Reports

Red Alert: The Growing Threat to U.S. Aircraft Carriers

While the U.S. Navy has long enjoyed freedom of action throughout the world’s oceans, the days of its unchallenged primacy may be coming to a close. In recent years, a number of countries, including China, Russia, and Iran, have accelerated investments in anti-access/area denial (A2/AD)capabilities such as advanced air defense systems, anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles, submarines, and aircraft carriers. These capabilities are likely to proliferate in the coming years, placing greater constraints on U.S. carrier operations than ever before.

The Equipment Industry Technician Shortage

While there are certainly differences between the heavy equipment and manufacturing industries, there are similarities between the natures of the skills gap affecting their workforces. These connections between the experiences provide a broader context for the challenges facing businesses due to the shortage of technical workers.

The Demographics of Innovation in the United States

This study provides a detailed portrait of individuals who are driving technological innovation in the United States - including their gender, ethnicity, countries of origin, education, and age—as well as the settings and circumstances in which they are creating their innovations, such as the institution (or institutions) behind the advances, the commercial status of the innovations, and their funding sources.

Using Indicator Data to Drive K–12 STEM Improvements in States and Districts

Indicators and measures have long served a critical role in the U.S. education system. For district and state education leaders, monitoring data describe current initiatives and support informed decision-making. In Monitoring Progress Toward Successful K-12 STEM Education, the National Research Council (NRC) argues for new and enhanced indicators in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education

Measuring the Quantity and Quality of the K-12 STEM Teacher Pipeline

STEM teachers are essential to any effort to improve U.S. STEM education, both for students who eventually will work in STEM-related fields and for the general public. Efforts to enhance the quality of STEM teachers have focused on attracting more academically capable people to the field, improving the quality of teacher education programs, supporting teachers’ continued learning once they have joined the profession, or rewarding and retaining the most effective teachers.

Ranking Countries Impact on Global Innovation

The report finds that on a per-capita basis, the nations doing the most for global innovation (a combination of more effort on policies that support innovation and less on policies that harm it) are Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. In contrast, India, Indonesia, and Argentina score the lowest overall. Singapore, Korea, and Finland rank highest on how much their policies contribute to global innovation. In contrast, India, China, and Thailand have put in place policies that have done the most to harm global innovation.

2016 Tech Salary Guide

Competition among businesses for top IT talent today makes it critical for managers to rethink their recruitment and retention methods. Speeding up hiring times, training from within, filling skills gaps with project professionals and offering attractive compensation can help you hire – and keep – the best and brightest for your organization.

NIH-Wide Strategic Plan, FY 2016–2020: Turning Discovery Into Health

The plan focuses on four essential, interdependent objectives that will help guide NIH’s priorities over the next five years as it pursues its mission of seeking fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and applying that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability. The objectives are to:

10 Hot Consumer Trends 2016

Source information is given separately for data used on each page. An additional online survey of smartphone users in 13 major cities across the world was also carried out in October 2015, specifically for this report. It comprises 6,649 urban iOS/Android smartphone users in Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Mexico City, Moscow,New York, Paris, San Francisco, São Paulo, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo. Respondents were aged 15−69, and the sample is representative of 68 million urban citizens.

Future Ready Learning: Reimagining the Role of Technology in Education

The National Education Technology Plan (NETP) sets a national vision and plan for learning enabled by technology through building on the work of leading education researchers; district, school, and higher education leaders; classroom teachers; developers; entrepreneurs; and nonprofit organizations. The principles and examples provided in this document align to the Innovative Technology Expands Children’s Horizons (ITECH) program as authorized by Congress in December 2015 through the Every Child Achieves Act.