News Updates

Private investment in US companies working in space hit a record $8.9 billion last year, despite expectations that the pandemic would trigger a drop. As analyst Bhavya Lal writes in Issues, recent years have seen a “a profound shift” in the nation’s space enterprise: the privatization of functions previously considered inherently governmental. “This transformation,” she argues, “in addition to providing cost savings and enabling greater innovation, may ultimately push the boundaries of the art-of-the-possible and expand the human footprint in space.”

A national group representing home builders is lobbying to weaken proposed new construction codes aimed at improving energy efficiency of houses and other types of buildings, says a New York Times op-ed. In 2016, data scientist Henry Kelly explained in Issues how improving the energy efficiency of buildings will be essential for providing comfortable living and working spaces without increasing emissions of the greenhouse gases that drive climate change. Indeed, he calls for expanded federal support for research on technologies and designs that boost energy savings.

The United States has a high infant mortality rate of 5.7 per 1000 live births, but the rate for Black babies is even higher:10.8 per 1000. The Washington Post recently reported on a new study showing that when Black babies are delivered by Black doctors, their mortality rate is cut by half. The reasons for this disparity are not understood, but the study points to the need for more Black doctors. Last year, Issues published a perspective by Arri Eisen on the 20 year history of Emory University’s FIRST program—Fellowships in Research and Science Teaching—which was started at the suggestion of Clifton Poodry at the National Institutes of Health. It has become a model for many other programs to increase the numbers of talented underrepresented minority students pursuing biomedical careers.

In a small community on the Colorado River, private investors acting through a national financial-services firm are buying rights to the water and reselling it to distant cities. For a region suffering prolonged drought, challenges to using the river and its water are nothing new. And in a book review in Issues, an experienced resource manager notes that conflicts in managing the Colorado and other western rivers as they transition from an era of plenty to one of scarcity have often catalyzed compromises needed to balance conflicting interests. Fingers crossed.