News Updates

7/21/17 – In the next decade or so, electric vehicles (EVs) will become cheaper than conventional fossil-fueled cars and will outsell them even without government subsidies, says a New York Times editorial. But an analyst recently argued in Issues that simply getting more EVs on the road will not be enough to offset the climate-changing effects of carbon emissions from the transport sector. Electricity grids also must incorporate greater levels of clean renewable energy, and electricity providers must incentivize public recharging of EVs when renewable energy generation is at its peak.

7/14/17 – In what may be “the beginning of something big,” a scientific advisory panel for the US Food and Drug Administration has recommended approval of a new type of therapy that genetically alters a patient’s own immune system to fight cancer. The therapy draws fundamentally on a revolutionary technique, called CRISPR/Cas9, for editing genes precisely and with relative ease. As CRISPR/Cas9 was emerging from the laboratory, Issues published a series of articles based on an international summit that reviewed the technology’s backstory and examined the social, legal, ethical, and policy questions essential to understanding how (or whether) to move it into broader use.

7/13/17 – When and if Congress finally acts on its pledge to overhaul the federal tax code, a key step should be to expand the corporate tax credit for research and development, a nonpartisan think tank says in a new report, calling it a proven way to boost industry productivity and raise workers’ incomes. In a broader look in Issues, an experienced economic analyst similarly pointed to the need for technology-focused growth policies and proposed a four-part national investment strategy designed to yield steady productivity gains and create high-paying, high-skill jobs.

With an expanding roster of companies sending fleets of low-cost satellites into orbit, “You’ll have the space economy integrating with the terrestrial economy like it never did before,” a venture capitalist invested in the movement says in an expansive article, complete with a map of global launch facilities, in Bloomberg Businessweek. In Issues, a space analyst offered an early look at this unfolding revolution and detailed how the United States can reshape its space agencies and policies to capitalize on changing global trends.

7/5/17 – Two lawmakers recently introduced a bill in the US Senate authorizing the federal government to offer financial grants to states to encourage them to cut their prison populations. Toward this aim, state policy makers could draw on a decade’s worth of lessons, detailed in Issues, about what works for reducing incarceration levels while also protecting public safety, holding offenders accountable, and controlling corrections costs.

7/3/17 – A new study suggests that bats are especially likely to harbor viruses dangerous to humans, though the researchers caution that more needs to be learned and that there’s no reason to fear or fight these important flying mammals. In Issues, a long-time authority on bats recently presented his case on why bats have mistakenly been singled out as potential spreaders of viral diseases and how this caused problems for bats and humans alike.