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• Spring 2025

  “Universities Are the Invisible Hand.”

  Marcia McNutt, Michael M. Crow

  On March 12, 2025, the leaders of the Issues editorial board—Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, and Michael M. Crow, president of Arizona State University—met on Zoom to offer… Read More

• 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

• Winter 2025

  Our Bases Are Precarious!

  Wilko Graf von Hardenberg

  Sea level rise has become a standard indicator of how humans are transforming the planet. But our ideas about sea level, why we measure it, and how it varies have changed radically over the centuries.

• May 21, 2024

  Strategies to Govern AI Effectively

  Advances in artificial intelligence are accelerating scientific discoveries and analyses, while at the same time challenging core norms and values in the conduct of science, including accountability, transparency, replicability, and human responsibility—difficulties that … Read More

• Summer 2025

  For Better Soil, Get Better Data

  Vivian Zhong, Clay Mitchell

  If you were buying a house, would you expect the value of the property to be based on its current condition, or its condition 50 years ago? When it comes to farmland… 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 2025

  Innovation’s Hidden Scaffolds

  Lisa Margonelli

  Call it the Vannevar Index: The greater the pressure on the scientific enterprise, the more one hears about Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s science advisor. The New York Times has mentioned Vannevar Bush… 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

• 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

• 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.

• 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.

• Winter 2025

  “The Currency of Power Is Increasingly Becoming Science and Technology.”

  Darío Gil, Molly Galvin

  Chair of the National Science Board Darío Gil also leads IBM Research, one of the largest corporate labs in the world. He discusses how science is the new currency of power, the challenges in developing a STEM workforce, and the possibility of a “NATO of science and technology.”

• 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

• 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 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.

• Fall 2024

  Science Policy: No Longer an “Exotic Nice-to-Have Thing”

  Lisa Margonelli

  The community of people who do science policy has long been something of a cipher. In the late 1960s, journalist Dan Greenberg reported that it comprised a “remarkably small number of people”—he… Read More

• 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

• 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.

• Summer 2024

  The Power of Space Art

  One of the remarkable qualities of space art is its ability to amplify the mysterious intangibility of the cosmos (as with the late-nineteenth-century French artist Étienne Trouvelot) and at the same time… Read More

• May 30, 2025

  The Shade Technician

  In a heat-sieged city whose residents have become functionally nocturnal, an essential worker labors during the day to fix private shade structures designed to provide shelter from the grueling sun for anyone who can pay.

• 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.

• 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

• Fall 2024

  Lessons From Baltimore for Participatory Research

  Alvin Hathaway Sr.

  Alvin Hathaway Sr. explains what Baltimore’s African Ancestry Neuroscience Research Initiative needed to gain insight, influence, and credibility.

• 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

• Winter 2021

  Natural Historians of the Industrial Landscape

  Julie Anand

  

  Hilla and Bernd Becher were a collaborative duo of German conceptual art photographers who profoundly changed the way artists saw the post-World War II landscape. For more than 40 years, they studied… Read More

• 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

• January 16, 2024

  How Generative AI Endangers Cultural Narratives

  Jill Walker Rettberg

  Sometime last summer, I needed to install a new dryer in my home in Bergen, Norway. I opened a localized version of Google and typed a request for instructions in Norwegian. Everything… Read More