News Updates

As the popularity of electric vehicles is steadily reducing the pot of money available from traditional vehicle fuel taxes to build and maintain highways, the federal government and some states are eyeing alternative funding methods, including charging motorists by the distance their vehicle travels rather than the fuel it consumes. In Issues, John Paul Helveston examines the case for vehicle mileage taxes, the technical and political challenges of implementing them, and ways to make them both practical and socially equitable. Importantly, he writes, “If we don’t act now, we’re likely to find ourselves with state-of-the-art cars on roads that are unfit for driving.”

The Biden administration just announced it would provide $600 million to support adaptation to climate change, with a portion of the funds going to help coastal communities prepare for relocation to escape the tidal flooding and storm surge events that are expected to worsen with climate change. In Issues, Kavitha Chintam and five other PhD students offer guidelines for successfully managing community retreat. The authors cite, among other things, gaining neighborhood-wide approval of relocation plans, underwriting residents unable to afford moving, and providing grants to destination communities facing challenges of weaving in the people who resettle.

In the cover story of Cell, 52 Black scientists mark Juneteenth, which celebrates the freedom of the last large group of enslaved Black Americans, by describing the struggles still facing Black people in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine, and proposing institutional-level solutions. In Issues, Wayne A. I. Frederick examines how Howard University, which produces more Black PhDs than any school in the country, is helping meet this challenge. Among the school’s efforts, Howard starts early by engaging with middle-schoolers of color to familiarize them with the various disciplines, and stays late by comprehensively supporting enrolled students through their advanced degrees.

After months of delay, NASA has announced an October launch of a spacecraft named Psyche to explore a metal-rich asteroid of the same name. The mission’s primary aim is to learn about the formation and interior structure of Earth and other planets. But in Issues, Ian Christensen and colleagues point out that the nascent space mining community also hopes to learn about the resources contained in such asteroids. And citing tantalizing potential, the authors call on the United States to lead in developing policies to guide the utilization of space resources as operations become feasible.

Amitai Etzioni, a sociologist who helped develop and popularize communitarianism—a centrist philosophy that asks people to care less about their own rights and more about the common good—has died at age 94. In one of his many articles in Issues, he explores how communitarianism seeks a “third way” for navigating between speedy and slower economic growth and how science and technology influence both dimensions. “I see great merit,” he writes, “in shifting the focus of our actions from seeking ever-greater wealth to investing more of our time and resources in social lives, public action, and spiritual and intellectual activities—in communitarian pursuits.”