Although Congress, President Bush, and top university chancellors have publicly fretted about the declining health of science and engineering in the United States, a new report argues that the U.S. has maintained its supremacy in those sectors. Further, the report says, the nation should not overreact to overseas growth in technological prowess.
And Daniel Greenberg writes in “Call Off the Funeral: Science in U.S. is Lively and Growing”:
The RAND report stands out because gloomy findings predominate in assessments of American science. In 1985, for example, the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee for the National Science Foundation expressed exasperation with the din of doom: “Its the same argument every year, about losing the lead.” In 2005, the National Research Councilthe research arm of the National Academy of Sciences and its subsidiariesissued a blockbuster compilation of R&D anxiety, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” which still reverberates around Washington as science-policy gospel.
The thing is, I’m not sure there are many within the science advocacy community who would disagree with the primary findings of the RAND report, U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology. The report found that the U.S. continues to be the world leader in S&T innovation; that federal support for resarch is generally up over the last decade or so — though that increase is almost all in the life sciences, the physical sciences have been held essentially flat; there is lots of opportunity in the science and engineering workforce; and the U.S. continues to be heavily dependent on our ability to attract the best and the brightest in the world to work and study here.
Not many, if any, in the DC science advocacy community would disagree with those assessments. The concerns, of course, are the trend lines — they are almost all trending the wrong way. (The Task Force on the Future of American Innovation has a good compilation of many of these benchmarks in their Benchmarks of Our Innovation Future II report.) Our competitors worldwide are every day increasing their capacity to compete with us — investing in better facilities, more partnerships, increased investments in key areas — and we’re concerned the U.S. isn’t matching them with anything close to the same intensity. Gene Spafford, one of my Government Affairs Committee members, notes that these pieces also seem to give short shrift to the disruptive effect one or two key discoveries can have — think light bulb, antibiotics, the transitor, controlled fission, the Internet, and more. Right now there is intensive research in genetics, nanotechnology, parallel computation, fusion, alternative energy and several other areas. A major advance in any one of them would be transformative on a large scale. It won’t be incremental. If we’re concerned about our national position as opposed to simply the advancement of science, the we want to somehow ensure that those advances happen here. And that requires having a prepared base and an active set of programs of inquiry.
The U.S. is the global leader in science and technology. It’s true that the U.S. has enough of a lead at this point to “decay gracefully” (as Newt Gingrich describes it). But I’m not sure that’s what most want for this country, or for their children and grandchildren who will have to live in it.
…but don’t get too excited, yet.
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science today approved (pdf) a nearly 14 percent increase for the National Science Foundation ($830 million over NSF’s lackluster FY 08 number) in its version of the FY 09 CJS Appropriations bill.
While the committee is doing this with the stated goal of getting NSF back on the doubling track called for in the America COMPETES Act, this is just one step along a long and tortuous path appropriations will take to get completed this year. Unfortunately, all the dynamics that were in play last year that led to science getting completely shut out of increases in the final FY 08 Omnibus Appropriations are still in play this year. And frankly, it appears that we are once again headed for a long-term continuing resolution until at least early next year, when lawmakers can assess the new climate after the election and chart a new strategy.
Still, the CJS Committee deserves kudos for continuing to find a way to highlight the importance of science funding and for giving the community a good starting point from which to argue for continued support throughout the remainder of the appropriations process. We’ll have all the details of that process here, so stay tuned.
The Chronicle of Higher Ed has more (though that link might be temporary).
The next couple of weeks will be busy ones here at CRA World Headquarters. On June 18, the Congressional Robotics Caucus will be holding its second briefing, this time on Industrial Robotics. (CRA is on the Robotics Caucus Advisory Committee.) The lunch briefing will feature Jeff Burnstein of the Robotic Industries Association, Richard Seif and Chris Bailey of the Lincoln Electric Company, and John Dulchinos of Adept Technology. In conjunction with the Caucus event, CRA’s Computing Community Consortium will be hosting three days worth of robotics workshops. All the details on the CCC endeavor can be found on the CCC blog.
CRA is also gearing up to participate in the Coalition for National Science Funding’s Annual Science Exposition on June 25. This year we will be represented by Dr. R. Michael Young from North Carolina State University. Dr. Young will visit his Congressional delegation during the day and then host an exhibit of his research in the early evening. The exhibit is Cognition and Computation: Exploring the Sciences of Computer Games for Serious Applications. Details from last years event are here. If you have any interest in showing your work at a future CRA event, let us know!
