In the News
Democratic lawmakers in Congress have asked major cryptocurrency and digital asset industry players to provide data on their diversity and inclusion practices.
Specifically, the lawmakers, including U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), chair of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee, sent the request to the nation's 20 largest crypto, Web3, and digital assets companies, as well as prominent venture capital firms with investments in crypto.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and local congressmen visited Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont Monday to mark the completion of a new facility that will allow a closer look at clean energy sources such as electric vehicle batteries and nuclear energy materials.
"I'm so honored to be here and honored to be here representing an administration that very much believes in science," Granholm said during her visit.
US lawmakers have warned that fake research papers risk compromising trust in the entire scientific system, as artificial intelligence (AI) makes it ever easier for so-called paper mills to fool journals into accepting made up articles.
Some estimates suggest hundreds of thousands of fake papers could exist in the human genomics literature alone. Paper mills have also managed to impersonate guest journal editors to wave through hundreds of their own fraudulent articles.
Building a robot that can throw Frisbees into a bin is one thing, but that was not what impressed U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm the most.
"You are looking outside just building the robot," Granholm said to the high school-age students, part of a robot-building team at the APS Academy in downtown Aurora.
The students had just told her that in addition to their robot, they were designing an app to help people find places to recycle batteries. It even included incentives to get people to recycle alkaline batteries, and get lifetime lithium batteries instead.
WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm hits the Chicago area Monday with stops at Argonne National Laboratory and Hyzon Motors, which makes zero-emission vehicles, to highlight the Biden administration's initiatives to combat climate change and spur development of clean energy.
Granholm, a former Michigan governor, made her first visit as energy secretary to the Chicago area in December, where, among other stops, she toured Fermilab in Batavia, the national particle physics and accelerator laboratory.
A bill meant to ramp up federal government participation in the digital identity ecosystem is inching closer to passage. The bill is poised to be advanced by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and a Senate version was just introduced.
The bipartisan "Improving Digital Identity Act" was first introduced by Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) in 2020, but never never voted out of committee. It also didn't get a Senate version in that session of Congress. Foster reintroduced the measure last year.
Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) has spent more than a decade in Congress and is the only current lawmaker to hold a PhD in physics. "One of the reasons I feel occasionally useful in Congress is actually having some background in business and technology, I have some idea of where the puck is going,'' says the 66-year-old lawmaker representing the state's 11th congressional district, which includes parts of five counties roughly 30 miles west of Chicago.
The reversal of Roe v. Wade is expanding the conversation in Congress around biometric data and data privacy.
The U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight held a hearing Wednesday to discuss privacy issues around biometric data, and the benefit of biometric technology. Biometric data is information such as facial IDs and fingerprints.
Congress is working through numerous recycling-related bills meant to prevent plastic pollution and reduce single-use plastic use. Here are a few of the most recent updates.
The Supreme Court on Friday overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that established the constitutional right to abortion in the U.S. in 1973.
The decision comes more than a month after the leak of a draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito indicating the court was prepared to take this momentous step.
The court's ruling means that individual states will now have the power to set their own abortion laws without concern of running afoul of Roe.