Archive for January, 2008
Market forces alone are not enough to expand the research and innovation initiatives that will drive a competitive U.S. economy. To bolster the economy, science and technology policy must return to the national priority list, said Science Progress advisory board member Tom Kalil, speaking yesterday at the Congressional Intern Caucus “State of the Net” conference.
Business and blogs in the Middle East, Asia and, North Africa ground to a halt after damage to two undersea communications cables in the Mediterranean crippled Internet services. The incident could be a “wake-up call” to a region heavily dependent on underground lines without much of a back-up infrastructure.
The Bush Administration will likely withdraw its $1.5 billion in support for the FutureGen coal-fired power plant in Illinois. The plant was to be the flagship demonstration project for carbon capture and sequestration technology, which would divert carbon emissions from coal combustion and bury them underground.
The phrase “stem cells” never made it into the State of the Union address—until last night, when the President implied that only policy makers, not scientists, can understand morality.
Yesterday, we noted the frequency with which President Bush has mentioned “energy” in previous State of the Union speeches. Last night’s address and included the word “energy” five times, but contained more doublespeak than leadership.
Progressives can get behind the president if he supports in words and deeds his calls for a doubling of federal spending on critical basic research, writes Ed Paisley.
The decline in basic scientific research in the United States is verifiable, writes Tom Kalil, but easily reversible with the right set of policies in place.
Press coverage of last week’s announcement from the J. Craig Venter Institute that researchers have built the first synthetic genome focused on synthetic cells as potential fuel factories, carbon dioxide sinks, biological weapons, ecosystem ravagers, and ego boosters.
Tonight, President Bush offers the final State of the Union address of his presidency. Saying that science has gotten short shrift during the Bush years is nothing new. Science Progress takes a look at some of the key terms in science and tech policy that have, and have not, appeared in the previous six State of the Union addresses.
Free public archiving of Institute-funded research will accelerate scientific communication, control costs in higher education, and more effectively share information.
A roundup of some of the science and technology policy events happening around Washington D.C. from Jan. 28 to Feb. 1.
Experts testify that auction would foster green job growth, offset higher energy prices for low-income consumers, and fund R&D in alternative energy sources and technology.
President Bush’s “Vision for Space Exploration,” unveiled in 2004, outlined new plans for the country’s space program. Four years later, some in the science and space community feel the current vision is “blurred” and in need of a new “prescription” for the future of science and space exploration in the United States.
Yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission began auctioning off licenses to a portion of the 700 MHz band of the radio frequency spectrum. The decisions of companies that win those national licenses will determine the shape of wireless communications in the United States for years to come. Science Progress offers this short guide to the issues involved.
A new plan to sequence and compare one thousand human genomes; WHO releases data on bird flu monitoring; Ares 1 design flaw could cause violent vibrations.
Scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland have succeeded in synthesizing the complete genome of a bacterium,
Mycoplasma genitalium. If the stitched DNA can be inserted into a cell that then replicates, it will appear to have met the criteria for the first “artificial life” form.
We need more popular intersections of scientific thinking with the other lenses through which we see the world.
Europe revises biofuels standards, NSF Science and Engineering Indicators in global context, and sub-national regions lead the world in climate policy.
President Bush’s last budget is unlikely to expand dedicated and critical federal spending on science. It’s a problem that must be overcome.
The NSF has been making measurable headway in its efforts to improve STEM education from Kindergarten to Grad School and beyond, but it still has a long way to go. On Jan. 15th and 16th the NSF held a conference in DC entitled “Science Education and Workforce Development: Key Challenges for Innovation in the States,” focusing on progress an challenges in the overlapping fields.
Three stories focusing on innovation and on the impact of climate change demonstrate the difficulty of fairly distributing the costs, risks, and benefits of technologies.
Is the NIH monitoring conflicts of interest?; EPA won’t explain itself on nixing state emissions caps; controversial framing of new MRSA study; new paths to energy-efficient electronics.
Engineering corn to fight blindness; “Science 2.0″ and participatory journalism; Google gives back, and not just to non-profits.
A House Select committee hearing examines whether the government should protect polar bears before or after making a decision to allow oil drilling in their habitat.
National security and public safety require a coherent national strategy for investing in a range of telecommunications technologies.
Bush exemption for Navy sonar use; farmer loses to Monsanto; SLAC loses to budget; Japan hikes budget for stem cell research; Supreme Court opening arguments for patent case.
