A centralized, consistently reported system of indicators of educational equity is needed to bring attention to disparities in the U.S. education system, says a new report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Recently, questions have been raised about climate science. The National Academies have addressed many of these questions in our independent, evidence-based reports. We are speaking out to support the cumulative scientific evidence for climate change and the scientists who continue to advance our understanding.

Current cancer control efforts in the United States typically are fragmented and uncoordinated, but taking a systems approach to establish a U.S. National Cancer Control Plan would address the challenge more holistically, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

When John L. Anderson, president emeritus and distinguished professor of chemical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology, was first elected to the National Academy of Engineering almost 30 years ago, he remembers being deeply honored and excited about how the recognition would help his career.

The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development lays out a range of ambitious goals for global development, from achieving food security to combating climate change to making the world’s cities sustainable.

The National Academies today released Criteria for Selecting the Leading Health Indicators for Healthy People 2030, the first of two reports that will help inform the development of Healthy People 2030 (HP2030).

The Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has announced the nine recipients of its 2019 Science Policy Fellowships.

Rev. Heber Brown III wants people to erase the term “food desert” from their vocabulary.

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine – which reviews a separate report by a federally funded laboratory that examines options for treating low-activity radioactive waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation -- is available for public comment until Oct. 31.

Last week, the International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing held its first public meeting at the National Academy of Sciences building in Washington, D.C.

The International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing is tasked with identifying the scientific, medical, and ethical requirements to consider when assessing potential clinical applications of human germline genome editing — if society concludes that heritable human genome editing applications are acceptable.

The Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine announced today the recipients of its 2019 Early-Career Research Fellowships.

The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) has selected five outstanding health professionals for the class of 2019 NAM Fellowships. The fellows were chosen based on their professional qualifications, reputations as scholars, professional accomplishments, and relevance of current field expertise to the work of the NAM and the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies).

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine calls for a comprehensive national agenda to improve mental, emotional, and behavioral (MEB) health in children and youth. Despite advances in research, rates of depression, suicide and self-harm among young people have been increasing.

For her role in transforming a safety net hospital into a national model for high-quality, cost-efficient health care, the National Academy of Medicine today announced Patricia Gabow is the recipient of the 2019 Gustav O. Lienhard Award for Advancement of Health Care.

The National Academy of Medicine today announced Daniel Weinberger is the recipient of the 2019 Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health, for his fundamental role in elucidating the biological origins and genetic expressions of schizophrenia, and for transforming how clinicians, researchers, and the public understand mental illness.

The Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine today announced $10.7 million in grant awards for four new projects focused on enhancing community resilience in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico region.

It has been a little over a year since the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong, where scientist He Jiankui (pictured above) announced the birth of twins whose healthy embryonic genomes had been edited to confer resistance to HIV.

The federal government should foster collaboration and decrease obstacles that can keep foreign atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physicists from working in the United States, if the nation is to maintain its position as leader in these fields, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have been awarded a grant for $100,000 from Arcadia — a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin — to support the work of the Academies’ Roundtable on Aligning Incentives for Open Science.

National Academy of Sciences President Emeritus Frank Press — distinguished geophysicist, science adviser to President Jimmy Carter, and National Medal of Science recipient — died on Wednesday, Jan. 29, at his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He was 95.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) this week requested that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine rapidly examine the information and data needed to help determine the origins of the novel coronavirus that is causing a global outbreak of respiratory illness.

WASHINGTON — In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to establish a Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats.

Today the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released its review of the National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) draft monograph Systematic Review of Fluoride Exposure and Neurodevelopmental and Cognitive Health Effects.

More than 9.6 million children — or 13 percent of all children in the U.S. — live in families with annual incomes below the poverty line, according to data from 2015. As closures and restrictions related to COVID-19 begin to impact the U.S. economy, it’s clear many more families will be receiving fewer paychecks and less income in the coming months, putting more children at risk of falling below the poverty line.

As a novel coronavirus spreads throughout the world and the number of cases and deaths continues to rise, almost no country or community remains untouched by this rapidly evolving threat.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the National Science Foundation announced today the formation of a Societal Experts Action Network (SEAN) to connect social and behavioral science researchers with decision-makers who are leading the response to COVID-19. SEAN will respond to the most pressing social, behavioral, and economic questions that are being asked by federal, state, and local officials by working with appropriate experts to quickly provide actionable answers.

The National Science Foundation: Creating knowledge to transform our future

The National Science Foundation: Creating knowledge to transform our future

Climate change poses a large threat to African agriculture, but there is little research on how to respond. A recent study indicates that traditional adaptation methods are not enough and international collaboration is needed in ‘planned adaptation’ by collecting and conserving certain crops for the future.

