Research Library

Qualities like amazing tensile strength and electrical conductivity offer a huge range of uses for carbon nanotubes. In a new policy brief, fellow Rachel A. Meidl and her co-authors Dana Goerzen and Daniel A. Heller explain that to ensure carbon nanotubes’ role in a circular, sustainable economy, a coordinated system for classifying, testing, and identifying CNTs and a life cycle approach to risk assessments are needed to better understand impacts to facilitate consistent communication among researchers, industries, and policymakers.

Are our views of sustainability becoming distorted by the often unsubstantiated “green” actions of companies and organizations? This brief explores why we urgently need a new framework for sustainability — one that relies on a holistic, cross-disciplinary, and multidimensional life cycle approach.

This policy brief explores the dangerous potential of neuroweapons, the need for a “Neuroshield” to protect democracies from the risks of disinformation, the implications of brain-computer interfaces and other national security considerations related to brain health.

With the 45V tax credit, the U.S. is well poised to compete for the growing pipeline of clean hydrogen projects globally, writes fellow Rachel Meidl. But if the Treasury adds restrictions to the new tax credit, the U.S. could lose its advantage and a key opportunity for large-scale decarbonization.

Hostile immigration enforcement policies and anti-immigrant actions against refugees and asylum seekers are causing trauma to migrant families and exposing them to dangerous living conditions on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Carbon nanotubes are critical components for future decarbonization strategies and a clean energy revolution. If the U.S. is to reestablish climate leadership, advanced nanotechnology solutions must be a national priority, argues the author.

Integrating a life-cycle dimension into future policies to assess the social, environmental and economic implications of various products across their life cycle and throughout their value chain is critical to achieving sustainability and a circular economy, writes Rachel A. Meidl, fellow in energy and environment.

Energy fellow Rachel A. Meidl writes that it is imperative to consider and assess innovative recycling technologies that could have enormous economic value in transforming waste plastics into the building blocks for new, higher-value products.

With the cost of virgin plastic directly affected by oil and natural gas prices, the global plastics economy is highly vulnerable to shocks. The authors argue that in order to advance sustainability and solve existential crises like resource depletion and the environmental and social impacts of climate change, high-income countries should take the lead on the development of transparent, closed loops for plastics. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25613/JXVH-K250

A defense diplomacy shielded from the influence of nationalistic and partisan sentiments presents a valuable opportunity for the U.S. to advance regional security in the Indo-Pacific, and to forge a path to a more equitable and peaceful future with China, writes nonresident scholar Daniel Katz.