News Updates

10/31/16 – All children should have a good—and equitable—chance on the economic ladder, social thinker Isabel Sawhill and colleagues have written in Issues, describing a variety of promising interventions to give disadvantaged kids a leg up at various stages of life, from before birth through entry into adulthood. In a new report, she and another colleague amplify these ideas in “an agenda for reducing poverty and improving opportunity,” aimed at providing lower-income children with a fair chance to succeed in the classroom, the workplace, and the home.

10/28/16 – The White House has announced a new federal initiative to promote public-private partnerships to develop and deploy small satellites not only to aid in space research but also to help shorten the cycle of technological innovation, according to a policy brief from the American Institute of Physics. This effort reflects trends in how government and industry are working in space, as described recently in Issues, bringing a shift toward more global participation, increased collaboration, and adaptive regulatory thinking.

10/21/16 – Manufacturing’s recent anemic output growth in the United States is largely the result of globalization, and new government policies are needed to address problems, a senior employment research economist recently said here and here. In Issues, a leading observer of innovation policy has also examined what really ails manufacturing and laid out a blueprint for reinvigorating this critical sector.

10/19/16 – Artificial intelligence and robotics hold potential for disrupting the workplace in the United States, as an economic analyst explained in Issues. And these technologies are also flourishing elsewhere in the world, with industries in other regions making even greater use of robots, and with China expected to show especially rapid growth in the deployment of industrial robots as well as the pursuit of advanced research in artificial intelligence.

10/18/16 – Setting a tax on carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion is considered by many experts, including two economic analysts writing in Issues, as a promising way to help control human-caused climate change, but US policy makers have resisted. Now, a proposal is on the ballot in Washington state to institute a carbon tax, which would become the first of its kind in the United States, but it is being hotly debated, with even some environmental groups registering opposition.

10/13/16 – Criminalizing drug possession has caused “dramatic and unnecessary harms” in many African American communities, two major human and civil rights organizations concluded in a new report described here that called for changes in how governments deal with drug enforcement. In a related look at the effects of mass incarceration on communities of color, a legal scholar and a judge have argued in Issues that there may well be a tipping point at which rigorous crime policies and practices can do more harm than good.

10/12/16 – “Getting to Mars will require continued cooperation between government and private innovators, and we’re already well on our way,” President Obama said in an essay on CNN’s website, in tandem with a joint blog post by senior White House and NASA officials. Indeed, collaborative work on space activities is becoming increasingly common across a range of industries and in a growing number of nations, an analyst said recently in Issues, calling on the United States to reshape its space policies to reflect and capitalize on these changing conditions.

10/10/16 – With Hurricane Matthew leaving behind damages estimated to be nearing $6 billion, a vast swath of the Southeast likely faces massive rebuilding, if past experience is the guide. In Issues, a strategic planner who helped develop a “decision tool” to aid recovery efforts after Hurricane Sandy has proposed what he considers a better approach, centered on shifting the nation’s current tendency to react to natural disasters and instead to prepare for them.

10/7/16 – A Japanese biologist has won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for a series of “brilliant experiments” using yeast that revealed for the first time a key mechanism in cells that plays an important role in cancer, diabetes, and numerous other devastating diseases. Indeed, yeast has an illustrious history in research, as a scientist-writer team has detailed in Issues, but funding woes may hinder turning lessons learned from these tiny organisms into practice.

10/4/16 – With revolutionary developments in reproductive technologies occurring in many nations, a researcher and a writer joined in Issues to examine the accompanying global bioethical debates. Concerns recently kicked into higher gear with the birth of a “three-parent” baby, born to a couple from Jordan who traveled to Mexico for treatment using a controversial new fertilization technique developed by a US scientist and applied with his help in this case without regulatory approval by any government.

10/3/16 – In an examination of jobs losses in the United States, a New York Times article says that 13% can be explained by changing trade practices, with the rest being casualties of automation or tweaks to factory operations that have enabled more production with less labor. In Issues, a leading scholar who examines innovation policy has offered a deeper look at the loss of manufacturing jobs and laid out policy options for reversing this trend that is damaging the nation’s economy, democracy, and social ideals.

10/1/16 – A massive change is occurring in the space industry—a move from “Old Space” to “New Space”—as out-of-the-box thinking increasingly pushes against heritage and convention, an Australian space innovator reports in The Conversation. In Issues, an observer of the scene has detailed this “major transformation” as more countries and private companies expand their activities in space, calling on the United States to reshape its space agencies and policies to meet changing global trends.