In The News

Middle East Rivers Losing Critical Water Reserves

Lee Rannals February 13, 2013
Water shortages and secrecy over how much is used will only exacerbate tensions in the Middle East. Researchers, in the journal Water Resources Research, report a rapid decline of freshwater in the Middle East region. Lee Rannals of redOrbit.com reports on the University of California’s Center for Hydrologic Modeling study that relied on NASA satellite images to show that most of the loss in...

Tort and Technology

January 24, 2013
Activists can use the US judicial system and the Alien Tort Claims Act to shame all sorts of multinational corporations from cooperating with authoritarian governments that violate international law. For example, a dozen Chinese citizens joined a suit against Cisco Systems, based in California, in 2012 for selling technology that allows the Chinese government to track dissenters online. “The...

Graphene: Patent Surge Reveals Global Race

David Shukman January 23, 2013
A race is on to develop energy, IT and other applications for graphene – a single layer of carbon atoms described as the thinnest material. Two Russian researchers working at a British university won the Nobel Prize for initially identifying the material in 2004. Since 2007, China leads in a patent race with 2,204 patents and applications, compared with 1,754 for the US, 1,160 for South Korea and...

Deafness at Doomsday

Lawrence M. Krauss January 17, 2013
Global leaders routinely ignore the views of scientists in many areas of policymaking, and this threatens global security. “Scientists’ voices are crucial in the debates over the global challenges of climate change, nuclear proliferation and the potential creation of new and deadly pathogens,” writes Lawrence M. Krauss, theoretical physicist at Arizona State University. Nine countries have...

US to Build $120m Rare Earth Research Institute

Katia Moskvitch January 16, 2013
Terbium, europium, neodymium – these are just a few of 17 rare earths that are factors behind the colors, sounds, power and endurance of cutting-edge technology in the medical, aeronautical, entertainment, communications, defense and transportation industries. China produces more than 95 percent of the world’s rare earths, and despite rapid technology turnover, only 1 percent of rare earths are...

Temperatures Off Charts, Australia Turns Deep Purple

Peter Hannam January 14, 2013
Australia’s national weather bureau is adding new colors to weather graphs to for forecasting rising temperatures exceeding 50 degrees Celsius, or 122 degrees Fahrenheit. “The Bureau of Meteorology's interactive weather forecasting chart has added new colours – deep purple and pink,” reports Peter Hannam for the Sydney Morning Herald. Breaking temperature records and battling wildfires, the...

Iran’s Nuclear Program: Handle With Care

Jamsheed K. Choksy, Carol E. B. Choksy November 14, 2012
Both the United States and Iran must contend with polarized politics. Yet large majorities of Iranians and Americans do not support Iran’s development of nuclear capability for military purposes and do not want to start a war over the issue. An attack on Iran’s nuclear program, which it insists is for peaceful purposes, is useless because the knowhow is there, as it is in many other places, and...