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Today’s Science Policy News for April, 29th 2009
A look at today’s science and health policy news:
First 100 days of Obama: What’s happened so far
Salt Lake Tribune–A look at the first 100 days of President Obama’s administration.
Interior, Commerce Departments Overturn Rule That Cut Science Out of Endangered Species Act
Union of Concerned Scientists–Tuesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar rescinded eleventh-hour Bush administration changes to Endangered Species Act regulations that allowed federal agencies to decide for themselves if their own projects would threaten imperiled species.
Obama plans to enforce mining limits
Lexington Herald-Leader–The Obama administration is moving to tighten a coal-mining rule loosened by his predecessor, but it might not be enough to satisfy environmentalists.
Obama May Get ‘Hands a Little Dirtier’ Pushing Campaign Agenda
Bloomberg–For President Barack Obama, it’s the second 100 days that may define his presidency.
Top White House Aide Voices Pragmatic Approach on Health Care, Energy
N.Y. Times–Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, sounded a decidedly pragmatic note on President Obama’s health care and energy initiatives in an interview marking the new administration’s 100 days, by pointing toward compromises in which the overriding principle would be “don’t make perfect the enemy of the essential.”
Sebelius confirmed as HHS Secretary
Boston Globe–Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius won Senate confirmation yesterday as the nation’s health and human services secretary, thrusting her into the middle of a public health emergency with the swine flu sickening dozens of Americans.
Two senators offer bipartisan healthcare proposal
L.A. Times–Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) want to pay more to hospitals and doctors meeting quality standards — and penalize those who don’t.
Senators look for proper model for managing cybersecurity
Government Computer News–A panel of experts testifying before a Senate committee today agreed that the country’s cybersecurity is inadequate and needs to be fixed.
House Democrats ‘moving ahead’ on climate bill, majority leader says
N.Y. Times–House Democrats will not abandon plans to pass global warming and energy legislation this year despite concerns that similar proposals may fail to win the 60 votes needed for Senate approval, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said yesterday.
Kosmas wins battle for shuttle extension
Daytona Beach News–U.S. Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) announced today that the House and Senate conference agreement on the budget removes a deadline to retire the space shuttle.
Space Junk Forcing More Evasive Maneuvers
Wired–American spacecraft had to dodge space debris four times in 2008, NASA revealed Tuesday, a fact that highlights both the extent of the space junk problem and the primary mitigation option open to NASA.
US more optimistic about climate deal after talks
AP–The top U.S. negotiator on climate change said Tuesday that he is slightly more optimistic about striking a new international agreement to curb global warming after a two-day meeting with the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases.
Where federal energy research money should go
CNet (Opinion)–So where should this money go? While it’s impossible to say what specific programs could land a slice of the ARPA-E funding, there are significant categories that don’t generate many headlines but bear watching beyond more established green technologies.
Climate scientist fired for talking to media
Nature–A prominent New Zealand climate scientist has been fired by a government-funded research institute, allegedly for talking to the media without authorization.
At Last: FY 2009 Budget Cycle Complete
By Richard Jones at AIP
After operating with essentially flat budgets for almost six months after the start of FY 2009 last October 1, most federal departments and agencies received their new budgets yesterday. President Obama signed the 218, 448 word Omnibus Appropriations Act for 2009. As this bill became law, the $410 billion in the legislation started flowing to all of those departments and agencies whose appropriations bills were stalled because of an impasse with former President Bush.
Passage of the omnibus bill took more time, and was more difficult, than first expected. After last November’s election, some optimistic congressional leaders predicted that this bill would be waiting for the new president when he took office. That did not happen, in part because the congressional leadership decided to concentrate on the passage of the economic stimulus bill.
After that bill was passed, Senate leaders found that they lacked the necessary sixty votes to cut off floor debate and allow the omnibus bill to come up for a vote. There was objection to the overall level of spending in the bill, and to what has been calculated to be more than 8,500 earmarks worth $7.7 billion. (According to the Washington Post, $4.6 billion of these earmarks were sponsored by Democrats; $3.1 billion by Republicans.) After several days of debate and consideration on the Senate floor of amendments, none of which were successful, the Senate passed H.R. 1105 by a voice vote on March 10. The bill was signed into law yesterday.
As previously reported, H.R. 1105 provides significant increases in many science budgets. Below is a summary of these changes. Readers wishing additional detail may consult the cited issues of FYI. A printed version of the all-important Explanatory Statement accompanying this bill has been printed in the Congressional Record. To access this Statement, see this site. In the text at the top of this page see “Note” where it provides the two sections of the Congressional Record having this Statement. It will take a bit of searching in the “table of contents” on the first page of each of the sections of the Statement to find a desired heading with a link to the specific page of the Explanatory Statement.
