• Giving New Life to Old Concrete Structures Through “Vascularization”

    Concrete is a ubiquitous building material, and it is often cited as the most consumed commodity on Earth, second only to potable water. As this inherited concrete infrastructure continues to age, maintaining and repairing concrete is of increasing strategic importance to both defense and civilian infrastructure. DARPA’s BRACE program aims to revitalize legacy DoD infrastructure to extend its serviceability.

  • Tiny, Cheap Solution for Quantum-Secure Encryption

    A new kind of encryption could secure data in the age of quantum computers, ensuring medical records are destroyed after being read by a doctor, or to enforce time limits on software licenses. They can secure voting records or validate NFTs or just make sure no one is reading your email. Microchips with tiny clocks may hold key to future of computing security.

  • Protecting Picture Passwords Using Adjustable Distortion

    Researchers developed a new system for graphical authentication online using key images with adjustable levels of distortion to thwart over-the-shoulder and screen-capture snooping, which may make online sites more secure.

  • Pivotal Battery Discovery Could Benefit Transportation, the Grid

    Researchers uncover new avenue for overcoming the performance decline that occurs with repeated charge-discharge cycling in the cathodes of next generation batteries.

  • Predicting, Managing EV Charging Growth to Keep Electricity Grids Reliable, Affordable

    With a growing fleet of EVs on the road, grid planners depend on accurate estimates of charging patterns to calculate electricity demand. A team of researchers at Stanford University assembled a scalable probabilistic model for charging demand that can be applied to a flexible array of populations and account for a wide range of factors.

  • Targeted demand response reduces price volatility of electric grid

    To reduce the energy load during supply constraints on the Texas power grid, it is not necessary to reduce the energy load in high population centers such as Houston and Dallas. Instead, when supply is strained, focusing on a few strategic locations across the state outside of those high-population areas is much more cost-effective and can have a greater impact on the price volatility of the grid.

  • Green Rare-Earth Recycling Goes Commercial

    Rare earths are essential ingredients in the magnets that power many technologies people rely on today, such as cell phones, computers, electric vehicles, and wind turbines. Researchers have  developed a novel way to extract rare earth elements (rare earths) from the high-powered magnets in electronic waste (e-waste).

  • Ultrafast Devices to Protecting the Grid from EMPs

    Scientists from Sandia National Laboratories have announced a tiny, electronic device that can shunt excess electricity within a few billionths of a second while operating at a record-breaking 6,400 volts — a significant step towards protecting the nation’s electric grid from an electromagnetic pulse.

  • Drone Warfare Is Increasingly Sophisticated, Deadly

    Policymakers, legislators and military strategists must prepare for the consequences of other countries and actors such as the Islamic State using unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, in the Ukraine-Russia conflict and others.

  • Food Crisis Due to Ukraine War Calls for Demand-Side Action

    The global food system is impacted by the war in Ukraine, adding to the direct humanitarian and security crisis caused by the Russian aggression. Ukraine and Russia are major producers of grains and fertilizers. Experts say that focusing on short-term supply-side solutions is not the way to go. Rather, changes to the demand side of the global food system can lead to both a more resilient and more sustainable global food system.

  • Artificial Intelligence’s Promise: Discovering New Rare-Earth Compounds

    Rare earth elements have a wide range of uses including clean energy technologies, energy storage, permanent magnets, defense technology, and much more. Artificial intelligence advances how scientists explore materials, and researchers have developed an AI-based framework for experimenting with compounds and understanding chemical instabilities.

  • Setting Carbon Management in Stone

    Keeping global temperatures within limits deemed safe by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change means doing more than slashing carbon emissions. It means reversing them. And when it comes to carbon storage, some MIT scientists think the best solution is to find the fastest way to turn carbon into rock.

  • Warning: Objects in Driverless Car Sensors May Be Closer Than They Appear

    Researchers have demonstrated the first attack strategy that can fool industry-standard autonomous vehicle sensors into believing nearby objects are closer (or further) than they appear without being detected.

  • As Sea Levels Rise, Coastal Megacities Will Need More Than Flood Barriers

    Sea level rise is expected to worsen in the next few decades, especially for many of the world’s largest cities in lower and middle income countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. These cities are already improving their infrastructure. But most of the focus remains on big engineering solutions (like flood walls and embankments) rather than a more holistic plans.

  • CO2 Could Be Stored Below Ocean Floor

    Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing humanity. To combat its potentially catastrophic effects, scientists are searching for new technologies that could help the world reach carbon neutrality. One potential solution that is drawing growing attention is to capture and store carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the form of hydrates under ocean floor sediments.