A San Diego company has announced that it has been able to obtain embryo-like bodies by depositing the nucleus of a human skin cell into a human egg cell that has had its nucleus removed. The process is technically known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) or, more simply, nuclear transfer, and popularly known as cloning.
Sending humans to the Moon and Mars won’t answer any pressing scientific questions. That’s why NASA should focus its resources on Earth and space science that will teach us more about the home planet and the mysterious “dark energy” driving galaxies apart.
A design flaw in the gusset plates joining steel beams may have been the culprit in the I-35 bridge collapse outside of Minneapolis that killed 13 people last August.
Scientists on Capitol Hill; National Science Board reports on the state of U.S. science; interview with the Department of Energy Undersecretary Orbach; risks to U.S. leadership in biotech; Columbia Journalism Reviews announces The Observatory.
India ramps up science and engineering education; the European Commission has more questions for Microsoft; the International Linear Collider may end up in Japan; Supreme Court rules that terminally ill patients do not have a constitutional right to developmental drugs; FCC could have trouble selling all its wireless licenses.
An FDA study says that milk and meat from cloned animals is safe for human consumption. The news breaks close on the heels of reports that the E.U.’s European Food Safety Authority released similar findings that food from cloned livestock is “very unlikely” to harm consumers.
Free Patents? That’s the idea behind an effort to foster the promulgation of eco-friendly technology and spur innovation in the environmental sustainability arena. The “Eco-Patent Commons” initiative, a project of the World Council for Sustainable Development, goes online today, already boasting thirty-one publicly-available patents from electronics giants like IBM, Sony, Nokia, and Pitney Bowes.
A new generation of bioweapons sensors has been deployed in New York City as part of the federal BioWatch program, but their introduction raises questions about how we are preparing for potential acts of bioterror.
Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology reports that it has grown embryonic stem cells from one cell of an 8-cell embryo left over in a fertility clinic and donated for research, without doing apparent harm to the remaining embryo. If the technique is successful the stem cell lines produced should qualify for federal research funding under President Bush’s policy.
New helmet sensors will improve army body armor; the disorganization of state stem cell initiatives; acute stress spikes after 9/11; think tanks for developing nations.
Tracking broadband speeds for the FCC; bioterrorism sensors in NYC; China revises its patent policy.
The quest to restore dedicated science advice for Congress through a reborn Office of Technology Assessment has proven more difficult than one might have supposed.
The Minneapolis bridge collapse underscores the need to modernize infrastructure monitoring.
Greenland glaciers melting faster than previously thought; new money to fight African Sleeping Sickness; do plastic drinking bottles leech harmful chemicals?
Economic research on the creative power of groups demonstrates that teams composed of smart people alone may not generate innovative solutions to technical problems. According to Scott Page, diversity within those groups leads to a diversity of problem-solving approaches and drives the power to innovate.
The Water Resources Development Act of 1986 grants the governors of the eight Great Lakes states the power to veto plans to divert water outside the Great Lakes Basin. But with drought conditions in the Southwest and Southeast showing no signs of abatement, talk of moving water to dry areas of the country has the lake states scrambling to better protect their resources.
The Navy must turn off its sonar around whales; Britain readies for new nuclear power plant construction; Illinois will host the first commercial carbon capture and sequestration project; the OPEN Government Act of 2007.
The National Academy of Sciences just released a new book,
Science, Evolution, and Creationism, which “provides information about the role that evolution plays in modern biology and the reasons why only scientifically based explanations should be included in public school science courses.”
Health coverage inequalities limit patient access to the free drugs pharmaceutical companies distribute, accelerate the illnesses of elderly patients, and limit access to preventative cancer screenings.
Thirty-seven states, along with the District of Columbia, require businesses and institutions to publicly disclose incidents of data loss in which personal consumer information is compromised. But with tens of millions of records reported compromised each year, and incidents on the rise, the government and businesses need to do more to protect consumer information.
Without greater access to public markets, startup entrepreneurs trying to commercialize cutting-edge science and technology will founder.
Under Article 76 of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, nations have rights to ocean floor on the continental shelf within 200 nautical miles of their shores. But countries can petition the commission that oversees the UNCLOS to extend that range based on “natural prolognations” of the continental shelf.
A cocaine vaccine; Navy sonar vs. the whales; racial gaps in ER painkiller prescriptions; Social Security Numbers available on the web; the EU’s Galileo geopositioning system.