The following is a recap of major funding changes as compared to FY 2008:
Department of Energy:
Office of Science: Up 18.8% to $4.8 billion
(Further detail)
National Science Foundation:
Up 5.9% to $6.5 billion
Research and Related Activities: Up 7.0% to $5.2 billion
(Further detail)
National Institute of Standards and Technology:
Up 8.4% to $819 million
Scientific and Technical Research and Services: Up 7.1% to $472 million
(Further detail)
NASA:
Up 2.2% to $17.8 billion
Science: Down 4.3% to $4.5 billion
Aeronautics: Down 2.3% to $500 million
Exploration: Up 11.5% to $3.5 billion
Space Operations: Up 4.3% to $5.8 billion
Education: Up 15.3% to $169.2 million
(Further detail)
U.S. Geological Survey:
Up 3.7% to $1.0 billion
(Further detail)
National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering:
Up 2.8% to $308.2 million
(Further detail)
Department of Education - Math and Science Partnerships:
Level funding at $179.0 million
(Further detail)
FY 2009 Omnibus Funding Bill: NIST
By Richard Jones at AIP
The FY 2009 budget for the National Institute of Standards and Technology would increase 8.4 percent, or $63.2 million in the FY 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Bill that was released Monday following an agreement by House and Senate appropriators.
The House is continuing its debate on H.R. 1105, a $410 billion bill consisting of the nine appropriations bills that were not finished by October 1, 2008, the start of FY 2009. Passage of this bill is expected, although it is not certain it will be by March 6 when a resolution providing flat funding expires.
A hand-annotated copy of this bill, and its accompanying Joint Explanatory Statement are available here. Explanatory Statement language regarding NIST can be viewed in Division B - Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2009, which is found on pdf pages 12 through 14. A table with specific line item funding amounts can be viewed at pdf pages 341 and 342. (Important notes: consult the Explanatory Statement and not the bill text language, and use the pdf and not the typed page numbers.)
The following are the recommended levels of funding for various NIST programs in H.R. 1105, taken from the above cited table:
Total National Institute of Standards and Technology:
The FY 2008 enacted budget was $755.9 million.
The Bush Administration’s FY 2009 request was $636.0 million.
The omnibus bill recommends $819.0 million. This is an increase of $63.2 million or 8.4 percent over FY 2008.
Scientific and Technical Research and Services:
The FY 2008 enacted budget was $440.5 million.
The Bush Administration’s FY 2009 request was $535.0 million.
The omnibus bill recommends $472.0 million. This is an increase of $31.5 million or 7.1 percent.
Construction of Research Facilities:
The FY 2008 enacted budget was $160.5 million.
The Bush Administration’s FY 2009 request was $99.0 million.
The omnibus bill recommends $172.0 million. This is an increase of $11.5 million or 7.2 percent.
Industrial Technology Services:
The FY 2008 enacted budget was $154.8 million.
The Bush Administration’s FY 2009 request was $4.0 million.
The omnibus bill recommends $175.0 million. This is an increase of $20.2 million or 13.0 percent.
Industrial Technology Services consists of the following two programs, both of which the Bush Administration had sought to be terminated:
MANUFACTURING EXTENSION PARTNERSHIPS:
The FY 2008 enacted budget was $89.6 million.
The Bush Administration’s FY 2009 request was $2.0 million.
The omnibus bill recommends $110.0 million. This is an increase of $20.4 million or 22.7 percent.
TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION PROGRAM:
The FY 2008 enacted budget was $65.2 million.
The Bush Administration’s FY 2009 request was zero.
The omnibus bill recommends $65.0 million. This is a decline of $200,000 or 0.3 percent.
NiMH Batteries, Chevron Patents and the Future of Plug-in Hybrid Cars
By Paul M. Rybski
Auto manufacturers interested in producing plug-in hybrid or battery-powered vehicles are facing two problems. First, they are determined to use Li Ion battery technology that remains unproven for automobile traction applications. Why are they not using the long-proven NiMH traction batteries that are still in use today? Secondly, these auto manufacturers will be buying their batteries from foreign manufacturers because there are no domestic manufacturers. In our rush to develop vehicles that will free us from petroleum acquired from foreign countries, are we not swapping one foreign dependence for another? Let’s examine both of these issues.
