• Small Hydroelectric Plants Could Provide Emergency Power During Outages

    Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is seeking a hydropower utility to collaborate on a case study, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO), to understand how small hydroelectric plants operating at 10 megawatts or less can be upgraded to provide emergency power to critical loads (e.g., hospitals and emergency service providers) during outages.

  • History Says Tariffs Rarely Work, but Biden’s 100% Tariffs on Chinese EVs Could Defy the Trend

    Earlier this month, President Biden announced a hike in tariffs on a variety of Chinese imports, including a 100% tariff that would significantly increase the price of Chinese-made electric vehicles. Tariffs have a troubled history, but Biden’s move might defy historical precedent and succeed where other tariffs have failed. The Biden tariffs can succeed in giving the U.S. EV industry room to grow, and encourage similar protective actions elsewhere, reinforcing the global shift toward securing supply chains and promoting domestic manufacturing.

  • Beyond Watermarks: Content Integrity Through Tiered Defense

    Watermarking is often discussed as a solution to the problems posed by AI-generated content. However, watermarking is inadequate without other methods of detecting and sorting out AI-generated content.

  • Elaine Liu: Charging Ahead

    The U.S. Department of Energy reports that the number of public and private EV charging ports nearly doubled in the past three years, and many more are in the works. Users expect to plug in at their convenience, charge up, and drive away. But what if the grid can’t handle it? An MIT senior calculates how renewables and EVs impact the grid.

  • Solar Geoengineering to Cool the Planet: Is It Worth the Risks?

    There is no international, national or state framework that currently governs geoengineering. As a result, one worrisome future scenario is that climate impacts in a particularly vulnerable country will be so severe that it resorts to deploying stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI, also called solar radiation management or SRM) on its own before the world is ready for it. This could cause political instability or provoke retribution from other countries that suffer its effects.

  • U.S.-China Trade War: Why Joe Biden Has Raised the Stakes

    In a move to safeguard domestic industries and address unfair trade practices, the US president has quadrupled tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and raised levies on other green tech.

  • Making Batteries Takes Lots of Lithium: Almost Half of It Could Come from Pennsylvania Wastewater

    Most batteries used in technology like smartwatches and electric cars are made with lithium that travels across the world before even getting to manufacturers. But what if nearly half of the lithium used in the U.S. could come from Pennsylvania wastewater?

  • Investigation: How Russia's Warplanes Get Their 'Brain Power' From the West, Despite Sanctions

    The sanctions Western countries have imposed on Russia have many vulnerabilities –a recurring complaint for Kyiv as, handicapped by a deficit of weapons and ammunition, it watches Russian forces advance, hammering soldiers, civilians, and vital infrastructure.

  • Tech Diplomacy: What It Is, and Why It’s Important

    We need to get used to a new concept in international security: tech diplomacy. It means technological collaboration across sectors and between countries, but the simplicity of the idea shouldn’t disguise its importance.

  • AI May Be to Blame for Our Failure to Make Contact with Alien Civilizations

    Could AI be the universe’s “great filter” – a threshold so hard to overcome that it prevents most life from evolving into space-faring civilizations? The great filter hypothesis is ultimately a proposed solution to the Fermi Paradox: why, in a universe vast and ancient enough to host billions of potentially habitable planets, we have not detected any signs of alien civilizations. The hypothesis suggests there are insurmountable hurdles in the evolutionary timeline of civilizations that prevent them from developing into space-faring entities.

  • Seeing Behind the Mask

    There is a need for face recognition to be able to “see behind the mask” for security and safety. Researchers discusses the potential of new software which will allow facial recognition to work despite the mask you use.

  • Knocking Cloud Security Off Its Game

    Public cloud services employ special security technologies. Computer scientists at ETH Zurich have now discovered a gap in the latest security mechanisms used by AMD and Intel chips. This affects major cloud providers.

  • Beware of AI-based Deception Detection, Warns Scientific Community

    Artificial intelligence may soon help to identify lies and deception. If only it were as easy as with Pinocchio: Researchers warn against premature use.

  • What Is the CHIPS Act?

    Extraordinary U.S. government incentives are proving popular with many large chipmakers, but it is too early to tell how much of the semiconductor industry can be lured back to the United States. 

  • Why Japan Is Investing in Semiconductors Once More

    Japan was once the world’s leading chip manufacturer. Now, concerns over supply chains and geopolitical tensions have prompted the government to provide funding for foreign firms and domestic manufacturers.