Science & Technology

ON TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 2016, Commander Scott Kelly returned home from the International Space Station after twelve months working off the Earth, for the Earth. His year in space will pay scientific and medical dividends for years to come, helping pave the way for future astronauts to travel to Mars and beyond.

When former Belfer Center International and Global Affairs Student Fellow Francisco Aguilar learned about the challenges facing responders during Haiti’s devastating earthquake in 2010, he got an idea that could potentially save lives in the future. His idea, which took him to the White House this summer, was to develop a small and inexpensive tactical camera device that “spots danger,” as the White House put it, “before soldiers and first responders walk into it.

"...[S]olving complex problems is less about generating the one right answer and more about generating solutions that may have flaws but nonetheless help you progress toward a goal."

The Federal Government has many tools at its disposal to advance energy technology innovation. It can signal markets, for example, through energy tax and regulatory policy ("market pull"), and it can advance research, development, and deployment of energy technologies ("technology push"). Both of these kinds of tools can be effective, but the most effective policy portfolio balances a combination of these policies.

"Values Conscious design may not be able to prevent the kind of deliberate fraud perpetrated by Volkswagen, but it could well have revealed Volkswagen's design choices as dubious, to say the least."

Cambridge, MA – The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has named Daniel Schrag, Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology and Director of the Center for the Environment at Harvard University, to lead its Science, Technology, and Public Policy program. STPP, one of Harvard's most collaborative and cross-disciplinary programs, is renowned world-wide for its cutting-edge research on technology innovation, nuclear non-proliferation and safety, climate science and policy, cybersecurity, and globalization and development.

The New Harvest argues that Africa can feed itself in a generation and help contribute to global food security despite its history of persistent food shortages and the rising threat of climate change. This new edition provides ideas on how to place agriculture at the center of the continent's long-term economic transformation. It demonstrates how policy coordination can help realize agriculture's full potential as a motherboard for other economic activities.

The full text of The New Harvest is available here.

"The diverse skills, capabilities and resources needed to run an effective pharmaceutical enterprise can be aggregated in a geographical locale to create an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Such an ecosystem can then help to spawn new businesses. For example, the knowledge built up in packaging can form the design basis for many other products."

The introduction of new energy technologies may lead to public resistance and contestation. It is often argued that this phenomenon is caused by an inadequate inclusion of relevant public values in the design of technology. In this paper, the authors examine the applicability of the value sensitive design (VSD) approach.

"Africa is saddled with higher education systems that were created in the early 1960s to train functionaries. Very few of the universities have curricula or use teaching methods that promote innovation."