Ensuring successful public engagement in policy can be difficult. Four key challenges – communicating complexity, providing balanced information, creating space for deliberation and accessing broader values – are highlighted by a new study. Its authors show how they dealt with these challenges in a UK programme, designed to gather public views on the future of national energy policy.

The main factors affecting household food waste in the EU have been identified by an analysis of the 2013 Flash Eurobarometer survey (n.388). On an individual level, the main factors include age, gender, income and environmental attitudes. On the national level, the most significant factor is median disposable income. The authors suggest their results could help develop campaigns targeted at groups that generate the most household waste.

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes offer direct payments for communities and individuals in exchange for conserving areas of land reserved for conservation for their environmental qualities. The results of an Ecuadorian study highlight key aspects for designing successful PES schemes and demonstrate how investments associated with PES can also benefit poor communities.

The cost of a Mediterranean marine protected area (MPA) network could be cut by over two thirds if countries surrounding the Sea collaborate in its creation. This is the conclusion of a study that explored how the Convention on Biological Diversity’s goals to protect wildlife through MPAs could be met cost-efficiently.

The transition to a low-carbon transport system needs a coherent national policy framework that supports all its aspects, according to a review of transport and innovation policy in Finland. Its findings suggest that policy makers need to identify and remove contradictory policies that present barriers to achieving a greener transport system.

Large imports of low-cost Russian wood to Finland up until 2007 increased pressure on Russian forest ecosystems, whilst reducing harvest pressure on Finnish forests and those of other European countries that consume wood-based products made in Finland, according to research. This highlights the need to take the international dimension of environmental impacts into account when designing sustainable production and consumption policies.

National Forest Programmes (NFPs) aim to incorporate the views of a wide range of stakeholders into the management of national forests. However, an analysis of NFPs in Bulgaria and Germany found they had little impact on forest policy. Despite this, stakeholders who took part in the NFP negotiations welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the policy-making process, even though they realised they may have little impact.

A new international policy regime for sustainable forest management may complicate matters rather than provide solutions, according to a new report. It suggests there should be better co-ordination of existing hard and soft policy options and between the numerous organisations involved in forest management.

International trade in wood and wood products affects forest stocks around the world. A recent study examines the relationship between changes in forest cover and international timber trade at global level. If finds that some wealthier nations with low population density can maintain forest areas while exporting wood; but other, usually poorer, nations, are losing forests through domestic and global demand for wood.

Last year my organization fell victim to a trans- national export invoice fraud. Since 99 percent of our sales come from exports, the cyber fraud dealt a big blow to our organization. We have a customer in South East Asia and my organization had business dealings with this customer for over five years.

Researchers have developed a new indicator for policymakers, which shows the strength of renewable-energy technologies for electricity production in a country’s energy security. They compare their Renewable Energy Security Index (RESI) to the carbon footprint, in that it is easy to report and practical to use in energy policy.

International trade has increasingly relied on material resources since the 1990s, according to a new study. The research used the most detailed global computer model available for capturing the effects of international trade on the environment and on the efficiency of resource use between 1995–2011. Sharp increases in the trade of cheap ‘fast fashion’ and mass market electronics are highlighted as two of the fastest growing drivers of this change in material inefficiency.

The management of international rivers is subject to two main types of boundary: the physical boundary of the river itself and the socio-political boundaries of the nations and regions that surround it. A new study has compared the impacts of managing rivers according to these different boundaries in Europe and Africa.

Loss of satellites providing rainfall data could have a negative effect on global flood management, according to new research. However, this could be mitigated by improved international co-operation and the use of more modern satellite technology, the authors say. The study examined the consequences for flood management of the loss of four of the existing 10 dedicated rainfall measuring satellites.

These proposed regulations overlap and in some cases even contradict, and these issues have been flagged by global companies such as Google and IBM.

National lists of threatened species contribute to the monitoring of biodiversity, but new research has discovered a lack of these lists in certain countries, such as Pacific Island states, and for certain groups of wildlife, such as invertebrates. Targeted financial support, better knowledge sharing and standard systems of data collection could help bridge these gaps.

How can ecotourism be managed so that tourists' visits are compatible with the protection of species and their habitats? In a new study, researchers developed a tool to calculate the trade-off between tourism and the protection of an endangered bird in an Austrian national park, in order to optimise conservation and visitor management.

Ecological networks connect areas of habitat to prevent biodiversity loss and have been established across Europe. The ambitious Dutch National Ecological Network aims to span 728 500 hectares by 2025. In this study, researchers explored the feasibility of this goal in the context of climate and policy changes.

The coverage of ‘Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas’ (IBAs) in relation to Special Protection Areas (SPAs) for birds in the EU has been assessed in a new study. Overall, 66% of the IBA network is covered by SPAs. SPAs were found to cover 23% of the distributions of 435 EU bird species as well as 25% of the distributions of mammals, reptiles and amphibians.