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Law enforcement and technologists have been arguing over encryption controls for more than two decades. On one side are privacy advocates and tech bosses like Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, who believe people should be able to have online communications free of snooping. On the other side are law enforcement and some lawmakers, who believe tough encryption makes it impossible to track child predators, terrorists and other criminals.

After years of on-and-off debate over nearly snoop-proof security, the industry is girding for new pressure from law enforcement around the world.

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Bursts of media coverage of retracted scientific articles and failures to replicate and reproduce scientific findings have led to a widespread sense of crisis in the familiar forms of scientific knowledge production and communication. Is the language of crisis warranted, or is this how science has always worked? How are technological changes in the communication of scientific results affecting the process of scientific knowledge production? Are there genuine knowledge crises in certain scientific fields (such as medicine or social science)? What solutions are available for these problems, and how can new scholars move forward with both confidence and integrity in this environment?

This program will be appropriate to all campus personnel and community members interested in how the process of scientific communication may affect their role as producers and consumers of scientific knowledge.

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Everything in our Universe is held together or pushed apart by four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and two nuclear interactions. Physicists now think they’ve spotted the actions of a fifth physical force emerging from a helium atom.

It’s not the first time researchers claim to have caught a glimpse of it, either. A few years ago, they saw it in the decay of an isotope of beryllium. Now the same team has seen a second example of the mysterious force at play — and the particle they think is carrying it, which they’re calling X17.

If the discovery is confirmed, not only could learning more about X17 let us better understand the forces that govern our Universe, it could also help scientists solve the dark matter problem once and for all.

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US Defence Secretary Mark Esper on Friday ruled out allegations of unfair competition in the awarding of a US$10-billion cloud computing contract to Microsoft.

“I am confident it was conducted freely and fairly, without any type of outside influence,” Esper told a news conference in Seoul, South Korea.

Formally called the Joint Enterprise Defence Infrastructure, or JEDI, the contract was awarded to Microsoft on 25 October, and the lucrative deal could span 10 years.

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What could the UK’s recent investment announcement mean for the future of sustainable energy?
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There are many directions we could go when it comes to the future of sustainable energy—but the UK made a bold move when it announced a huge investment (220 million pounds huge) in a prototype fusion power facility that could be functioning as a commercial power plant by 2040.

So it’s safe to say the race to fusion power is on. Fusion energy could provide us with clean, basically limitless energy.

But the thing is, fusion power isn’t really a reality yet, but does this prototype facility have a shot at making fusion a reality?

Continue reading “The UK Is Racing to Build the World’s First Commercial Fusion Power Plant” | >

When gigantic stars run out of fuel they collapse under their own gravity and, in a last hurrah, send out a blast of light and matter in the most violent known explosions in the universe.

Now astronomers have discovered that these cataclysmic events, known as gamma ray bursts, release roughly twice as much energy as previously thought.

The rethink comes after an international team registered a record-breaking observation of the highest-energy radiation ever measured from gamma ray bursts.

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