News Updates

8/25/17 – Even as negotiators have barely started talking about the North American Free Trade Agreement, President Trump declared at a recent rally in Arizona that he doubted the United States can reach a deal with Mexico and Canada. But in Issues, an expert on international economics has argued that NAFTA has been a boon for US industry, and by making some proposed improvements and expansions, the three partners can even increase their competitiveness in world markets.

8/24/17 – Two leading entrepreneurs are among investors backing a California-based start-up company that plans to make and sell meat on an industrial scale from self-producing animal cells, eliminating the need to raise and slaughter livestock or poultry. Looking toward such commercialization, two specialists in sustainable engineering explored in Issues how factory-grown meat “might transform our food system, the environment, and even our culture.”

8/22/17 – In a recent examination in Issues of whether artificial intelligence should be regulated, a technologist and a social scientist argued that the case for regulation is clear in one specific area: the development of autonomous weapons that employ AI to decide when to fire, how much force to apply, and on what targets. Now, leaders of AI companies worldwide have sent an open letter to the United Nations urging quick action “to prevent an arms race in these weapons, to protect civilians from their misuse, and to avoid the destabilizing effects of these technologies.”

8/20/17 – To ensure that efforts to edit human genes progress in a safe and ethical manner, the public should be included in discussions about how—and whether—to proceed, an international panel of leaders in the field recently stated in Issues. Indeed, a new national US survey found that a majority of the people who responded think the public should be consulted before genome editing is used in humans.

8/15/17 – Roughly a dozen states are modifying their use of a legal process that sends juveniles charged with crimes directly into the adult justice system where rehabilitation may not be of highest priority. As a leading expert explains in Issues, accumulating scientific evidence is revealing that young people may be prone to making risky decisions because their brains are not fully developed and that this condition could well correct itself with time.

8/12/17 – The Food and Drug Administration has delayed regulations that would have nearly halted sales of electronic cigarettes and at the same time signaled a willingness to allow the devices to be marketed as smoking-cessation aids. The shift would leave room for a proposal offered recently in Issues by a community health specialist to conduct a series of policy experiments to assess the full health effects and possible benefits of e-cigarettes and other alternative products to identify the best ways to reduce the harm caused by conventional smoking.

8/10/17 – Scientists for the first time have successfully altered a specific gene in human embryos to remove a mutation known to cause a disease, in this case a common and potentially deadly heart condition. If the embryos were allowed to develop into babies, they would not only be disease-free but would not later transmit the mutation to descendants. Such work raises social, legal, ethical, and policy questions that were analyzed in a series of articles in Issues.

8/8/17 – The Trump administration’s recent proposal to halve the number of legal immigrants into the United States is exactly backward, says the head of a major education organization, calling instead for expansion of opportunities available to skilled foreign workers and promising students. Along these lines, a policy analyst has proposed in Issues comprehensive reforms of the federal visa and immigration systems for scientists and engineers that will meet the nation’s scientific, educational, and economic needs while being fair to US workers and students.

8/3/17 – The Chemical Safety Board, which investigates chemical industry accidents and makes safety recommendations, is slated for elimination, but a labor activist argues against the move, citing the good it has done in his community. Even a former board member who resigned because of its bureaucratic fumblings gave it a nod recently in Issues, though emphasizing that the board will need to adopt a set of reforms centered primarily on making it more open and accountable to the public.

8/1/17 – A research team has demonstrated what reportedly may be an effective way to slow tree-cutting in the tropical forests of western Uganda and thereby protect endangered chimpanzees living there: pay local landowners small sums not to chop down their trees. Indeed, the concept of paying for ecosystem services is gaining attention. But an economist and former federal environmental official recently cautioned in Issues that relying on economic justifications for conservation could backfire and undermine other compelling arguments for protecting nature.