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The Financial Risks of Water Resilience Planning in California
California’s Water Resilience Portfolio Initiative is a multi-billion dollar effort that encourages different water utilities and irrigation districts to work together to build shared infrastructure to reduce the effects of droughts, but a number of questions remain regarding how best to structure these agreements.
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The Future of 5G+ Infrastructure Could Be Built Tile by Tile
Currently 5G+ technologies rely on large antenna arrays that are typically bulky and come only in very limited sizes, making them difficult to transport and expensive to customize. Researchers have developed a novel and flexible solution to address the problem. Their additively manufactured tile-based approach can construct on-demand, massively scalable arrays of 5G+‐enabled smart skins with the potential to enable intelligence on nearly any surface or object.
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Can Nuclear Generation Help Reduce European Reliance on Russian Gas?
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the International Energy Agency and the European Commission have come up with plans to rapidly reduce the European Union’s imports of Russian natural gas. While the International Energy Agency anticipates that EU nuclear generation could increase by 20 terawatt hours (TWh) (or 2.7 percent) in 2022, the European Commission only mentions nuclear as a potential source of hydrogen.
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How Ukraine Has Defended Itself Against Cyberattacks – Lessons for the U.S.
In 2014, as Russia launched a proxy war in Eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea, and in the years that followed, Russian hackers hammered Ukraine. The cyberattacks went so far as to knock out the power grid in parts of the country in 2015. Russian hackers stepped up their efforts against Ukraine in the run-up to the 2022 invasion, but with notably different results. Those differences hold lessons for U.S. national cyber defense.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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?
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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.
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More headlines
The long view
Preparing National Security Officials for the Challenges of AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of several rapidly emerging technologies that promise to disrupt not only multiple sectors of the U.S. economy but also the manner in which the U.S. government carries out its foundational responsibility to protect national security consistent with the rule of law and constitutional values. Steve Bunnell writes that “The United States’ national security apparatus is not known for nimbleness, nor is the law that governs it. When it comes to AI, the risk is not just that our generals will fight tomorrow’s war with yesterday’s strategy but also that the United States will lack the legal and policy guardrails that are essential to a lawful, accountable, and ethical protection of the nation’s security.”
Food Production Vulnerable to Cyberattacks
Wide-ranging use of smart technologies is raising global agricultural production but cyber experts warn this digital-age phenomenon could reap a crop of another kind – cybersecurity attacks.
Emerging Hydrogen Storage Technology to Increase Energy Resilience
With the rise in renewable energy as well as increasing uncertainty associated with outages due to power surges and extreme weather events, energy storage plays a key role in ensuring reliable power supply to critical infrastructure such as healthcare facilities, data centers, and telecommunications. New study assesses cost competitiveness of metal-organic framework materials to store hydrogen for large-scale backup power applications.
The "Rock-to-Metal Ratio" of Critical Minerals
A new metric to quantify the amount of waste rock generated by mining for minerals essential to 21st century society has been created by the U.S. Geological Survey and Apple.
Diminishing Snowmelt to Make Colorado, Utah, Wyoming Resemble the Arid Southwest
New research predicts that changes in mountain snowmelt will shift peak stream flows to much earlier in the year for the vast Colorado River Basin, altering reservoir management and irrigation across the entire region. As a result, upper basin in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming may more closely resemble the arid Southwest.
Challenges to Tidal Flats Pose Risks to 41M Americans Living in Coastal Counties
About 29 percent of the United States’ population live in coastline counties – more than 41 million are in Atlantic counties. This high population density poses a critical challenge to sustainable developments in coastal areas.