• Fire Science Critical for Combating Wildfires Out West

    In 2020, wildfire activity in California and the Pacific Northwest has been extreme, with more than 45,700 wildfires raging across 8.3 million acres (as of October 15, 2020). This puts the 2020 Fire Year on pace for being the most extensive of the last decade, even outpacing the fires of 2017 and 2018. Science can help in preparing for and coping with wildfires, thus helping save lives, property and money.

  • Six Men Indicted in Alleged Plot to Kidnap Michigan Governor

    Six men were charged Thursday with conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in an alleged plot by right-wing extremists who were angry over her coronavirus containment policies. The suspects were arrested in October after an FBI probe into alleged plans to kidnap Whitmer at her vacation home in northern Michigan.

  • Identity Verification in the Age of COVID-19

    Face masks have become a way of life due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We now wear them nearly everywhere we go—at grocery stores, on public transportation, in schools, at work—any situation that requires us to be around others. But what about at places that require a higher level of security, like airports?

  • K9 Chemistry: A Safer Way to Train Detection Dogs

    Trained dogs are incredible chemical sensors, far better at detecting explosives, narcotics and other substances than even the most advanced technological device. But one challenge is that dogs have to be trained, and training them with real hazardous substances can be inconvenient and dangerous.

  • Face Recognition Software Improving in Recognizing Masked Faces

    A new study of face recognition technology created after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that some software developers have made demonstrable progress at recognizing masked faces.

  • Guns, Drones and Poison: The New Age of Assassination

    We are living in the greatest-ever age of assassination as states, fearful of the twin threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, are using increasingly sophisticated intelligence to track and kill dangerous people and deprive other states of dangerous knowledge.

  • Virtual Reality Battlefield Technology Designed to Train Military Leaders

    Researchers have developed battlefield simulation technology that they used to produce a virtual reality tour of the D-Day beaches in Normandy, France. Their work is part of the FORCES (4S) – Strategy, Security and Social Systems Initiative at Purdue University. The initiative supports the use of social scientific research in strategy and security activities to shape long-range and global military, political and organizational decision-making.

  • Germany Worried about “Violent Potential” among Anti-Lockdown Protesters

    Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has identified an “intensified escalation potential” within Querdenker movement that includes coronavirus skeptics. Querdenker adherents, including coronavirus-skeptics and anti-lockdown protesters, claim the COVID-19 pandemic and long-established federal and regional laws aimed at halting the pathogen’s spread infringe on citizens’ liberties.

  • Remote-Control Killing: Iran Says Top Nuclear Scientist Assassinated by Machine Gun Guided Via Satellite

    A machine gun equipped with a “satellite-controlled smart system” was used to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist, a senior official with the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has said. Officials have blamed Israel for the brazen, daytime attack on 27 November in Absard, some sixty kilometers from the capital, Tehran, though it didn’t offer any evidence for the claim.

  • Brazil: Apps Warn Residents of Shootings

    Every year there are thousands of shooting incidents on Brazil’s streets in which innocent bystanders are injured or killed. In some cities, apps now give real-time warnings to residents about areas to avoid. This year alone, there have been at least 3,000 shootings in the state of Rio de Janeiro. But this statistic does not come from the authorities. The number is taken from data supplied by “Onde Tem Tiroteio” (OTT), a crowdsourcing app that warns users about shootouts and where users can report shooting incidents themselves. In English, “Onde Tem Tiroteio” literally means “Where is a shootout.”

  • European Powers "Deeply Worried" By Iran's Uranium Enrichment Plans

    Britain, France, and Germany say Iran’s apparent plan to install additional advanced centrifuges at its main nuclear enrichment facility is “deeply worrying” and contrary to the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. A confidential report by the UN’s atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said Iran plans to install three more cascades of advanced IR-2m centrifuges in its underground plant at Natanz.

  • Cause of Mystery Illness of U.S. Diplomats in U.S. Embassies in Cuba, China

    Government personnel and their families at the U.S. embassy in Havana, Cuba, in late 2016 and the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou, China, in early 2017 began suffering from a range of unusual — and in some cases suddenly occurring — symptoms such as a perceived loud noise, ear pain, intense head pressure or vibration, dizziness, visual problems, and cognitive difficulties, and many still continue to experience these or other health problems. A new scientific report says that directed, pulsed radio frequency energy appears to be the most plausible mechanism in explaining these cases, especially in individuals with the distinct early symptoms.

  • Making Our Infrastructure Safer

    Saurabh Amin, a systems engineer at MIT, focuses on making transportation, electricity, and water infrastructure more resilient against disruptions. “There are a lot of commonalities among these networks — they are built and operated by human actors, but their functionality is governed by physical laws. So, that is what drives me forward,” Amin says.

  • Iran Violating 2015 Nuclear Deal Again with Use of Advanced Centrifuges: Reuters

    Reuters obtained a confidential IAEA report which says that Iran plans to install more advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges at an underground plant in breach of its troubled deal with major powers. The confidential IAEA report said Iran plans to install three more clusters of advanced IR-2m centrifuges in the underground plant at Natanz, located about 300 kilometers south of the capital, Tehran.

  • Teaching Anti-Terrorism: How France and England Use Schools to Counter Radicalization

    The murder of the schoolteacher Samuel Paty, beheaded by 18-year-old Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov in October 2020 after Paty had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad during a civic education lesson, has understandably caused shock and fear among teachers in France. Many teachers were already struggling to manage classroom discussions on sensitive topics such as the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo’s publication of the controversial caricatures. Some now fear for their personal safety.