• Better Batteries for a Better Future

    A team of scientists from the United States, Canada and Germany are tackling one of the largest challenges of our generation — reliable energy storage.

  • Revised Guidelines for Digital Identification in Federal Systems

    NIST’s draft publication features updates intended to help fight online crime, preserve privacy and promote equity and usability.

  • Flameproofing Lithium-Ion Batteries with Salt

    Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries power phones, laptops, other personal electronics and electric cars, and are even used to store energy generated by solar panels. But if the temperature of these batteries rises too high, they stop working and can catch fire. A polymer-based electrolyte makes for batteries that keep working – and don’t catch fire – when heated to over 140 degrees F.

  • Flash Droughts Becoming Big Concern for Farmers, Water Utilities

    Many people are familiar with flash floods – torrents that develop quickly after heavy rainfall. But there’s also such a thing as a flash drought, and these sudden, extreme dry spells are becoming a big concern for farmers and water utilities.

  • Washington’s Semiconductor Sanctions Won’t Slow China’s Military Build-Up

    Advanced semiconductors underpin everything from autonomous vehicles to hypersonic weapon systems. Chips are imperative to the defense industry and technologies of the future. By targeting this critical input, the Biden administration aims to freeze China’s semiconductor suite at 2022 levels and impede its military development. Despite the bleak short-term outlook, it is wrong to assume that US controls will hobble China for years.

  • The Right Time for Chip Export Controls

    On Oct. 7, the U.S.-China tech competition heated up dramatically when the Biden administration imposed wide-ranging semiconductor-related export controls on China. Martijn Rasser and Kevin Wolf write that “There is no crystal ball that can divine the outcome, given how unprecedented and wide ranging these actions are.” They add: “The Biden administration made the right call by acting now, particularly if it is successful at getting allied cooperation on the essence of the rules soon.”

  • Why Nuclear Fusion Is So Exciting

    The Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California last week achieved fusion with a net energy gain. Harvard scientist Adam Cohen breaks down breakthrough that might prove major turning point in clean energy efforts — but not any time soon.

  • Software Tracking Pandemics

    DHS has awarded $5 million to create tools to increase the nation’s level of preparedness for biological threats — including an infection rate tracking program for COVID-19 developed by a Sandia National Laboratories team in 2020.

  • Ukraine War: Drones Are Transforming the Conflict, Bringing Russia on to the Frontline

    Russia and Ukraine have deployed a wide range of military and commercial drones since the early days of the war. But their increasingly frequent – and effective – deployment indicates a potential new stage of escalation with important consequences for Ukraine and its western backers.

  • How Doctrine and Delineation Can Help Defeat Drones

    As Iranian-made drones continue to spread destruction across Ukraine, observers have been reminded once again of the dangers unmanned aerial systems pose. Nicholas Paul Pacheco writes that the United States, to its credit, has made significant progress in bolstering its capabilities to combat this threat, particularly through the investment of the Pentagon and the defense industrial base in counter-drone research and development. But “there remain two areas that have not been properly tackled: base defense and warfighter-policymaker synergy,” he writes.

  • Can Nuclear Fusion Help Fuel the World?

    The US Department of Energy is expected to make an important announcement Tuesday on the generation of energy using nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion reaction has a higher energy potential than all other energy sources we know. It can release nearly 4 million times more energy than chemical reactions like burning coal, oil or gas, and four times more than nuclear fission. Nuclear fission is the process currently used in all nuclear power plants around the world.

  • Smart AI Tools Could Protect Social Media Users’ Privacy

    Digital assistants could help prevent users from unknowingly revealing their views on social, political and religious issues by fighting AI with AI, researchers say.

  • New ‘Faraday Cage’ Research Facility to Help Combat Digital Crime

    University of Huddersfield installing a new facility named the ‘Faraday Cage’ which will help speed-up the development and testing of new digital forensic processes to help law enforcement meet the huge growth rate in digital crime.

  • Swiss “Water Battery” Boosts Europe's Energy Storage Plans

    A Swiss company has built what is being called a giant water battery deep under the Alps that provides an energy storage capacity equivalent to 400,000 electric car batteries. It could be a game changer.

  • Mathematics Works in Serendipitous Ways

    In the digital era and moving towards quantum computing, protecting data against hack attacks is one of our biggest challenges. Mathematical theorem used to crack U.S. government encryption algorithm.