Search Results

200 Results Found for

• Spring 2021

  A Manifesto to Responsibly Extend Reality Into Virtual Realms

  Dhoya Snijders, Rinie Van Est

  We perceive physical reality with our senses: we see the blue sky, hear waves crashing on the beach, feel the wind in our hair. As technology such as augmented reality (AR) and… Read More

• September 6, 2022

  Episode 17: Fruitful Communities

  David Allen Burns, Austin Young, Molly Jahn, JD Talasek

  Food is an essential part of our lives, but for many people fresh food is something they find in a grocery store, not growing in their communities. How can art and advances in… 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

• Summer 2020

  Public Value Science

  Barry Bozeman

  STEF at 75 Why should the United States government support science? That question was apparently settled 75 years ago by Vannevar Bush in Science, the Endless Frontier: “Since health, well-being, and… Read More

• Fall 2021

  How We Practice Hope

  Ed Finn

  If there is anything the tumultuous life and mesmerizing works of Mary Shelley have to teach us, it is that imagination has power. Ideas can tear you up, turn you inside out,… Read More

• Summer 2022

  Reflections on Carrie Mae Weems’s RESIST COVID | TAKE 6!

  David Fakunle, Carrie Mae Weems

  

  I often share a Zimbabwean proverb about lion hunts: “Until the lion tells its side of the story, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” I felt the spirit… Read More

• March 11, 2022

  What If Our Phones Had Skin?

  Biodesign Challenge

  VISION: Sheathe cell phones in a living, electricity-generating skin made by bacteria, changing how we relate to them and how they are charged. Team: Nada Elkharashi, Sequoia Fischer, Catherine Euale, Paige Perillat-Piratoine… Read More

• Winter 2020

  Ownership Dilemmas in an Age of Creative Machines

  Lav R. Varshney, Deepak Somaya

  Recently, a computer-generated work of art titled “Edmond de Belamy, from La Famille de Belamy” was sold by the auction house Christie’s for $350,000 to an anonymous bidder. Purported to be the… Read More

• Fall 2022

  Arctic Ice

  Cy Keener, Justine Holzman, Ignatius Rigor, John Woods

  

  Sea Ice Daily Drawings, 2019–2022, aluminum, acrylic, paper, and ink (detail) Integrating field data, remote satellite imagery, scientific analysis, and multimedia visual representation to document Arctic ice that is disappearing due to… Read More

• February 4, 2022

  Can a Sensor-Laden Hoodie Protect Vulnerable Communities?

  Biodesign Challenge

  VISION: Safeguard communities of color against violence through a network-linked fashion line of hoodies. Team: Mika Campbell, Grace Burch, Abigail Gordon, Savannah Adams School: Spelman College When 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot… Read More

• Summer 2021

  COVID Artifacts

  James Gouldthorpe

  

  It’s been more than a year since the pandemic started. Now that vaccines have arrived, a measure of hope has returned. But memories of the early days of the pandemic lie close… Read More

• Winter 2022

  Complexity and Visual Systems

  Ellen K. Levy

  

  Art, in both creation and experience, is one of the most complex of human endeavors. Artist Ellen K. Levy engages the mental loop of seeing, connecting, and processing by juxtaposing imagery that… Read More

• Spring 2021

  Data for the People!

  In “The Path to Better Health: Give People Their Data” (Issues, Winter 2021), Jason Cohen makes an important contribution to the discussion of data privacy. Data privacy in the midst… Read More

• December 21, 2021

  Episode 4: Art of a COVID Year

  In the early days of the pandemic, communities began singing together over balconies, banging pans, and engaging in other forms of collective support, release, and creativity. Artists have also been creatively responding… Read More

• Winter 2021

  Evolving Our Understanding of the Brain

  Susan M. Fitzpatrick

  Where did the human brain come from? How did biological evolution, randomly generated genetic tweaks that have accumulated over millions of years, result in an organ with such sophisticated anatomical and functional… Read More

• Spring 2022

  A Montreal Protocol for Space Junk?

  Stephen J. Garber, Lisa Ruth Rand

  On November 15, 2021, the crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) received an early wake-up call from NASA’s mission control. The day before, Russia had unexpectedly conducted an antisatellite technology (ASAT)… 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

• Winter 2021

  Human-Centered AI

  Ben Shneiderman

  In early 1997, before Alexa and Siri were conceived, I engaged in several public debates with MIT Media Lab professor Pattie Maes about the future of computing and artificial intelligence. The starting… Read More

• Winter 2022

  Wired and CERN

  Steve Miller

  

  Quantum System, 2020, 39 x 69 inches On a trip to Brazil, artist Steve Miller was captivated by the tangled web of power lines in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro, the largest… Read More

• Summer 2018

  The Limits of Dual Use

  Tara Mahfoud, Christine Aicardi, Saheli Datta, Nikolas Rose

  Research and technologies designed to generate benefits for civilians that can also be used for military purposes are termed “dual use.” The concept of dual use frames and informs debates about how… Read More

• 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

• October 28, 2021

  Why Data Isn’t Divine

  Jag Bhalla

  Who, or what, can we put our faith in now? Many would say we should trust in technology, which delivers feats once deemed miraculous on a daily basis. But as Meghan O’Gieblyn… Read More

• March 23, 2022

  Independent Science for a Daunting Future

  Fred H. Gage, Eric D. Isaacs

  When President Franklin D. Roosevelt called on Vannevar Bush to conceive a new future for American scientific research in the waning days of World War II, Bush responded with a breathtakingly bold… Read More

• October 22, 2021

  America on Edge: Settling for Second Place?

  Norman R. Augustine, Neal Lane

  The United States is on edge in ways the nation has rarely experienced throughout its young history. The country’s global leadership is being challenged in a rapidly changing and increasingly competitive world.… Read More

• March 1, 2022

  Episode 9: Maximizing the Good of Innovation

  The United States is justifiably proud of the accomplishments of its taxpayer-funded biomedical innovation system. But these innovations don’t benefit all Americans equally, which means, among other things, that the richest live… Read More

• Winter 2020

  Will Precision Medicine Lead to a Healthier Population?

  Nigel Paneth, Richard Cooper

  Human health and biomedical science have been transformed in tandem over the past two centuries. From around 1850 to 1920, better nutrition and prevention of epidemic infections were the main contributors to… Read More

• Summer 2022

  The Pomological Watercolor Collection

  US Department of Agriculture

  

  In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, healthy orchards and groves were seen as crucial to national prosperity. As people across the country created new cultivars, or varieties, through hybridization, the… Read More

• February 21, 2022

  Building a Just and Fair Scientific Enterprise

  Gilda Barabino

  Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to make equity a central principle in science was obvious. The scientific community has long discussed the need to go beyond the narrow definition of… Read More

• February 3, 2022

  Measuring Moonshots

  The Biden administration has reignited the Cancer Moonshot, first launched by the Obama administration, with a goal of reducing the death rate from cancer by at least 50% over the next 25… Read More

• January 31, 2022

  Episode 7: Shaky Science in the Courtroom

  Eyewitness testimony and forensic science are forms of evidence frequently relied upon in criminal cases. But over the past few decades DNA analysis—and the exonerations it has prompted—has revealed how flawed these… Read More