News Updates

Iran plans to restart activities at its heavy-water nuclear reactor, according to the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency. This type of reactor can produce weapons-grade plutonium, something that was restricted under the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal that the United States walked away from in May 2018. Against this backdrop, a past Issues article examining Iran’s nuclear program still resonates. “No simple solution exists for the Iranian nuclear problem,” the author, a nonproliferation specialist, wrote, “but a series of coordinated steps offers the best chance of rolling back the country’s program.”

More than 60 media outlets will focus on climate change for a week in September, as part of a project intended to show that “climate change is not just one more story but the overriding story of our time.” But turning up the threat level will be counterproductive, a communication and policy specialist recently argued in Issues, calling on journalists to focus instead on “contextualizing expert knowledge and competing claims, promoting consideration of a broader menu of policy options and technologies, and facilitating discussion that bridges entrenched tribal divisions.”

“We are now experiencing the sting of climate change, and I do believe we are the last generation that can do something about it,” the presidential hopeful Jay Inslee told editors of the Los Angeles Times, going on to propose measures to “build a clean energy economy and defeat the climate crisis.” But in Issues, an “ecomodernist” thinker has argued that the policies advocated by the Washington governor and other progressives are “lukewarmist,” falling short of the “concerted national effort by public institutions” needed to meaningfully reduce climate-driving carbon emissions.

Several major companies are backing off plans to put fleets of self-driving cars into routine use in the near future, largely because of complications in dealing with human drivers—along with pedestrians, cyclists, and other roadway users—who often behave in unpredictable ways that baffle current technologies. They could have heeded recent Issues articles that argued for adopting a slow-but-sure strategy to commercialization of autonomous vehicles and resisting their advocates’ life-saving claims that steer discussion of traffic safety away from alternative approaches.

When scientists engage the public on contentious issues, “bombarding people with more information” isn’t useful, a professor of pediatrics says, adding that “it seems important to engage the public more, and earn their trust through continued, more personal interaction.” Issues has examined just this challenge, with a scholar of science communication writing that scientists should act not as authoritative persuaders but as partners in dialogue, and a philosopher of science noting that scientific controversies are often public proxies for larger social concerns.

A new report that analyzes by county and city how US workers will fare as technology advances concludes, among other things, that new methods, especially online tools, will be needed to connect displaced workers with other rewarding jobs. In Issues, a researcher who studies economic competitiveness has offered a blueprint for how the government “through modest investments” can build a nationwide data system that will help workers—as well as policy-makers, employers, and educators—make sound labor market decisions.

NASA has shaken up its leadership reportedly to help achieve the Trump administration’s goal of returning humans to the moon by 2024. At the same time, numerous other countries, including some smaller ones, are also aiming for the moon. Which raises a point made by a space historian in Issues when he called for nations to work together to explore the moon and deeper space, citing the vision of cooperation offered by President Kennedy even before the Apollo 11 mission landed the first humans on the lunar surface 50 years ago, on July 20, 1969.

To respond to the explosion of smart machines in the workplace, higher education should develop a new curriculum tailored to the age of artificial intelligence, promote learning through experience, and expand lifelong learning, experienced hands in the business say here (caveat auditor: start of audio is a bit garbled) and here. Issues extensively surveyed this landscape recently in a series of articles that notably are oriented toward solutions rather than diagnosis of problems, and that center on the particular needs of students themselves as they prepare for a very different world.

In assessing the 2020 US Census, a New York Times article finds that “risks abound,” including software glitches, cyberattacks, inadequate preparation, political interference, public distrust, and the spread of misinformation. But on a reassuring note, a scholar who has closely examined the track record of the decennial enumerations pointed out in Issues that “every modern census has delivered acceptable results on time.” Still, continued vigilance is warranted, she added, and offered some specific steps the Census Bureau could take to protect the 2020 count.

A longtime humanities professor has called for a mandatory retirement age for his profession, arguing that “my generation needs to think as carefully as possible whether the time has come to turn the helm over to the next generation.” In Issues not long ago, a newly minted professor emeritus in public policy offered a similar if less drastic proposal, asking universities to make it easier for professors to retire but continue part-time research, citing his own positive experience at work and in life satisfaction while also enabling more younger faculty to get started.