CRA is looking to expand its staff once again — we’re looking for a business/office manager type to help us get a handle on our growing responsibilities. If you know someone who fits the bill, please pass this along!
Wanted: Business Manager
The Computing Research Association, a non-profit representing the academic and industrial IT research community, seeks a Business Manager for its Washington, DC office. This position supports CRA initiatives, provides technical coordination and administration of grants and subcontracts, develops project management plans and monitors execution, works with stakeholders, prepares presentations and reports, and handles office human resource requirements. Requirements: a Bachelors degree or four years of related experience, an employment history of progressively responsible experience, and demonstrated management and administrative skills. Knowledge of federal grants/contracts management is desirable. Please email resume and salary requirements to: employment@cra.org.
Well after a lot of rumors, innuendo, and veto threats, the House supplemental appropriations bill — the last hope for rectifying the shortfall for science in FY 2008 — does not contain additional funding for science and technology but the Senate version does. The House version, which is scheduled to be debated and voted on today, only includes additional domestic funding for veterans education, unemployment benefits, and Medicaid and some additional international aid that the President requested. The Senate version, which is scheduled to have floor time next week, also includes $1.2 billion for science at NASA, NSF, NIH, and DOE. It is unlikely that the Senate will pass the supplemental with a veto proof majority so the question going forward is how to reconcile the two bills — and how they will handle the science funding — and avoid a Presidential veto. It is likely that much of the Senate funding will get stripped out in order to satisfy House Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats who would vote against the additional spending and to avoid a veto by the President. Well keep you posted as the debate and votes happen and let you know how it all shakes out in the end Update: Here is a breakdown of the funding for science the Senate is including in their version of the supplemental.
$150 million for NSF basic research activities and $50 million for four science/math education programs.
$400 million for DOE – $300 million for environmental management and $100 million for ACI, of which $50 million is fusion (ITER).
$200 million for NASA for a new account to reimburse NASA programs that helped to cover costs associated with Space Shuttle return to flight after 2003 Columbia accident.
$400 million for NIH.
This additional funding, while welcome, does not cover the short fall for the ACI-related agencies who lost out in the FY08 omnibus. But at least the Senate included science funding which is more than can be said for the House version. Sigh.
CRA Chair Dan Reed (who is also Microsoft’s “Scalable and Multicore Strategist”) will testify Thursday before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation committee to talk about the computational aspects of U.S. climate modeling.
From the committee:
This hearing will examine the current computing capacity to process models at the regional and local scales, the need for continuous observational data to support the models, and the basic science to support the improvement of the next generation of climate models to meet the needs of decisionmakers. The hearing will focus on developing applications, consumer expectations, and network operation.
We’ll have Dan’s testimony here, links to any archived video and audio coverage of the proceedings, as well as our take on how it all went down, so stay tuned.
The Computing Community Consortium — a partnership between CRA and the National Science Foundation that seeks to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer-range, more audacious research challenges, then work to realize them — has launched its new blog, and it’s definitely worth checking out.
Given the goal of CCC to get the community talking about research visions (and then setting to work on developing the most promising ones into clearly defined initiatives that could receive funding from various federal agencies), a blog seems like a reasonable way to help spur the discussions. Researchers on the CCC Council will author some of the initial (hopefully opinionated) pieces, but I think the hope is that the discussions will get carried on both in the open comments section and in some additional online fora.
Anyway, you can check it out at http://www.cccblog.org. They’ve already got a good summary of some of the activities of the new CCC “Big Data Computing Study Group” — including the Hadoop Summit and the Data-Intensive Scalable Computing Symposium.
The blog also looks really nice — I’m a little jealous and am wondering whether my IT guy (who is also CCC’s IT guy) can set me up with the same nice WordPress setup — and features open commenting and the ability to subscribe to the articles via e-mail, which is very handy. Definitely worth checking out.
The saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, NSF and AAAS agree and are sponsoring the sixth annual Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. There are five awards categories: Photographs/Pictures, Illustrations/Drawings, Informational/Explanatory Graphics, Interactive Media, and Non-Interactive Media. The deadline for entries is May 31.
