The Road to a New Energy System
Every issue explores cutting-edge developments in technology, medicine, education, climate change, and much more. Articles provide in-depth analyses of science and technology’s impact on public policy, the economy, and society—bringing today’s best minds to bear on tomorrow’s most critical topics.
Editor's Journal
Why Is This So Hard?
If everyone from T. Boone Pickens to Vinood Khosla to Steven Chu agrees that the world needs to develop affordable, low-carbon, efficient, and sustainable energy technologies, why do we have to spend… Read More
From the Hill
From the Hill – Fall 2009
House approves climate and energy bill, Senate begins work In a 219-212 vote on June 26, the House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454), a bill to cap… Read More
Perspectives
A Vision for U.S.-Russian Cooperation on Nuclear Security
The United States and Russia have reached a new stage in their relationship, and the time is right to consider how the world’s two most powerful nuclear powers can work together to… Read More
Features
Archives – Fall 2009
DAVID MANN, Liquid Gravity, Oil, alkyd, acrylic on panel, 30 × 72 inches, 2001. Collection of the National Academy of Sciences. Liquid Gravity Central to the paintings by artist David Mann… Read MoreStimulating Innovation in Energy Technology
Energy technology poses a special challenge to the U.S. innovation system. Fossil fuels are deeply imbedded in the economy and the political system. To the user, they are usually cheap, convenient, efficient,… Read MoreNanolessons for Revamping Government Oversight of Technology
In recent decades, the capabilities of U.S. federal agencies responsible for environmental health and safety have steadily eroded. The agencies cannot perform their basic functions now, and they are even less able… Read MoreCloning DARPA Successfully
Confronted with the growing threat of global climate change, today’s policymakers face the challenge of how to create an energy system that emits less carbon and is more efficient, affordable, and secure.… Read MoreTransforming Energy Innovation
The United States must change the way it produces and uses energy by shifting away from its dependence on imported oil and coal-fired electricity and by increasing the efficiency with which energy… Read MoreMobilizing Science to Revitalize Early Childhood Policy
President Barack Obama has called for greater investment in the healthy development of the nation’s youngest children. But policymakers are facing difficult decisions about the allocation of limited funds among a range… Read MoreChina‘s Future: Have Talent, Will Thrive
When China’s leaders surveyed their development prospects at the onset of the 21st century, they reached an increasingly obvious conclusion: Their current economic development strategy, heavily dependent on natural resources, fossil fuel,… Read MoreClimate Change and U.S. Competitiveness
The Obama administration and Congress have been grappling with how to craft legislation that addresses the looming threat of global warming while reducing U.S. dependence on foreign energy sources. In June 2009,… Read More
Book Reviews
Water Woes
True to his title, in Unquenchable, legal scholar and water expert Robert Glennon describes a cross-section of the nation’s water problems and offers several prescriptions. But Glennon is never dusty and … Read More
Russian Science Odyssey
The complex rivalries and connections between Soviet and U.S. science and technology were a subject of intense worldwide interest during the era of “big science” and throughout the Cold War, and Science … Read More
Embracing uncertainty
This book is a pudding with a theme. The pudding is a mélange of observations on the cultural, economic, and political implications of the Internet, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, space exploration, and various… Read More
A pox on Smallpox
Smallpox is a severe viral disease that claimed hundreds of millions of lives during the course of history. A uniquely human affliction, it killed a third of its victims and left the… Read More