting snow, and rain patterns and the effects of wildfires on the landscape.

  • Using Historical Weather Data to Optimize Power Grid

    With the record-breaking heat and drought conditions states across the U.S. are currently facing, finding a solution to the growing need for reliable power from the electric grid is at an all-time high. Information about past outlier conditions could provide valuable context to help operators better manage the grid during extreme weather.

  • U.S. Senate Approves Bill Containing Texas’ “Ike Dike” Coastal Protection Project

    By Erin Douglas

    The U.S. Senate voted to authorize the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin planning for a massive coastal barrier project in Galveston Bay meant to protect against hurricanes’ storm surge. Funding is not yet secured.

  • Secure Cryptography with Real-World Devices Is Now Possible

    New research published in Nature explains how an international team of researchers have, for the first time, experimentally implemented a type of quantum cryptography considered to be the ‘ultimate’, ‘bug-proof’ means of communication.

  • Tool Estimates Costs of Power Interruptions

    Berkeley Lab-led initiative helps electric companies improve grid reliability and resilience. The initiative aims to update and upgrade the Interruption Cost Estimate (ICE) Calculator – a publicly available, online tool – which estimates the economic consequences of power interruptions.