The U.S. is beginning to roll out striking instances of place-based industrial policy—a good amount of it focused on federal investment in heartland geographies still making a spotty transition from their “old” industrial economy to a new tech-driven model. Most notable are the investments from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Regional Innovation Engines program and the Commerce Department’s Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs (Tech Hubs) program—each funded as part of last year’s bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act and financed by the FY 2023 omnibus appropriations bill. Last August, the NSF named 16 regions as finalists for its Regional Innovation Engines competition. Seven of these regions were…

For the first time, researchers have sequenced RNA from an extinct animal species — the Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus).   Using muscle and skin samples from a 132-year-old museum specimen, scientists isolated millions of RNA sequences. This genetic material provides information about the animal’s genes and proteins that are made in its cells and tissues. The findings, published in Genome Research on 19 September1, offer hope that RNA locked up in the world’s museum collections could provide new insights into long-dead species.   Being able to look at RNA in particular “opens up a whole new potential source of information”, says Oliver…

Blockchain technology has moved past the hype – and hysteria – of cryptocurrencies and become a technology adopted by industry and governments as a solution for securing and streamlining processes across a variety of sectors. China has been a developer and rapid adopter of blockchain, particularly in areas such as finance, medicine, energy, and supply chains. The government’s support of blockchain firms and applications have boosted the use of the tech across the country, improving security, transaction speed for customers, and advancing China’s competitiveness within the global market. https://www.stimson.org/wp-content/plugins/wp-views/embedded/res/img/ajax-loader.gif","callback_next":"","manage_history":"enabled","has_controls_in_form":"disabled","infinite_tolerance":"0","max_pages":0,"page":1,"base_permalink":"/2021/blockchain-in-china/?wpv_view_count=67185-TCPID44170&wpv_paged=WPV_PAGE_NUM","loop":{"type":"","name":"","data":[],"id":0}}" data-permalink="/2021/blockchain-in-china/?wpv_view_count=67185-TCPID44170" style="box-sizing:border-box"> Executive Summary Emerging technologies such as blockchain, a subset…

Microsoft has been increasingly moving Windows to the cloud on the commercial side with Windows 365, but the software giant also wants to do the same for consumers. In an internal “state of the business” Microsoft presentation from June 2022, Microsoft discuses building on “Windows 365 to enable a full Windows operating system streamed from the cloud to any device.” The presentation has been revealed as part of the ongoing FTC v. Microsoft hearing, as it includes Microsoft’s overall gaming strategy and how that relates to other parts of the company’s businesses. Moving “Windows 11 increasingly to the cloud” is identified as…

 That’s what the software concluded about a student’s paper. One of the professors in the academic program I direct had come across this finding and asked me what to do with it. Then another one saw the same result—100 percent AI—for a different paper by that student, and also wondered: What does this mean? I did not know. I still don’t. The problem breaks down into more problems: whether it’s possible to know for certain that a student used AI, what it even means to “use” AI for writing papers, and when that use amounts to cheating. The software that had flagged…