• A Water Strategy for the Parched West: Have Cities Pay Farmers to Install More Efficient Irrigation Systems

    Unsustainable water practices, drought and climate change are causing this crisis across the U.S. Southwest. To achieve a meaningful reduction in water use, states need to focus on the region’s biggest water user: agriculture.

  • Europe’s Energy Choice

    Russia’s war in Ukraine and the disruption of Russian gas exports to Europe has triggered an energy crunch, with price spikes unlike anything seen since 1973. And the situation will get worse before it gets better. Responding to the immediate energy crisis in the right way will help to address the broader climate challenge. Authorities must both buffer the shock of the gas crunch in the short term, and accelerate the transition to clean energy in the long -term.

  • New Chief Information Officer (CIO) Program at NYU

    Created in partnership with Emeritus, the new nine-month executive program helps senior technology leaders and CIOs advance their C-suite leadership skills, transform information systems, and navigate rapidly changing remote and workforce trends.

  • New Flood Maps Clarify the Risk Homeowners Face

    Flooding in urban areas cost Americans more than $106 billion between 1960 and 2016, damaging property, disrupting businesses and claiming lives in the process. Determining which areas are most likely to flood amid ever-changing land use and shifting rainfall and climate patterns can be expensive and complicated. New maps more realistically depict flood zones with less effort, lower costs.

  • U.S. Launches Heat.gov with Tools for Communities Facing Extreme Heat

    The administration launched Heat.gov, a new website to provide the public and decision-makers with clear, timely and science-based information to understand and reduce the health risks of extreme heat. Heat.gov will provide a one-stop hub on heat and health for the nation and is a priority of President Biden’s National Climate Task Force and its Interagency Working Group on Extreme Heat.

  • Your Brain Is Better Than You at Busting Deepfakes

    Deepfake videos, images, audio, or text appear to be authentic, but in fact are computer generated clones designed to mislead you and sway public opinion. They are the new foot soldiers in the spread of disinformation and are rife – they appear in political, cybersecurity, counterfeiting, and border control realms. While observers can’t consciously recognize the difference between real and fake faces, their brains can.

  • FAU Receives State Grant for Cybersecurity, IT Training

    Cybersecurity jobs are expected to grow by a faster-than-average 33 percent over the next 10 years. In addition, cybersecurity-related job postings have increased by 43 percent in the past year. Florida launches a $15.6 million initiative to prepare students and mid-career professionals for jobs in the fields of cybersecurity and information technology.

  • Deep Learning Technology for Faster and More Accurate Terahertz Security Inspection

    With the strengthening of global anti-terrorist measures, it is increasingly important to conduct security checks in public places to detect concealed objects carried by the human body. A new detection method can be used for accurate and real-time detection of hidden objects in terahertz images. 

  • Extreme Heat Causes Record Wildfires, Acres Burned

    In 2022, 38,046 wildfires have burned 5,571,855 acres. This is the most acres burned-to-date in the past 10 years. Both numbers are well above the 10-year average of 32,286 wildfires and 3,328,244 acres burned. Temperatures will rise to 10- 15oF above normal across the Pacific Northwest and 5-10oF above normal in northern California and portions of the Great Basin.

  • 'Killer Robots': Will They Be Banned?

    A UN panel in Geneva remains split on whether to ban autonomous weapons, which don’t need a human to pull the trigger. Increasingly, these sorts of weapons are the stuff of a manufacturer’s promotional materials rather than science fiction movies. The war in Ukraine is complicating the conversation.

  • The World’s Largest Experimental Earthquake Infrastructure Facility

    The National Science Foundation (NSF) promotes research investments and technology that help recognize and mitigate the impacts of natural disasters across the U.S.“The ability to test infrastructure under a full range of motion is critical for unleashing new and pioneering research that can lead to effective, economical and innovative infrastructure designs and retrofitting strategies for existing infrastructure,” said NSF director Sethuraman Panchanathan.

  • Solution to Encrypted Messages Being Hacked Before Sending or After Receipt

    Message applications must do more to keep user data safe from undetected malware or over-the-shoulder eavesdropping that bypasses encryption before a message has been sent. Researchers have created a new end-to-end encryption mechanism that protects users’ communications at a far higher level than currently experienced on popular applications.

  • NIST chooses Kyber, Dilithium and SPHINCS+ as Standards for Post-Quantum Cryptography

    NIST has selected CRYSTALS-KYBER, CRYSTALS-Dilithium and SPHINCS+, three security algorithms, as one the new standards for post-quantum cryptography. The underlying technology must ensure that the encryption of sensitive communication will continue to be secure in the coming decades.

  • Amid Climate Change and Conflict, More Resilient Food Systems a Must: Report

    Increased demand for water will be the No. 1 threat to food security in the next 20 years, followed closely by heat waves, droughts, income inequality and political instability.

  • Why UK Railways Can’t Deal with Heatwaves – and What Might Help

    Like most construction materials, steel, which rails are made from, expands when air temperature increases. When this movement is restrained by the anchorage, which holds the rail and the sleeper (the rectangular supports for the rails) in place, internal stresses build up, and compression buckles or kinks the rail. Trains cannot travel over rail lines with kinks. In the US, kinks caused by the sun caused over 2,100 train derailments in the past 40 years, equivalent to around 50 derailments per year.