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Meet the Maggot: How This Flesh-Loving, Butt-Breathing Marvel Helps Us Solve Murders
Not all superheroes wear capes – some live in rubbish bins, garbage dumps and on dead bodies. Maggots, the humble little legless larvae, are actually nature’s antibacterial soldiers. Their ability to survive and thrive in decomposing matter is making them our new secret weapon in forensic entomology – the science of using insects to solve crimes.
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What Are the Geopolitical Risks of Manipulating the Climate?
It would only take one country—watching its crops shrivel or its water run dry—deciding to take a chance to set in motion a global geoengineering climate experiment, and technologies which could, for example, block the sun’s rays or siphon huge amounts of carbon from the air are not that far out of reach. The effects could get out of hand quickly. Yet the international community has not established the kinds of guardrails you might expect for potentially world-changing technologies. As a result, no single governing body is overseeing geoengineering efforts on a global scale.
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The Use of Earthquake Science for Assessing Risks to Gas Pipelines
New study highlights the need to continue efforts to systematically quantify nationwide earthquake risk to gas pipelines in the United States, which manages the largest gas pipeline network in the world.
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Simulation Models of Potential Asteroid Collisions
An asteroid impact can be enough to ruin anyone’s day, but several small factors can make the difference between an out-of-this-world story and total annihilation.
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“In Defense of Water” Program Aims to Improve Water Security
A new DOD-funded project — “In Defense of Water” – aims to help provide clean drinking water and protect the environment. The project will improve water security and efficiency at military and civilian installations to improve readiness and reduce operational impacts due to water shortages and employ innovative water management technologies.
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Computer Attacks with Laser Light
Computer systems that are physically isolated from the outside world (air-gapped) can still be attacked. This is demonstrated by IT security experts in the LaserShark project. The researchers demonstrate hidden communication into air-gapped computer systems: Data transmitted to light-emitting diodes of regular office devices.
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UN Fails to Agree on “Killer Robot” Ban While Nations Pour Billions into Autonomous Weapons Research
Autonomous weapon systems – commonly known as killer robots – may have killed human beings for the first time ever last year, according to a recent UN Security Council report on the Libyan civil war. History could well identify this as the starting point of the next major arms race, one that has the potential to be humanity’s final one.
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Identifying Fake Voice Recordings
Artificial intelligence can imitate people’s voices. Scammers are already taking advantage of this on the phone. A team of researchers is working on a solution.
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Selective Separation Could Help Alleviate Shortage of Critical Metals
A new way of processing rare-earth and other key metals to separate them from other materials could reduce environmental impact and cost.
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Why China’s Advancements in Quantum Technology Worry Others
Quantum refers to a type of computing that lets high-powered machines make calculations that are too complex for ordinary devices. China’s advances in quantum computing will give a new advantage to its armed forces, already the world’s third strongest, analysts say.
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Gunfire or Plastic Bag Popping? Trained Computer Can Tell the Difference
There have been 296 mass shootings in the United States this year, and 2021 is on pace to be America’s deadliest year of gun violence in the last two decades. Discerning between a dangerous audio event like a gun firing and a non-life-threatening event, such as a plastic bag bursting, can mean the difference between life and death. Engineering researchers develop gunshot detection algorithm and classification model to discern similar sounds.
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Consortium to Combat Targeted Crowd Attacks
Ten universities formed a consortium to combat terrorist and criminal attacks on soft targets such as schools, hospitals, shopping malls and sports stadiums. “The challenges of keeping people safe in soft targets and crowded spaces gets more complicated every day,” said one expert.
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Aviation Self-Screening Concept and Prototype
DHS S&T has awarded $2.5 million to Vanderlande Industries to develop a passenger self-screening concept design and prototype that streamlines TSA PreCheck operations.
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Fuzzy Nanoparticles: New Way to Design Tougher Ballistic Materials
Researchers have discovered a new method to improve the toughness of materials that could lead to stronger versions of body armor, bulletproof glass and other ballistic equipment.
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New Cyber Protections against Stealthy “Logic Bombs”
Cybersecurity researchers proposed new ways to protect 3D printed objects such as drones, prostheses, and medical devices from stealthy “logic bombs.”
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The long view
Build-a-Satellite Program Could Fast Track National Security Space Missions
Satellites equipped with remote sensing technology execute many critical national security missions, from detecting explosions to tracking sea ice, but until now it could take a team years to move from a concept to a deployable space system. High-performance computing enables custom satellite design and analysis in weeks.
Boosting Efforts to Predict Harmful Solar Weather Events
When big blasts of energy from the sun envelop the Earth, they can very strong: a 2015 event so weakened Earth’s protective magnetic field that it penetrated to the atmosphere, posing a threat to everything from circling space station astronauts to delicate electronics and communication systems.
Developing Novel Hybrid Reef-Mimicking Structures
Despite previous efforts to implement storm mitigation solutions — including concrete breakwaters — damage due to storm surge and flooding continues to devastate coastal areas around the world. In response to these threats, DARPA has launched the Reefense program to develop self-healing, hybrid biological, and engineered reef-mimicking structures to protect civilian and DoD infrastructure, personnel by mitigating damage related to coastal flooding, erosion and storm surge.
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.
Hack Post-Quantum Cryptography Now So That Bad Actors Don’t Do It Later
In February, the cryptography community was stunned when a researcher claimed that an algorithm that might become a cornerstone of the next generation of internet encryption can be cracked mathematically using a single laptop. Edward Parker and Michael Vermeer write that this finding may have averted a massive cybersecurity vulnerability, but it also raises concerns that new encryption methods for securing internet traffic contain other flaws that have not yet been detected.
Reliance on Dual-Use Technology is a Trap
The current approach to promoting the use of emerging technology by the Pentagon is for emerging technology companies to work with the Department of Defense is to build commercial applications first and only then move into defense. But the notion of developing “technologies for the commercial market first and only then slap some green paint on them so that they can begin exploring the U.S. defense market” is untenable, Jake Chapman writes. “A better solution would enable entrepreneurs to focus on solving defense challenges by making the Department of Defense a better customer.”
A Retrospective Post-Quantum Policy Problem
In May 2022, a White House memorandum warned that a quantum computer of sufficient size and sophistication will be capable of breaking much of the public-key cryptography used on digital systems across the United States and around the world. The various steps taken by the administration, and proposed by lawmakers, to deal with the problem are all forward-looking. “However, despite these efforts, policymakers have given little or no attention to what could be called a retrospectivepost-quantum problem,” Herb Lin writes. “Policymakers would be wise to consider the very real possibility that in a PQC[post-quantum computing] world, messages they once believed would be kept secret could in fact be made public.”
A Retrospective Post-Quantum Policy Problem
In May 2022, a White House memorandum warned that a quantum computer of sufficient size and sophistication will be capable of breaking much of the public-key cryptography used on digital systems across the United States and around the world. The various steps taken by the administration, and proposed by lawmakers, to deal with the problem are all forward-looking. “However, despite these efforts, policymakers have given little or no attention to what could be called a retrospectivepost-quantum problem,” Herb Lin writes. “Policymakers would be wise to consider the very real possibility that in a PQC[post-quantum computing] world, messages they once believed would be kept secret could in fact be made public.”