Science & Technology

57 Items

A man looks at a destroyed Russian tank placed as a symbol of war in downtown Kyiv, Ukraine

AP/Natacha Pisarenko, File

Journal Article - Texas National Security Review

What's Old Is New Again: Cold War Lessons for Countering Disinformation

| Fall 2022

Hostile foreign states are using weaponized information to attack the United States. Russia and China are disseminating disinformation about domestic U.S. race relations and COVID-19 to undermine and discredit the U.S. government. These information warfare attacks, which threaten U.S. national security, may seem new, but they are not. Using an applied history methodology and a wealth of previously classified archival records, this article uses two case studies to reveal how and why a hostile foreign state, the Soviet Union, targeted America with similar disinformation in the past

Tel Aviv Coastline seen from Jaffa

Wikimedia Commons/ Kallerna

Journal Article - Elsevier Inc.

The ecological tradeoffs of desalination in land-constrained countries seeking to mitigate climate change

| Feb. 18, 2022

The global demand for desalinated water is increasing at a remarkable rate. In a future with increasing demand for water and low-carbon electricity, an interesting ecological dilemma emerges. In a decarbonized world, providing desalinated water for domestic use and aquatic ecological restoration could increasingly come at the expense of open space lost to renewables such as solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind turbines. In this article we examine the environmental tradeoffs of providing freshwater from desalination under a solar photovoltaic-based decarbonization strategy, using Israel as an example.

an alert from the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

AP/Jon Elswick

Journal Article - Foreign Affairs

The End of Cyber-Anarchy?

| January/February 2022

Joseph Nye argues that prudence results from the fear of creating unintended consequences in unpredictable systems and can develop into a norm of nonuse or limited use of certain weapons or a norm of limiting targets. Something like this happened with nuclear weapons when the superpowers came close to the brink of nuclear war in 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis. The Limited Test Ban Treaty followed a year later.

Biden HQ

CNN

Journal Article - Science

Was 'Science' on the Ballot?

| Feb. 26, 2021

On 7 November 2020, moments before Kamala Harris and Joe Biden began their victory speeches, giant screens flanking the stage proclaimed, "The people have chosen science." Yet, nearly 74 million Americans, almost half the voters, had cast their ballots for Donald Trump, thereby presumably not choosing science. Prominent scientists asserted that "science was on the ballot" and lamented that "a significant portion of America doesn't want science". But before despairing at the loss of trust in science, scholars and policymakers should be sure they are worrying about the right problem. 

a sign stands advertising school vaccines and physical exams  sits in front of the Knox County Health Department in Mount Vernon, Ohio

AP/Paul Vernon

Newspaper Article - Harvard Gazette

As Measles Cases Crack 1,000, a Look at What to Do

    Author:
  • Alvin Powell
| June 11, 2019

Barry Bloom, former dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Juliette Kayyem, Belfer Senior Lecturer in International Security at the Harvard Kennedy School and a former Department of Homeland Security official, sat down with the Harvard Gazette to share their thoughts on the measles outbreak and likely ways forward. Bloom comes at the problem from the public-health viewpoint, and Kayyem from that of public safety.

 

Dave Johnson coal-fired power plant is silhouetted against the morning sun

AP/J. David Ake

Magazine Article - Fair Observer

Sacrificing Nature Is Not an Option

    Author:
  • Kourosh Ziabari
| Feb. 27, 2019

In this edition of "The Interview," Fair Observer talks to Professor John Holdren, former science adviser to President Barack Obama and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2009 to 2017 about the impacts of global warming on the United States and the government's strategies to combat climate change.

Andrew Wakefield arrives at the General Medical Council in London to face a disciplinary panel investigating allegations of serious professional misconduct.

AP

Journal Article - Science

The Science of Fake News

    Authors:
  • David Lazer
  • Matthew A Baum
  • Yochai Benkler
  • Adam J Berinsky
  • Filippo Menczer
  • Miriam J Metzger
  • Brendan Nyhan
  • Gordon Pennycook
  • David Rothschild
  • Michael Schudson
  • Steven A Sloman
  • Cass R. Sunstein
  • Emily A Thorson
  • Duncan J Watts
| Mar. 08, 2018

The rise of fake news highlights the erosion of long-standing institutional bulwarks against misinformation in the internet age. Concern over the problem is global. However, much remains unknown regarding the vulnerabilities of individuals, institutions, and society to manipulations by malicious actors. A new system of safeguards is needed.

Floating desalination unit "Hydriada" powered by wind and solar energy

Creative Commons

Journal Article - Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

Towards Sustainability in Water-energy Nexus: Ocean Energy for Seawater Desalination

In this article, the authors review the state of the art of ocean energy in desalination. It explores different sources of energy from the ocean that include electricity generation, as well as mechanical force and thermal energy and salinity gradients that can also be directly harnessed for powering the desalination processes. They also examine recent advances in scaling up for commercial deployment and discuss relevant cost, environmental, and social concerns.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg meets with a group of entrepreneurs and innovators during a round-table discussion at Cortex Innovation Community technology hub on Nov. 9, 2017, in St. Louis (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson).

AP Photo/Jeff Roberson

Magazine Article - Foreign Affairs

The False Prophecy of Hyperconnection

| Aug. 15, 2017

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the world is connected as never before. Once upon a time, it was believed that there were six degrees of separation between each individual and any other person on the planet (including Kevin Bacon). For Facebook users today, the average degree of separation is 3.57. But perhaps that is not entirely a good thing. As Evan Williams, one of the founders of Twitter, told The New York Times in May2017, “I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place. I was wrong about that.”