News Updates

The US government is proposing a new rule declaring that 23 types of birds, fish, and other species once living in the United States are now extinct, adding that climate change could make such disappearances more common. Indeed, a group of scientists and lawyers contend in Issues that climate change poses “significant challenges” for species conservation. Devising policies and tools for the job, Alejandro E. Camacho and his colleagues write, will require broad discussion involving conservation scientists, resource managers, lawyers, ethicists, and members of the public who will inevitably be affected by both conservation outcomes and costs.

The shipping giant FedEx, in partnership with a software developer and a truck manufacturer, has just launched a pilot program using self-driving trucks for commercial long-haul runs. Operating over a 500-mile stretch of Interstate 45 between Dallas and Houston, the initial fleet will include a “modest” number of trucks and use backup drivers for safety. But before autonomous trucking spreads widely, Steve Viscelli writes in Issues, government regulators, researchers, and the industry need to broadly examine current and evolving policies that affect the lives and compensation of human truckers, as well as road infrastructure and trucking’s environmental impacts.

As Congress debates the National Science Foundation’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research program, the Senate wants to direct significantly more funding to states that have historically been overlooked, while the House does not. Legislators might find guidance in Issues, where Michael Wallner and colleagues report on the commercialization outcomes of projects supported by two other federal programs aimed at helping small businesses innovate. Businesses in lower-funded states “consistently outperformed” those in higher-award states, they write, concluding that “efforts to assist firms in underserved states are a sound investment and contribute to improved geographic distribution of economically valuable innovative activities.”

Michigan, home to the first mile of paved road in the United States, is now planning the first road that will enable electric vehicles to recharge wirelessly while on the move. Backers say the one-mile stretch will demonstrate the kind of technology that could boost the transition to EVs. But as John D. Graham, Keith B. Belton, and Suri Xia note in Issues, the United States and its automakers will need to take a broad array of policy and technological steps, which the authors detail, to advance production and use of EVs—and to catch up with world-leading China in the process.

In a broad look at ways to improve people’s lives, a New York Times columnist argues for “bringing forward the technologies that will make that world possible.” This won’t mean technologies that primarily offer economic returns, but rather “inventions and advances that render old problems obsolete and new possibilities manifold.” This view aligns with a call in Issues by a group of policy officials and scientists to challenge conventional economic dogma—by assessing and valuing technologies more on their impact on quality of life. “If growth and progress can be noneconomic and nonmaterial,” Zora Kovacic and her coauthors write, “ a world of opportunities emerges.”

In a decision almost certain to provoke widespread opposition, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has licensed a private company to build a facility in Texas that will temporarily store 5,000 metric tons of spent fuel from nuclear power plants initially, and eventually as much as 40,000 metric tons. Writing in Issues before the plant won approval but expecting that outcome, Başak Saraç-Lesavre takes a sharp look at how the government is “backing into a decision” to support temporary storage, without adequate public input. Instead, she argues, “Congress and the Biden administration should formulate a political process that can put the decision back where it belongs: with the consent of the governed.”

A team of scientists, backed by $15 million from a new company named Colossal, plans to genetically engineer an Asian elephant to produce a new species resembling the long-extinct woolly mammoth. Possessing traits needed to live in the mammoth’s original Arctic home, the tusked giants could, in the scientists’ vision, help revitalize the tundra ecosystem and slow the release of climate-forcing carbon dioxide. It might sound like science fiction. But in Issues, John O’Brien surveys an impressive array of current and evolving technologies that can be used to protect—and sometimes restore—species of all kinds and the habitats they depend on.

Thousands of immigrants to the United States from Mexico and Latin America are now imprisoned in US detention facilities, for no legal reason other than an immigration violation. In Issues, Mary C. Waters explores how this situation arose as the government adopted a series of laws that effectively integrated the criminal justice system with immigration enforcement, and the resulting social consequences. “We need to think about whether that is something we want our laws to do,” she writes, “and whether there might be a better way of thinking about the human rights of people and the right to social inclusion in society.”

Solar energy has the potential to supply 40% of the electricity used in the United States by 2035, according to a new report from the US Department of Energy. In Issues, a group of energy experts maintains that significantly expanding solar energy and other intermittent power sources will require adding long-duration storage capacity to the electric grid. Sarah Kurtz and her coauthors explore a variety of storage mediums, configurations, and business models that hold promise. They call on policymakers, regulators, entrepreneurs, and the scientific community to continue studying them all, without “picking a winner” too early and shutting down innovation.

The Netherlands recently celebrated the success of a massive flood control project that saved an area along the Maas River from destruction during the wettest July on record. Part of the country’s larger Room for the River effort, this newly built component diverts rising waters into a 1,300-acre natural catchment zone that can safely accept them. In Issues, Thaddeus Miller, Mikhail Chester, and Tischa A. Muñoz-Erickson explore a variety of such “safe-to-fail” designs that can be used to make US infrastructure systems more resilient—a growing challenge as extreme weather events become more common with climate change.

An artificial intelligence system cannot be awarded a US patent because only humans can be inventors under current law, a federal judge has ruled, noting that Congress has explicitly defined an inventor as an “individual.” But in Issues, Michael M. Rosen argues that rendering AI ineligible to receive patents “ignores the essential goal of the patent system, which is to stimulate emerging fields of innovation.” Recognizing machines as inventors, he writes, would foster more patents that can solve human problems, open wholly new ways of inventing, and reorient human inventive activity toward more fruitful areas of discovery.

With many areas in the United States experiencing major flooding, evidenced most recently by hurricanes Ida and Fred, residents in some communities—and sometimes even entire communities—are increasingly retreating to safer areas. The moves aren’t easy. But Nicholas Pinter notes in Issues that the nation actually has a long history of successful managed retreat from flood dangers. These dozens of case studies, he writes, offer key data for planning and implementing projects in the future. One overall lesson: relocation can often be cost-effective while also maintaining social bonds, promoting social justice, and protecting the local environment.