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Review: IT in Health Care Has Produced Modest Changes — So Far
Large study of existing research shows incremental improvement in patient outcomes and productivity, without big employment changes.
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New Imaging Method Reveals Concealed Objects
Imaging scenes that lie outside an observer’s direct line of sight could greatly enhance search and rescue missions, such as finding a lost child in an abandoned factory, as well as military and police surveillance operations, such as exposing a hidden terrorist or enemy stronghold. Using submillimeter radiation naturally emitted by objects and people, researchers see around corners.
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Quantum-Inspired Approach Allows Lidar to Be used for Facial Recognition
Quantum-inspired technique can be used to perform lidar imaging with a much higher depth resolution than is possible with conventional approaches. Lidar, which uses laser pulses to acquire 3D information about a scene or object, is usually best suited for imaging large objects such as topographical features or built structures due to its limited depth resolution. By capturing more details, new approach could make lidar useful for facial recognition.
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Warning System for Dangerous Heavy Rain and Flash Floods
In recent years, there have been repeated flash floods in Germany, some with devastating effects, which have been triggered by localized heavy rainfall. New project aims to provide prototypical warnings at different spatial scales, from the whole of Germany to individual federal states and down to the municipal level.
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New Computing Security Architecture Protects Sensitive Private Data
Protecting sensitive information on the internet has become an essential feature for computing architectures. Applications that process such data must trust the system software they rely on, such as operating systems and hypervisors, but such system software is complex and often has vulnerabilities that can risk data confidentiality and integrity.
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Safer Web Surfing with a New Method for Detecting Malicious Code Patterns
With the ever-increasing importance of the Internet in our lives, there are growing attempts to exploit software vulnerabilities in our PCs for personal benefit. One way to do so is by infecting the victim’s PC with a malicious code injected through a website. A fast and reliable detection approach can analyze distribution patterns of malicious codes in websites.
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Pegasus Spyware Maker NSO Is Conducting a Lobbying Campaign to Get Off U.S. Blacklist
The cybersecurity firm has invested heavily in top lobbyists and law firms in an effort to lift restrictions on doing business in America. NSO is hoping the Israeli prime minister will raise the issue with Joe Biden when the two meet this week.
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Protecting Computer Vision from Adversarial Attacks
Advances in computer vision and machine learning have made it possible for a wide range of technologies to perform sophisticated tasks with little or no human supervision — from autonomous drones and self-driving cars to medical imaging and product manufacturing. Engineers are developing methods to keep these autonomous machines and devices from being hacked.
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Hurricane-Resilient Wind Turbines -- Inspired by Palm Trees
Today’s offshore wind turbines can tower more than 490 feet above ground, their spinning blades churning out up to 8 megawatts (MW) each—about enough to power 4,000 homes in the U.S. But with their increasing size comes challenges. To make those turbines more hurricane-resilient, scientists are taking a cue from nature.
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The Chinese Military’s Access to AI Chips
The Chinese military has made rapid progress in artificial intelligence. This progress largely depends on continued access to high-end semiconductors designed by American companies and produced in Taiwan and South Korea. The aggressive moves by the Trump and Biden administrations to limit technology exports to the Chinese military notwithstanding, China continues to order large quantities of American-designed advanced semiconductors from manufacturers in Taiwan and South Korea.
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Collapsed Bridge Helps Inform Future Flood-Resistant Designs
In 2018, an unprecedented flooding collapsed the Misasa Railroad Bridge, some nine miles inland from Japan’s western coast. Such infrastructure failures will continue to increase as weather events become more extreme. But we can learn optimal design needs from the catastrophic problem of failed structures.
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NIST Announces First Four Quantum-Resistant Cryptographic Algorithms
NIST has chosen the first group of encryption tools that are designed to withstand the assault of a future quantum computer, which could potentially crack the security used to protect privacy in the digital systems we rely on every day — such as online banking and email software.
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Exploring Explosives for Expanding Geothermal Energy
Geothermal energy has a lot of promise as a renewable energy source that is not dependent on the sun shining or the wind blowing, but it has some challenges to wide adoption. Sandia researchers test explosives and propellants to create geothermal power sites.
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Winners Announced in DHS $195K Challenge to Counter Extreme Temperatures
DHS announced the winners of the Cooling Solutions Challenge prize competition. The winners were each awarded funding, which totaled $195,000, for their innovative and creative ideas that sought climate-friendly cooling solutions to protect people in extreme heat conditions.
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How Does the U.S. Power Grid Work?
Responsible for powering the country and its economy, the U.S. energy grid has come under increasing strain due to climate change, and the threat of cyberattacks looms. The U.S. electric grid brings power to millions of homes and businesses via a vast network of transmission and distribution lines. Experts say the grid is increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather events, such as the February 2021 Texas winter storms, and cyberattacks. President Biden has proposed overhauling the grid, but his plans could face legal and political hurdles.
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More headlines
The long view
Great Leap Nowhere: The Challenges of China’s Semiconductor Industry
China is struggling in the battle for advanced semiconductor technology. With President Joe Biden’s most recent round of export controls on semiconductors, China is now facing an increasingly urgent challenge as it seeks to ramp up its domestic innovative capacity for high-end chips. These difficulties and challenges notwithstanding, Elliot Ji writes, “U.S. policymakers should be keenly aware that China’s relative success with creative adaptation means that it can boost certain sectors of the chip industry by exploiting leaky export controls and engaging in cyber espionage.”
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.”
Making Nuclear Energy More Competitive
Through research on high burnup fuels and improving the design of nuclear power plants, NSE doctoral student Assil Halimi is adopting a dual approach to addressing some of the industry’s toughest challenges.
Taiwan’s High-End Semiconductors: Supply Chain Interdependence and Geopolitical Vulnerability
What are the geopolitical implications of Taiwan’s dominance in global semiconductor production? How would the peaceful annexation or outright invasion of Taiwan by China affect the United States, its allies and partners, and the global economy? What are the United States’ options for mitigating or reversing the unfavorable effects of either unification scenario?