• Understanding Plants Improves Wildland-Fire Modeling in Uncertain Future

    Drought and warmer temperatures make vegetation dynamics crucial to fire behavior and effects. A new conceptual framework for incorporating the way plants use carbon and water into fine-scale computer models of wildland fire provides a critical first step toward improved global fire forecasting.

  • High-Fidelity Simulation Offers Insight into 2013 Chelyabinsk Meteor

    On the morning of Feb. 15, 2013, a small asteroid exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, sending a loud shockwave and sonic boom across the region, damaging buildings and leaving around 1,200 people injured. Meteoric events are natural disasters and, just like any other natural disaster, we can do more to be prepared. “They are not high-probability events, but we shouldn’t dismiss them as science fiction either,” says one scientist.

  • Spy Balloon Controversy Focuses Attention on Western Nuclear Missile Facilities

    Experts believe the Chinese balloon downed over the Atlantic coast this month was snooping on U.S. missile defenses. Part of the landscape for a half-century, they are headed for a costly refresh in an era of rising global tensions.

  • Places of Worship Linked with More Neighborhood Crime in Washington, D.C.

    A statistical analysis of areas near more than 700 houses of worship in Washington, D.C. found that these areas are associated with higher levels of violent and property crime—even after accounting for other factors commonly linked with crime.

  • Australian Government Needs to Go ack to Basics to Build an Australian Rare-Earths Industry

    China has moved well beyond an aspiration to monopolize the production of rare earths. It aims for leadership in the production of the full range of goods making use of rare earths—from electric cars to wind turbines, MRI scanners, lasers and rocket motors.

  • Next Generation 911 Interoperability

    An estimated 240 million calls are routed to first responders every year via our country’s 911 system. It is critical that responders and operators have access to the best tools and resources available so that they can effectively answer these calls quickly and accurately and keep our communities safe. New testing and certification program, laboratory will improve the functionality of our national 911 system.

  • 12 Days: The Time Iran Needs to Produce Enough Weapon-Grade Uranium for a Nuclear Weapon

    Iran can now break out and produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon in 12 days, using only three advanced centrifuge cascades and half of its existing stock of 60 percent enriched uranium. This breakout could be difficult for inspectors to detect promptly, if Iran took steps to delay inspectors’ access.

  • North Korea’s Nuclear Tests Expose Neighbors to Radiation Risks

    Tens of thousands of North Koreans and people in South Korea, Japan, and China could be exposed to radioactive materials spread through groundwater from an underground nuclear test site. North Korea secretly conducted six tests of nuclear weapons at the Punggye-ri site in the mountainous North Hamgyong Province between 2006 and 2017.

  • Garland Would Not Object to Designating Wagner a Foreign Terrorist Organization

    Founded in 2014, the Wagner Group is run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a sanctioned oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. With an estimated 50,000 fighters in Ukraine, the majority recruited from Russia’s prisons, the paramilitary force has become a veritable arm of the Russian military in Ukraine.

  • U.S. Creates New Antisemitism Task Force

    Four out of 10 Jews in the US feel less secure than they did a year ago. Faced with an uptick in antisemitism, the White House responds with an action plan.

  • Three Ways to Prevent School Shootings, Based on Research

    We study the circumstances that lead to violence in which an attacker picks a target – like a person, group, or school – in advance. We find that the same patterns of concerning behavior emerge among the perpetrators, but that’s not all. We also find that there are often many opportunities to intervene with the perpetrator before the tragedy that peers, family members, school staff, law enforcement officials, and others miss.

  • The U.S. Needs to Ditch Its America-First Approach to Critical Minerals

    More and more countries with advanced economies have begun to prioritize the supply and value chains for critical minerals and rare-earth elements because of their links with advanced and low-emissions technologies. In some countries, governments have responded to the critical minerals challenge by adopting a new version of economic nationalism. But unilateral responses will not produce secure or reliable supply chains. Indeed, economic nationalism may actually aggravate the problem.

  • Havana Syndrome Not Caused by Directed-Energy Weapons: U.S. Intelligence

    In 2016 in Havana, Cuba’s capital, a growing number of U.S. diplomats reported symptoms of unexplained ailment, and over the next five years, employees in many other U.S. embassies complained about identical symptoms, which included dizziness, nausea, headaches, ringing ears, and disorientation. A comprehensive investigation by several agencies of the U.S. intelligence community has now concluded that the symptoms of what came to be called the Havana Syndrome were not the result of an adversary nation using directed-energy or radiation weapons.

  • Directed Energy Weapons Shoot Painful but Non-Lethal Beams – Are Similar Weapons Behind the Havana Syndrome?

    The latest episodes of so-called Havana syndrome, a series of unexplained ailments afflicting U.S. and Canadian diplomats and spies, span the globe. The cause of these incidents is unknown, but speculation in the U.S. centers on electromagnetic beams.

  • AI Nuclear Weapons Catastrophe Can Be Avoided

    There is a growing concern that emerging AI features will only increase the potential for disaster through the possibility of semiautonomous or fully autonomous nuclear weapons. Noah Greene writes that “As the Soviet-era Col. Petrov case kindly taught us, without a human firmly in control of the nuclear command-and-control structure, the odds of disaster creep slowly toward an unintended or uncontrolled nuclear exchange.”