100373280
submission
meckdevil writes:
Joanne Chory, director of the Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences and a Breakthrough Prize recipient, has created an initiative called “Harnessing Plants for the Future” to develop a super plant that will both provide food and store carbon dioxide in its roots. A “super chickpea plant” now in development could remove huge amounts of excess atmospheric carbon dioxide and fix it in the soil, greatly diminishing the impacts of climate change (not to mention producing large amounts of tasty hummus). But fear of anti-GMO activists has so far deterred her from using the Crispr gene-editing tool to speed work on the plant.
96572189
submission
Lasrick writes:
A former Army Ranger—who happens to have led the team that established Defense Department policy on autonomous weapons—explains in an interview with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists just what these weapons are good for, what they’re bad at, and why banning them is going to be a very difficult challenge.
96251887
submission
Lasrick writes:
In 2017, the cyber threat finally began to seem real to the general public. Advances in biotech in 2017 could lead to the deliberate spread of disease & a host of other dangers. And then there were the leaps forward made in AI. Here's a roundup of coverage from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on advances in emerging technological threats that were made in the last year.
96125905
submission
Dog of the South writes:
When the Pentagon--famous for its painful procurement process and its penchant for producing tech systems that are obsolete before they're fielded--decided to develop and deploy artificial intelligence to a combat zone within just six months, the idea sounded like a failure waiting to happen. Remarkably, Project Maven has met its goals and won rave reviews--and may have changed the Pentagon's whole approach to tech innovation. But is the Defense Department ready for the enormous challenges that lie at the intersection of military power and artificial intelligence?
90982329
submission
Dan Drollette writes:
From the pages of Teen Vogue comes a deep analysis of what it means now that an elite group of the world’s nuclear experts and advisers launched a group to help manage the growing risk of nuclear conflict.
90486681
submission
Dan Drollette writes:
The spotlight on Pyongyang this weekend means that it's a good time to sit back and take another look at some stories that delve into the psychology behind what has been happening lately in the so-called “Hermit Kingdom.” And to discredit some common tropes in the media, such as the idea that “North Korea is about to collapse,” “China has a lot of influence over North Korea,” “North Korea can credibly threaten the United States right now,” “North Korea has no reason to feel threatened,” or “The North can be completely denuclearized.”
86538625
submission
Dan Drollette writes:
To fight climate change with carbon capture and storage technology, we'd have to complete one new carbon capture facility every working day for the next 70 years. It's better to switch to a diet of energy conservation, efficiency, and renewables, rather than rely on this technology as a kind of emergency planetary liposuction.
81855003
submission
Lasrick writes:
Ray Weiss at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography describes how countries report greenhouse gas emissions--a 'bottom-up' approach that can result in inventories that differ from those determined by measuring the actual increases of emitted gases in the atmosphere. Weiss proposes a 'top-down" atmospheric monitoring system for greenhouse gases and goes into the technology that already exists for doing so. Fascinating stuff.
80290865
submission
Dan Drollette writes:
The solution to producing energy without contributing to global warming may be to go fly a kite. Literally. Researchers in Switzerland and Italy — high-altitude places where the winds are strong, steady and predictable — have been working on ways to generate electricity from kites that fly hundreds or thousands of meters high. The scientists already have a prototype cranking out 27 megawatts; they expect to have a 100-megawatt plant big enough to power 86,000 households. And they say that they can produce electricity for less that 4 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is better than fossil fuel. Plus, the kites look really cool (as does the "“Darrieus rotor vertical axis wind turbine” at the base of the St Bernard Pass, on the Swiss side, which I've seen in operation in person). Be sure to click on the links.
80091313
submission
Lasrick writes:
Seismologist Jeffrey Park has done an initial analysis of the seismic data from North Korea's reported nuclear weapon test and found 'an uncanny resemblance to the signals recorded for the February 12, 2013 detonation.' Park's analysis pretty much destroy's the North Korean claim that they detonated a hydrogen bomb, and he postulates that P'yongyang is desperate for attention during the US presidential election cycle.
Siegfried Hecker, one of the world's top experts on the North Korea nuclear program, is nonetheless concerned that the DPRK has now completed its fourth test, and with it a greater sophistication in their bomb design. Hecker is also skeptical that the test was an H-bomb. However, as he says, "We know so little about North Korea’s nuclear weapons design and test results that we cannot completely rule it out."
79645975
submission
Lasrick writes:
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists offers a pretty thorough run-down of the pros and cons of the Paris climate accords. In a truly fascinating article, William Sweet examines not only the political machinations behind the agreement but much of what the agreement entails and how it got there after 21 years of COP meetings. In an audio recording of a teleconference briefing given to the Bulletin's Science and Security Board and other leading scientists and policy makers, Sivan Kartha and Richard Somerville (both on the S & S Board) give riveting explanations of the two weeks at Paris and what was accomplished (and not accomplished). The Question/Answer session is just as good as the presentations by Kartha and Somerville, as various leading minds in the field ask questions and offer additional information. Great stuff.
79123417
submission
Lasrick writes:
Two articles in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists analyze the IAEA's December 2nd report on the possible military dimensions (PMD) of Iran's nuclear program. Ariane Tabatabai goes into what the report did (and did not) reveal, and Harvard's Martin Malin gives five takeaways from the process.
77819187
submission
Lasrick writes:
If the world is to avoid severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts, carbon emissions must decrease quickly—and achieving such cuts, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, depends in part on the availability of "key technologies." But arguments abound against faith in technological solutions to the climate problem. Electricity grids may be ill equipped to accommodate renewable energy produced on a massive scale. Many technological innovations touted in the past have failed to achieve practical success. Even successful technologies will do little good if they mature too late to help avert climate disaster. In this debate in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, experts from India, the United States, and Bangladesh address the following questions: To what extent can the world depend on technological innovation to address climate change? And what promising technologies—in generating, storing, and saving energy, and in storing greenhouse gases or removing them from the atmosphere—show most potential to help the world come to terms with global warming?
77709985
submission
Lasrick writes:
'I have been involved in government at the state and federal level for a long time and have had my share of political and legal run-ins with government agencies, but rarely in more than 50 years in politics have I encountered a government agency more committed to secrecy—perhaps even deception—than the US Department of Energy.' So writes governor of Idaho Cecil D. Andrus in this account of the US government's plan to ship commercial spent fuel to the Idaho National Lab for what the feds call 'research' but what the governor (and his predecessor) feel is an attempt to store high level nuclear waste in Idaho. According to Governor Andrus, despite Freedom of Information Act requests, the federal government is not sharing its plan for the waste once it gets to Idaho. This is a disturbing tale of government secrecy and stonewalling, and the problem with nuclear waste: no one wants it in their backyard. Great read.
76917407
submission
Lasrick writes:
Although biosecurity experts have long warned that biohackers will eventually engineer pathogens in the same way that computer enthusiasts in the 1970s developed viruses and adware, UC Berkeley's Zian Liu thinks fears about "rogue biohackers" are overblown. He lists the five barriers that make it much more difficult to bioengineer in your garage than people think, but also suggests some important chokeholds regulators can take to prevent a would-be bioweaponeer from getting lucky. Great read.
