The Ongoing Transformation
Local Research for Local Problems
The North Carolina Collaboratory offers a bipartisan vision for how science can respond to society’s needs.
Gallery
The Air We Share
Ilana Manolson’s pictures are about plants, but they are also about what connects them. Each is bound to the water that feeds them, the air they trade, and the larger systems in which nothing stands alone.
The Latest
Reparative Science
Repairing Relations With Science
How can scientists and research institutions contribute to social justice?
University Innovation
Is It Time to Say Bye-Bye to Bayh-Dole?
Even though the 1980 Bayh–Dole Act is widely considered a success, the modern research enterprise operates under new tensions that the legislation was not built to address.
Grid Infrastructure
The Grid’s Invisible Constraint
A lack of standardized infrastructure data is holding back efforts to modernize the nation’s electrical grid.
Data Centers
How Communities Are Bargaining With Big Tech Over Data Centers
Data centers have become tests of whether and how local governments can negotiate the physical terms of the AI economy.
Real Numbers
Nurturing America’s Seed Fund
A core design feature allows the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs to serve a federal innovation system with missions as diverse as biomedical research, energy technology, and national defense.
Focused Research Investments
Nova Scotia’s Experiment in Research That Solves Real Problems
Locally focused research investments enable coalitions of scientists and citizens to serve community needs.
Poem
Meet Zoom AI Companion
You have been lonely all these years.
You once loved a French lop named Cleo.
You once loved a boy named Rabbit….
AI Oversight
Escaping AI’s Measurement Trap
Oversight of artificial intelligence is largely built on benchmarks that fail to capture how models have learned to “perform for the test.” A better system would govern through learning and inquiry.
Urban Robots
Make Room for Robots
As robot-human interactions become more commonplace in urban spaces, policymakers can use a diagnostic to find the best existing tools for governance and determine when new ones are needed.
Autonomous Vehicles
A Crash Course for Robotaxis
After a plane crash, the entire aviation industry learns from the failure. Autonomous vehicle companies should adopt a similar standard.
Editor’s Journal
Tapping the Revolutionary Potential of “Useful Knowledge”
The science practiced by the founders and other early Americans was sociable rather than professional, with “useful knowledge” seen as a path to building better people and citizens. Can this approach help today’s scientific enterprise?
Join the Conversation
Social Media
Follow us on BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Rules for Robots
Vol. XLII, No. 4, Summer 2026
As robots increasingly become part of the urban landscape, local officials must ensure that they are integrated safely and efficiently. There are a lot of existing rules governing vehicles and devices in cities, but which ones should apply to robots and when should new rules be considered? The essays in the Summer 2026 Issues explore this and many other topics, including how community colleges are training the AI workforce, the future of the National Science Board, assessing the costs and benefits of clean air regulations, and how communities are learning to bargain with big tech companies over data centers.
Browse the Issue
For faster access to our full journal and to see the beautiful artwork that accompanies our feature essays, subscribe to the print edition today.
Subscribe to the Print EditionForum
In response to essays published in Issues, our readers weigh in on critical topics in policy related to science, technology, and society.
Summer 2026
Health Science Saves Lives
A Discussion of
When Sixth Graders Study Neuroscience
Responses By
Summer 2026
Honoring the Communities That Produce Knowledge
A Discussion of
A New Science Diplomacy in Latin America Embeds Knowledge in Public Institutions
Responses By
-
How Can We Sustain Sustainable Housing?
How can rapidly expanding cities provide affordable, green housing? To understand the challenges in doing so, look to the capital of Nigeria.
Response
-
Where the Wild Things Grow
Imagine a housing development that takes green architecture to another level, braiding plants into the very scaffolding of a home. Osahon Ize-Iyamu’s story brings us to such a development, where a grief-stricken daughter struggles to defend her late mother’s vision of sustainable housing against financial, regulatory, and personal hurdles.
-
From Gospel to Guide
Familial and cultural prompts shape children’s experiences of relationships and themselves—especially among children in diaspora. How do those prompts change over time?
Response
-
Prompts for a Perfect Daughter
A young protagonist is forced to follow strict prompts embedded deep in her brain via an implant. The protagonist’s parents installed the brain implant in the hopes of guiding their child to live a “good” life. But when the family immigrates to a place whose customs and language diverge from their own, the protagonist is torn between internal and external prompts—and discovers how quickly they can both become a trap.
-
In the Blink of an Eye
How does emotion travel through our eyes? In his response to Sofia Samatar’s story, video game designer Will Hellwarth shares his quest to create a narrative world that responds to a player’s blink.
Response
-
Mirror, Mirror
What happens when you hold someone’s gaze—really hold it? An artist and an inventor try to recreate that experience in Sofia Samatar’s Future Tense Fiction story. Absorbed in detail and technicalities, they neglect a more fundamental question: Will they be ready to see what their technology reflects back to them?
Over four decades, Issues has hosted many articles discussing science’s “social contract”—the idea, as physicist Harvey Brooks articulated it in 1988, that the scientific enterprise would provide “social benefits in exchange for an unusual degree of self-governance and financial support free of strings.” Today, this contract is clearly defunct: The federal government has cut funding for science, cast doubt on scientific findings, and prioritized investment in research outside the university system. Whatever the future of federally funded science is, it’s no longer “free of strings.” As the scientific enterprise tries to decide how to respond, it first needs to figure out what happened.
This collection is part of an exploration of science’s social contract that is generously supported by The Kavli Foundation, Rita Allen Foundation, and Dana Foundation.
-
Who Should Decide How to Use Taxpayer Dollars to Fund Scientific Research?
After the firing of the National Science Board, legislators have an opportunity to establish a new balance between democratic accountability and protection from partisan meddling.
-
Merton Redux: Re-Confronting the Norms of Science in Democracy
Although public attention is focused on the federal government’s efforts to slash funding for scientific research, the decimation of the democratic institutional processes that undergird state-sponsored scientific research is far more consequential.
-
A Science Funding System Beyond the Linear Model
To improve the relationship between science and the public, funders should embrace a new ontology of scientific work that aligns incentives with society’s goals.
-
How the American Research University Survives
University leadership needs to shift attention from chasing prestige to crafting strategies for long-term success.
Explore Issues By Topic
- Agriculture and Food
- Climate
- Defense and National Security
- Education
- Energy
- Engineering and Infrastructure
- Ethics, Values, and Philosophy
- Fiction and Poetry
- Global Affairs
- Innovation Policy
- Medicine
- Online Exclusives
- Real Numbers
- Science and Society
- Science Politics
- Socrates Untenured
- Space
- Transportation