Is Innovation China’s Next Great Leap Forward?

The Senate Appropriations Committee’s Energy & Water Development spending bill, approved in late May on a 30-1 vote, continues congressional pushback against the sharp Department of Energy (DOE) research and development (R&D)… Read More

It all began in the middle of the fourth century BCE. Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics established a hierarchy of goods that laid the foundation for today’s science policy debates. A good pursued for… Read More

Some observers tout autonomous (self-driving) vehicles by claiming that a computer is “simply a better driver than a human,” as a recent Time magazine article put it. This is not true now… Read More

Although there is considerable uncertainty about specific effects, there is certainty that global warming is significant, accelerating, and seriously threatening. Doing nothing is not an option, as the cost of not adapting is many times greater than the cost of the most aggressive adaptation efforts.

Hundreds of times each year the natural gas pipeline system fails, shutting down electric power plants, but there is no national system to record these events and help us improve reliability.

Research and technologies designed to generate benefits for civilians that can also be used for military purposes are termed “dual use.” The concept of dual use frames and informs debates about how… Read More

For much of the atomic age, the United States led the world in developing and deploying nuclear technologies. Despite building the world’s largest fleet of reactors—99 of which remain operational—and seeding most… Read More

Innovation refers to the process of implementing new or improved technology and management practices that offer products and services with desirable performance at affordable cost. Innovation encompasses the entire pathway from early-stage… Read More

Over the past 20 years, patent analysis has become a dominant method of studying innovation. The number of papers containing “patent citation” listed in Google Scholar rose from fewer than 10 in… Read More

Policy action is required to mitigate and adapt to human-caused climate change, but current efforts to develop a global climate policy cannot fly. What the world’s leaders have been able to agree… Read More

Investment in research and development (R&D) is a key driver of innovation and economic growth. In addition to funding R&D within public institutes or universities, governments within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation… Read More