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Foiling the Growing Threat of Fungal Pathogens
The Shuttle Program

Attempting a Democratic Technology
John M. Logsdon reviews Amy Paige Kaminsky’s book about the development of and justification for NASA’s space shuttle program.
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Nurturing Deeper Ways of Knowing in Science
Efforts to diversify representation in science and engineering require initiatives that increase diversity of thought as well.
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Don’t Rank Research Universities—Compare Them
Regional Development

How Some Universities Translate Inclusive Innovation into Regional Growth
Positioning universities as hubs of inclusive innovation, particularly in less inventive places, can shift local workforce demographics and accelerate growth.
Read MoreFuture Tense Fiction

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.
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The New Currency of Power
Winter 2025
Science and technology have often come to policymakers’ rescue when the United States was worried about threats to national security or competitiveness—think of the US response to Sputnik, or more recently, the CHIPS and Science Act after the COVID-19 pandemic. But industry, not government, is now the biggest funder of scientific research and technological development. How can the country coordinate this vast and unwieldy conglomerate in order to maintain its global preeminence? Fortunately, the scientific enterprise has been continually reinventing itself for decades, and essays in the Winter 2025 issue document this process and consider what insights we might glean for the future.
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From This Issue
The Future of Nuclear Power
The US Department of Energy and big tech companies such as Google and Amazon have announced their support for the development of advanced nuclear reactors. Do their efforts prefigure a nuclear renaissance? And what would such a renewal of the nuclear sector mean for society?
Nuclear Innovation

An Ambidextrous Approach to Nuclear Energy Innovation
Engineering Education

Educating Engineers for a New Nuclear Age
Decentralized Nuclear?

Can Nuclear Power Go Local?
Nuclear Waste

Deep Time: The End of an Engagement
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