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EV Batteries: Chinese Dominance Raises Thorny Questions
Chinese firms currently dominate the electric vehicle battery supply chain — from mining and refining through to final assembly. This leaves Western automakers with little option but to rely on Chinese-made batteries.
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The Potential for Geologic Hydrogen for Next-Generation Energy
Hydrogen, you may recall from your school days, is a gas. It is considered the cleanest fuel, because burning it only produces heat and pure water. A previously overlooked, potential geologic source of energy could increase the renewability and lower the carbon footprint of the U.S. energy portfolio: natural hydrogen.
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SUPER Technology Manages Intelligent Building Blocks for a More Reliable Electric Grid
As the United States transitions to cleaner energy and more U.S. consumers adopt electric vehicles, the grid is facing new power flow demands. Researchers are tackling this challenge by creating a new architecture to modernize the grid from the bottom up, starting with consumers and expanding to the entire power distribution system.
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Governments Are Using Science Fiction to Predict Potential Threats
From high-tech fighting machines to supercomputers and killer robots, science fiction has a lot to say about war. You might be surprised to learn that some governments are now turning their attention to these fantastical stories as a way to think about possible futures and try and ward off any potential threats.
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Making Drones Suitable for Cities
Unmanned aerial vehicles will make their way into urban skies only if the safety of people below can be ensured.
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Detecting Manipulations in Microchips
Attackers have the ability not only to manipulate software, but also to tamper with the hardware. A team from Bochum is devising methods to detect such tampering.
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Investigators May Be Able to Use Household Dust as a Forensic Tool
A new study found it is possible to retrieve forensically relevant information from human DNA in household dust. After sampling indoor dust from 13 households, the researchers were able to detect DNA from household residents over 90% of the time, and DNA from non-occupants 50% of the time. The work could be a way to help investigators find leads in difficult cases.
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New Algorithm Keeps Drones from Colliding in Midair
Researchers create a trajectory-planning system that enables drones working together in the same airspace to always choose a safe path forward.
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Kites Aim to Tap Unused High-Altitude Wind Power
There is a growing interest in harvesting what are known as high-altitude winds. At a height of 200 meters (656 feet) and more, winds tend to blow stronger and more steadily than those closer to the ground. High-altitude winds remain a huge untapped source of renewable energy, but a race to the sky is well underway.
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Channeling NEXTGEN TV to Help Responders Answer the Call
A natural disaster strikes, vehicles collide on a snowy highway, a 5-alarm fire blazes through the night. For first responders, every second counts. DHS S&T is collaborating on a new effort to arm agencies with a digital alerting system that taps into NEXTGEN public TV broadcasting technologies to deliver emergency dispatches faster.
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Preventing Fires and Explosions
Lines in natural gas grids have to be maintained and serviced regularly. This entails using flares to vent the natural gas. With FlareSimulator, research scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF have developed an assistive tool that calculates the correct distance of flares to houses, trees and other nearby objects. This makes it easy to maintain minimum distances and prevent potential hazards and explosions.
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New Method Helps Locate Deposits of Critical Metals
The global shift to a carbon-free energy system is set to drive a huge increase in the demand for rare or limited earth minerals. This presents an urgent need to locate new sustainable sources of these elements. New technique could help locate new deposits of critical metals needed to enable the green-energy transition.
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An Early Warning System for Landslides Protects Sitka, Alaska
A hard rain was rattling against the rooftops of Sitka, Alaska, as day broke on August 18, 2015. Just before 10 a.m., a hillside gave way. A river of mud, rocks, and broken trees surged down the slope and crashed through the subdivision.
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Perfectly Secure Digital Communications
Researchers have achieved a breakthrough in secure communications by developing an algorithm that conceals sensitive information so effectively that it is impossible to detect that anything has been hidden.
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“Switchable” High Explosives Mitigate Risk of Accidental Detonation
New explosives materials ensure safe transport and storage. The “switchable” high explosives that won’t detonate unless activated by being filled with an inert fluid, such as water.
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More headlines
The long view
Autonomous Vehicle Technology Vulnerable to Road Object Spoofing and Vanishing Attacks
Researchers have demonstrated the potentially hazardous vulnerabilities associated with the technology called LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, many autonomous vehicles use to navigate streets, roads and highways. The researchers have shown how to use lasers to fool LiDAR into “seeing” objects that are not present and missing those that are – deficiencies that can cause unwarranted and unsafe braking or collisions.
Tantalizing Method to Study Cyberdeterrence
Tantalus is unlike most war games because it is experimental instead of experiential — the immersive game differs by overlapping scientific rigor and quantitative assessment methods with the experimental sciences, and experimental war gaming provides insightful data for real-world cyberattacks.
Prototype Self-Service Screening System Unveiled
TSA and DHS S&T unveiled a prototype checkpoint technology, the self-service screening system, at Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) in Las Vegas, NV. The aim is to provide a near self-sufficient passenger screening process while enabling passengers to directly receive on-person alarm information and allow for the passenger self-resolution of those alarms.
Falling Space Debris: How High Is the Risk I'll Get Hit?
An International Space Station battery fell back to Earth and, luckily, splashed down harmlessly in the Atlantic. Should we have worried? Space debris reenters our atmosphere every week.
Testing Cutting-Edge Counter-Drone Technology
Drones have many positive applications, bad actors can use them for nefarious purposes. Two recent field demonstrations brought government, academia, and industry together to evaluate innovative counter-unmanned aircraft systems.
Strengthening the Grid’s ‘Backbone’ with Hydropower
Argonne-led studies investigate how hydropower could help add more clean energy to the grid, how it generates value as grids add more renewable energy, and how liner technology can improve hydropower efficiency.
The Tech Apocalypse Panic is Driven by AI Boosters, Military Tacticians, and Movies
From popular films like a War Games or The Terminator to a U.S. State Department-commissioned report on the security risk of weaponized AI, there has been a tremendous amount of hand wringing and nervousness about how so-called artificial intelligence might end up destroying the world. There is one easy way to avoid a lot of this and prevent a self-inflicted doomsday: don’t give computers the capability to launch devastating weapons.
The Tech Apocalypse Panic is Driven by AI Boosters, Military Tacticians, and Movies
From popular films like a War Games or The Terminator to a U.S. State Department-commissioned report on the security risk of weaponized AI, there has been a tremendous amount of hand wringing and nervousness about how so-called artificial intelligence might end up destroying the world. There is one easy way to avoid a lot of this and prevent a self-inflicted doomsday: don’t give computers the capability to launch devastating weapons.