Japan’s New Security Policies: A Long Road to Full Implementation

On December 16, 2022, Japan’s government released a new national security strategy, national defense strategy, and defense buildup program. In mid-January, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and key Cabinet officials visited Washington to jointly highlight these documents and discuss the next steps for the U.S.-Japan alliance with the Biden administration. At the time, much commentary… Continue reading Japan’s New Security Policies: A Long Road to Full Implementation

Proteins Never Seen in Nature Are Designed Using AI to Address Biomedical and Industrial Problems Unsolved by Evolution

Machine learning (ML) and other AI- based computational tools have proven their prowess at predicting real-world protein structures. AlphaFold 2, an algorithm developed by scientists at DeepMind that can confidently predict protein structure purely on the basis of an amino acid sequence, has become almost a household name since its launch in July 2021. Today,… Continue reading Proteins Never Seen in Nature Are Designed Using AI to Address Biomedical and Industrial Problems Unsolved by Evolution

Can Grade Retention Help with COVID-19 Learning Recovery in Schools?

Requiring low-performing students to repeat a grade has been a long-standing and highly debated intervention in the United States. Calls to end social promotion in schools in the 1990s, along with the increasing popularity of educational accountability and standardized testing, led to test-based retention policies in many states and school districts. As of 2020, for… Continue reading Can Grade Retention Help with COVID-19 Learning Recovery in Schools?

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How Magnetic Fields Control Galactic Growth

The Milky Way’s rotating disk of gas and dust gives rise to graceful spiral arms, which make up the galaxy’s most active star formation sites. Now researchers using an airplane-borne telescope high in Earth’s atmosphere have found a mechanism for how magnetic fields shape star birth in the dense filaments, or “bones,” that wind their… Continue reading How Magnetic Fields Control Galactic Growth

Why U.S. Military Interventions Fail and What to Do About It

American soldiers have been deployed abroad almost continuously since the end of World War II. The best-known foreign interventions—in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq—were large, long, and costly. But there have been dozens of other such deployments, many smaller or shorter, for purposes ranging from deterrence to training. Taken as a whole, these operations have had… Continue reading Why U.S. Military Interventions Fail and What to Do About It

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Why the Brain’s Connections to the Body Are Crisscrossed

Dazzling intricacies of brain structure are revealed every day, but one of the most obvious aspects of brain wiring eludes neuroscientists. The nervous system is cross-wired, so that the left side of the brain controls the right half of the body and vice versa. Every doctor relies upon this fact in performing neurological exams, but… Continue reading Why the Brain’s Connections to the Body Are Crisscrossed

How Physicists Cracked a Black Hole Paradox

A few years ago a team of chemists unboiled an egg. Boiling causes protein molecules in the egg to twist around one another, and a centrifuge can disentangle them to restore the original. The technique is of dubious utility in a kitchen, but it neatly demonstrates the reversibility of physics. Anything in the physical world… Continue reading How Physicists Cracked a Black Hole Paradox

Violence in Schools, Neurodiversity and National Security, Drug Cartels: RAND Weekly Recap

This week, we discuss how to encourage threat reporting to help keep schools safe; why national security organizations need a neurodivergent workforce; the F.D.A. approval of over-the-counter Narcan sales; the implications of labeling drug cartels foreign terrorists; what happens when struggling students repeat a grade; and helping veterans find employment during a recession. Photo by… Continue reading Violence in Schools, Neurodiversity and National Security, Drug Cartels: RAND Weekly Recap

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