Wildland fires are becoming larger, more frequent, and more severe. Wildland fire suppression funding, in turn, has become more complex.
California has seen historic and catastrophic wildfires in the past several years. But it would be a mistake to assume the impacts of these wildfires are contained by California’s borders. It’s known from existing research that wildfires in one area can have public health impacts far from the source. The wildfires in California and throughout […]
The NIH funds the world’s most innovative biomedical research, but rising administrative burden is slowing down the speed of breakthroughs.
For many students in the U.S. a career in science is out of reach. Too often young people interested in science never get the chance to pursue their dreams simply because they come from low-income families or live in parts of the country where opportunities to engage in scientific research are limited. This leads to […]
WASHINGTON, D.C.–Today the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is teaming up with Metaculus to kick off the Climate Tipping Points Tournament, a virtual forecasting tournament aimed at helping policymakers make better informed decisions about climate change policies. The concept of forecasting is familiar to anyone who has checked their phone’s weather app before heading out […]
The concept of forecasting is pretty familiar to anyone who’s flipped on their local news to get a sense of the week’s weather. But the broader science of forecasting, which is being applied to policy-relevant topics such as epidemiology, energy, technology progress, and many more topics – – has never been in a more exciting […]
One of the most urgent challenges discussed the past few weeks at COP27 was climate adaptation—how to secure and empower communities worldwide that are already in the throes of climate change’s worst impacts. U.S. policymakers have rightly recognized climate adaptation and food security as growing intertwined national security and development aid priorities. Yet most acute climate adaptation challenges like […]
Over the past two years, the federal government has invested unprecedented amounts of funding in wildfire suppression, hazardous fuels reduction, community preparedness, and restoration through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Together, the IIJA and IRA provide $24 billion in funding for wildfire issues, distributed over 40 different programs and administered […]
Earlier this year Congress passed the CHIPS And Science Act: a once-in-a-generation piece of legislation to secure U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, enhance U.S. science investment, and foster the next generation of STEM talent. But at the core of that legislation are aggressive spending targets for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy Office of Science […]
Like HIV/AIDS, acute childhood malnutrition is deadly but treatable with the right approach. A President’s Emergency Plan for Acute Childhood Malnutrition could catalyze the fight against malnutrition and direct resources to greater impact.
Improving local food security is critical to ending poverty and eliminating hunger, and United States Government can be a global leader. From Jonathan Lehe, Nick Milne, and Gautam Bastian, a proposal for USAID, Feed the Future, and its partners to launch a Digital Agriculture for Food Security Challenge to improve crop yields worldwide.
Question: What do family game nights and federal government initiatives have in common? Answer: They’re both much easier to successfully start than to successfully finish. Coordinating multiple stakeholders—each with their unique interests and perspectives—around a common goal is simply difficult. At FAS, we have yet to figure out how to best tackle family game nights. But we […]