The premise of the Challenge is that science is often communicated through visuals better than words, particularly in our web and graphics culture. Winning entries in each category will be published in Science Magazine and Science Online as well as at the NSF web site. One of the winners will be on the cover of Science Magazines September 26 issue.
More information and winning entries from the previous five years can be found here.
The National Academies, in conjunction with the National Math and Science Initiative, will hold a day long convocation today called Rising Above The Gathering Storm Two Years Later: Accelerating Progress Toward A Brighter Future. Discussions will include what has happened since the 2005 report was release at the federal, state, and private sector levels and, of course, what still needs to happen. Competitiveness overall, K-12, higher education, and research are all panel and breakout topics throughout the convocation. Frequent readers will remember that the Gathering Storm report, released in October 2005, was a report requested by Sens. Alexander (R-TN) and Bingaman (D-NM) and Reps. Boehlert (R-NY) and Gordon (D-TN) that listed the top 10 actions Congress should undertake to secure Americas competitiveness. The report was a catalyst for news, legislation, and further reports that we have reported on regularly over the last couple of years.
The convocation has spurred a grasstops effort, led by The Science Coalition, to bring the issue of research funding back to the forefront just as Congress begins to consider both a supplemental and the FY09 appropriations bills. The Coalition is encouraging university and association leaders to contact their Congressional members with letters emphasizing the call for increased funding of basic research contained in the Gathering Storm report and to contact local media on the ongoing competitiveness issue. Additional coverage of the convocation can be found at The Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog.
Two Nobel Prize winners have an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (sub. reqd) today regarding the need to make science a top priority of the next Administration. David Baltimore and Ahmed Zewail write that the next President needs to have an Office of Science and a science advisor at the White House in order to protect Americas competitive future. The piece makes a strong case for the necessity of strong leadership on science and science funding and is worth a read if you have access to the Wall Street Journal.
The section that best sums up the argument of the op-ed and the community as a whole plays on the fact that the three major candidates for President turned down an opportunity to have a debate focused on science issues is:
Apparently the top contenders for our nation’s highest elective office have better things to do than explain to the public their views on securing America’s future.
Protecting that future starts with understanding that much of the wealth in this country comes from scientific research and technological innovation. Translating science into commerce has opened up vast new fields of endeavor and has raised the standard of living in America. The country that is on the cutting edge of developing new technology is the country best positioned to benefit from that new technology.
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Chronicle, Citing RAND Report, Claims U.S. S&T is A-OK
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Policy, R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaTwo recent pieces in The Chronicle of Higher Education riff off a just-released report by the RAND Corporation to make the case that those who have argued that U.S. science and technology dominance is at risk in a globally competitive world are exaggerating.
Richard Monastersky writes in “Despite Recent Obits, U.S. Science and Engineering Remain Robust“:
And Daniel Greenberg writes in “Call Off the Funeral: Science in U.S. is Lively and Growing”:
The thing is, I’m not sure there are many within the science advocacy community who would disagree with the primary findings of the RAND report, U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology. The report found that the U.S. continues to be the world leader in S&T innovation; that federal support for resarch is generally up over the last decade or so — though that increase is almost all in the life sciences, the physical sciences have been held essentially flat; there is lots of opportunity in the science and engineering workforce; and the U.S. continues to be heavily dependent on our ability to attract the best and the brightest in the world to work and study here.
Not many, if any, in the DC science advocacy community would disagree with those assessments. The concerns, of course, are the trend lines — they are almost all trending the wrong way. (The Task Force on the Future of American Innovation has a good compilation of many of these benchmarks in their Benchmarks of Our Innovation Future II report.) Our competitors worldwide are every day increasing their capacity to compete with us — investing in better facilities, more partnerships, increased investments in key areas — and we’re concerned the U.S. isn’t matching them with anything close to the same intensity.
Gene Spafford, one of my Government Affairs Committee members, notes that these pieces also seem to give short shrift to the disruptive effect one or two key discoveries can have — think light bulb, antibiotics, the transitor, controlled fission, the Internet, and more. Right now there is intensive research in genetics, nanotechnology, parallel computation, fusion, alternative energy and several other areas. A major advance in any one of them would be transformative on a large scale. It won’t be incremental. If we’re concerned about our national position as opposed to simply the advancement of science, the we want to somehow ensure that those advances happen here. And that requires having a prepared base and an active set of programs of inquiry.
