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200 Results Found for

• Fall 2023

  Transforming Research Participation

  In “From Bedside to Bench and Back” (Issues, Summer 2023), Tania Simoncelli highlights patients moving from being subjects of biomedical research to leading that research. Patients and their families no… Read More

• Winter 2025

  Searching for a New Protopia

  Lisa Margonelli

  As scientists and government officials reinvent science politics and policies for a new era, the country will need to tell a new story about its future.

• Summer 2024

  Industrial Terroir Takes on the Yuck Factor

  Christy Spackman

  Illustration by Shonagh Rae Would you drink water you knew was made from your own poop or pee? What if that water showed up in a glass of award-winning beer? Perhaps you’ve… Read More

• May 30, 2025

  The Limits of Heat Resilience

  How resilient to extreme heat can humans really be? Our bodies have a limit—and our response to climate change should reflect that.

• May 9, 2025

  Ride

  Jasmine, a hotel worker in a future climate-ravaged Hawaii, is desperate for a change to her monotonous routine. When a guest tells Jasmine about a secret hack to tinker with the taxi-share system the island’s workers rely on, she’s forced to ride with some unusual fellow commuters, who change her mind about what her true destination should be.

• December 17, 2024

  Reindeer!

  Jacqueline Hrabok, Bonnie Scheele, Lisa Margonelli

  In Alaska, reindeer are much more real than the fantasy animals that pull Santa’s sleigh. Introduced to Alaska from Siberia by the US government in the 1890s, reindeer were part of a… 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

• Fall 2024

  Will It Scale?

  Omar Al-Ubaydli, John A. List

  During the bloodiest battles of the First World War, a young French sergeant named André Maginot was injured in the fighting, earning him a medal for valor. He later rose to the… Read More

• April 25, 2025

  Automated Justice?

  The emerging applications of artificial intelligence promise huge social benefits: significant gains in detecting breast cancer that allow radiologists to focus on other patient needs, the deciphering of text inside a 2,000-year-old… Read More

• April 25, 2025

  The 28th

  In a future legal system in which the investigators, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and juries are all replaced or supervised by artificial intelligence, who can be trusted? And are the contradictions and flaws inherent in human decisionmaking actually an asset?

• Fall 2024

  Who Is Responsible for AI Copyright Infringement?

  Michael P. Goodyear

  Twenty-one-year-old college student Shane hopes to write a song for his boyfriend. In the past, Shane would have had to wait for inspiration to strike, but now he can use generative artificial… Read More

• April 11, 2025

  The Minnesota Diet

  In a future city complete with vertical farms, rooftop gardens, and no carbon footprint, the city’s survival still depends on regular food deliveries from the outside. What happens when those deliveries suddenly stop showing up?

• January 16, 2024

  Ground Truths Are Human Constructions

  Florian Jaton

  Artificial intelligence algorithms are human-made, cultural constructs, something I saw first-hand as a scholar and technician embedded with AI teams for 30 months. Among the many concrete practices and materials these algorithms… Read More

• Summer 2023

  ARPA-H Should Zero In on Pandemic Prevention

  Jassi Pannu, Janika Schmitt, Jacob Swett

  More than 20 years ago, Robert Cook-Deegan asked in this magazine, “Does NIH Need a DARPA?” The article described the innovation funding model pioneered by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency—created during… Read More

• Winter 2017

  Of Sun Gods and Solar Energy

  Kartikeya Singh

  Come, O Surya, of thousand rays, the store-house of all energies, the Lord of the world, have mercy on me thy devotee, accept this Arghya, O, Mother of the day. —Invocation of the Spiritual… Read More

• March 28, 2025

  Coda

  When Ray discovers a secret that a powerful quantum computing company would rather keep hidden, she’s forced to question the very nature of her reality—and the memories that make it up.

