EXTREMISMWe Don’t Need a Civil War to Be in Serious Trouble By Christina Pazzanese Published 13 January 2022 With extremist movements and rhetoric on the rise, a growing number of people, including some historians and many opinion writers, believe the U.S. is on the brink of disaster. “There are so many bad things that can

EXTREMISMRadicalization Pipelines: How Targeted Advertising on Social Media Drives People to Extremes By Jeanna Matthews Published 13 January 2022 Behind-the-scenes mechanisms feed an item you search for on Google, “like” on social media, or come across while browsing into custom advertising on social media. Those mechanisms are increasingly being used for more nefarious purposes than

CLIMATE CHALLENGES2021 Was U.S. 4th-Warmest Year on Record, Fueled By a Record-Warm December Published 13 January 2022 The year 2021 was marked by extremes across the U.S., including exceptional warmth, devastating severe weather and the second-highest number of billion-dollar weather and climate disasters on record. The U.S. was struck with 20 separate billion-dollar disasters in 2021.

WEATHER DISASTERSWeather Disasters in U.S. Dominate Natural Disaster Losses in 2021 Published 10 January 2022 In 2021, natural disasters caused overall losses of $280bn, of which roughly $120bn were insured. Alongside 2005 and 2011, the year 2021 proved to be the second-costliest ever for the insurance sector (record year 2017: $146bn, inflation-adjusted). Overall losses from

CYBERSECURITYU.S. Cyber Officials Bracing for Fallout from “Log4j” Vulnerability By Jeff Seldin Published 10 January 2022 More than a month after the Log4j software vulnerability was first discovered, U.S. cybersecurity officials are still warning about it, saying that some criminals and nation state adversaries may be waiting to make use of their newfound access to

EXTREMISMWhat Prevention and Treatment of Substance Dependence Can Tell Us About Addressing Violent Extremism By Ryan Andrew Brown, Rajeev Ramchand, Todd C. Helmus Published 10 January 2022 Hate, violence, and their co-occurrence—violent extremism—represent increasing threats to society. Experts say that in order to deal effectively with extremism, there is a need for new approaches and

METAVERSE & EXTREMISMThe Metaverse Offers a Future Full of Potential – for Terrorists and Extremists, Too By Joel S. Elson, Austin C. Doctor, and Sam Hunter Published 10 January 2022 The metaverse is an immersive virtual reality version of the internet where people can interact with digital objects and digital representations of themselves and others,

PANDEMICSThe Battle of the SARS-CoV-2 Variants Published 10 January 2022 In order to fight the pandemic in the long term, it is crucial to understand why one variant prevails over another. A new study has provided important answers by comparing the spread and transmission of different emerging variants in parallel. In order to fight the pandemic

EXTREMISMWhat Prevention and Treatment of Substance Dependence Can Tell Us About Addressing Violent Extremism By Ryan Andrew Brown, Rajeev Ramchand, Todd C. Helmus Published 10 January 2022 Hate, violence, and their co-occurrence—violent extremism—represent increasing threats to society. Experts say that in order to deal effectively with extremism, there is a need for new approaches and

METAVERSE & EXTREMISMThe Metaverse Offers a Future Full of Potential – for Terrorists and Extremists, Too By Joel S. Elson, Austin C. Doctor, and Sam Hunter Published 10 January 2022 The metaverse is an immersive virtual reality version of the internet where people can interact with digital objects and digital representations of themselves and others,