• Why China Has Edge on AI, What Ancient Emperors Tell Us About Xi Jinping

    Dictatorships and authoritarian regimes tend to trail more democratic and inclusive nations in fostering cutting-edge, innovative technologies, such as robotics and clean energy. Artificial intelligence may prove an exception, at least in China.

  • COVID-19 Origins: New Evidence, and More Politics

    Last week, researchers released a report linking SARS-CoV-2 to six near-complete samples of raccoon-dog mitochondrial DNA sold at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan. The report says that “These results provide potential leads to identifying intermediate hosts of SARS-CoV-2 and potential sources of human infections in the market.”

  • A Major Clue to COVID’s Origins Is Just Out of Reach

    Last week, the ongoing debate about COVID-19’s origins had yet another plot twist added to it. A French evolutionary biologist stumbled across a trove of genetic sequences extracted from swabs collected from surfaces at a wet market in Wuhan, China, shortly after the pandemic began. Katherine J. Wu writes that the sequences bolster the case for the pandemic having purely natural roots. “But what might otherwise have been a straightforward story on new evidence has rapidly morphed into a mystery centered on the origins debate’s data gaps.” Wu says that public access to the sequences was locked, and, as a result, a key set of data which could have shored up the case for a purely animal origin became unavailable to scientists.

  • Will Machine Learning Help Us Find Extraterrestrial Life?

    When pondering the probability of discovering technologically advanced extraterrestrial life, the question that often arises is, “if they’re out there, why haven’t we found them yet?” And often, the response is that we have only searched a tiny portion of the galaxy. Researchers have applied a deep learning technique to a previously studied dataset of nearby stars and uncovered eight previously unidentified signals of interest.

  • New Accelerator for Data Science and Emerging AI Startups

    Data science and AI are two of the most transformative technologies this century, with the potential to revolutionize virtually every industry and field of study. The University of Chicago is at the heart of these scientific innovations. The New Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation program provides support to early-stage companies built on data science and AI technologies.

  • U.S. Immigration Has Become an Elaborate Bait and Switch

    The United States is relying on its engineering and science talent to stay ahead of China in what has become an existential struggle to lead in the industries of the future. At U.S. universities, international students make up 74 percent of graduate electrical engineering students, 72 percent of computer and information science students, and half or more students in pharmaceutical sciences, mathematics, and statistics. Yet, the U.S. Congress has not revised immigration quotas since 1965, when the U.S. population was almost 140 million people smaller. Nor has Congress revisited the rules for highly educated immigrants since 1990—which was before the U.S. information technology sector created millions of new jobs in technical fields that have attracted so many immigrant scientists and engineers.

  • Germany Did Research with North Korea -- Despite UN Sanctions

    Kim Jong Un wants to modernize his nuclear weapons. To stop him, the UN has banned research collaboration with North Korea. One Berlin institute continued to collaborate with North Korea on research projects — without flagging the risks.

  • “Safeguarding Science” Toolkit to Help U.S. Research Enterprise Guard Against Threats

    The National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) and its partners announced a unique collaboration between elements of the U.S. intelligence and scientific communities to help the U.S. research enterprise mitigate the broad spectrum of risk it faces from nation-state, criminal, and other threat actors.

  • Meeting Surging Demand for National Security Research

    Sandia National Laboratory is embarking on a major expansion of its network of academic partners to meet the surging demand for national security science and engineering. From 2015 to 2021, the Labs’ budget increased more than 50%, from $2.9 billion to $4.5 billion. Over the same period, the Labs increased its workforce by more than 25%, from 11,700 to 15,000. Still, the Lab says that it won’t meet its obligations just by hiring staff.

  • Purdue University Launches Institute for National Security

    Building on its years of growing engagement and collaboration with the defense, homeland security and intelligence communities, Purdue University is creating the Purdue Institute for National Security, a new interdisciplinary institute.

  • Looking to Move to a Galaxy Far, Far Away? Innovative System Evaluates Habitability of Distant Planets

    The climate crisis presents a huge challenge to all people on Earth. It has led many scientists to look for exoplanets, planets outside our solar system that humans could potentially settle. Computerized system classifies atmospheres of planets and identifies those suitable for future human settlements.

  • Signatures of Alien Technology Could Be How Humanity First Finds Extraterrestrial Life

    Technosignatures are signs of technology originating from beyond Earth. No astronomer has ever found a confirmed technosignature, so it’s hard to say what will be the first sign of alien civilizations. Many astronomers have thought a lot about what might make for a good signal, but ultimately, nobody knows what extraterrestrial technology might look like and what signals are out there in the Universe.

  • “U.S. Is Not Prepared for Waging” Tech War

    A new book explores the evolution of the current U.S. research and development enterprise, and asks whether the organization of the U.S. R&D efforts and its structure remain appropriate to the challenges the United States face today. “Today, the U.S. is not prepared for waging this war. Absent fundamental changes, our current science and technology advantages will continue to erode,” Daniel Gerstein writes.

  • The WHO Has Advised Against the Use of Two Antibody Therapies Against COVID – Here’s What That Means

    New guidance from WHO strongly advises against using the antibody therapies sotrovimab and casirivimab-imdevimab to treat patients with COVID-19. This means that, at least for the time being, there are no recommended antibody therapies to treat COVID. There are, however, still other treatment options.

  • U.S. Plans to Boost US Biotechnology Manufacturing

    The administration announced Monday steps to bolster the “bioeconomy” in the United States, a classification that covers research and development across a broad swath of products, including medical supplies, sustainable new fuels and food, as well as technologies meant to help fight climate change. The order comes barely a month after President Biden signed a major piece of legislation, the CHIPS Act, meant to supercharge U.S. manufacturing of semiconductors, an area in which the U.S. has lost its once-dominant global position.