Supreme Court Allows Assault On Stem Cell Research To Die
Ian Millhiser via Think Progress. Two years ago, Reagan-appointed Chief Judge Royce Lamberth suspended all federal funding for embryonic stem cell research in a sweeping opinion that even invalidated...
View ArticleClik here to view.
White House Announces U.S. Government Will Not Build Death Star
"Sure, the Death Star is a giant superlaser that can blow up planets. But over 1,000,000 of our employees just like to call it 'home.'" It is official: the United States government will not build an...
View ArticleWorking Toward a More Fitting Tribute to Aaron Swartz than JSTOR’s Register &...
Just two days before internet folk hero Aaron Swartz took his own life, online journal archive JSTOR announced an expansion of its free-access “Register & Read” program, from 76 publishers to over...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why DDoS Attacks Are the Wrong Way to Honor Aaron Swartz
When internet folk hero Aaron Swartz’s family released a statement blaming the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and MIT for decisions that contributed to his suicide, it was almost inevitable that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Duck, Rabbit, Gas Well
Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, now in its 50th year of print, offers a unique way to understand the debate over fracking. Kuhn speculates that two people might “see different...
View ArticleClik here to view.
ARPA-E is Here to Stay
Citations and footnotes are available in the pdf version of this article. Since its inception in 1958, countless groundbreaking innovations have been commercialized from the Department of Defense’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Blue Pill or Red Pill?
“If there’s a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that’s going to make you well?” With these...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Surpassing Outdated Law, Google Requires Warrants For Government Access To...
Andrea Peterson, via Think Progress. In a major change to how America’s largest tech companies handle online privacy, Google revealed this week that it requires warrants for users’ email content and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Terminating the Terminator: What to do About Autonomous Weapons
“The Terminator” is clearly science fiction, but it speaks to a deep intuition that the robotization of warfare is a slippery slope—the endpoint of which can neither be predicted nor fully controlled....
View ArticleDivest Over Global Warming?
James Lawrence Powell, in a campaign letter for the FossilFree. A generation ago, students urged colleges to sell their stock in companies doing business in Apartheid South Africa. At least 155...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Clicking Online Ads More Likely To Deliver Malware Than Surfing Porn Sites,...
Andrea Peterson, via ThinkProgress. Your online habits may be less dangerous than you think if they involve the less savory aspects of the web: According to Cisco’s annual 2013 Security Report internet...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Manmade Carbon Pollution Has Already Put Us On Track For 69 Feet Of Sea Level...
Joe Romm, via climate progress. The bad news is that we’re all but certain to end up with a coastline at least this flooded (20 meters or 69 feet). The “good” news is that this might take 1000 to 2000...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Cybersecurity Bill Supporters Regroup As Executive Order Looms
The Hill reports Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, plans to re-introduce the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), with the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Success of Northeast Cap-and-Trade System Shows Market-Based Climate Policy...
The success of a regional cap-and-trade program in reducing carbon pollution in the U.S. Northeast over the past few years has scarcely been mentioned in the debate over how to reduce carbon pollution....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Announcement Raises Hopes About Cheaper-Than-Coal Solar Technology
David Roberts at Grist has reported on some interesting news which, if true, would be pretty significant: a new solar technology company claims to have designed a new solar photovoltaic product capable...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Government Audit Says The FCC Failed To Fix Network Security Holes
Andrea Peterson, via Think Progress. Last week the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released an audit on the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Enhanced Secured Network (ESN) project that...
View ArticleTIMELINE: U.S. Cybersecurity Policy in Context
President Barack Obama signed a long-rumored executive order and presidential directive on Tuesday aimed at strengthening the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure. America’s enemies are “seeking...
View ArticleHow The Sequester’s R&D Cuts Will Hurt Science And Innovation
After President Obama’s called to attain a “level of research and development not seen since the height of the Space Race” in the State of the Union, universities are renewing their cry for a deal to...
View ArticleThe Other Aaron’s Law
Andrea Peterson, via Think Progress. Just over a month after internet folk hero and activist Aaron Swartz ended his own life, a bipartisan group of law-makers have introduced legislation that would...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Americans Ask White House For The Right To Unlock Their Cell Phones
Andrea Peterson, via Think Progress. You probably don’t have as much control over your cell phone as you think: Thanks to a bizarre enforcement of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that bars...
View ArticleKeeping Good Research from Going Bad
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released yesterday the second installment of a policy initiative to address research that, while being done for the right reasons, could be used...
View ArticleSuppressed South Carolina Climate Change Report Warns of Big Impacts
South Carolina news outlet TheState.com reported on Sunday that an official, comprehensive assessment of dramatic climate change impacts looming large in South Carolina’s future was buried and barred...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Ten Principles of 3D Printing
Editor’s Note: Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, is a new manufacturing technology of increasing relevance across many industries and across the globe. 3D printers work in a similar...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Corporations Score Big Profits By Limiting Access To Publicly Funded...
Andrea Peterson via Think Progress. Here’s how the academic publishing industry works: Academics do research (frequently supported by public funds) and submit that research to journals, often paying...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Eliminate Violence Against Women and Girls? There’s An App for That
Today is International Women’s Day, which falls during the 57th annual week-long session of the Commission on the Status of Women, or CSW, that is currently taking place at the U.N. headquarters in New...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Recent Observed Global Warming Is ‘Amazing And Atypical’
Dr. Joe Romm, via Climate Progress. The figure at right shows temperature change over the past 11,300 years (in blue, via Science, 2013) plus projected warming this century on humanity’s current...