Every hybrid automobile in production today uses NiMH batteries, all of which are produced outside of the United States. As pointed out in a recent Union of Concerned Scientists newsletter, these NiMH batteries have been performing extremely well, even though most are far smaller in capacity than drivers would like. However, nearly every auto manufacturer that has announced future production of a plug-in hybrid or fully electric automobile claim their vehicles must run on Li Ion batteries. With the exception of the Tesla and AC Propulsion limited implementations, Li Ion batteries have no track record in traction applications. Yet the Panasonic EV-95 NiMH battery packs used in fully electric Toyota RAV4 EV mini-SUV’s have demonstrated lifetimes in excess of nine years and average vehicle miles in excess of 100,000 miles. Some technologists anticipate only a 50,000-mile lifetime for Li Ion batteries.
If NiMH batteries are being used so successfully, why are American manufacturers fixated on Li Ion batteries? Part of the reason is that petroleum company Chevron owns the patent for the Ovonics NiMH traction battery. Under the ruse of saying they have not had sufficiently convincing proposals brought to them, Chevron continues to deny licenses to any company proposing to manufacture new NiMH traction batteries. Equally aggravating is Chevron’s having filed suit against Toyota in 2003 after Chevron had acquired the Ovonics patent. Part of the settlement reached in this suit enjoined Toyota-Panasonic from manufacturing any additional EV-95 batteries. So every RAV4 EV on the road today (about 320 in private hands and an unknown number of fleet use) is running on its original NiMH battery pack. There were some NiMH battery companies “grandfathered in” at the time of the Chevron/Toyota settlement, but their products are either too small to use in place of the EV-95 or they are inferior in performance.
Surprisingly, Chevron’s legal constraints on NiMH traction battery manufacture are never mentioned as reasons for American manufacturers’ choice of Li Ion chemistry for their batteries. For example, GM has argued that NiMH batteries are substantially heavier per kilowatt-hour than Li Ion batteries. While this claim is true, such weight had not been a barrier to using NiMH batteries to power the more than 500 Toyota RAV4 EV’s currently on the road for more than 110 miles per charge and for a fleet-average use of over 80,000 miles. Nor was it a barrier when they powered about 400 EV-1’s for more than 110 miles between charges before 2003. Ironically, the Li Ion traction pack proposed by GM for the VOLT will weigh more than an equivalently performing EV-95 battery pack because GM has derated the Li Ion pack’s state-of-charge range compared to that used by Toyota for the EV-95.
Finally, regardless of technological base, there are no NiMH or Li Ion batteries manufactured in the United States. One of the reasons many people are pushing for the manufacture of plug-in hybrid and fully-electric vehicles is to reduce the United States’ dependence on foreign oil. With such advocacy, are we not merely switching problems here: from dependence on oil extracted from Middle Eastern countries, whose populations are hostile to Western countries, to dependence on batteries manufactured in the volatile economies of the Asia? SEA should lead the much-needed discussion of how we can obtain an adequate supply of NiMH or Li Ion batteries from American, not foreign, manufacturers for our hoped-for next generation of automobiles.
SEA and other “green” organizations, interested in bringing to market as quickly as possible the next generation of hybrid and electric automobiles, should be holding Chevron’s feet to the fire over Chevron’s deliberately blocking the licensing of Ovonics-derivative NiMH technology. They should also be advocating federal subsidies to encourage American industries, such as Johnson Controls and Ovonics, to develop the battery manufacturing plants needed to supply the traction batteries for this next generation of vehicles. The sooner this advocacy begins and stakeholders are engaged, the sooner plug-in hybrid and battery-powered vehicles will appear in auto dealer show rooms.
Paul M. Rybski is an associate professor in and former chair of the Department of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He joined UW-Whitewater in 1987 after having been a research scientist at Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago.
FY 2009 Omnibus Funding Bill: National Science Foundation
By Richard Jones at AIP
The National Science Foundation would receive a 5.9 percent or $362.9 million increase in its FY 2009 budget in the FY 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Bill that was released Monday following an agreement by House and Senate appropriators.
H.R. 1105 is now being debated on the House floor. This $410 billion measure consists of nine appropriations bills that were not completed by the start of FY 2009 on October 1, 2008. Following the expected House passage of this legislation it will move to the Senate. While passage of H.R. 1105 is expected, opposition by some Republican senators could delay the enactment of this bill by March 6. The current flat funding for departments and agencies covered in this bill expires on March 6.
A hand-annotated copy of this bill, and its accompanying Joint Explanatory Statement are available here. Explanatory Statement language regarding the National Science Foundation can be viewed in Division B - Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2009, which is found on pdf pages 153 through 156. A table with specific line item funding amounts can be viewed at pdf page 345. (Important notes: consult the Explanatory Statement and not the bill text language, and use the pdf and not the typed page numbers.)
