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Category: government – Page 5

RALEIGH, N.C. — Particle physicist Hitoshi Murayama admits that he used to worry about being known as the “most hated man” in his field of science. But the good news is that now he can joke about it.

Last year, the Berkeley professor chaired the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel, or P5, which drew up a list of multimillion-dollar physics experiments that should move ahead over the next 10 years. The list focused on phenomena ranging from subatomic smash-ups to cosmic inflation. At the same time, the panel also had to decide which projects would have to be left behind for budgetary reasons, which could have turned Murayama into the Dr. No of physics.

Although Murayama has some regrets about the projects that were put off, he’s satisfied with how the process turned out. Now he’s just hoping that the federal government will follow through on the P5’s top priorities.

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Artificial intelligence holds the potential to bring a commercial and economic rebirth for the United States and its allies. Yet the U.S. Congress is getting skittish. Its leaders are reportedly negotiating a lame-duck bill to regulate the AI industry.

As officials push and prod on the new technology, they should exercise caution.

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Six US banks are reporting potential security breaches of debit cards, with several forcing affected customers to get replacements.

In new filings with the Massachusetts state government, Mainstreet Bank, Savers Bank, The Village Bank, Watertown Savings Bank, Webster Five Cents Savings Bank and Eagle Bank say some debit cards may have been compromised following a security breach of a merchant’s payment card platform.

A copy of a notice sent to Eagle Bank customers was recently posted on the government site, stating an unnamed Mastercard merchant allowed unauthorized access to account information.

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Over the past few months, I was asked multiple times by Staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability whether I am available to testify before the U.S. Congress on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs). As a result, I cleared my calendar for November 13, 2024 and prepared the following written statement. At the end, I was not called to testify before Congress and so I am posting below my intended statement. The Galileo Project under my leadership is about to release this week unprecedented results from commissioning data of its unique Observatory at Harvard University. Half a million objects were monitored on the sky and their appearance was analyzed by state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms. Are any of them UAPs and if so — what are their flight characteristics? Unfortunately, the congressional hearing chairs chose not to hear about these scientific results, nor about the scientific findings from our ocean expedition to the site of the first reported meteor from interstellar space.

Stay tuned for the first extensive paper on the commissioning data from the first Galileo Project Observatory, to be posted publicly in the coming days. Here is my public statement.

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The Department of Defense (DoD), alongside the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), delivered its 2024 Annual Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) to Congress this week, fulfilling requirements outlined in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2022, with amendments from the FY 2023 NDAA. The report, produced by the DoD’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), presents a comprehensive update on UAP sightings and analyses, covering incidents reported from May 2023 through June 2024.

According to the report, AARO received a total of 757 UAP reports during this period. Out of these, 485 incidents occurred within the last year, while the remaining 272 involved sightings from 2021 and 2022 that had not been previously cataloged. These new additions bring the total number of UAP cases reviewed by AARO to over 1,600 as of June 1, 2024.

The DoD emphasizes that UAP reports are critical to national security. Every incursion into designated air, sea, or space zones is taken seriously, with each sighting undergoing a systematic, data-driven analysis. AARO’s mandate includes examining these sightings for potential threats to service members, U.S. facilities, and sensitive operations.

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Akash Systems has signed a non-binding preliminary memorandum of terms with the U.S. Department of Commerce for $18.2 million in direct funding and $50 million in federal and state tax credits through the CHIPS Act. Although this isn’t yet a binding contract that will give the company the promised funds, it’s an important first step in the negotiation process for the Oakland-based startup, which shows that both the company and the U.S. government are gradually moving towards a formal agreement. According to Akash Systems (h/t Axios), it will use the funds to ramp up its operations for producing diamond-cooled semiconductors for AI, data centers, space applications, and defense markets.

Diamond-cooling technology goes deeper than just thermal paste with nano-diamond technology. For example, some use synthetic diamonds as the chip substrate, utilizing the material’s thermal conductivity to more efficiently move heat away from the processor. So, let’s look closer at Akash’s solution.

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A US bank is warning customers of a security “intrusion” that may have compromised Mastercard account numbers and other financial data.

Maryland-based Eagle Bank says it has received a notice from Mastercard, stating an unnamed US merchant allowed unauthorized access to account information between August 15th, 2023, and May 25th, 2024.

The bank revealed the breach in a filing with the Massachusetts state government.

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SAN FRANCISCO – Austrian space domain awareness startup iSEE Global established a U.S. subsidiary in Arlington, Virginia, led by former Kleos Space CEO Andy Bowyer.

The U.S. subsidiary of iSEE, which stands for Impact Space Expedition & Exploration Global Corp., seeks “proximity to key government and defense customers, like the U.S. Space Force, and major commercial clients,” Bowyer told SpaceNews by email. “The U.S. is the biggest and most influential SDA [space domain awareness] market.”

Having a U.S. subsidiary will help iSEE “navigate the complex regulatory requirements,” Bowyer said.

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