SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
April 22, 2008
"It's Not the Price That Causes Hunger"
Op-Ed, International Herald Tribune
By Robert Paarlberg, Research Fellow, Science, Technology and Globalization
"Africa's food crisis grows primarily out of the low productivity, year in and year out, of the 60 percent of all Africans who plant crops and graze animals for a living. The average African smallholder farmer is a woman who has no improved seeds, no nitrogen fertilizers, no irrigation and no veterinary medicine for her animals. Her crop yields are only one third as high as in the developing countries of Asia, and her average income is only $1 a day."
March 2008
Russian and Chinese Responses to U.S. Military Plans in Space
Report
By Pavel Podvig and Hui Zhang, Research Associate, Project on Managing the Atom
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences called upon Pavel Podvig and Hui Zhang to consider what consequences would develop if the United States continues to pursue the weaponization of space and how China and Russia would respond, and what would be the broader implications for international security.
March 18, 2008
"America Must Learn the Hard Facts of Soft Power"
Op-Ed, The South China Morning Post
By Joseph S. Nye, Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations
"Soft power is not good per se, and it is not always better than hard power. Nobody likes to feel manipulated, even by soft power. But soft power allows followers more choice and leeway.
Hard power has not become irrelevant, but leaders must develop the contextual intelligence to combine hard and soft power resources into a "smart power" strategy. The next US president will need to learn that lesson."
March 4, 2008
"Application Oriented R&D: Aphorisms and Anecdotes"
Presentation
By Robert Frosch, Senior Associate, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program
Dr. Frosch shares lessons from his experience trying to perform, and lead, application oriented R&D. Some of these lessons are encapsulated in aphorisms. Some aphorisms are presented, with explication, and illustrated with anecdotes from experience with the Navy, ARPA, NASA, and General Motors.
March 2008
Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa
Book
By Robert Paarlberg, Research Fellow, Science, Technology and Globalization
Heading upcountry in Africa to visit small farms is absolutely exhilarating given the dramatic beauty of big skies, red soil, and arid vistas, but eventually the two-lane tarmac narrows to rutted dirt, and the journey must continue on foot. The farmers you eventually meet are mostly women, hardworking but visibly poor. They have no improved seeds, no chemical fertilizers, no irrigation, and with their meager crops they earn less than a dollar a day. Many are malnourished.
Nearly two-thirds of Africans are employed in agriculture, yet on a per-capita basis they produce roughly 20 percent less than they did in 1970. Although modern agricultural science was the key to reducing rural poverty in Asia, modern farm science—including biotechnology—has recently been kept out of Africa.
February-March 2008
"Recovering American Leadership"
Journal Article, Survival, issue 1, volume 50
By Joseph S. Nye, Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations
"Leaders are those who help groups create and achieve shared goals. Traditionally, the leaders in international politics have been the most powerful states. However, while hard military power counts for more in the context of international politics than it does in democratic domestic politics, even in international relations conquest, or pure coercion, is not leadership, but mere dictation. Disproportionate power, sometimes called 'hegemony', has been associated with leadership, but appeals to values and ideology also matter, even for a hegemon...."
February 29, 2008
"Africa's Organic Farms"
Op-Ed, International Herald Tribune
By Robert Paarlberg, Research Fellow, Science, Technology and Globalization
"In Europe, meanwhile, some official donors and nongovernmental agencies are working to block farm modernization in Africa. Despite Africa's worsening soil nutrient deficits, European donors like to promote costly organic farming techniques as the alternative to chemical fertilizer use. This is not how European farmers escaped poverty....European governments and NGOs also promote regulatory systems that block the use of genetically engineered crops, including crops capable of resisting insects without pesticide sprays. Europe's own science academies have found no new risks to human health or the environment from any of the genetically engineered crops placed on the market so far, but since overfed Europe can do without this technology, underfed Africa is told to do the same."
In Press
"Socio-Political Evaluation of Energy Deployment (SPEED): An Integrated Research Framework Analyzing Energy Technology Deployment"
Journal Article, Technological Forecasting & Social Change
By Jennie Stephens, Research Associate, Energy Technology Innovation Policy, Elizabeth J. Wilson and Tarla Rai Peterson
This paper proposes a systematic, interdisciplinary framework for the integrated analysis of regulatory, legal, political, economic, and social factors that influence energy technology deployment decisions at the state level.
AP Photo
February 2008
"Communicating With Intent: The Department of Defense and Strategic Communication"
Paper
By Lindsey J. Borg, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program
The Department of Defense's (DoD's) development of strategic communication processes, a supporting organizational structure, and an institutional culture change began in earnest in 2006. The broad, operational view of communication presents many opportunities for the DoD; it also presents many areas demanding attention if the department is to realize its aim of positive strategic effects in the information and cognitive domains.
This paper examines the DoD's development of strategic communication, concentrating specifically on the implications, opportunities, and threats associated with the public information environment. The paper does not present a prescription for tactics to win near-term battles, but rather a review of current efforts to build strategic communication capacity and considerations that demand attention to advance this capability for long-term, strategic successes.
January 25, 2008
"Science and Technology for Sustainable Well-Being"
Journal Article, Science, issue 5862, volume 319
By John P. Holdren, Director and Faculty Chair, Science, Technology and Public Policy Program
"I would urge every scientist and engineer with an interest in the intersection of S&T with sustainable well-being...to 'tithe' 10% of your professional time and effort to working in these and other ways to increase the benefits of S&T for the human condition and to decrease the liabilities. If so much as a substantial fraction of the world's scientists and engineers resolved to do this much, the acceleration of progress toward sustainable well-being for all of Earth's inhabitants would surprise us all."
