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Rural residents photograph ailing chickens to monitor the spread of Avian flu, mountaineer adventurers collect scat samples so microbes in isolated locations can be identified, and sailors take water samples that reveal the plastic afloat in the world’s oceans. These citizen scientists are ordinary people who collect data in the field that support researchers warning of di...
An advanced nuclear power plant is coming to Wyoming. Funded by Bill Gates’ TerraPower, it will use cutting edge technology that aims to provide safer and more sustainable nuclear energy. Wyoming’s governor and the company’s CEO share their optimism, address concerns around technology, and expand on the bumpy road to building nuclear power in America.
Economic uncertainty continues its reign of confusion, vexing financial leaders, regulators, and consumers with worrisome inflation and unpredictable markets. Experts weigh in on whether we can avoid a recession, what today’s banking and political difficulties signal about the future of lending and saving, and how workplace developments, A.I. advances, and complex geopolit...
With advances in testing and technology, the world of professional sports is beginning to use data to evaluate athlete health and to predict — and ideally, prevent — injury. Experts equipped with 3D motion capture technology are now essential members of team training staffs. Are these new technologies and recovery interventions increasing player longevity? Will cost-effect...
Where others see challenges, social entrepreneurs see opportunity. Hear from the innovators who build a better tomorrow out of broken systems. How did they approach the design of their world-changing innovations? Learn how they harness the power of collaboration to advance systems-level change, their successes and challenges along the way, and what they see on the horizon.
Artificial Intelligence is appearing in practically every facet of our lives, and Olympic sports is no exception. The US Olympic Committee is employing new technologies to supplement athletic ability and coaching intuition, from innovations in psychology, to the radar technology that helped propel one USA team to gold in Rio, and to cutting-edge motion capture technology b...
As our society grapples with the ramifications of developments like machine learning and genetic testing, a surprising new generation of even more powerful technological advances is already brewing in labs. Researchers are teaming up with machines to create reasoning systems that reach beyond the mere correlations in data to understand the underlying causal mechanisms in e...
For the last twenty years, technology has been the most powerful force of globalization, but it now appears that the next decades will be defined by how the world splinters into different tech camps—changes driven by societal values, human rights, and nationalistic interests. Advanced technologies—from 5G to semiconductors to quantum computing—are the new currency of power...
For tens of thousands of years, humans have created and employed new technologies in order to gain advantage, to survive, and to thrive in the face of adversity. Today, streamlined research and development processes and advanced computing accelerate everything we do — including our next scientific and technological discoveries. How will humankind’s latest cutting-edge tech...
Kai-Fu Lee, a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, gives AI a B- for its performance during the pandemic. It’s far from perfect, he says, but gets a solid pass for its contributions to contact tracing and containment in China, where Lee lives and works. Importantly, he says, advances in artificial intelligence give us plenty of reasons to believe that the next...
From Genentech’s advances in biotechnology to Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, venture capital has long had a transformative influence on healthcare. Investors willing to put money on the table often have the most clear-eyed vision of the next big thing and in 2021, they poured more than $28 billion into the healthcare industry, almost doubling the previous year’s investments....
We live in an interconnected world of volatility and disruption. Systems are linked in a web of dizzying and only partially visible complexity, and change in any one domain has a swift impact on many others. Join Andrew Zolli in a walking tour of emerging tools – such as next-generation satellite imagery, social media, and advanced analytics – that allow us to make sense o...
A discussion with Comcast Corporation Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts and NBC Olympic primetime host Bob Costas. The rapid advances in technology are changing how we interact with events that resonate across our culture. Not that long ago, we all watched the same thing at the same time. Now we watch not just on our TVs but on our phones and tablets or through apps. Or we co...
Our coffee makers, phone chargers, washing machines — our lives — are powered by the humble flip of a switch or press of a button. And it’s easy to lose sight of where the energy that powers our everyday conveniences comes from. Fossil fuels, predominantly through transportation and electricity, account for roughly 74 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions. As the principa...
Genetically modified organism. Rarely have three words generated such passionate and polarized debate. GMO has become a cultural construct, a metaphor we use to argue about a set of ideas that don’t fit neatly into any clear category: consumer and worker health; corporate greed; biodiversity; the role of the Green Revolution; productive farming in the developing world; inn...
As the nation’s top doctor, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy helps to advance the health and well-being of all Americans. He has described the growing youth mental health crisis in America as the “defining public health crisis of our time” and warned that social media carries a “profound risk of harm to the mental health of children and adolescents.” Murthy has also highlig...
Gun violence in the US is a public health epidemic. With partisan battles currently making state and federal legislative solutions elusive, private sector trendsetters are quietly exploring other avenues of opportunity. The Smart Tech Challenges Foundation funds research to advance biometric identification and other security technologies that allow only authorized users to...
A clean energy revolution is underway here, and across the globe. And it’s high time, considering electricity and heat are responsible for a staggering one-third of global emissions. Coal plants are shutting down, the costs of solar and wind technologies are rapidly falling, and a recent bipartisan bill looks to reestablish the United States as a leader in nuclear energy....