• 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.

  • Local Focus Can Prevent Failures in Large Networks

    We live in an increasingly connected world, a fact underscored by the swift spread of the coronavirus around the globe. Underlying this connectivity are complex networks — global air transportation, the internet, power grids, financial systems and ecological networks, to name just a few. The need to ensure the proper functioning of these systems also is increasing, but control is difficult.

  • Climate Change, Land-Use Changes Increase Likelihood of Flood Events

    The German government estimates the total losses resulting from the disastrous floods in July 2021 at 32 billion euros. To improve future preparedness for such extreme events, researchers advise that risk assessments take greater account of the landscape and river courses, how they change, and how sediments are transported. In addition, projections show an increase in the spatial extent and frequency of such extreme events, as well as higher amounts of precipitation.

  • How Not to Solve the Climate Change Problem

    When politicians talk about reaching “net zero” emissions, they’re often counting on trees or technology that can pull carbon dioxide out of the air. What they don’t mention is just how much these proposals or geoengineering would cost to allow the world to continue burning fossil fuels. I’ve been working on climate change for over four decades. Let’s take a minute to come to grips with some of the rhetoric around climate change and clear the air, so to speak.