The U.S. is the global leader in science and technology. It’s true that the U.S. has enough of a lead at this point to “decay gracefully” (as Newt Gingrich describes it). But I’m not sure that’s what most want for this country, or for their children and grandchildren who will have to live in it.
House CJS Committee Approves Big Increase for NSF…
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY09 Appropriations /by Peter Harsha…but don’t get too excited, yet.
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science today approved (pdf) a nearly 14 percent increase for the National Science Foundation ($830 million over NSF’s lackluster FY 08 number) in its version of the FY 09 CJS Appropriations bill.
While the committee is doing this with the stated goal of getting NSF back on the doubling track called for in the America COMPETES Act, this is just one step along a long and tortuous path appropriations will take to get completed this year. Unfortunately, all the dynamics that were in play last year that led to science getting completely shut out of increases in the final FY 08 Omnibus Appropriations are still in play this year. And frankly, it appears that we are once again headed for a long-term continuing resolution until at least early next year, when lawmakers can assess the new climate after the election and chart a new strategy.
Still, the CJS Committee deserves kudos for continuing to find a way to highlight the importance of science funding and for giving the community a good starting point from which to argue for continued support throughout the remainder of the appropriations process. We’ll have all the details of that process here, so stay tuned.
The Chronicle of Higher Ed has more (though that link might be temporary).
Computing Community Gets Opportunities to Show Off for Congress
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC), CRA, Events, Research /by MelissaNorrThe next couple of weeks will be busy ones here at CRA World Headquarters. On June 18, the Congressional Robotics Caucus will be holding its second briefing, this time on Industrial Robotics. (CRA is on the Robotics Caucus Advisory Committee.) The lunch briefing will feature Jeff Burnstein of the Robotic Industries Association, Richard Seif and Chris Bailey of the Lincoln Electric Company, and John Dulchinos of Adept Technology. In conjunction with the Caucus event, CRA’s Computing Community Consortium will be hosting three days worth of robotics workshops. All the details on the CCC endeavor can be found on the CCC blog.
CRA is also gearing up to participate in the Coalition for National Science Funding’s Annual Science Exposition on June 25. This year we will be represented by Dr. R. Michael Young from North Carolina State University. Dr. Young will visit his Congressional delegation during the day and then host an exhibit of his research in the early evening. The exhibit is Cognition and Computation: Exploring the Sciences of Computer Games for Serious Applications. Details from last years event are here. If you have any interest in showing your work at a future CRA event, let us know!
We’re Looking For More Good Peeps!
/In: CRA /by Peter HarshaCRA is looking to expand its staff once again — we’re looking for a business/office manager type to help us get a handle on our growing responsibilities. If you know someone who fits the bill, please pass this along!
Update on the Supplemental
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY08 Appropriations /by MelissaNorrWell after a lot of rumors, innuendo, and veto threats, the House supplemental appropriations bill — the last hope for rectifying the shortfall for science in FY 2008 — does not contain additional funding for science and technology but the Senate version does. The House version, which is scheduled to be debated and voted on today, only includes additional domestic funding for veterans education, unemployment benefits, and Medicaid and some additional international aid that the President requested. The Senate version, which is scheduled to have floor time next week, also includes $1.2 billion for science at NASA, NSF, NIH, and DOE. It is unlikely that the Senate will pass the supplemental with a veto proof majority so the question going forward is how to reconcile the two bills — and how they will handle the science funding — and avoid a Presidential veto. It is likely that much of the Senate funding will get stripped out in order to satisfy House Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats who would vote against the additional spending and to avoid a veto by the President. Well keep you posted as the debate and votes happen and let you know how it all shakes out in the end
Update: Here is a breakdown of the funding for science the Senate is including in their version of the supplemental.
$150 million for NSF basic research activities and $50 million for four science/math education programs.
$400 million for DOE – $300 million for environmental management and $100 million for ACI, of which $50 million is fusion (ITER).
$200 million for NASA for a new account to reimburse NASA programs that helped to cover costs associated with Space Shuttle return to flight after 2003 Columbia accident.
$400 million for NIH.
This additional funding, while welcome, does not cover the short fall for the ACI-related agencies who lost out in the FY08 omnibus. But at least the Senate included science funding which is more than can be said for the House version. Sigh.
