Science, Technology, and Public Policy

This paper will review the changing world of climate change education and opportunities for adopting innovative pedagogical approaches such as immersive technologies, participatory methods, and art-based learning.

Why would a state that lacks nuclear weapons choose to fight a state that has them? In this roundtable, four scholars evaluate Paul Avey's explanation for this phenomenon.

Stephen Walt and Bruce Schneier are two of the ten leading global thinkers that Foreign Policy invited to each give their take on an expansion of government powers as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Right now, everything both sides do to strengthen their defenses looks to the other side like preparation for attack.

International concern over nuclear terrorism has grown during the past few decades. This has driven a broad spectrum of efforts to strengthen nuclear security globally, including the widespread adoption of radiation-detection technology for border monitoring. Detection systems are now deployed at strategic locations for the purported purpose of detecting and deterring the smuggling of nuclear and radioactive materials. However, despite considerable investment in this area, few studies have examined how these programs are implemented or the operational challenges they face on a day-to-day basis. This article seeks to address this with a focus on radiation-detection efforts at maritime facilities. Utilizing practitioner interviews and a survey, this article identifies the factors that influence the planning and use of these systems in this fast-moving environment. The results clearly demonstrate that the implementation of these systems varies significantly across different national and organizational contexts, resulting in a fragmented global nuclear-detection architecture, which arguably undermines efforts to detect trafficked nuclear-threat materials. Greater consideration should therefore be given to developing international standards and guidance, designing and adopting tools to support key parts of the alarm assessment process, and broader sharing of good practice.