Efforts are underway to strengthen public trust in US elections by utilizing open source voting machines. Election authorities in Concord, New Hampshire have been examining vendor proposals for new voting machinery, questioning everything from the equipment’s weight to its components’ origins. For the small towns in New Hampshire looking to replace inadequate existing machines, there are two potential routes: working with traditional suppliers or banking on the innovative nonprofit, VotingWorks with its 17-member team. This organization aims to enhance election transparency via open source solutions but its capacity to dethrone established industry giants is yet to be confirmed. Read more about this topic here.
Lita Nelsen, who worked with the Technology Licensing Office at MIT between 1986 and 2016 and served as its director from 1992 to 2016, saw the transformation of Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from a forlorn region rife with deserted warehouses and dying low-tech factories to the global hub for the biotech industry. This evolution resulted largely from the Bayh-Dole Act passed by the Congress in 1980, which permitted top universities like MIT and Harvard to hold onto the rights over their scientists’ discoveries regardless of whether the research was federally funded. These discoveries have supported the flourishing growth of numerous biotech startups in the Boston area. Nevertheless, the Bayh-Dole Act’s effectiveness is now facing considerable challenges. Read the full story here.
