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• Fall 2025

  A Firebreak for Mirror Life

  Regulation may not be enough to prevent the potential harms of mirror life. Is it time for a “firebreak” that makes the creation of mirror organisms impossible?

• November 25, 2025

  Making AI Chatbots Safer

  J. B. Branch, Megan Nicholson

  AI chatbots generate conversations with users and can appear, at times, quite human. J. B. Branch discusses who is using chatbots, what the companies behind these AIs are doing, and how they might be regulated.

• June 17, 2025

  Neil Chilson Helps Turn Knowledge Into Benefits for Humanity

  Neil Chilson, Jason Lloyd

  Neil Chilson, head of AI policy at the Abundance Institute, discusses what it’s like to work at a policy think tank, the questions about artificial intelligence that motivate his work, and why he is optimistic about our technological future.

• Spring 2025

  Let Unfunded Grant Applications See the Light of Day

  Stuart Buck, Christopher Steven Marcum

  Showing which proposals do and don’t receive federal funding can improve research and advance open science.

• Fall 2025

  A Strategy for Building Space Nuclear Systems That Fly

  Bhavya Lal, Roger M. Myers

  NASA’s new directive to design, build, and deploy a nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030 will require a commitment to implementation, leadership from the White House, and learning from six decades of failures.

• December 3, 2024

  A Cutting-Edge Bureaucracy

  Natalie B. Aviles, Jason Lloyd

  The word “bureaucracy” conjures up images of red tape and long lines at the DMV, not cutting-edge innovation. But some of the most significant scientific and health innovations of the past century… Read More

• Spring 2024

  Embracing the Social in Social Science

  Rayvon Fouché

  To begin thinking about why all the sciences should embrace the social in social science, I would like to start with cupcakes. In my research, context is a recurring theme, so let… Read More

• January 16, 2024

  Generative AI Is a Crisis for Copyright Law

  Kate Crawford, Jason Schultz

  Generative artificial intelligence is driving copyright into a crisis. More than a dozen copyright cases about AI were filed in the United States last year, up severalfold from all filings from 2020… Read More

• January 30, 2026

  Deficiency Agent

  How will artificial intelligence transform warfare? Andrew Liptak’s story brings us to the front lines to see how a glitchy combat AI deals with the tricky task of balancing the demands of a mission with the unpredictability of the battlefield.

• September 2, 2025

  How to Safely Study “Mirror Life”

  Tom Burroughs

  Worried about the potential perils of “mirror life” organisms, whose molecular structures are reverse images of their natural counterparts, scientists have widely stopped studying them—with some researchers calling for an outright ban.… Read More

• Spring 2024

  Boost Opportunities for Science Learning With Regional Alliances

  Susan Singer, Heidi Schweingruber, Kerry Brenner

  By many metrics, Tennessee struggles in science education. The number of candidates finishing teacher preparation programs fell nearly 40% from 2014 to 2020; if that trend continues, the state will produce no… Read More

• Winter 2026

  A Capacity for World-Building

  Tavares Strachan

  

  Across sculpture, painting, text, and music, Tavares Strachan creates immersive environments that blend everyday spaces with surreal landscapes.

• December 12, 2025

  A Lion Roars in Longyearbyen

  Following the mass extinction of most species, the animals that fill a zoo in a future Arctic metropolis are lab-made—with one exception: an aging lion. When the lion escapes in the middle of the city’s Christmas festivities, a complex hunt ensues.

• July 18, 2025

  Reconsidering “Mirror Life”

  Jason Lloyd

  Just as humans have left and right hands that are mirror images of one another, the molecules in our cells have similar properties. Proteins, for instance, are composed of “left-handed” amino acids.… Read More

• Summer 2024

  Educating Engineers for a New Nuclear Age

  Aditi Verma, Katie Snyder, Shanna Daly

  Engineering education has long prioritized technical mastery above all else. And though such prioritization has equipped engineers with powerful analytical tools, this singular focus has left them unprepared to address some of… Read More

• February 11, 2025

  How Do You Solve a Problem Like Misinformation?

