Senator Barack Obama responded to fourteen science questions asked by Science Debate 2008 regarding how an Obama White House would lead the US in areas vital to our competitiveness and innovation. All fourteen questions and Obama’s answers in their entirety can be found here. Some highlights of most importance to the computing community include: Q […]
The Chronicle of Higher Ed yesterday covered the release of a National Science Foundation Info Brief on the decline of U.S. funding for academic research for the second straight year, noting that NSF declares the decline “unprecedented for this data series, which began in 1972.” Though federal funding for academic research technically increased from FY […]
Senator John McCain released his technology agenda this week. He supports some of the ideas that have high importance to the S&T community. McCains plan includes: Making the R&D tax credit permanent Lowering the corporate tax rate to 25% Allowing companies to write off of new equipment and technology in the first year Keeping the […]
As mentioned in this space on Wednesday, the House Science and Technology Committee held a hearing Thursday morning to review the federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program (NITRD — alternately pronounced “NIGHT-erd” or “NIGHTER-dee”), the 13 agency, $3.3 billion budget activity that represents the federal government’s investment in IT research and development. […]
Tomorrow Dan Reed, CRAs Board chair will testify before the House Science and Technology Committee on the state of the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program. Dan is a part of the Presidents Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), which released a report last summer on the state of NITRD. […]
Last Tuesday, NYT science commentator John Tierney discussed how Congress has recently ramped up enforcement of Title IX among universities’ science departments. Will a “quota system”–an idea Tierney floats in the third paragraph of his piece–be an outcome of Title IX enforcement? So far, the increased enforcement has only consisted of periodic compliance reviews, which […]
Voters ballots may be more partisan than ever, but the vast majority of Americans can agree that we need to invest in science and technology, according to a recent poll. 71 percent of polled voters said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who is committed to making sure the federal budget […]
The Emergency Supplemental for FY08 — the last chance to rectify the appropriations shortfall for science caused by the FY 08 Omnibus Appropriation — has been signed by the President and is now law. Though science funding made it into the supplemental — one of the few non-defense items in the bill — the win […]
A symbolic (and that’s about all) victory for science in managing to get included in the FY 08 Emergency Supplemental Appropriation approved by the House today, though the amounts leave a lot to be desired. Even though the funding levels are pretty anemic, at least some money appeared in the bill. The great majority of […]
Noah Shactman has an interesting post on the Danger Room Blog at Wired noting that the Pentagon has “reprogrammed” $32 million of DARPA funding, including $2 million from the Information and Communications Technology account because of DARPA’s inability to attract program managers and spend the money allocated it. From the Reprogramming Action (pdf) report: “DARPA […]
