News Updates

NASA has reached a design milestone in its plans to bring soil and rock samples from Mars back to Earth for advanced study. Delivery isn’t scheduled until 2033. But as Bhavya Lal and Jeff Trauberman write in Issues, many observers want the space agency to do more now to beef up “planetary protection” to prevent extraterrestrial microbes or other potentially troublesome organic materials from contaminating Earth and its biosphere. Toward this aim, they offer five considerations that NASA should heed in developing policies and technical tools not only for preventing inbound contamination but also outbound contamination by human spacecraft.

As part of legislation to help the United States compete with China, the Senate has authorized $100 billion for the National Science Foundation. The bill also sets up a new NSF directorate focused on turning research into critical real-world applications. In Issues, Steven C. Currall and Venkatesh Narayanamurti propose a set of principles that NSF can use to build an “organizational architecture” for innovation. Key, they write, is fostering “breakthrough innovations” that lead to “novel and valuable products, processes, or services that have dramatic societal and economic impact by reshaping the competitive market in a single industry or by launching a new industry.”

A start-up company pursuing commercial fusion energy, TAE Technologies, just hit an operational milestone, and gained $250 million in new funding from some big names in tech and energy. In earlier days, venture capitalists played a key role in getting the company up and running. Ray A. Rothrock was one of them. In Issues, he describes the various ways venture capitalists helped the company—which was then called Tri Alpha Energy—just as they aid countless research-intensive innovators. In addition to cash, for example, they provide what Rothrock calls “the tough love necessary for controlling spending, or keeping it directed toward the agreed objective.”

Cultivated meat grown directly from animal cells offers health and environmental benefits, a range of observers tell CNN, but getting it to market faces challenges. Writing in Issues, Alex Smith and Saloni Shah agree on all counts—and they look to the US government to help advance the technology and guide its impact. “Public investment can stimulate the growth of the alternative meat industry and its competitiveness with conventional meat producers,” they argue. “At the same time, federal policy can help assure a faster, less politically divisive, and more socially equitable transition from conventional meat production to the new high-tech alternatives.”

Contrary to conventional wisdom that countries need constant economic growth to prosper, the economist Herman Daly explains in the New York Times his long-standing arguments that a steady-state economy will better benefit both society and the global environment. In Issues, Zora Kovacic and four colleagues offer Europe as a case in point. “The future of growth in Europe could benefit from a shift in focus: from an increase in quantity to an increase in quality,” they write. “Many of the most valuable experiences in life cannot be monetized or measured. Finding meaning and purpose does not necessitate material riches.”

With the Biden administration stripped of major tools for fighting climate change, one alternative is to encourage states to adopt their own aggressive policies to reduce carbon emissions, the New York Times reports. In Issues, Charles F. Kennel sees scaling down the focus—even to the local level—as a good idea. Local communities worldwide experience climate change differently, he argues, and face unique environmental, economic, and social factors when making climate policy choices. “The scientific community,” Kennel writes, “needs to help by providing local leaders with the specific regional climate information they need to motivate and inform coordinated action.”