  Monya Baker, Asheley Landrum

  Vaccines, oil spills, genetic engineering, and stem cells—anywhere there’s science, there’s also misinformation. It muddies our ability to make good decisions, ranging from far-reaching ones like creating policy to simple ones like… Read More

• Fall 2025

  Tracing the Roots of Motion Capture

  

  Frank and Lillian Gilbreth’s pioneering motion studies laid the groundwork for the sophisticated systems used in biomechanics, animation, and virtual environments today.

• Winter 2025

  AI and Copyright Law

  In “Who Is Responsible for AI Copyright Infringement?” (Issues, Fall 2024), Michael P. Goodyear presents a novel argument for treating AI systems as legal persons capable of direct liability for… Read More

• July 1, 2025

  What Does a Cormorant Feel?

  Brandon Keim, Lisa Margonelli

  Brandon Keim discusses animal personhood, movements around animal representation, and cormorants—one named Cosmos in particular.

• November 21, 2025

  Subsidence

  The AI boom means more demands on data centers—and running a data center requires complex technical infrastructure, vast environmental resources, and experienced human talent. In E. G. Condé’s story, a labyrinthine data center is in the middle of a massive outage. When the corporation that owns the center fails to diagnose the problem provoking the outage with its fancy technical systems, it’s forced to turn to human intuition to sniff out a more fundamental dilemma.

• October 31, 2025

  Coser y Cantar

  What does ethical fashion look like? Gabriela Damián Miravete’s story explores transborder labor and the future of the textile industry.

• June 3, 2025

  How ADHD Affects Adults

  David Goodman, Sara Frueh

  Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is the second most prevalent psychiatric disorder in adults. David Goodman explains how ADHD affects adults, the complexities in how it’s diagnosed and treated, and open questions for research in the field.

• Summer 2024

  What Can Artificial Intelligence Learn From Nature?

  Refik Anadol Studio

  

  Living Archive: Nature showcases the output from the Large Nature Model (LNM) by Refik Anadol Studio. Refik Anadol Studio in Los Angeles maintains a research practice centered around discovering and developing novel… Read More

• Fall 2024

  The Trap of Securitizing Science

  Tommy Shih, Caroline S. Wagner

  In recent years, science and technology have emerged as critical domains reshaping the landscape of international relations and national security. In particular, the United States and the European Union have sought to… Read More

• May 6, 2025

  Using Storytelling to Investigate Scientific Questions

  Arula Ratnakar, Mia Armstrong-López

  Fiction can be an important tool to explore complex science and technology questions. Arula Ratnakar discusses how storytelling can help both experts and nonexperts think about complex issues.

• Spring 2025

  If These Walls Could Talk

  Kathryn Freeman, Matt Moment

  

  In her enchanting narrative paintings, Kathryn Freeman imagines a world where people coexist with flora and fauna in moments of leisure and creativity.

• March 25, 2025

  The Rise of Deadly Fungal Pathogens

  Angel N. Desai, Jason Lloyd

  Angel Desai discusses what fungal pathogens are, why they are becoming more dangerous, and how the public health community can respond to this new threat.

• August 8, 2025

  The Song Between Worlds

  On a future Mars overrun by wealthy tourists, a young explorer ventures out to hear an elusive Martian song vocalized by the long-time residents of the planet. But they quickly run up against what it really means to seek—and share—intangible cultural goods.

• Fall 2024

  Second-Order Effects of Artificial Intelligence

  In “Governing AI With Intelligence” (Issues, Summer 2024), Urs Gasser provides an insightful survey on regulating artificial intelligence during a time of expanding development of a technology that has both… Read More

• March 11, 2025

  Minimizing Cannabis’s Harms to Public Health

  Yasmin Hurd, Sara Frueh

  More than half of US states have legalized cannabis, but it remains federally prohibited, which means regulations are decided on a state-by-state basis with little federal guidance. What are the public health implications of current cannabis policy?