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• May 30, 2024

  Warm Eddy in Gulf Could Spell Trouble

  Tom Burroughs

  A large eddy of warm water swirling in the Gulf of Mexico may transform storms this summer into powerful hurricanes, an NPR station in South Florida reports. The eddy spun off the… Read More

• May 21, 2024

  A Human Rights Framework for AI Research Worthy of Public Trust

  Mary L. Gray

  In 2014, researchers at Cornell University and Facebook joined forces for an experiment. They wanted to find out whether emotional contagion occurs on social media—whether the expressions of emotion showing up in… Read More

• October 4, 2024

  Empathy Hour

  From the Future Tense Fiction archives: A story about the aftermath of massive climate migration, and the use of deepfake technology to manufacture complacence.

• Spring 2024

  An Elusive and Indefinable Boundary

  Virginia Hanusik

  

  Seven years before the release of Silent Spring in 1962, marine biologist and writer Rachel Carson wrote The Edge of the Sea. Part field guide to the Atlantic seashore, part meditation on… Read More

• Spring 2024

  The Roots That Ward Off Disaster

  Samantha Montano

  Every summer I take my undergraduate emergency management students to Louisiana to learn about disasters in the Gulf. One of our most valuable experiences is volunteering with local organizations that are replanting… Read More

• September 27, 2024

  Move Fast and Fake Things

  In a recent episode of the podcast Women at Warp, the hosts discussed their favorite episodes of the various Star Trek series in which the Holodeck—a fully immersive, interactive virtual reality… Read More

• Spring 2021

  Technoscientific Bodies

  Michael Sappol

  

  The sensory pathway and radio system, in Gerhard Venzmer et al., Hand- und Lehrbuch der Krankenpflege 1 (Stuttgart: Franckh’sche Verlag, 1938), pl. 10. Originally from Fritz Kahn, Das Leben des Menschen … Read More

• Winter 2024

  FLOE: A Climate of Risk

  Stephen Talasnik

  

  STEPHEN TALASNIK, Glacial Mapping 2023; Digitally printed vinyl wall print, 10’ x 14’ (h x w) Imagination can be a fundamental tool for driving change. Through creative narratives, we can individually… Read More

• Winter 2024

  Economists Being Economists

  Daniel Sarewitz

  In early nineteenth-century England, bands of men known as Luddites went about smashing the automatic knitting machines that had taken their jobs. The novelist Thomas Pynchon described the situation in a 1984… Read More

• March 12, 2024

  Walter Valdivia Researches for the White House

  Walter D. Valdivia, Lisa Margonelli

  The Science Policy IRL series pulls back the curtain on who does what in science policy and how they shaped their career path. In previous episodes we’ve looked at the cosmology of… Read More

• Spring 2023

  How Science Gets Drawn Into Global Conspiracy Narratives 

  Marc Tuters, Tom Willaert, Trisha Meyer

  A few short years ago, mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) was the subject of fundamental research, but it is now known as the basis for COVID-19 vaccines. At the same time, the concept… Read More

• Summer 2023

  Science and Global Conspiracies

  What difference does the internet make to conspiracy theories? The most sobering aspect of “How Science Gets Drawn Into Global Conspiracy Narratives” (Issues, Spring 2023), by Marc Tuters, Tom Willaert,… Read More

• Fall 2022

  Is Open Source a Closed Network?

  In “Architectures of Participation” (Issues, Summer, 2022), Gerald Berk and Annalee Saxenian present a compelling question: “Given the complexity and divergent trajectories of today’s innovation systems, how should public policy… Read More

• January 31, 2024

  Zach Pirtle Explores Ethics for Mars Landings

  Zach Pirtle, Lisa Margonelli

  NASA’s Artemis project aims to establish a long-term human presence on the moon—and then put astronauts on Mars. So in addition to designing rockets and spacesuits, NASA is also exploring the ethical… Read More

• January 24, 2024

  To Discourage Science Misconduct, Encourage “Delight of Discovery”

  Tom Burroughs

  A top research center, the Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, plans to retract or correct numerous scientific papers amid allegations that the authors falsified data by manipulating images. In Issues, the science… Read More

