The automation of U.S. manufacturing — robots replacing people on factory floors — is fueling rising mortality rate among America’s working-age adults, according to a new study. The study, published Feb. 23 in the journal Demography, found evidence of a causal link between automation and increasing mortality, driven largely by increased «deaths of despair,» such…

The global computer chip shortage has hit car manufacturers especially hard, indicating the importance of supply chain resilience. Yet, for hybrid electric vehicles, it isn’t clear how their production could be impacted by fluctuating supplies and high prices. To get a grasp of these vulnerabilities compared to those for gas-powered models, researchers conducted a thorough…

A machine-learning algorithm could provide auto manufacturing, aerospace and other industries a faster and more cost-efficient way to test bulk materials. The technique was published recently in the scientific journal Materials Science and Engineering: A. Production stoppages are costly. So, manufacturers screen materials like sheet metal for formability before using them to make sure the…

Customers who feel afraid in the wake of a data breach care more about the size and scope of the breach than do angry customers, according to new research. The findings also extend to the stock market, where a company’s stock price can be influenced by the size of the breach when the news coverage…

A new study from cognitive scientists offers an answer to why legal documents such as contracts or deeds are often so impenetrable. After analyzing thousands of legal contracts and comparing them to other types of texts, the researchers found that lawyers have a habit of frequently inserting long definitions in the middle of sentences. Linguists…

Researchers use the field of incident response to shed light on how experts — and nations — can more effectively combat cyber-warfare when they foster trust and transcend politics. «People often think of infrastructure as a set of technologies just sitting there, but in fact they’re living technologies — socio-technical systems that are constantly being…

Scientists have identified common attributes of cybercrime networks, revealing how these groups function and work together to cause an estimated $445-600 billion of harm globally per year. «It’s not the ‘Tony Soprano mob boss type’ who’s ordering cybercrime against financial institutions,» said Thomas Holt, MSU professor of criminal justice and co-author of the study. «Certainly,…

Organizations aren’t moving quickly enough on cyber security threats linked to the drive toward using personal mobile devices in the workplace. Dr Kenan Degirmenci from QUT’s Science and Engineering Faculty’s School of Information Systems said workers worldwide expected to take their work with them whenever and wherever. But he warned Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)…

Researchers executed successful stealth attacks on real and simulated robotic vehicles, revealing vulnerabilities in the attack detection system most commonly used by such vehicles. The researchers, based at UBC’s faculty of applied science, designed three types of stealth attack on robotic vehicles that caused the machines to crash, miss their targets or complete their missions…

Single sign-on systems (SSOs) allow us to login to multiple websites and applications using a single username and password combination. But these are third party systems usually handled by Big Tech companies who have been reported to gather and leak personal information without user consent. Now, researchers have developed a new and secure single sign-on…