Issues in Science and Technology

The US Army will build more than 20 nuclear microreactors at five military bases, the AP reports, buttressing the government’s push to advance nuclear power. But in Issues, Michael J.

Rey Velasquez Sagcal Future Tense Fiction “Madam. Simply put: This house is full of weeds.” If she didn’t focus on the building plans, Tamara would think about her mother. She would think she was fine, zooming in on a misspelled text one of her contractors sent, then she’d remember her mother’s face, a yellow paleness in the hospital bed, a clammy touch, lost of feeling.

Nigeria’s young and booming capital of Abuja, a place where I spent part of my formative years, is best described as a city of competitive hustling. Opportunities are available, but competition is high. For many young professionals and entrepreneurs, success depends heavily on networking, relationships, reputation, and persistence. In this way, Osahon Ize-Iyamu’s “Where the Wild Things Grow,” a Future Tense Fiction story set in a future Abuja, is familiar to me.

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The material published on this site reflects the views of the individual authors only, not the policy or opinion of any institution or organization.

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs are easy to underestimate. They make up a fraction—just 3.65%—of the total federal research and development budget. Their administration is decentralized across 11 federal agencies. Their individual awards have statutory limits of $305,000 for Phase I and $2 million for Phase II—modest compared with the scale of federal procurement, university research funding, or venture capital.

As Lars Erik Schönander makes clear in “Reauthorizing the Small Business Innovation Research Program Isn’t Enough” (Issues, Spring 2026), SBIR is massively improved. But it still fails to adequately address the decades-old problem posed by so-called SBIR mills, nor does it materially encourage first-time innovators to engage. SBIR mills, a small number of companies that benefit from the program but never commercialize any products, were born of a 40-year schism in the perceived objectives of SBIR.

The internet—saturated with advertising, tracking, and surveillance; optimized for engagement and attentional capture at any cost; and riddled with spam—was made, not born.

Several vast conservation areas in the Pacific Ocean are losing protection as the US government opens portions of them to commercial fishing, NPR reports. In Issues, Tundi Agardy, an early advocate for establishing marine protected areas, calls such conservation areas “urgently needed” for several critical reasons. “They can protect key habitats and boost fisheries production inside and outside the reserves,” she writes.

Through satellite imagery, orbital installations, lunar archives, and the perspective of spaceflight, Richelle Ellis asks how seeing Earth from above changes the way we understand life below.