CRA Chair to Testify Before Senate on Climate Modeling
/In: General /by Peter HarshaCRA Chair Dan Reed (who is also Microsoft’s “Scalable and Multicore Strategist”) will testify Thursday before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation committee to talk about the computational aspects of U.S. climate modeling.
From the committee:
We’ll have Dan’s testimony here, links to any archived video and audio coverage of the proceedings, as well as our take on how it all went down, so stay tuned.
The CCC is Now Blogging!
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC) /by Peter HarshaThe Computing Community Consortium — a partnership between CRA and the National Science Foundation that seeks to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer-range, more audacious research challenges, then work to realize them — has launched its new blog, and it’s definitely worth checking out.
Given the goal of CCC to get the community talking about research visions (and then setting to work on developing the most promising ones into clearly defined initiatives that could receive funding from various federal agencies), a blog seems like a reasonable way to help spur the discussions. Researchers on the CCC Council will author some of the initial (hopefully opinionated) pieces, but I think the hope is that the discussions will get carried on both in the open comments section and in some additional online fora.
Anyway, you can check it out at http://www.cccblog.org. They’ve already got a good summary of some of the activities of the new CCC “Big Data Computing Study Group” — including the Hadoop Summit and the Data-Intensive Scalable Computing Symposium.
The blog also looks really nice — I’m a little jealous and am wondering whether my IT guy (who is also CCC’s IT guy) can set me up with the same nice WordPress setup — and features open commenting and the ability to subscribe to the articles via e-mail, which is very handy. Definitely worth checking out.
2008 NSF/AAAS Visualization Challenge
/In: Events, Misc., R&D in the Press, Research /by MelissaNorrThe saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, NSF and AAAS agree and are sponsoring the sixth annual Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. There are five awards categories: Photographs/Pictures, Illustrations/Drawings, Informational/Explanatory Graphics, Interactive Media, and Non-Interactive Media. The deadline for entries is May 31.
The premise of the Challenge is that science is often communicated through visuals better than words, particularly in our web and graphics culture. Winning entries in each category will be published in Science Magazine and Science Online as well as at the NSF web site. One of the winners will be on the cover of Science Magazines September 26 issue.
More information and winning entries from the previous five years can be found here.
National Academies Convocation on Gathering Storm Two Years Later
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Events, Funding, FY09 Appropriations, Policy /by MelissaNorrThe National Academies, in conjunction with the National Math and Science Initiative, will hold a day long convocation today called Rising Above The Gathering Storm Two Years Later: Accelerating Progress Toward A Brighter Future. Discussions will include what has happened since the 2005 report was release at the federal, state, and private sector levels and, of course, what still needs to happen. Competitiveness overall, K-12, higher education, and research are all panel and breakout topics throughout the convocation. Frequent readers will remember that the Gathering Storm report, released in October 2005, was a report requested by Sens. Alexander (R-TN) and Bingaman (D-NM) and Reps. Boehlert (R-NY) and Gordon (D-TN) that listed the top 10 actions Congress should undertake to secure Americas competitiveness. The report was a catalyst for news, legislation, and further reports that we have reported on regularly over the last couple of years.
The convocation has spurred a grasstops effort, led by The Science Coalition, to bring the issue of research funding back to the forefront just as Congress begins to consider both a supplemental and the FY09 appropriations bills. The Coalition is encouraging university and association leaders to contact their Congressional members with letters emphasizing the call for increased funding of basic research contained in the Gathering Storm report and to contact local media on the ongoing competitiveness issue.
Additional coverage of the convocation can be found at The Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog.
WSJ Op-Ed on Missing Leadership in Science
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY08 Appropriations, FY09 Appropriations, Policy /by MelissaNorrTwo Nobel Prize winners have an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (sub. reqd) today regarding the need to make science a top priority of the next Administration. David Baltimore and Ahmed Zewail write that the next President needs to have an Office of Science and a science advisor at the White House in order to protect Americas competitive future. The piece makes a strong case for the necessity of strong leadership on science and science funding and is worth a read if you have access to the Wall Street Journal.
The section that best sums up the argument of the op-ed and the community as a whole plays on the fact that the three major candidates for President turned down an opportunity to have a debate focused on science issues is: