News Updates

A new survey of the central swath of the United States often called the heartland found that even as parts of the region are fairing pretty well, its future is threatened by a serious lack of human capital and innovation capacity, including venture capital investment, that is rendering companies “starved of the new ideas, new practices, and funding leveraged by firms elsewhere to drive competitive breakthroughs.” In Issues, an official with a revolutionary investment firm called, well, Revolution recently described its efforts to promote technology-based start-ups in underserved areas and bring a broader array of fledgling entrepreneurs into the mix.

Depending on upcoming voting, Washington may become the first state to impose a fee—supporters carefully explain why it isn’t a tax—on emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas widely considered to be driving global warming and climate change. Two economists (one of whom is now chair of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers) in Issues earlier made an unapologetic case for a carbon tax, adding that it should be part of larger energy policy reforms that could include ending subsidies for fossil fuel production, adopting targeted “feebates” and “green tax swaps,” and expanding conservation incentive programs.

A new report on the employment landscape in the United States examines what it calls the three main educational pathways to good jobs—high school,middle skills, and bachelor’s degree—detailing the prospects for each route and how the emerging picture can inform policies designed to help workers navigate changing labor markets. Issues has extensively surveyed this territory as well, most recently in a series of articles on the future of work, in an exploration of what workforce skills really entail, and in a deep look at the scope of middle-skill jobs and how to help workers prepare for and find them.

Algorithms, increasingly used in decision-making across a swath of society, often leave people unable to understand how they worked or why they reached their decisions, in turn leaving those at the mercy of the mathematical creations unable to assess their fairness, says a recent article in Wired. In Issues, an independent research consultant focused on problems that arise when algorithms are used in the criminal justice system, and she proposed improvements including making their inner workings more transparent and subjecting them to independent audit to gauge their real-world impact.

China, already second to the United States in R&D spending, increased its expenditures by 12.3% in 2017 to a record $254 billion, and its ratio of R&D spending to total economic output also reached a high of 2.13%, according to new reports described here and here. In Issues, a longtime analyst recently examined China’s technological ambitions, often accompanied by predatory economic practices, and proposed ways that the US government, industry, and universities can strengthen the nation’s innovation capability and maintain its global leadership.

The percentage of children under age two who haven’t received any vaccinations has quadrupled since 2001, and the percentage of kids entering kindergarten who have been exempted from immunization has increased in recent years, new federal data show. Parents’ objections to vaccination is thought to be contributing to this trend. But changing their minds may prove complicated, a philosopher and data analyst recently wrote in Issues, noting that opinions about vaccines often bypass science and reflect deepening social disagreements about risk and the role of experts.

Defense contractors are moving full speed ahead to develop self-driving submarines and surface vehicles tailored for dangerous or time-consuming missions such as waging antisubmarine warfare or clearing mines, looking to the day when the Navy will be buying fewer aircraft carriers and more seagoing robots. In Issues, an independent security analyst examined the government’s technical plans as well as the operational, legal, and diplomatic issues involved in deploying an array of autonomous marine vehicles.

In a flawed damage-and-repair cycle, the US government spends billions of dollars following major storms to rebuild structures in their original locations, often leaving them just as defenseless against coming storms aggravated by climate change. In reports from the front lines in Issues, a planner involved in recovery efforts after Hurricane Sandy offered practical lessons for breaking out of this default strategy, and an environmental advocate recounted political insights gained in helping Virginia localities better adapt to rising sea levels.

Paul Romer and William Nordhaus, winners of the 2018 Nobel prize in economics, have both written for Issues. You can learn about their thinking here and here.

Back when the first laboratory-grown hamburger was introduced—costing roughly $335,000—two scholars of emerging technologies argued in Issues that it wasn’t too early to start discussing the social, cultural, environmental, and economic implications of this new development. Among the latest discussions, a rabbi with the Orthodox Union is considering whether “clean meat” grown from animal cells would be kosher, which would mean, among many other things, that observant Jews could top those burgers with a slice of cheese

The Big Apple—New York City—is becoming the Big Sponge as it adopts new types of infrastructure that will “flood by design” to cope with heavy rainfalls. The plans align with recommendations offered recently in Issues by three analysts who explored how the nation must ramp up the resiliency of its infrastructure—the technical components as well as the systems for managing them—to meet unprecedented extreme weather events expected with climate change.

A century ago this year, influenza swept much of the world, killing perhaps 50 million people—one of every 30 humans on the planet. Today, top health groups say flu pandemics are nearly certain to recur. Complicating medical challenges, the disease will be accompanied by waves of misleading messages and images spread via social media, a US technology entrepreneur said recently in Issues, calling for the creation of a global volunteer corps of scientists and communicators to quickly provide accurate, clear, and credible information to the public.