The following are the recommended levels of funding for various National Science Foundation programs in H.R. 1105, taken from the above cited table:
Total National Science Foundation:
The FY 2008 enacted budget was $6,127.5 million.
The Bush Administration’s FY 2009 request was $6,854.1 million.
The omnibus bill recommends $6,490.4 million. This is an increase of $362.9 million or 5.9 percent over FY 2008.
Research and Related Activities:
The FY 2008 enacted budget was $4,844.0 million.
The Bush Administration’s FY 2009 request was $5,594.0 million.
The omnibus bill recommends $5,183.1 million. This is an increase of $339.1 million or 7.0 percent.
Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction:
The FY 2008 enacted budget was $220.7 million.
The Bush Administration’s FY 2009 request was $147.5 million.
The omnibus bill recommends $152.0 million. This is a decline of $68.7 million or 31.1 percent.
Education and Human Resources:
The FY 2008 enacted budget was $725.6 million.
The Bush Administration’s FY 2009 request was $790.4 million.
The omnibus bill recommends $845.3 million. This is an increase of $119.7 million or 16.5 percent.
FY 2009 Omnibus Funding Bill: DOE Office of Science
By Richard Jones at AIP
Funding for the Department of Energy’s Science programs would increase by 18.8 percent or $754.9 million in the FY 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Bill that was released yesterday by House and Senate conferees.
This bill, H.R. 1105, is scheduled for House and Senate consideration in coming days, as Congress attempts to get this legislation to President Obama before funding expires on March 6. The funding for the Office of Science is one component of this $410 billion bill that wraps up the FY 2009 budget cycle. A stalemate between the Democratic congressional leadership and President Bush last year lead to an agreement to flat fund programs in nine bills that remained unfinished when the fiscal year started on October 1. The 218,000 word omnibus bill that was filed yesterday combines all of these unfinished bills into a single bill.
A hand-annotated copy of this bill, and its accompanying Joint Explanatory Statement are available here. Important Explanatory Statement language regarding various Office of Science programs can be viewed in “Division C - Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act,” which is found on pdf pages 79 and 80. A table with specific line funding amounts can be viewed at pdf pages 105-107. (Important notes: consult the Explanatory Statement and not the bill text language, and use the pdf and not the typed page numbers.)
The following are the recommended levels of funding for Science programs in H.R. 1105, taken from the above cited table:
Total Science:
The FY 2008 enacted budget was $4,017.7 million.
The Bush Administration’s FY 2009 request was $4,722.0 million.
The omnibus bill recommends $4,772.8 million. This is an increase of $754.9 million or 18.8 percent over FY 2008.
Advanced Scientific Computing:
The FY 2008 enacted budget was $351.2 million.
The Bush Administration’s FY 2009 request was $366.8 million.
The omnibus bill recommends $368.8 million. This is an increase of $17.6 million or 5.0 percent.
Basic Energy Sciences:
The FY 2008 enacted budget was $1,269.9 million.
The Bush Administration’s FY 2009 request was $1,568.2 million.
The omnibus bill recommends $1,572.0 million. This is an increase of $302.1 million or 23.8 percent.
Biological and Environmental Research:
The FY 2008 enacted budget was $544.4 million.
The Bush Administration’s FY 2009 request was $568.5 million.
The omnibus bill recommends $601.5 million. This is an increase of $57.1 million or 10.5 percent.
Fusion Energy Sciences:
The FY 2008 enacted budget was $286.6 million.
The Bush Administration’s FY 2009 request was $493.1 million.
The omnibus bill recommends $402.6 million. This is an increase of $116.0 million or 40.5 percent.
High Energy Physics:
The FY 2008 enacted budget was $688.3 million.
The Bush Administration’s FY 2009 request was $805.0 million
The omnibus bill recommends $795.7 million. This is an increase of $107.4 million or 15.6 percent over FY 2008.
Nuclear Physics:
The FY 2008 enacted budget was $432.7 million.
The Bush Administration’s FY 2009 request was $510.1 million.
The omnibus bill recommends $512.1 million. This is an increase of $79.4 million or 18.3 percent over FY 2008.
Other categories of funding include science laboratories infrastructure, safeguards and security, science program direction, ARPA-E, workforce development, and congressionally directed projects.
Scalable Personalized Medicine
By Bruce Schatz and Richard Berlin
People are different, so different lifestyles have different effects. Some doughnut eaters get diabetes, some do not. Some smokers get heart disease in their thirties, some never do. Some women with BRCA gene markers get breast cancer, but some never do. The fundamental approach to viable healthcare is to give each person only what works for them and nothing else. This would maximize the quality, but minimize the cost.
