Washington, DC - The Department of State announces its intention to provide $15 million for the Capacity-Building Initiative for Transparency (CBIT) over the next three years, subject to appropriations. This initiative was first proposed by the United States and the European Union at the 21st Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP-21) in December 2015 in order to ensure that all countries will be prepared to meet the new, robust transparency requirements in the Paris Agreement.

Boulder, Colorado - Whether you’re using a landline or cell phone, there’s a good chance that the signal spends at least some time traveling over fiber-optic cables. To ensure that the information gets where it needs to go, and to help researchers find better ways to ferry this information around, it’s necessary to reliably measure radiation power through these fibers.

Washington, DC - Feb. 27, 2010, is a date that most Chileans will probably never forget. On that day, the sixth strongest earthquake in recorded history—packing a force greater than the most powerful thermonuclear device ever tested—occurred off the country’s central coast. Now, thanks to a newly available set of data collected in the aftermath of the disaster, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is providing Chile and other quake-prone areas worldwide with a powerful tool toward becoming more resilient to future seismic events.

Washington, DC - It’s official: NIST’s 4.45-million newton (equivalent to one million pounds-force) deadweight machine – the largest in the world – is back in one piece after a colossal 16-month effort to overhaul the system for the first time in 50 years.

Manama, Bahrain - Leaders of the International Mine Countermeasures Exercise (IMCMEX) brought the exercise to a close and highlighted the need to continue training with scenarios that are likely to occur in real life in order to keep waterways safe.

Berkeley, California - The United States’ 2016 presidential race so far has been ruled by drama, trauma and Donald Trump, and provided political scientists and reporters assembled at UC Berkeley on Friday for the 19th annual Travers Conference on Ethics and Accountability in Government no shortage of potential lessons.