Yesterday, I had the opportunity to meet for a lunch Dave Snowden during his stay in Hong Kong and Macau. I would like to thank José Ferreira Pinto from City University of Macau and Les Hales from CIO...

A machine-learning framework predicts when a complex system, such as an ecosystem or a power grid, will undergo a critical transition.

The US electric grid faces increasing complexity and multiple threats to reliability, including fuel supply, market design, regulations, and permitting processes. A lack of unified responsibility across Congress, FERC, and States contributes to inaction and inconsistent policies, further exacerbated by state-level actions impacting interstate grid reliability. Recent warnings from NERC and the National Academies of Science highlight the fragility of the grid. Solutions are prioritized based on reliability value and expediency. Highest priority actions include expediting generator winterization, ensuring natural gas fuel assurance (requiring Congressional action), and overhauling state permitting processes to reduce interstate reliability impacts. Medium priority actions involve unleashing flexible demand, finishing generator interconnection reforms, safeguarding against premature generation retirements, improving wholesale market design, and streamlining federal permitting. Lower priority solutions focus on improving state resource planning, optimizing the existing transmission system, and improving conventional transmission expansion, which face complex political and logistical hurdles. Key actors and responsibilities are distributed: Congress addresses statutory changes like fuel assurance mandates and federal permitting reform; FERC handles wholesale market design and interconnection reforms; States reform permitting processes and engage with Regional Transmission Organizations; NERC monitors grid reliability; and Regional Transmission Organizations manage grid operations. Underlying concerns include political challenges, agency discretion regarding reliability decisions, balancing short-term costs with long-term resilience, navigating state versus federal authority, and ensuring market signals accurately reflect reliability costs and benefits. A summary table categorizes solutions by priority, key actors, importance, and implementation difficulty, encompassing expedited winterization, natural gas assurance, state permitting reforms, flexible demand, interconnection reforms, generation retirement safeguards, market design improvements, and federal permitting streamlining, alongside lower-priority initiatives for state resource planning and transmission optimization.

Cognition is often associated with complex brains, yet many forms of learning—such as habituation, sensitization, and even spacing effects—have been observed in single cells and aneural organisms. The...