Personalized Medicine is being realized by the technologies of genome biology, where a profile is measured for each individual then used to choose treatments targeted to the individual person. Current treatments are for whole populations without individual variation, since there is no effective method for determining population stratification. Personalized medicine pushes protein profiles for each individual. But current technology can only screen a population of a hundred at this level. Much like current clinical trials, it costs $100M to screen 100 persons. It is known that this number is far too small for effective stratification, since the population helped by a drug cannot be distinguished from the population hurt by the drug, and many patients take medications without documentation of any significant clinical benefit. This phenomenon produces medical errors and unnecessary deaths, as happened with blockbuster drugs such as Vioxx or Resulin. There is no practical way to examine the protein and gene profiles of the entire population in a periodic and verifiable manner at the present time.
Population Health deals with large numbers of persons, to measure their health and assess their risk. The measurement is necessarily done across all activities of daily living, because health risk has major effects from both genes and environment. Thus, diet and exercise or stress and sociality must be considered equally with genetics and inheritance. Current health measurement records tens of features, to assess risk for acute conditions. Future health measurement must record thousands of features, to assess risk for chronic conditions, which must be managed rather than cured. A comprehensive national health survey would record daily values of thousands of features for millions of persons. Current commercial systems for social networking, such as FaceBook or MySpace, already record features for millions of persons. Current research systems already record thousands of features, which are explicitly extracted from persistent conversations like health messages and implicitly extracted from ubiquitous sensors like home motes. Thus information systems at the requisite scale will soon be technically feasible.
Scalable Personalized Medicine will be realized through revolutionary technologies that can effectively screen an entire population of 100M persons. Information technology for health measurement can cover social and environmental effects, while integration with electronic medical records covers demographics and diagnosis. Such a system is scalable since each screen costs one dollar instead of one million dollars, yet personalized due to the number of features considered. A scalable technology for population measurement performs an inexpensive screen with computers for whole populations, using this to place persons into cohorts, then performs the expensive genetic and proteomic profile only for representatives from each cohort at highest risk for a particular condition. The coarse comprehensive population survey will filter out most people for any condition, making the genomic testing economically feasible. Only a few persons should be tested for cystic fibrosis, only mature women at significant risk should be tested for breast cancer to optimize BRCA screens, only susceptible persons living in detrimental environments should be tested for asthma. With many more measured features of personal health, there will be many finer categories of disease risks appropriate for finer testing, well beyond these simple examples.
We need to implement scalable technologies for personalized health across whole populations now. This is a rare instance of biomedical research into basic science that would be immediately practical as clinical application. There is common ground between genome medicine and healthcare infrastructure. The integration of social and environmental cohorts with genetic and proteomic profiles must be implemented at a large scale, while leveraging the national efforts towards electronic medical records. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act just signed into law allocates stimulus monies of $1B specifically for comparing the effectiveness of different treatments for the same illness and $10B specifically for new biomedical research relevant to practical healthcare. It also includes $20B specifically for national development of electronic medical records. To save the economy by creating viable healthcare, we urge NIH and other appropriate government agencies to use these funds to put major funding into practical research on Scalable Personalized Medicine, towards individual variation for whole populations.
Bruce Schatz is the Director of the Bioinformatics Laboratory in the Institute for Genomic Biology and the Head of the Department of Medical Information Science in the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Richard Berlin is a general surgeon at a local hospital in south central Illinois and former Medical Director of the regional HMO. They are writing a book on healthcare infrastructure for the 21st century.
Science and Technology Funding in the Economic Stimulus Act
By Richard Jones at AIP
Yesterday, President Obama signed into law the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. As previously outlined in FYI #15 the bill provides billions of dollars in new funding for science programs.
Further detail on the science funding provisions in this legislation are found in the 421 page Joint Explanatory Statement issued by the House - Senate conference committee. The following are excerpts from Division A of this statement, which may be viewed in its entirety here.
