Science Alert March 16, 2020 In 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius explored whether Earth’s temperatures were influenced by the presence of heat-absorbing gases in the atmosphere. He calculated that if carbon dioxide concentrations doubled, global temperatures would rise by 5°C – even more at the poles. According to a team of researchers in Australia the world is on track to fulfilling Arrhenius’ prediction. If we continue the current trajectory, Earth will warm up to 4.8°C above pre-industrial times by 2100. They examine four fronts to battle the climate change: Plant a lot more trees, Turn carbon dioxide into rock, Make […]
Tag Archives: National security
DARPA Races To Create a “Firebreak” Treatment for the Coronavirus
IEEE Spectrum March 5, 2020 When DARPA launched its Pandemic Preparedness Platform (P3) program two years ago, the pandemic was theoretical. The P3 program’s plan was to start with a new pathogen and to “develop technology to deliver medical countermeasures in under 60 days. The participating teams have proven they can meet this ambitious timeline in previous trials using the influenza and Zika viruses. The DAPRA approach called for employing antibodies, the proteins that our bodies naturally use to fight infectious diseases, which remain in our bodies after an infection. They have built the tools that enable them to screen […]
Super lightweight foam uses sunlight to harvest water from evaporation
Nanowerk March 10, 2020 Researchers in Italy have developed a hydrophilic and self-floating photothermal foam that can generate potable water from seawater and atmospheric moisture via solar-driven evaporation at its interface. Specifically, the foam shows an excellent solar-evaporation rate of 1.89 kg m–2 h–1 with a solar-to-vapor conversion efficiency of 92.7% under 1-Sun illumination. The collected water is suitable for potable use. The foam can be repeatedly used in multiple hydration–dehydration cycles, consisting of moisture absorption or water collection, followed by solar-driven evaporation; in each cycle, 1 g of the foam can harvest 250–1770 mg of water. The lightweight and […]
Hackers could shut down satellites–or turn them into weapons
Phys.org February 12, 2020 According to researchers at the University of Denver the lack of cybersecurity standards and regulations for commercial satellites, in the U.S. and internationally, leaves them highly vulnerable to cyberattacks. If hackers took control of the satellites, they could shut them down, deny access to their services, jam or spoof the signals from satellites, creating havoc for critical infrastructure. If hackers took control of steerable satellites, they could alter the satellites’ orbits and crash them into other satellites. Complex supply chains and layers of stakeholders, and multiple parties involved in their management means it is often not […]
Joint Call to Action on Pandemic Preparedness and Response: 7 Recommendations for Readiness
Global Biodefense January 20, 2020 The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, World Economic Forum and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have issued 7 recommendations in a joint call for action for new public-private cooperation to improve Pandemic Preparedness and Response. Recommendations have been reviewed, built upon and agreed to since first introduced at the Event 201 pandemic exercise conducted in October 2019 that featured a fictional coronavirus igniting a major pandemic and 15 global corporate and health stakeholders from key industries responding. The next severe pandemic will not only cause great illness and loss of life but could also […]
Can solar geoengineering mitigate both climate change and income inequality?
Science Daily January 13, 2020 An international team of researchers (University of California, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of California, Cornell University, Switzerland, Canada) applied macroeconomic impact models and combined historical evidence with climate simulations of mean annual temperature and precipitation. They found that the impacts of climate changes on global GDP-per-capita by the end of the century are temperature-driven, highly dispersed, and model dependent. Across all model specifications, however, income inequality between countries is lower with solar geoengineering. They found that precipitation has little to no effect on GDP growth in our results, but there is a relationship for […]
Foreign Interference in NIH Research: Policy Implications
Global Biodefense January 12, 2020 An NIH investigation, conducted in partnership with FBI uncovered numerous potential violations of laws and policies (some confirmed, others subject to ongoing investigation), including: Scientists involved in the NIH peer review process sharing details of research proposals with foreign entities; Failure of scientists to disclose foreign ties or funding from foreign governments; and Research fraud, involving scientists signing employment contracts and earning salary from both U.S. and foreign institutions for concurrent positions. The focus of current concern was China—but this issue is not unique to China. NIH highlighted the Thousand Talents recruitment program, which encourages […]
Response to fire impacts water levels 40 years into future
Science Daily January 10, 2020 Few studies have investigated the longer‐term effects of either wildfire or post‐fire land management on catchment hydrology. A team of researchers in the US (UC Santa Barbara, Oregon State University, industry) analyzed ten years of pre‐fire data, along with post‐fire data from 1 to 7 and 35 to 41 years after wildfire burned three experimental catchments in the Entiat Experimental Forest (EEF) in the Pacific Northwest. They quantified and compared the short‐ and longer‐term effects of both wildfire and post‐fire forest management treatments on annual discharge, peak flows, low flows, and evapotranspiration (AET). They found increases […]
Ending the Cycle of Crisis and Complacency in U.S. Global Health Security
CSIS November 2019 According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report there is recognition that increasing levels of global disorder and conflict across the world are resulting in destruction of public health infrastructure and capacity, reduced access to critical services for vulnerable populations, and heightened risk of sudden outbreaks. These health threats undermine the economic and political security of nations. While formidable obstacles remain, experts are convinced there is a ripeness to health security, an opportunity to press for strengthening America’s policy approaches in a way that can drive forward overall U.S. global health engagement, bring about new […]
Outbreak science: Infectious disease research leads to outbreak predictions
Science Daily January 8, 2020 An international team of researchers (Finland, USA – Georgetown University, Canada) used information from the Global Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology Network (GIDEON) data resource to develop a simple approach to accurately predict disease outbreaks by combining novel statistical techniques and a large dataset on pathogen biogeography (spatial distribution of pathogens across the globe). The approach takes pairwise dissimilarities between countries’ pathogen communities and pathogens’ geographical distributions and uses these to predict country–pathogen associations. They compare the success rates of their model for predicting pathogen outbreak, emergence and re-emergence potential as a function of time…read more. […]