• Avalanche Detection Using Passive Radar

    In winter, avalanches pose the biggest danger in mountains. Avalanche monitoring is therefore of critical importance to ensure the safety of people and infrastructure.

  • South Korea Has Acted Decisively on DeepSeek. Other Countries Must Stop Hesitating

    South Korea has suspended new downloads of DeepSeek, and it was right to do so. Chinese tech firms operate under the shadow of state influence, misusing data for surveillance and geopolitical advantage. Any country that values its data and sovereignty must watch this national security threat and take note of South Korea’s response.

  • The Push to Restore Semiconductor Manufacturing Faces a Labor Crisis − Can the U.S. Train Enough Workers in Time?

    Semiconductors power nearly every aspect of modern life.The U.S. depends heavily on foreign countries – including China, a geopolitical rival – to manufacture semiconductors. This isn’t just an economic concern; it’s widely recognized as a national security risk. There is a bipartisan support to expanding domestic chip manufacturingby building new chip plants, but a major challenge remains: Who will operate them?

  • Making Airfield Assessments Automatic, Remote, and Safe

    U.S. Air Force engineer and PhD student Randall Pietersen is using AI and next-generation imaging technology to detect pavement damage and unexploded munitions.

  • Security Veins: Advanced Biometric Authentication Through AI and Infrared

    Hyperspectral imaging and AI can identify individuals using blood vessels in palms.

  • New AI Defense Method Shields Models from Adversarial Attacks

    Neural networks, a type of artificial intelligence modeled on the connectivity of the human brain, are driving critical breakthroughs across a wide range of scientific domains. But these models face significant threat from adversarial attacks, which can derail predictions and produce incorrect information.

  • Research Drives Innovation in Gen-IV Reactor Safety and Efficiency

    All U.S. nuclear reactors, which currently provide more than half of the nation’s carbon-free power, are first- or second-generation light water reactors. This means they use water as both a coolant and neutron moderator to control the nuclear reaction and produce useful electricity. Ut researchers pursue all kinds of reactor designs, and nuclear engineers at Argonne frame the future of nuclear design.

  • U.S. Cuts to Science and Technology Could Fast-Track China’s Tech Dominance

    Is the United States now trying to lose the technology race with China? It certainly seems to be. The race is tight, and now the Trump administration is slashing funding for the three national institutions that have underpinned science and technology (S&T) and what advantage the US still has.

  • B61-12 System Production Ends, Sustainment Begins

    A nuclear weapon milestone: in December, Sandia Lab has completed the last production unit of the B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb.

  • New Technology Will Help Satellites Avoid Collisions in Space

    Space is becoming more crowded every day, with over 11,000 active satellites and nearly 40,000 pieces of debris in low Earth orbit. Postage stamp-sized “license plates” can help track and protect satellites in low Earth orbit.

  • 3 Questions: Exploring the Limits of Carbon Sequestration

    Elevated CO2 levels can lead to a phenomenon known as the CO2 fertilization effect, where plants grow more and absorb greater amounts of carbon, providing a cooling effect. While this effect has the potential to be a natural climate change mitigator, the extent of how much carbon plants can continue to absorb remains uncertain. MIT assistant professor César Terrer discusses pioneering volcano research to track carbon dynamics in tropical forests.

  • Exploring the New Nuclear Energy Landscape

    In the last few years, the U.S. has seen a resurgence of interest in nuclear energy and its potential for helping meet the nation’s growing demands for clean electricity and energy security. Meanwhile, nuclear energy technologies themselves have advanced, opening up new possibilities for their use.

  • How Progress Happens

    On Feb. 7, the National Institutes of Health issued a notice, effective Feb. 10, to cap reimbursements for indirect costs (IDC) associated with its grants. The world’s largest public funder of biomedical research, the NIH supports investigations into, among other things, efforts to fight cancer, control infectious disease, understand neurodegenerative disorders, and improve mental health. Harvard’s vice provost for research details crucial role of NIH support in science and medicine.

  • Can Voice-to-Text AI Help Scientists Predict Earthquakes?

    By using automatic speech recognition designed to encode waveforms for translation, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory were able to modify this voice-to-text AI to correctly predict the timing of a slip during a repeating collapse sequence producing approximately magnitude-5 earthquakes at the Kīlauea volcano on Hawai’i.

  • Spyware Is Spreading Far Beyond Its National-Security Role

    Spyware is increasingly exploited by criminals or used to suppress civil liberties, and this proliferation is in part due to weak regulation.