• The Weakest Link of Global Supply Chains

    From toilet paper to industrial chemicals, there’s no doubt the COVID-19 pandemic has been disruptive to global supply chains. But how important are large, multinational companies in maintaining both local and international logistic networks and should governments be so focused on maintaining larger organizations through subsidies and bail-outs over their smaller counterparts? A new study finds that smaller operators can deliver the hardest logistic shocks.

  • Americans Increasingly Skeptical of COVID Vaccine: Poll

    A new survey reveals that Americans are becoming increasingly wary about getting the COVID-19 vaccine once it becomes available. Last April, a Pew Research survey of 10,000 Americans found that 72 percent said they would get a COVID-19 vaccine when it became available. Hen the same 10,000 respondents were polled between 8 and 13 September, only 51 percent said they would definitely or probably get a COVID-19 vaccine if it were available today.

  • Belief in Conspiracy Theories A Barrier to Controlling Spread of COVID-19

    Belief in conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic is not only persistent but also is associated with reluctance to accept a COVID-19 vaccine when one becomes available and to engage in behaviors such as mask-wearing that can prevent its spread, according to research.

  • U.S.-China Fight over Fishing Is Really about World Domination

    China’s aggressive, sometimes illegal fishing practices are the latest source of conflict with the United States.

    China has the world’s largest fishing fleet. Beijing claims to send around 2,600 vessels out to fish across the globe, but some maritime experts say this distant-water fishing fleet may number nearly 17,000. The United States has fewer than 300 distant-water ships. Governments often use the fishing industry to advance their diplomatic agenda, as my work as a historian of fishing and American foreign relations shows. The United States used fishing, directly and indirectly, to build its international empire from its founding through the 20th century. Now China’s doing it, too.

  • Epidemics and Pandemics Can Exacerbate Xenophobia, Bigotry

    When viruses, parasites and other pathogens spread, humans and other animals tend to hunker down with immediate family and peer groups to avoid outsiders as much as possible. But could these instincts, developed to protect us from illnesses, generalize into avoidance of healthy individuals who simply look, speak or live differently?

  • Africa: Milder COVID-19 Pandemic than Expected Puzzles Experts

    Hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths and serious infections causing the collapse of already shaky health care systems —this is how experts imagined the effect of the coronavirus pandemic in most African countries. But, more than four months later, one can say that this horror scenario has not materialized. A lack of reliable data makes it difficult to say why, but several theories have been put forth.

  • Amid Spotty Response, COVID Silently Stalked U.S. for Weeks

    Two new studies involving evolutionary genomics, computer simulations, and travel records from the COVID-19 pandemic suggest that inadequate travel monitoring, contact tracing, and community surveillance allowed the novel coronavirus to spread unchecked to and throughout North America and Europe in late January or early February.

  • The Genetic Engineering Genie Is Out of the Bottle

    Usually good for a conspiracy theory or two, President Donald Trump has suggested that the virus causing COVID-19 was either intentionally engineered or resulted from a lab accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Scientists have now conclusively proved that the virus was not designed in a lab, but Vivek Wadhwa writes that if “genetic engineering wasn’t behind this pandemic, it could very well unleash the next one. With COVID-19 bringing Western economies to their knees, all the world’s dictators now know that pathogens can be as destructive as nuclear missiles.”

  • Heritable Genome Editing Not Yet Ready to Be Tried Safely and Effectively in Humans

    Human embryos whose genomes have been edited should not be used to create a pregnancy until it is established that precise genomic changes can be made reliably without introducing undesired changes — a criterion that has not yet been met by any genome editing technology, says a new scientific report.

  • Uniform Framework for Quantifying Disaster-Related Deaths, Illness

    To more accurately quantify disaster-related deaths, injuries, and illnesses, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other agencies supporting disaster response should adopt a uniform national framework of data collection approaches and methods for distinguishing direct from indirect disaster deaths, says a new congressionally mandated report from the National Academies of Sciences.

  • How China Ramped Up Disinformation Efforts During the Pandemic

    China once shied away from the aggressive, conspiratorial type of disinformation favored by Russia, but Beijing has increased its manipulation of information as well as disinformation efforts around COVID-19. The goal of manipulating factual information and spreading disinformation—or willfully false information— is to distract from the origins of the virus, highlight the failures of the United States, damage democracies, and promote China as a global leader. But its strategies have had mixed results.

  • Pharmaceutical Giant AstraZeneca Halts COVID-19 Vaccine Trial

    British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant Astra-Zeneca has paused large-scale global trials of its COVID-19 vaccine because a volunteer participant became ill after receiving the experimental drug. The company issued a statement Tuesday saying the pause in testing is a “routine action, which has to happen whenever there is a potentially unexplained illness in one of the trials, while it is investigated, ensuring we maintain the integrity of the trials.” The chief executive officers of the world’s nine leading drug companies issued a statement promising they would not submit for approval any vaccine before the vaccine is demonstrated to be safe and effective through a Phase 3 clinical studies. The unusual joint pledge was aimed at alleviating growing fears by health experts that pharmaceutical companies are under considerable political pressure to quickly develop and introduce a COVID-19 vaccine.

  • The Pandemic Has Revealed the Cracks in U.S. Manufacturing: Here’s How to Fix Them

    The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed glaring deficiencies in the U.S. manufacturing sector’s ability to provide necessary products – especially amidst a crisis. Globalization is at the heart of the problem. With heavy reliance on global supply chains and foreign producers, the pandemic has interrupted shipping of parts and materials to nearly 75% of U.S. companies. Decades of “offshoring” domestic manufacturing to other countries have led the U.S. to the current crisis. It has seriously damaged the nation’s industrial base, increased income inequality and caused stagnation in U.S. living standards. How the U.S. responds will determine the long-term health and prosperity of the nation.

  • Better Strategy to Protect U.S. Agricultural Sector

    The agriculture sector in the United States accounts for more than 5 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product (about a trillion dollars) and provides jobs for more than 10 percent of U.S. workforce, and threats to the agricultural sectors. Agriculture impacts more than just the food provided for the family dinner. It’s a part of forestry, fishing, food and beverages for restaurants, textile, and leather products. In the past, biological weapons (BW) attacks were typically considered with the framework of anti-personnel attacks. Experts say that state-actors or terrorists could wreak havoc – and misery – on millions of Americans by launching attacks on the U.S. agricultural sector.

  • COVID-19 Revealing the Impact of Disinformation on Society

    The COVID-19 pandemic has provided new evidence of the impact of disinformation on people’s behavior, according to a new report, which examines the causes and consequences of disinformation. The researchers also argue there has been too much focus on blaming social media for spreading false content, whist neglecting the spread of misleading content in traditional media by political actors.