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• 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

  Why Space Debris Flies Through Regulatory Gaps

  Marilyn Harbert, Asha Balakrishnan

  Within an eight-day period in March 2023, astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) fired their thrusters twice to avoid a projected collision. Part of a dead satellite was hurtling toward the… 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

• 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

• 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

• Winter 2020

  How Academic Science Gave Its Soul to the Publishing Industry

  Mark W. Neff

  STEF at 75 America’s globally preeminent university research enterprise is constructed on two bedrock principles of self-governance. The first is autonomy: academic scientists should be left free to determine their own research… Read More

• September 11, 2023

  China Accused of Using AI to Spread Disinformation

  Tom Burroughs

  Chinese operatives are using artificial intelligence to create fake images to be spread on US social media, the tech giant Microsoft alleges, with the goal of sowing disinformation among the voting public… Read More

• February 21, 2023

  Episode 26: You’ve Been Misinformed About Sharks

  David Shiffman, Lisa Margonelli

  Recent conversations about scientific misinformation have concentrated on what is new: social media and algorithms that spread all kinds of information—reliable and unreliable—surprisingly fast. But misinformation has long been an issue for… Read More

• Fall 2021

  Reflections on a Tool of Observation

  Timothy Makepeace

  

  Cryogenic Test Structure, 2018, charcoal on paper, 49 x 49 inches In 2017, Washington, DC-based artist Timothy Makepeace was one of several artists selected by NASA to create artwork inspired by… Read More

• June 8, 2021

  The Scent of the Freetails

  Deji Bryce Olukotun

  Every parent feared that their kid would become a juicer, but Raj had never considered that his daughter might fall for one. He liked to believe that all the juicers lived far… Read More

• May 16, 2023

  Episode 31: Race, Genetics, and a “Most Dangerous Myth”

  Ann Morning, Monya Baker

  The concept of distinct races came from European naturalists in the 1700s. It’s now recognized as a social construct, rather than a biological classification. Nonetheless, genetics researchers sometimes use race or ethnicity to… Read More

• May 16, 2023

  “The Complexity of Technology’s Consequences Is Going Up Exponentially, But Our Wisdom and Awareness Are Not.”

  Tristan Harris, Sara Frueh

  Tristan Harris is a technology ethicist and the cofounder of the Center for Humane Technology. He’ll be speaking at the Nobel Prize Summit 2023: Truth, Trust, and Hope at the National Academy… Read More

• December 6, 2022

  Episode 22: Peaches, Pimentos, and Myths of Innovation

  Cynthia R. Greenlee, Lisa Margonelli

  The challenge of transforming regional economies through technological innovation is at the heart of current discussions about science and industrial policy—not to mention the CHIPs and Science Act itself. To think about what regional… Read More

• April 18, 2023

  Episode 29: To Solve the AI Problem, Rely on Policy, Not Technology

  Kate Crawford, Monya Baker

  Artificial intelligence is everywhere, growing increasingly accessible and pervasive. Conversations about AI often focus on technical accomplishments rather than societal impacts, but leading scholar Kate Crawford has long drawn attention to the… Read More

• November 15, 2022

  Episode 21: To Solve Societal Problems, Unite the Humanities With Science

  Kaye Husbands Fealing, Josh Trapani

  How can music composition help students learn how to code? How can creative writing help medical practitioners improve care for their patients? Science and engineering have long been siloed from the humanities,… Read More

• Spring 2014

  The View from Nowhere

  Jason Lloyd

  The global positioning system (GPS) technology incorporated into the vehicles, computers, smart phones, and other devices we use every day provides a convenience that would have been almost unimaginable two decades ago.… Read More

• Fall 2022

  Humanizing Science and Engineering for the Twenty-First Century

  Kaye Husbands Fealing, Aubrey Deveny Incorvaia, Richard Utz

  Dr. Nettrice Gaskins is a widely recognized African American digital artist who creates works that combine images of individuals with an artificial intelligence (AI) application that synthesizes patterns. When her larger-than-life portraits… Read More

• Fall 2022

  Imagining a Better Internet

  The future of technology is too often imagined and engineered by corporations and venture capitalists, foreclosing more radical possibilities. Today, it is Meta’s iteration of the Metaverse that dominates headlines, a riff… Read More

• November 18, 2021

  The Ongoing Transformation

  For the Issues podcast, we talk with fascinating people to get a behind-the-scenes look at how their research and ideas are transforming our world. Listen and subscribe to The Ongoing Transformation wherever … Read More

• April 12, 2022

  Episode 12: Chasing Connections in Climate Action

  There is scientific consensus on climate change and its human cause, but how to understand and address global warming remains a divided topic in American life. Art and religion are two lenses… Read More

• Winter 2023

  What the Ukraine-Russia War Means for South Korea’s Defense R&D

  Keonyeong Jeong, Yongseok Seo, Kyungmoo Heo

  South Koreans are watching the war between Russia and Ukraine not as a far-off conflict, but as a possible model for future power struggles in East Asia—especially in the context of increasing… Read More

• Winter 2023

  The Most Complex Puzzle

  Julia Buntaine Hoel

  

  Julia Buntaine Hoel, Territory 1, 2017, digital print on aluminum, 16 x 24 inches. Created from microscopy photographs taken by the artist of rhesus macaque brain slides. Artist Julia Buntaine Hoel… Read More

• November 10, 2022

  The United States Needs a Director of National Health Security

  Andrew Kilianski

  The US response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent monkeypox virus outbreaks has been severely hampered by a lack of a central authority over health security, a concept that encompasses a range… Read More

• December 7, 2021

  Episode 3: Eternal Memory of the Facebook Mind

  David Beer, Jason Lloyd

  Social media and streaming platforms such as Facebook and Spotify analyze huge quantities of data from users before feeding selections back as personal “memories.” How do the algorithms select which content to… Read More

• Spring 2022

  Electrifying Agents and the Power Thieves of Mexico City

  Diana Montaño

  Leer en español Mugshot from Tomás Sánchez’s booking record. One morning in 1908, the fate of Tomás Sánchez, owner of the San Antonio mill on Mexico City’s Pueblita Street, took a sharp… Read More

• Fall 2021

  An AI That’s Not Artificial at All

  John Paschkewitz, Bart Russell, John Main

  Despite the fact that geopolitical tensions had been steadily increasing over the last week and the entire base was on high alert, the shock and violence of the missile attack on the … Read More

• Summer 2022

  Academic Mentorship Needs a More Scientific Approach

  Beronda L. Montgomery, Fátima Sancheznieto, Maria Lund Dahlberg

  For an aspiring scientist, intentional support and guidance through effective mentorship can make a career. For that same scientist, negative mentoring experiences—whether well-meaning but neglectful supervision or intentional bullying or harassment—can break… Read More

• Summer 2022

  New Theory for Increasingly Tangled Banks

  Saran Twombly, Alan Hastings, Tom Miller, Michael Cortez, Karen Abbott, Tanjona Ramiadantsoa, Julie Blackwood, Olivia Prosper

  Illustration by Shonagh Rae Decades before the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how rapidly infectious diseases could emerge and spread, the world faced the AIDS epidemic. Initial efforts to halt the contagion were slow… Read More

• Summer 2022

  A New Social Contract

  Elizabeth Garbee

  Last summer, my friend Sarah and I tried to support local businesses that were hit hard during the pandemic by meeting up at various independent coffee shops around town to do our… Read More