• Uranium Detectable in Two-Thirds of U.S. Community Water System Monitoring Records

    A study on metal concentrations in U.S. community water systems (CWS) found that metal concentrations were particularly elevated in CWSs serving semi-urban, Hispanic communities independent of location or region.

  • Shared Water Resources: Source of Both Peace and Conflict

    From the Euphrates to the Mekong, dams that ensure one country’s water supply risk leaving others parched. But shared water resources can be a source of peace as well as conflict.

  • Marine Energy Is Finally Here

    Is marine energy finally here? The simple answer is yes, the ocean—specifically clean energy generated from waves, tides, and ocean and river currents—can help save the planet. Revamped software offers marine energy industry the data it needs to succeed.

  • Russia’s Energy Clout Doesn’t Just Come from Oil and Gas – It’s Also a Key Nuclear Supplier

    As Western nations look for ways to reduce their reliance on Russian oil and gas, another aspect of the Ukraine crisis has received less attention: Most of the 32 countries that use nuclear power rely on Russia for some part of their nuclear fuel supply chain. Economic fallout from the war in Ukraine could disrupt access to fuel for the nuclear power industry.

  • Protecting Solar Technologies from Cyberattack

    At a solar farm, power electronics devices convert direct current (DC) electricity generated by solar photovoltaic panels into alternating current (AC) electricity for use on the electrical grid. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates up to 80% of electricity could flow through power electronics devices by 2030. Researchers suggest a novel approach to safeguarding one possible target of a cyberattack – the nation’s solar farms.

  • Testing Similitude Laws of Multistory Masonry Buildings

    Earthquakes and other stressors on buildings pose a threat to their structural integrity that endangers human life. It helps to be able to calculate the behavior of buildings and test with small-scale models.

  • Cyber and Physical Security Should Collaborate: What Does It Take to Achieve This

    To understand and mitigate threats that cross the boundary between what is cyber and what is physical, some organizations have integrated their security resources to encourage them to work more closely together.

  • Giving New Life to Old Concrete Structures Through “Vascularization”

    Concrete is a ubiquitous building material, and it is often cited as the most consumed commodity on Earth, second only to potable water. As this inherited concrete infrastructure continues to age, maintaining and repairing concrete is of increasing strategic importance to both defense and civilian infrastructure. DARPA’s BRACE program aims to revitalize legacy DoD infrastructure to extend its serviceability.

  • What Does It Mean to Be Energy Independent?

    “‘Energy independence’ is a political slogan, not an economic or technical concept with a clear definition,” Berkeley’s Andrew Campbell says. “I understand that politicians use the term ‘energy independence’ to imply that a country is insulated from global energy markets. However, this is rarely the case.”

  • Can Germany Wean Itself Off Russian Gas?

    Experts are divided on how quickly Germany could cut imports of Russian energy and stop funding President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. How vulnerable would such a move leave Europe’s largest economy?

  • The Ukrainian Economy: Where Now for the Future?

    An expert has warned that the impact of the war will be disastrous for the Ukrainian economy, regardless of the outcome. “War will always have a catastrophic impact. As you’d expect, production is collapsing, and the economy has given up percentages of GDP growth,” says a Cambridge University professor who is an economic adviser to Ukrainian President Zelensky.

  • Pivotal Battery Discovery Could Benefit Transportation, the Grid

    Researchers uncover new avenue for overcoming the performance decline that occurs with repeated charge-discharge cycling in the cathodes of next generation batteries.

  • Coastal Home Buyers Are Ignoring Rising Flood Risks, Despite Clear Warnings and Rising Insurance Premiums

    Homebuyers along the U.S. coasts can check each property’s flood risk as easily as they check the size of the bedrooms – most coastal real estate listings now include future flood risk details that take climate change into account. In Apollo Beach, for example, many of the properties are at least 9 out of 10 on the flood risk scale. That knowledge isn’t stopping homebuyers, though.

  • Predicting, Managing EV Charging Growth to Keep Electricity Grids Reliable, Affordable

    With a growing fleet of EVs on the road, grid planners depend on accurate estimates of charging patterns to calculate electricity demand. A team of researchers at Stanford University assembled a scalable probabilistic model for charging demand that can be applied to a flexible array of populations and account for a wide range of factors.

  • Targeted demand response reduces price volatility of electric grid

    To reduce the energy load during supply constraints on the Texas power grid, it is not necessary to reduce the energy load in high population centers such as Houston and Dallas. Instead, when supply is strained, focusing on a few strategic locations across the state outside of those high-population areas is much more cost-effective and can have a greater impact on the price volatility of the grid.