View ArticleIs There Daylight Between the Two Sides of the Energy ‘Innovation’ Versus...
Recently there has been a resurgence of what is becoming a classic (see: tired) debate between very smart people about the tension between clean energy innovation and deployment. This is a “debate”...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why You Should Care About The Increasing Amount Of Fraud In Scientific Research
The Washington Post reported on the equivalent of an ongoing academic thriller unfurling at Johns Hopkins earlier this week, involving a researcher who alleges he was fired in retaliation for his...
View ArticleBloomberg’s Supersize Soda Ban Rejected By Judge, But Backed By Science
Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s (I) public health initiative to ban the sale of sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces was set to begin on Tuesday — but after a state judge struck down the initiative on Monday,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Government Can (Still) Read Most Of Your Emails Without A Warrant
Andrea Peterson, via ThinkProgress. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced a bipartisan bill Tuesday to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) that would...
View ArticleFuture Choices II
In 2007 the Center for American Progress released its report “Future Choices: Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Law,” which described a range of assisted reproductive technologies and their...
View ArticleClik here to view.
World’s Most Powerful Private Supercomputer Won’t Cure Cancer, But Will Find...
Ryan Koronowski via Climate Progress. Twice a year, a group of experts release a ranked list of the world’s most powerful computers called TOP500. It is likely that the new list in June will have a new...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Science and the Public Square
In the past decade, we have heard a lot about how Conservatives don’t like science. In their 2011 book Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway document the conservative lean of the champions...
View ArticleThe Dollars And Science of Fishery Management
By Michael Conathon, via The Center for American Progress In September 2013 the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which regulates America’s fisheries, will be up for...
View ArticlePresident Obama Launches $100 Million Initiative To Map The Human Brain
Editor’s Note: Science Progress applauds the President’s latest initiative to invest in the next generation of neuroscience research. Whether this is the beginning of the next human genome project...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The ‘Scariest Search Engine On The Internet’ Has Been Around For 3 Years And...
Andrea Peterson via ThinkProgress. CNNMoney posted an ominously titled column “Shodan: The scariest search engine on the Internet” last week about a search application that discovers unprotected...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Equity Crowdfunding: Boost for Innovation or Haven for Scams?
Shortly after the passage of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups, or JOBS, Act just over a year ago, an article in the New York Times Dealbook section observed that “it is unclear how regulators will...
View ArticleDeath Spiral Video: Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Volume 1979-2012
Many experts now say that if recent volume trends continue we will see a “near ice-free Arctic in summer” within a decade. Creative tech guru Andy Lee Robinson shows why in a wondrous new video — set...
View ArticleThe ‘Broader Impacts’ of Sequestration on Science
Now that we’ve been driven off the “fiscal cliff,” perhaps we should look around and assess the results. It turns out that sequestration is raising interesting questions about the relation between...
View ArticleHow Smartphones Are Revolutionizing Home Care For Alzheimer’s And Autism...
Sy Mukjerjee via ThinkProgress. As technological innovation empowers consumers to take greater control over their lives, the health industry has taken particular advantage of emerging internet and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Ethics of Publishing Genomes
Andrea Peterson via Think Progress. In 1951, a black tobacco farmer and mother of five named Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer at the age of 31. But before she died, the doctors treating her at...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Navigating the Junk Science of Fetal Pain
March 13, 2013, was a significant day for abortion activists as a federal judge struck down an Idaho law banning abortions past 20 weeks. The ban had been put in place based on unfounded assertions...
View ArticleHow the Political Crusade Against Fisker Automotive Stifles Innovation
Martin LaMonica via our partners at OnEarth. Before raising more than $1 billion in private capital to start his own “green car” company, Henrik Fisker was a designer for the likes of Aston Martin and...
View ArticleThe U.S. Outsources Cybersecurity & Defense To Contractors That Keep Getting...
Last week, Bloomberg reported that QinetiQ, a high tech defense contractor specializing in secret satellites drones and software used by U.S. special forces, was the victim of a sustained cybersecurity...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Getting Innovative with Regional Innovation Funding
The Obama administration announced yesterday the latest chapter in its unfolding story of regional innovation partnership programs. More than any past administration, the Obama White House has been...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Software Patents: Separating Rhetoric from Facts
In a digitally enabled economy, software is of great and growing importance. Getting the right legal, regulatory, and trade framework in place is, or should be, a priority of the highest order....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fetal Anomalies, Undue Burdens, and 20-week Abortion Bans
With the introduction of a 20-week abortion ban in the District of Columbia in April by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), anti-choice activists are once again looking to restrict abortion access in a city...
View ArticleFulfilling the Promise of Concentrating Solar Power
This is the executive Summary of a report, available in full here. Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF version of this report. Concentrating solar power—also known as concentrated solar...
View ArticleTurning the Page
The Center for American Progress, The Heritage Foundation, and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation teamed up to release a joint report assessing options to reform the national lab...
View ArticleYour Genes Not for Sale
In a unanimous ruling last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected that a patent can be granted to a gene sequence that describes the risk of a disease. Simply stated, you cannot own a piece of the human...
View Article
