The Internet is held together as a globally interoperable communications platform through its shared set of technical protocols, message formats, and computer languages, collectively known as "Internet standards." A growing chorus of national governments – including China and Russia – has argued that the organizations and processes that lead to standardization are both outmoded and inequitable. They contend that the current process unfairly favors American firms; that it produces standards with insufficient built-in security; and that it leads to standards that allow for a degree of freedom fundamentally at odds with the social norms of some nonwestern nations.

The rise of emerging markets is heralded as a force that will change the global balance of power. But behind the rise of the new economies lies a strong commitment to leveraging engineering as a foundation for economic transformation. Engineering provides the basic foundations for economic growth such as energy, transportation, irrigation, and telecommunications. Yet the men and women who build and maintain these systems are hardly recognized. The announcement of the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering will go a long way toward helping the international community appreciate the role that engineers have played in making modern civilization possible.

In a spectacular technological failure, Kenyan officials recently abandoned the electronic transfer of election results and switched to manual tallying. This was not expected in a country that developed the now world-famous mobile money transfer system, M-Pesa. The collapse of the system delayed the announcement of the winner, causing anxiety in a country that witnessed serious post-election violence in 2007 that left more than 1,500 people dead and 250,000 displaced from their homes. Rumors swirled on social media that the system had been hacked and as result the elections had been fatally compromised.

In recent years the major focus of China’s engagement in Africa has been on economic diplomacy. Much of this debate has been influenced by concerns over China’s rise as an economic superpower and the preoccupation with viewing Africa through the jaded natural resource lens. A closer look at Africa’s growing economic diplomacy reveals a more complex picture involving other important emerging market economies as illustrated by economic relations with Brazil. Africa’s relations with Brazil highlight the emergence of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) as a new economic alliance that is reshaping international trading relations.

  Critics of agricultural biotechnology have long contended that it would not benefit farmers in developing countries. Their concerns were not unjustified. A large number of technologies continue to be restricted to industrialized countries despite their global relevance. Farmers in developing countries, however, are bridging the “biotechnology divide.” According to a new report by Clive James of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), “For the first time, developing countries grew more, 52% of global biotech crops in 2012 than industrialized countries at 48%.

From the MIT Technology Review: "This package is meant to capture the rich variety of ways that innovations get commercialized. Each company on this list has done something over the past year that will strengthen its hold on a market, challenge the leaders of a market, or create a new market....[S]ome of these companies, like the thermostat maker Nest, have burst forth with a breakthrough product, and the question now is what the next one will be. Others, like the battery startup Ambri, are still on the verge of their breakthrough.

Africa’s economic growth outlook has come into sharp focus recently. Some analysts have argued that claims about “Africa Rising” are a myth. Others argue that Africa’s growth is underestimated. These contrasting views, however, pay little attention to major trends that are shaping the continent: deepening regional integration; shifting trade relations; and the rise of technocratic presidencies. Deepening Regional Integration African economies are generally viewed as being too dependent on global trends.

Science and technology are being increasingly recognized as central features in international diplomacy. Much of the attention, however, has focused on how major industrialized countries and large emerging nations such as China, India, and Brazil use science and technology to advance their global competitiveness. One of the most pressing global challenges, though, is how to leverage the power of new knowledge to help address the global economic and environmental challenges. New science and technology diplomacy responses are emerging from smaller industrialized nations working with developing countries.

  A few months ago, I discovered that my excessive fatigue and uneasy sleep were caused by an underlying condition of severe sleep apnea. This malady causes one to stop breathing while sleeping. Humans of course, need to breathe, so the end result is that sufferers keep waking up every 5 minutes or so to restart the breathing process, all the while remaining blissfully unaware of multiple interruptions to their sleep. That is, until the fatigue begins upon waking. In my case, the recommended treatment was a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airways Pressure) machine.

From the current Issues in Science and Technology: "U.S. science policy since World War II has in large measure been driven by Vannevar Bush’s famous paper Science—The Endless Frontier. Bush’s separation of research into 'basic' and 'applied' domains has been enshrined in much of U.S. science and technology policy over the past seven decades, and this false dichotomy has become a barrier to the development of a coherent national innovation policy. Much of the debate centers on the appropriate federal role in innovation.