• Winter 2024

  Living Computers

  Lisa Margonelli

  In 1967, the idea of computer science as a distinct discipline seemed outlandish enough that three leaders of the movement felt the need to write a letter to Science addressing the question,… Read More

• Summer 2023

  Chasing De-extinction

  Mark Schaefer

  Three decades ago, Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park presented readers with the tantalizing question of whether a dinosaur could be brought back to life. Much of his novel is a depiction of the… Read More

• January 16, 2024

  How AI Sets Limits for Human Aspiration

  Stephanie Dick, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Matt Canute

  We are watching “intelligence” being redefined as the tasks that an artificial intelligence can do. Time and again, generative AI is pitted against human counterparts, with textual and visual outputs measured against… Read More

• January 16, 2024

  The Question Isn’t Asset or Threat; It’s Oversight

  Emmanuel Didier

  As part of a research group studying generative AI with France’s Académie Nationale de Médecine, I was surprised by some clinicians’ technological determinism—their immediate assumption that this technology would, on its own,… Read More

• January 10, 2024

  Turning a Policy Idea into a Pilot Project

  Erica Fuchs, Lisa Margonelli

  By day, Erica Fuchs is a professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. However, for the past year she’s also been running a pilot project—the National Network for Critical Technology Assessment—to give… Read More

• Fall 2022

  A Vision for Democratizing Government Data

  Julia Lane

  During the earliest weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a desperate need for data to respond to the worst labor market crisis in almost a century. State-administered unemployment claims skyrocketed. Jobseekers,… Read More

• Summer 2023

  From Bedside to Bench and Back

  Tania Simoncelli

  One night in 1995, Tracy Dixon-Salazar and her husband awoke to find their two-year-old daughter, Savannah, rigid and blue, her eyes rolled up into her head. This was the first of thousands… Read More

• Winter 2024

  “Libraries Are That Safe Place for Discussion of Ideas.”

  Carla Hayden, Molly Galvin

  Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden discusses the dynamic and essential role libraries play in American life—as community spaces, information repositories, trusted sources, and conveners of civil discourse. 

• May 20, 2024

  How Can Philosophy Help NASA Explore the Cosmos?

  After the success of the Apollo missions in landing men on the moon more than 50 years ago, humans have not left low Earth orbit. Changing political directives, myriad technical options, and … Read More

• Fall 2023

  Environmental Apparitions

  Brandon Ballengée

  

  Brandon Ballengée, SOS Humpback Black Seadevil Anglerfish, 2023, salvaged latex house paint on thrifted cotton bed sheets, 77 x 96 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Various Small Fires, Los Angeles,… Read More

• Fall 2023

  When the Energy Transition Comes to Town

  Jillian E. Miles, Christophe Combemale, Valerie J. Karplus

  In July 2023, Homer City, Pennsylvania, saw its coal-fired power plant deactivated, only three months after the community got word of the impending closure. With the plant being the state’s largest generating… Read More

• Winter 2023

  The Complicated Legacy of Terry Wallis and His Brain Injury

  Joseph J. Fins

  illustration by Shonagh Rae In the eight years that I have been teaching a seminar on disability rights and brain injury at Yale Law School, I have never come close to tears. But last… Read More

• Spring 2023

  Visions of Nursing

  Anne Wallentine

  

  Tim Okamura, Nurse Tamika, 2021, oil on wood panel, 24 x 30 in. During conflict or crisis—from wars and pandemics to individual health emergencies—nurses are often depicted in art as heroes… Read More

• Fall 2023

  What Ukraine Can Teach the World About Resilience and Civil Engineering

  Daniel Armanios, Jonas Skovrup Christensen, Andriy Tymoshenko

  When Russian airstrikes cut off water to 80% of Kyiv at the end of October 2022, utility workers were able to restore the flow within 24 hours. Against a steady barrage of… Read More

• December 20, 2022

  Episode 23: Shirley Malcom – Where Science and Society Meet

  Shirley M. Malcom

  Shirley M. Malcom is a trailblazer in the area of broadening participation in science. Currently senior advisor and director of the SEA Change initiative at the American Association for the Advancement of… Read More