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How Australia, with Friends, Can Secure Its Place in Critical Minerals
As the United States recalibrates its industrial policies under President Donald Trump, Australia’s role in securing non-Chinese supply chains for critical minerals has never been more important.
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3 Questions: Exploring the Limits of Carbon Sequestration
Elevated CO2 levels can lead to a phenomenon known as the CO2 fertilization effect, where plants grow more and absorb greater amounts of carbon, providing a cooling effect. While this effect has the potential to be a natural climate change mitigator, the extent of how much carbon plants can continue to absorb remains uncertain. MIT assistant professor César Terrer discusses pioneering volcano research to track carbon dynamics in tropical forests.
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Trump Threatens to Disrupt the World’s Critical Minerals Supply – but There Are Reasons to Be Positive
The energy policies of the new American administration will have ripple effects. But these are likely to be temporary and the market in critical minerals is unlikely to be affected long term. The global transition to clean energy seems safe, for now.
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UA Little Rock Secures $4.65 Million Grant to Advance Cybersecurity Education
The grant, funded by the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE-C) within the National Security Agency, will enable UA Little Rock to enhance its efforts in preparing high school teachers to teach cybersecurity.
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New Lab Studies How Cities Can Survive Extreme Climates
“The city is a dynamic creature; it’s changing all the time,” says architect Merav Idit Battat. “I think we shouldn’t focus on how to think of everything from the beginning, but how to create a more adaptive city over time.”
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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.
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How Progress Happens
On Feb. 7, the National Institutes of Health issued a notice, effective Feb. 10, to cap reimbursements for indirect costs (IDC) associated with its grants. The world’s largest public funder of biomedical research, the NIH supports investigations into, among other things, efforts to fight cancer, control infectious disease, understand neurodegenerative disorders, and improve mental health. Harvard’s vice provost for research details crucial role of NIH support in science and medicine.
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Can Voice-to-Text AI Help Scientists Predict Earthquakes?
By using automatic speech recognition designed to encode waveforms for translation, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory were able to modify this voice-to-text AI to correctly predict the timing of a slip during a repeating collapse sequence producing approximately magnitude-5 earthquakes at the Kīlauea volcano on Hawai’i.
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Cleaning Up Critical Minerals and Materials Production, Using Microwave Plasma
With technology developed at MIT, 6K is helping to bring critical materials production back to the U.S. without toxic byproducts.
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Spyware Is Spreading Far Beyond Its National-Security Role
Spyware is increasingly exploited by criminals or used to suppress civil liberties, and this proliferation is in part due to weak regulation.
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The U.K. Demands for Apple to Break Encryption Is an Emergency for Us All
The United Kingdom is demanding that Apple create an encryption backdoor to give the government access to end-to-end encrypted data in iCloud. Encryption is one of the best ways we have to reclaim our privacy and security in a digital world filled with cyberattacks and security breaches, and there’s no way to weaken it in order to only provide access to the “good guys.”
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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.
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Ukraine Needs U.S. Weapons. Trump Wants Its Rare Earth Minerals in Return.
President Donald Trump wants to condition future U.S. aid to Ukraine on getting more access to the country’s valuable “rare earth” minerals — minerals that are in increasing demand for batteries, computers, smart phones, and electric cars, not to mention weaponry.
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Volcanic Ash Can Be Used for Radiation Shielding
Radiation shielding is essential for hospitals, industrial sites, and nuclear facilities. Researchers have found a surprising new use for the copious amounts of volcanic ash scattered across the Philippines: it can be used to shield against harmful radiation.
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Marine Heatwaves: A Rising Challenge for Naval Warfare
We now know that rising sea temperatures will affect sonar performance, sometimes greatly affecting submarines’ ability to find ships and other submarines, and ships’ ability to find them. This leaves us wondering about the specific effects of another phenomenon: marine heatwaves, which can create large and sudden changes in temperatures.
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More headlines
The long view
Encryption Breakthrough Lays Groundwork for Privacy-Preserving AI Models
In an era where data privacy concerns loom large, a new approach in artificial intelligence (AI) could reshape how sensitive information is processed. New AI framework enables secure neural network computation without sacrificing accuracy.
AI-Controlled Fighter Jets May Be Closer Than We Think — and Would Change the Face of Warfare
Could we be on the verge of an era where fighter jets take flight without pilots – and are controlled by artificial intelligence (AI)? US R Adm Michael Donnelly recently said that an upcoming combat jet could be the navy’s last one with a pilot in the cockpit.
The Potential Impact of Seabed Mining on Critical Mineral Supply Chains and Global Geopolitics
The potential emergence of a seabed mining industry has important ramifications for the diversification of critical mineral supply chains, revenues for developing nations with substantial terrestrial mining sectors, and global geopolitics.
AI and the Future of the U.S. Electric Grid
Despite its age, the U.S. electric grid remains one of the great workhorses of modern life. Whether it can maintain that performance over the next few years may determine how well the U.S. competes in an AI-driven world.
Using Liquid Air for Grid-Scale Energy Storage
New research finds liquid air energy storage could be the lowest-cost option for ensuring a continuous power supply on a future grid dominated by carbon-free but intermittent sources of electricity.
Enhanced Geothermal Systems: A Promising Source of Round-the-Clock Energy
With its capacity to provide 24/7 power, many are warming up to the prospect of geothermal energy. Scientists are currently working to advance human-made reservoirs in Earth’s deep subsurface to stimulate the activity that exists within natural geothermal systems.