• March 14, 2025

  When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis

  Robot, a disease-detecting drone, has been meticulously trained to gather public health data in hard-to-reach communities—and to use that data to stymie the spread of dangerous viruses. But when the public health authorities responsible for Robot are defunded, it’s forced to assemble a new team to keep its communities safe.

• May 7, 2024

  To Fix Health Misinformation, Think Beyond Fact Checking

  Tina Purnat, Elisabeth Wilhelm, Monya Baker

  When tackling the problem of misinformation, people often think first of content and its accuracy. But contering misinformation by fact-checking every erroneous or misleading claim traps organizations in an endless game of… Read More

• February 28, 2025

  Mothering the Bay

  When a busy BART train suddenly screeches to a stop deep under the San Francisco Bay, passengers turn to personalized AI agents to understand what’s happened—but they begin to realize that those agents may obscure more than they illuminate.

• February 14, 2025

  Actually Naneen

  Shristi employs a robot nanny named Naneen to watch over her kids. As Naneen’s hardware and software ages, Shristi debates whether to replace the nanny with a newer model—and questions which parts of parenting she really wants to automate.

• March 28, 2022

  Episode 11: Can Bureaucracy Build a Climate Revolution?

  Between 2009 and 2019, India brought electricity to half a billion citizens, and then turned around and presided over a grid where power from wind and solar became cheaper than electricity from… Read More

• Spring 2023

  Generating Meaningful Energy Systems Models for Africa

  Michael O. Dioha, Rose M. Mutiso

  About 77% of the 770 million people living without access to electricity today reside in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Increasing access to energy in the region could raise prospects for the 431 million… Read More

• Spring 2024

  “AI Is a Tool, and Its Values Are Human Values.”

  Fei-Fei Li, Sara Frueh

  Fei-Fei Li has been called the godmother of AI for her pioneering work in computer vision and image recognition. Li invented ImageNet, a foundational large-scale dataset that has contributed to key developments… Read More

• January 31, 2025

  The Funniest Centaur Alive

  At a Vegas comedy club, a stand-up has rapidly improved his act—thanks to the secret help of advanced AI trainers. When two spectators catch on, they unravel a complex debate about transparency, technology, and the process of artistic improvement.

• January 17, 2025

  The Wait

  When Emilia’s brother disappears, she turns to a government agency that tracks citizens’ locations in real time in order to protect them—only to realize that the agency’s real goal is to simply create an illusion of safety.

• Summer 2024

  A Space Future Both Visionary and Grounded

  In “Taking Aristotle to the Moon and Beyond” (Issues, Spring 2024), G. Ryan Faith argues that space exploration needs a philosophical foundation to reach its full potential and inspire humanity.… Read More

• Summer 2024

  A Binational Journey Toward Sustainability

  Christopher A. Scott, Constantino Macías Garcia, Natalia Martínez-Tagüeña, Thomas F. Thornton, Heather Kreidler

  The border between the United States and Mexico is both a political boundary and a demarcation of different ideological representations of a shared binational landscape. Both sides of the border share climate,… Read More

• Fall 2023

  New Voices on the Hill

  Yadira Caraveo, Jen Kiggans, Eric Sorensen, Brandon Williams

  Yadira Caraveo Congresswoman Yadira Caraveo. Illustration by Shonagh Rae. Congresswoman Yadira Caraveo, MD (D-CO) is a pediatrician and previously served in the Colorado state legislature. She represents Colorado’s Eighth (and newest) Congressional… Read More

• Summer 2024

  Unleashing Synergy or Accelerating Fragmentation?

  Kyung Ryul Park

  Over the last 40 years, international collaboration has become an essential strategy for the global science and technology (S&T) enterprise. Collaboration enables countries to leverage foreign expertise and equipment and distributes the… Read More

• December 20, 2024

  The Trolley Solution

  What does it take to be a good educator? In Shiv Ramdas’s story, a creative writing professor competes for tenure against an AI—and forces us to consider what we really want from technology in the classroom.