Experts in the News

“I shudder to think what things would be [like] if we were actually having a heat wave,” said Baker Institute Rice Faculty Scholar Dan Cohan, noting a similar call for conservation during a relatively mild April.

The Senate passed a $250 billion funding bill this week to boost U.S. technology research -- an investment that is long overdue, said senior science and technology policy fellow Neal Lane, who is a former National Science Foundation director. “Even if it weren’t for the competition with China, the American people deserve the benefits that come from these kinds of investments of taxpayer money."

Scientists are banned from doing research on embryos older than 14 days. Now they want the decades-old rule lifted. Why? Science and technology policy fellow Kirstin Matthews talked about the shift.

Texas may again face days-long blackouts in the future, despite two bills that were just signed into law, said Baker Institute Rice Faculty Scholar Dan Cohan. "The bills only really addressed the supply, and don’t go far enough," he said. Legislators failed to address electricity demand and transmission — key considerations for keeping the power on during extreme weather.

Seemingly taking a page from the Trump playbook, Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has assailed the incoming administration and called the election that defeated him “the scam of the century.” Middle East fellow Gilead Sher said the fact that “no transition [of power] has begun by the prime minister, his staff or most of his ministers, is extremely unusual and counterproductive. What Netanyahu and his [Likud] party members have been saying is shameful." Sher, the former chief of staff to prime minister and defense minister Ehud Barak, said Netanyahu should “not try to cling to power.”