Issues in Science and Technology

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Prasad Shirvalkar brain scan chronic pain

The Ongoing Transformation

Combating the “Multi-Dimensional Beast” of Chronic Pain

Chronic pain affects more Americans than diabetes, depression, and hypertension. Yet the disease is poorly understood, often undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, and effective treatments are in short supply. A recent study provides new insights into how the disease affects the nervous system. In this episode, the lead author of that study, Prasad Shirvalkar talks about his research and how it could transform physicians’ understanding and treatment of what he calls a “multi-dimensional beast.”Read More

Energy Access

Generating Meaningful Energy Systems Models for Africa

Michael O. Dioha, Rose M. Mutiso

Expanding modern energy access to all in Africa requires models that enable forward-looking decisionmaking to achieve the goals of the people and governments of the region.Read More

Representing Nurses

Tim Okamura, "PPE" (2021), oil, colored pencil, on wood panel, 48 x 60 in.

Visions of Nursing

Anne Wallentine

Nursing has been depicted in many ways as it evolved into a formalized profession over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From caps to scrubs, exemplars to essential (and exhausted) workers, the many changes in the profession over the past half-century have been reflected in nursing’s representations in visual art and culture. Read More

Dr. Nurse

The Transformation of American Nursing

Dominique A. Tobbell

Nursing faced a crisis in the years following World War II. The arrival of new technologies, potent pharmaceuticals, and complex surgeries had made patient care increasingly complex. Nurses often found themselves without the availability, knowledge, or authority to provide appropriate care to critically ill or dying patients.Read More

The Ongoing Transformation

Artificial Intelligence and the Moral Imagination

Deborah Poskanzer, Jason Lloyd

Historian Deborah Poskanzer talks about three books that she recently reviewed for Issues, exploring the themes that unite them, the connections they draw with real-world politics and history, and what they reveal about humanity’s moral imagination. Read More

In Focus

Navigating a Polluted Information Ecosystem

The Spring Issue

The Spring 2023 Issues looks at human experience and agency to explore how to navigate polluted ecosystems, how tacit knowledge is key to a safe bioeconomy, how disciplines are nurtured and defined, and much more.

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Spring 2023

The Limits of Science Communication?
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Spring 2023

Managing the Risks of International Collaboration
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Current Issue

The Human in the Node

Spring 2023

Despite our best efforts, complex sociotechnical phenomena aren’t amenable to technocratic, top-down solutions. There are always the humans in the nodes of the network: people doing passionate, weird, creative, and impulsive things that defy prediction and control—but which also make possible our ongoing efforts to improve the world. In the Spring 2023 Issues, contributors look at human experience and agency to explore how to navigate polluted ecosystems, how tacit knowledge is key to a safe and productive bioeconomy, how disciplines are nurtured and defined by the competing interests of academic leaders, and much more.

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Online Exclusives

The ISSUES Interview

“The Complexity of Technology’s Consequences Is Going Up Exponentially, But Our Wisdom and Awareness Are Not.”

Tristan Harris, Sara Frueh

Tristan Harris, a technology ethicist and the cofounder of the Center for Humane Technology, talked with Issues editor Sara Frueh about the challenge of online misinformation, ways to govern artificial intelligence, and a vision of technology that strengthens democracy.Read More

National Science Foundation

Centering Societal Concerns at NSF

David H. Guston

The National Science Foundation has been operating in a hybrid mode of use-inspired research and knowledge-based innovation for most of its history. Examining the new mandates of the CHIPS and Science Act, and their relationship to past experiments at the agency, reveals how NSF can center “ethical and societal considerations” as it reorients the scientific enterprise. Read More

Human Development

The Camouflaged Metaphysics of Embryos

Jane Maienschein

In June 2022, the Supreme Court decided to leave decisions about abortion to states rather than the courts—in effect forcing legislators to take positions on when life is taken as beginning. Although the court’s decision makes seemingly scientific claims, there is a need for sound, consistent definitions—starting with the different stages of human development.Read More

Community Resilience

Disaster Response Must Help Protect LGBTQ+ Communities

Leo Goldsmith, Michael Méndez, Vanessa Raditz

LGBTQ+ people are disproportionately affected by disasters. But there are actions that the federal government and other organizations can take to become trusted resources and better serve LGBTQ+ populations during disasters.Read More