Joint Explanatory Statement of the Committee on Conference
“The managers on the part of the House and Senate at the conference on . . . (H.R. 1 ) a bill making supplemental appropriations for job preservation and creation, infrastructure investment, energy efficiency and science, assistance to the unemployed, and State and local fiscal stabilization. . . . “
Department of Defense
NEAR TERM ENERGY EFFICIENCY TECHNOLOGY DEMONSTRATIONS AND RESEARCH
“The conference agreement provides $75,000,000 for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Army; $75,000,000 for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Navy; $75,000,000 for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Air Force; and $75,000,000 for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Defense-Wide only for the funding of research, development, test and evaluation projects, including pilot projects, demonstrations and energy efficient manufacturing enhancements. Funds are for improvements in energy generation and efficiency, transmission, regulation, storage, and for use on military installations and within operational forces, to include research and development of energy from fuel cells, wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources to include biofuels and bioenergy. The Secretary of Defense is directed to provide a report to the congressional defense committees detailing the planned use of these funds within 60 days after enactment of this Act. Additionally, the Secretary of Defense is directed to provide a report on the progress made by this effort to the congressional defense committees not later than one year after enactment of this Act and an additional report not later than two years after enactment of this Act.”
Department of Energy
ENERGY PROGRAMS
Energy efficiency and renewable energy
“The conferees agree to provide an additional $16,800,000,000 for the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program . . . . “
“Funds under this heading include $2,000,000,000 for Advanced Battery Manufacturinggrants to support the manufacturing of advanced vehicle batteries and components, as proposed by the Senate, instead of $1,000,000, does not include the Advanced Battery Loan guarantee program as proposed by the House.”
Science
“The conferees agree to provide an additional $1,600,000,000 for the Science program. After taking into account the additional $400,000,000 provided for Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) in a separate account, the funding level for Science is the same as proposed by the House, instead of $330,000,000 as proposed by the Senate.
“The conference agreement does not include $100,000,000 for advanced scientific computing as proposed in the House bill. The Senate bill carried no similar provision.”
Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy
“The conferees agree to provide $400,000,000 for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy authorized under section 5012 of the America COMPETES Act (42 U.S.C. 16538). This funding was provided by the House under ‘Science’. The Senate bill carried no similar provision.”
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
“NASA is directed to submit to the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations a spending plan, signed by the Administrator, detailing its intended allocation of funds provided in this Act within 60 days of enactment of this Act.”
SCIENCE
“The conference agreement includes $400,000,000 for Science, to remain available until September 30, 2010. Funding is included herein to accelerate the development of the tier 1 set of Earth science climate research missions recommended by the National Academies Decadal Survey and to increase the agency’s supercomputing capabilities.”
AERONAUTICS
“The conference agreement includes $150,000,000 for aeronautics, to remain available until September 30, 2010. These funds are available for system-level research, development and demonstration activities related to aviation safety, environmental impact mitigation and the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen).”
EXPLORATION
“The conference agreement includes $400,000,000 for exploration, to remain available until September 30, 2010.”
CROSS AGENCY SUPPORT
“The conference agreement includes $50,000,000 for cross agency support, to remain available until September 30, 2010. In allocating these funds, NASA shall give its highest priority to restore NASA-owned facilities damaged from hurricanes and other natural disasters occurring during calendar year 2008.”
OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL
“The conference agreement includes $2,000,000 for the Office of Inspector General, to remain available until September 30, 2013.”
National Institutes of Health
“The conference agreement provides $10,000,000,000 for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as proposed by the Senate instead of $3,500,000,000 as proposed by the House. The components of this total are as follows:”
NATIONAL CENTER FOR RESEARCH RESOURCES
“The conference agreement includes $1,300,000,000 for the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) instead of $1,500,000,000 as proposed by the House and $300,000,000 as proposed by the Senate. Bill language identifies $1,000,000,000 of this total for competitive awards for the construction and renovation of extramural research facilities. The conference agreement also provides $300,000,000 for the acquisition of shared instrumentation and other capital research equipment. The conference agreement includes bill language proposed by the House for extramural facilities relating to waiver of non-Federal match requirements, primate centers, and limitation on the term of Federal interest. The conference agreement includes language xpect that NCRR will give priority.to those applications that are expected to generate demonstrable energy-saving or beneficial environmental effects.”
OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR
(Including transfer of funds))
“The conference agreement provides $8,200,000,000 for the Office of the Director instead of $1,500,000,000 as proposed by the House and $9,200,000,000 as proposed by the Senate. Of this amount, $7,400,000,000 is designated for transfer to Institutes and Centers and to the Common Fund instead of $7,850,000,000 as proposed by the Senate. The conference agreement adopts the Senate guidance that, to the extent possible, the $800,000,000 retained in the Office of the Director shall be used for purposes that can be completed within two years; priority shall be placed on short-term grants that focus on specific scientific challenges, new research that expands the scope of ongoing projects, and research on public and international health priorities. Bill language is included to permit the Director of NIH to use $400,000,000 of the funds provided in this account for the flexible research authority authorized in section 215 of Division G of P.L. 110-161.
