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The debate over whether food companies should be required to label products containing genetically modified ingredients took an important turn this month when the nation’s first labeling law took effect in Vermont. Now Congress appears to be on the verge of passing the first-ever federal standard for disclosing information about genetically engineered food, a bill that would preempt state laws.

Spending thousands of hours playing Grand Theft Auto might have questionable benefits for humans, but it could help make computers significantly more intelligent. Several research groups are now using the hugely popular game, which features fast cars and various nefarious activities, to train algorithms that might enable a self-driving car to navigate a real road.

Whether or not your ethnic group has political power in the country where you live is a crucial factor determining your access to the Internet, according to a new analysis. The effect varies from country to country, and is much less pronounced in democratic nations. But the study, published today in Science, suggests that besides censorship, another way national governments prevent opposing groups from organizing online is by denying them Internet access in the first place.

Peak oil, if it even exists, is very much a moving target. But so, it turns out, is measuring how much oil is already above ground, sitting in the holds of ships and in storage facilities around the world. It’s not that humanity is fundamentally incapable of measuring how much oil we are extracting - it’s that many countries don’t report their inventories.

When a state representative named Thom Tillis ran for US Senate in North Carolina in 2014, his campaign followed the now-standard practice of sending voters online and direct-mail advertisements referring to particular issues. Which issues mattered to which people, from ISIS to the Affordable Care Act, could be gleaned from the voters’ memberships and donations or inferred from demographic information and databases of everything from their purchases to their Web history.

From the street, through Beijing’s heavy smog, it can sometimes be hard to make out IBM’s Chinese headquarters: a towering office building with a distinctive undulating architectural flourish and a large company logo at the top. But just a short distance away, on the northeast outskirts of the capital, IBM computer scientists are using artificial intelligence to develop what they think will be a way to manage China’s notorious and chronic pollution problem more successfully.

Can Tesla really deliver on its promise to offer a long-range electric vehicle that is cheap enough to attract mainstream buyers by 2017? We can’t know for sure without access to the company’s proprietary information. But one thing is clear: if Tesla is successful it will be because of significant advances to the design and manufacturing of its battery pack, which many estimates suggest represents a quarter to half of the full cost of the car.

Apple CEO Tim Cook claims that if his company helps the FBI get into a dead terrorist’s iPhone, a precedent would be set that has “implications far beyond” this case. But is that true in the legal sense? Technologically speaking, it should be possible for Apple to cooperate with law enforcement - as telecommunications companies have done for 100 years - in this particular case without compromising the tough encryption standards now baked into its phones.

A controversial genetic technology able to wipe out the mosquito carrying the Zika virus will be available within months, scientists say. The technology, called a “gene drive,” was demonstrated only last year in yeast cells, fruit flies, and a species of mosquito that transmits malaria. It uses the gene-snipping technology CRISPR to force a genetic change to spread through a population as it reproduces.

The news that Padmasree Warrior, a former technology chief at Cisco and Motorola, was hired this week as CEO of the U.S. division of the Chinese company NextEV raised an obvious question: what exactly is NextEV?

Does playing football cause permanent brain damage? If it wasn’t already, that question is now squarely in the zeitgeist thanks to Hollywood and Will Smith. The answer is not so straightforward, however. We are likely to learn a lot more about the subject in 2016 because so many labs are focused on concussion research right now. But scientists are only beginning to understand the details of how concussions - also a serious problem in the military - damage the brain.

A crowdsourced mapping startup is using computer-vision technology to turn user-submitted photographs into a searchable, 3-D map of the world.

Billy Maddox planted 100 acres of Roundup Ready soybeans this year. The big news is he didn't pay Monsanto a dime. It's been 20 years since Monsanto developed its first genetically modified crops. Now some of its early patents are starting to expire, leading to the first "generic GMOs" - off-patent seeds that cost half as much and which farmers are free to save and replant.

A colleague recently described a fun Friday night for his teenage son: staying home and chatting online. Every now and then there’s a party where all his friends talk on their laptops.

The American tradition of retirement at age 65 is crumbling. As older workers stay on the job longer, challenges ranging from eyestrain to aching joints become increasingly prevalent. In response, technologists and ergonomics experts are rethinking working conditions.

Can India modernize its manufacturing economy and supply electricity to its growing population without relying heavily on coal - and quite possibly destroying the global climate?

Here are some key numbers for content licensors in digital media: Netflix will pay approximately $3 billion in licensing and production fees this year to the television and film industry; Hulu is paying $192 million to license South Park; Spotify pays out 70 percent of its gross revenues to the music labels that hold the underlying rights to Spotify's catalogue.

In this issue: "A Contrarian in Biotech" by Antonio Regalado. "Industry Body Calls for Gene-Editing Moratorium" by Antonio Regalado. "The Electric Mood-Control Acid Test" by Kevin Bullis. "Gadgets Are Getting Better at Fooling Your Sense of Touch" by Rachel Metz. "App Ads Are Booming Business for Facebook" by Robert D. Hof. "Smartphones Will Soon Learn to Recognize Faces and More" by Tom Simonite. "How People Will Use the Apple Watch" by John Pavlus. "A Smart Watch Pioneer Has an Answer for Apple" by Rachel Metz. "Your iPhone Might Make You a Reality TV Star" by Winston Ross. "New Display Technology Lets LCDs Produce Princess Leia-Style Holograms" by Mike Orcutt. "A Film Studio for the Age of Virtual Reality" by Rachel Metz. "Five Loopholes That Could Undermine Net Neutrality" by George Anders.

In this issue, you'll learn how Google will keep a copy of any genome in the cloud – for only 25 dollars. You’ll hear about Lockheed Martin's breakthrough Fusion machine. You’ll learn how Knightscope is preparing to roll out human-size robot patrols. You'll hear how IBM is trying to turn things around with research on more human-like artificial intelligence. You'll learn how we’re going to need an air traffic control system for drones. You'll hear about a "smart" terminal that is going to be used for all kinds of payments. And you'll hear news from the worlds of Biomedicine, Technology and Communications.

You’ll learn how Facebook is pushing beyond data-driven studies on voting, sharing, and organ-donation prompts, to make people feel good or bad. You’ll hear how inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil is working with Google to apply his theory of intelligence to understanding online information. You’ll learn how Amazon’s Fire Phone could make visual search easier, better, and more popular. You’ll hear how IBM is working on a new computer chip – which could be up to five times faster than current transistors. You’ll learn how smart homes will require unprecedented effort to ensure not just security but also usability. And you’ll hear news from the worlds of Biomedicine, Technology and Communications.