By: Shontavia Johnson, Drake University

America has long been the land of innovation. More than 13,000 years ago, the Clovis people created what many call the “first American invention” – a stone tool used primarily to hunt large game. This spirit of American creativity has persisted through the millennia, through the first American patent granted in 1641 and on to today.

One group of prolific innovators, however, has been largely ignored by history: black inventors born or forced into American slavery. Though U.S. patent law was created with color-blind language to foster innovation, the patent system consistently excluded these inventors from recognition.

As a law professor and a licensed patent attorney, I understand both the importance of protecting inventions and the negative impact of being unable to use the law to do so. But despite patents being largely out of reach to them throughout early U.S. history, both slaves and free African-Americans did invent and innovate.

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Show science and our community some love this Valentine’s Day, and donate $20 to ECS’s Free the Science campaign.

According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, over 30,000 people are forced to flee their homes every day. A new feature from NPR highlights one professor from Leipzig University that decided to take action on the refugee crisis, addressing the around 6,000 refugees living in her city.

Carmen Bachmann believed that as a professor, it was her duty to ease this problem, and she sought out to do so by providing advanced academic training to those in refugee camps. Listen to the full story above.

Bill Nye the Science Guy first debuted in 1993, bringing an entertaining and educational program to public television. After 100 episodes, the show went off air in 1998, but Nye has continued to hold a prominent place in mainstream scientific dialogue.

Now, Nye is going back to his roots with Bill Nye Saves the World, set to air on Netflix on April 21.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is calling on U.S. President Donald Trump to work with the world’s largest scientific organization to ensure the free flow of scientific talent from around the world.

The latest response from AAAS comes just after President Trump’s executive order limiting immigration and travel from seven countries in the Middle East. AAAS’s CEO, Rush Holt, issued a statement emphasizing the need to keep U.S. borders open to scientists and students from around the world.

“Scientific progress depends on openness, transparency, and the free flow of ideas. The United States has always attracted and benefited from international scientific talent because of these principles,” Holt said in the release. “We know that fostering safe and responsible conduct of research is essential for scientific advancement, national prosperity, and international security. Therefore, the detaining of students and scientists that have already been screened, processed, and approved to receive a visa to visit the United States is contrary to the spirit of science to pursue scholarly and professional interests. In order for science and the economy to prosper, students and scientists must be free to study and work with colleagues in other countries.”

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More than 12,000 academics, including 40 Nobel laureates, have added their names to an online petition condemning U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent executive order that institutes “extreme vetting” of refugees and limits immigration from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen into the U.S.

The petition cites the executive order as “needlessly cruel” and “discriminatory,” further stating that it could negatively damage scientific research in the U.S. and hurt the country’s reputation for academic excellence.

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While not the only source of science, government funded research plays a huge role in the lives of many individuals. From something as simple as the weather apps underpinned by the National Weather Service to the Food and Drug Administration’s work on preventing Salmonella, this tax-payer funded research shapes lives and helps provide knowledge to make crucial decisions.

On January 23, word came from the White House that almost all U.S. scientific government agencies had been temporarily barred from communicating with the public via press releases, blogs, and social media.

It’s not currently clear how extensive the gag order is – with some reports saying that explanations of just published peer reviewed research are barred, while others citing a much more lenient scenario – but it is confirmed that almost all agencies, from the U.S. Department of Interior to the Department of Health and Human Services, received a memo restricting – to some degree – outreach to the public.

Even after the gag order was put in place, federal agencies such as the Badlands National Park continued tweeting on its official account with a stream of facts pertaining to climate change. The tweets have since been deleted, though the park did address the president in a letter on Huffington Post.

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“We all need to understand each other and what we can do together to benefit the greater community.”
-Way Kuo

Way Kuo is president of the City University of Hong Kong. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and Russian Academy of Engineering.

He was the first foreign expert invited to discuss nuclear safety following the Fukushima incident. He argues that a holistic view of energy development is required, one that prioritizes the production and use of reliable energy sources over that of polluting and volatile ones. He maps out a policy that encourages and rewards the conservation of energy and efficiency in energy use.

You can meet Kuo in person at the 231st ECS Meeting this May in New Orleans, LA, where he will deliver the ECS Lecture, entitled “A Risk Look at Energy Development.”

Listen to the podcast and download this episode and others for free through the iTunes Store, SoundCloud, or our RSS Feed. You can also find us on Stitcher.

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A new initiative that goes by the name, STEM the Divide, is looking to bring scientists out of the lab and into public office.

STEM the Divide is founded by the nonprofit 314 Action group (homage to Pi), which is focused on building a community for those in STEM and bridging the gap between scientists and public policy. The group’s main goals include: strengthening communications between the scientific community and public officials, providing a voice for the STEM community on social issues, and increasing STEM engagement in the media.

As a branch of 314 Action, STEM the Divide is dedicated to electing more STEM-educated leaders to the U.S. Senate, House, State Executive, and Legislative offices.

“There’s nothing in our Constitution that says we can only be governed by attorneys,” Shaughnessy Naughton, founder of STEM the Divide, tells The Washington Post. “Especially now, we need people with scientific backgrounds that are used to looking at the facts and forming an opinion based on the facts.”

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