The United Nations University Institute for Advanced Studies recently published a report on human cloning offering the international community two choices: either prepare for the legal and ethical issues associated with living, cloned humans, or prohibit human reproductive cloning.
The Bush administration wants to push clean-technology exports without taking meaningful measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at home. That’s the wrong message to send on the eve of a major global summit on climate change next week in Indonesia.
FINANCING SCIENCE
Maine voters recently voted to support targeted investment in the state’s technology sector through the Maine Technology Initiative. Technology investments have yielded significant gains for the state economy since the 19th century.
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
In his most recent book, The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker argues that language is one of many mental organs that shape our participation in a just and free society.
Nanotechnology offers great promise, but an incomplete understanding of the potential dangers and the lack of a unified regulatory framework threaten the potential of research. And despite the concerns of scientists, the public is not engaged with nanotech policy.
DEFINING SCIENCE
Humans should be extremely cautious about meddling any further with the Earth’s atmosphere. But we should study the possibility nevertheless, in case someone else tries it—or in case we don’t have a choice.
PROGRESSIVE GROWTH
The Center for American Progress today releases the first pieces of Progressive Growth, its Economic Plan for the Next Administration, which includes a chapter on expanding growth and opportunity through science and technology.
PROGRESSIVE GROWTH
The Center for American Progress today releases the first pieces of Progressive Growth, its Economic Plan for the Next Administration, which includes a chapter on new energy solutions.
John Kanzius, a retired electrical engineer and TV and radio station owner, is developing one of the most promising new techniques to kill cancer cells.
STEM CELLS
The announcement that researchers can reprogram skin cells to behave like embryonic stem cells is a triumph, but the discovery has implications beyond the creation of pluripotent cells.
FINANCING SCIENCE
Entrepreneurial, venture capital-backed innovation industries require a deft public policy hand to find the financing they need to help boost economic prosperity.
Researchers working independently in Japan and the U.S. published papers this week announcing the creation of non-embryonic pluripotent stem cells. The method side-steps the ethical concerns over the destruction of embryos and could open the doors for federal funding of research on stem cells and the medical breakthroughs they promise.
SPACE
Providing medical care over tens of millions of miles is fraught with complications central to the success of any manned mission to Mars.
A recent New York Times Op-Ed on brain response to political keywords has drawn criticism from the neuroscience community for its incomplete findings and its false air of scientific certainty.
SCIENCE AND THE LAW
A new proposal to grant embryos legal rights could disrupt more than just access to abortion: it threatens women’s rights and demonizes medical technology.
DeCode Genetics, an Icelandic company, announced personal genome sequencing, available immediately for $985. But there’s quite a bit of fine print to consider as other companies join this infant industry.
In the Minor Cosmic Irony department, the same day that The New York Times reported the monkey cloning story on the front page, back in obituaries the paper reported the passing of Ira Levin, the novelist whose The Boys From Brazil became a fairly successful film.
Two dozen representatives from around the country met in Cambridge, MA last month to discuss interstate collaboration in stem cell research, highlighting the need for a systematic negotiation between states to allow collaboration and to unify the patchwork of currently existing regulations.
President Bush vetoed the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill, which would have increased funding for the National Institutes of Health from $29 billion to $30 billion and required open access to published NIH-funded research.
DEFINING SCIENCE
How U.S. media coverage of global warming finally moved past “he said, she said, we’re clueless.”
Science Progress and American Progress's Doing What Works project teamed up to produce a set of policy proposals that the Obama administration and Congress can adopt to reinvest in the building blocks of American science, innovation, and economic competitiveness. Read the overview of the five reports.
Science Progress proceeds from the propositions that scientific inquiry is among the finest expressions of human excellence, that it is a crucial source of human flourishing, a critical engine of economic growth, and must be dedicated to the common good. Scientific inquiry entails global responsibilities. It should lead to a more equitable, safer, and healthier future for all of humankind.