“The funds available to NIH can be used to enhance central research support activities, such as equipment for the clinical center or intramural activities, centralized information support systems, and other related activities as determined by the Director. The conferees intend that NIH take advantage of scientific opportunities using any funding mechanisms and authorities at the agency’s disposal that maximize scientific and health benefit. The conferees include bill language indicating that the funds provided in this Act to NIH are not subject to Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer setaside requirements.”
BUILDINGS AND FACILITIES
“The conference agreement provides $500,000,000 for Buildings and Facilities as proposed by the House and the Senate. Bill language permits funding to be used for construction as well as renovation, as proposed by the Senate. The House language permitted only renovation. These funds are to be used to construct, improve, and repair NIH buildings and facilities, including projects identified in the Master Plan for Building 10.”
National Institute of Standards and Technology
SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL RESEARCH AND SERVICES
“The conference agreement includes $220,000,000 for research, competitive grants, additional research fellowships and advanced research and measurement equipment and supplies. In addition, $20,000,000 is provided by transfer from the Health Information Technology (HIT) initiative within this Act. For HIT activities, NIST is directed to create and test standards related to health security and interoperability in conjunction with partners at the Department of Health and Human Services.”
CONSTRUCTION OF RESEARCH FACILITIES
“The conference agreement includes $360,000,000 to address NIST’s backlog of maintenance and renovation and for construction of new facilities and laboratories. Of the amounts provided, $180,000,000 shall be for the competitive construction grant program for research science buildings, including fiscal year 2008 and 2009 competitions.”
National Science Foundation
“NSF is directed to submit to the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations a spending plan, signed by the Director, detailing its intended allocation of funds provided in this Act within 60 days of enactment of this Act.”
RESEARCH AND RELATED ACTIVITIES
“For research and related activities, the conference agreement provides a total of $2,500,000,000, to remain available until September 30,2010. Within this amount, $300,000,000 shall be available solely for the major research instrumentation program and $200,000,000 shall be available for In allocating the resources provided under this heading, the conferees direct that NSF support all research divisions and support advancements in supercomputing technology.”
EDUCATION AND HUMAN RESOURCES
“The conference agreement includes $100,000,000 for education and human resources, to remain available until September 30, 2010. These funds shall be allocated as follows:
Robert Noyce Scholarship Program: $60,000,000
Math and Science Partnerships: $25,000,000
Professional Science Master’s Programs: $15,000,000″
MAJOR RESEARCH EQUIPMENT AND FACILITIES CONSTRUCTION
“The conference agreement includes $400,000,000 for major research equipment and facilities construction, to remain available until September 30, 2010.”
OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL
“The conference agreement includes $2,000,000 for the Office of Inspector General, to remain available until September 30, 2013.”
United States Geological Survey
SURVEYS, INVESTIGATIONS, AND RESEARCH
“The conference agreement provides $140,000,000 for Surveys, Investigations and Research instead of $135,000,000 proposed by the Senate and $200,000,000 proposed by the House. The Survey should consider a wide variety of activities, including repair, construction and restoration of facilities; equipment replacement and upgrades including stream gages, seismic and volcano monitoring systems; national map activities; and other critical deferred a maintenance and improvement projects which can maximize jobs and provide lasting improvement to our Nation’s science capacity.”
TITLE XVI - GENERAL PROVISIONS - THIS ACT
“Section 1601 provides that each amount appropriated or involved. Further, enactment of this Act shall have no effect on the availability of amounts under the continuing resolution for fiscal year 2009.”
“Section 1602 provides for quick-start activities. For infrastructure investment funds, recipients of funds provided in this Act should give preference to activities that can be started and completed expeditiously, with a goal of using at least 50 percent for activities that can be initiated within 120 days of enactment. Also recipients should use grant funds in a manner that maximizes job creation and economic benefit.”
“Section 1603, provides that funds appropriated in this Act shall be available until September 30, 2010, unless expressly provided otherwise in this Act.”
Today’s Research Is Tomorrow’s Infrastructure
By Edward D. Lazowska and Robert F. Sproull
Congress is now debating the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Included in this package is over 10 billion dollars for science facilities, research, and instrumentation.
The reason for this inclusion is simple: today’s research is tomorrow’s infrastructure.
