In The News

Inside New Horizons: What It's Like to Conduct a 9-Year Mission for a 3-Minute Flyby

Joseph Stromberg July 17, 2015
After nine years of travel and little public attention, a spacecraft the size of a piano sped by Pluto and is in the process of returning photos about 4.5 billion kilometers back to Earth. The remote exploration and operation of the New Horizons spacecraft requires patience and meticulous training: “The scientists had spent a decade patiently guiding the probe 3 billion miles to Pluto, but as...

Climate Change Brings Ill Winds for Airline Industry

Tim Radford July 15, 2015
Researchers studied round trips for airlines between Hawaii and airports in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angles over the past two decades: Eastbound trips are now an average 10 minutes shorter and westbound trips were 11 minutes longer. The researchers suggest that climate change and volatile wind patterns are the reason. “[T]iny differences began to add up to substantial costs in time and fuel...

Why Smart Africa Is Smart Policy

Stuart N. Brotman July 9, 2015
In 2013, Rwandan President Paul Kagame and the secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union at that time organized a summit to address Africa’s need for information communication technology, or ICT, an endeavor they called “Transform Africa.” More than 1,200 delegates from different countries, corporations and civil society groups discussed how to bring ICT to Africa. They...

Higher Education: Apocalypse Now?

July 3, 2015
Digital technology is revolutionizing higher education with increased globalization, student enrollment and privatization. Digital technology may be more revolutionary than the printing press in that it “not only disrupts the dissemination of knowledge, but also its production,” report the editors of ParisTech Review. “This double effect is precisely what disrupts the economic balance of the...

3D Printing Comes Of Age

Nayan Chanda June 5, 2015
The first 3D printers were introduced in the 1980s. Rapid development combined with dropping cost has put these printers into general circulation – accessible to small businesses and artists through special orders, available for ongoing use and study in university workshops, small-town libraries and high schools. Innovations abound as students apply their imaginations. “The potential of this...

The Agency

Adrian Chen June 5, 2015
US companies, journalists and communities are being targeted with hoaxes about false disasters including fake videos and photographs over email and Twitter. Adrian Chen details a fake report of an explosion at a chemicals plant in Louisiana and describes a It was “a highly coordinated disinformation campaign, involving dozens of fake accounts that posted hundreds of tweets “fake screenshots from...

India – A Silicon Valley for Emerging Markets?

Dinesh C. Sharma June 4, 2015
Emerging markets represent 80 percent of the globe’s population and more than 50 percent of its GDP. So many consumers living in the emerging economies are digitally deprived, yet eager to explore the internet. India is well positioned to become the next hub for internet development. “Capitalizing on early investments in science and engineering development, India showed the world a new way of...