When our nation faces immediate challenges, the feasible solutions depend upon the ideas, resources, and designs that are “on the shelf,” ready to deploy. Whether the challenge is restoring New Orleans, defeating improvised explosive devices, thwarting cybercrime and cyberterrorism, transforming the safety and efficiency of our transportation system, building a 21st century electrical energy infrastructure, or revolutionizing our health care system, we can’t get anything done quickly if we haven’t already explored the solution space, tested the ideas, run the pilot projects, and had experience with “solutions at scale.” Without this preparation, we can spend vast amounts of money unwisely, and fail to achieve the results we need. So an important ingredient in infrastructure investment is to invest in the ideas, resources, and designs for tomorrow’s infrastructure. Without a vigorous program of renewal of the infrastructure basics, we build the wrong thing, and the infrastructure degrades, sometimes rapidly. A wise program of infrastructure investment will build today’s infrastructure and design tomorrow’s infrastructure.
The Internet is a spectacular example of indispensable global infrastructure derived directly from the federal investment in fundamental research. The idea of digital packet-switched communication was revolutionary 40 years ago – the telephone network was analog circuit-switched. ARPANET, a Department of Defense research project, grew from 4 computers in 1969 to roughly 500 in 1983, when the conversion to today’s TCP/IP Internet protocol took place. The regional networks put into place by the National Science Foundation in 1988, and the graphical web browser invented with NSF sponsorship in 1992, led to the explosive growth of the Internet to more than half a billion hosts today.
Most people find the information they need on today’s vast unstructured Internet by “Googling” for it. The Google search engine was developed by two graduate students at Stanford University working on a project supported by the National Science Foundation Digital Libraries Initiative. In 1998, Google handled 10,000 search queries per day from a “server farm” located in a Stanford dormitory room. Today, barely a decade later, Google has 20,000 employees, diverse products, annual revenues of $20 billion, a market capitalization of $100 billion, and is a verb. Again and again, modest investments in information technology research have led to innovations that have transformed our society and our economy.
More than half of the “Grand Challenges for Engineering for the 21st Century” identified by the National Academy of Engineering – ranging from “Secure Cyberspace” to “Engineer the Tools of Scientific Discovery” – depend at their heart on advances in information technology. Increasingly, information technology is the cornerstone of America’s infrastructure. Today’s information technology research is a cornerstone of tomorrow’s infrastructure.
Edward D. Lazowska is the Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington.
Robert F. Sproull is Vice President and Fellow at Sun Microsystems.
Science is the Real Deal for Economic Stimulus
By Mark Westneat
The least discussed feature of the $800 billion economic stimulus plan currently being debated by our leaders in Washington is support for scientific research and scientific infrastructure. The House bill designated a significant amount of funding for the National Science Foundation and other agencies, but the Senate version of the bill may decrease or eliminate science funding. If so, it would be a tragic error, because funding for science is one of the surest ways of stimulating the kind of knowledge-based and information rich economy that the United States needs in order to retain our competitive position in the future.
The House version of the stimulus bill contained over $50B for science, distributed to Energy, National Institutes of Health, NASA, NOAA and a boost of $3B for the National Science Foundation. But a recent version of the Senate legislation cut that substantially; funding for the National Science Foundation was cut by more than half, to just $1.4B. This week we understand that the NSF boost may be deleted completely, along with other major cuts to Science and Education This is a critical mistake that should be remedied before the bill goes to President Obama because scientific research is one of the best economic stimulus provisions in the entire plan — a fact that is surprising to many people who are not familiar with how federal research grants are spent.
There are several key reasons why scientific research is an important stimulus. First, academic institutions (colleges, universities and museums) are shovel-ready for infrastructure funding. In some cases so shovel-ready that they are starting to fall apart. They have the administrative and academic teams ready to quickly put stimulus dollars towards much-needed and cutting-edge research facilities that can perform NSF sponsored projects in biology, computation, education, engineering, genetics and medicine. They are also ready to hire construction firms and personnel to create better institutions for training of the next generation of scientists.
Second, America’s academic institutions are electron-ready, a computational complement to shovel-readiness that is going largely unspoken in the current debate. Rapid access to information is the defining revolution of our times, and the information age is being driven in large part by scientific research in such areas as genetics, high-powered computing, and climate and biodiversity research that is supported by NSF and is so critical to our future. Stimulus funds to an electron-ready research community will be well spent in providing jobs and purchasing equipment in information technology and other high-tech fields.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, scientific research is basically all about hiring people and buying stuff. NSF grants are not funding elite Ivory Tower endeavors — the money helps everyone. The primary line item in most research grants is salary for students, technicians, interns, post-doctoral scientists, and researchers. These are mostly young people who contribute fresh approaches and new ideas to the research while receiving training in science and technology. While these are not blue collar jobs, all institutions charge an overhead fee on federal grants that is used to fund operational costs, including administrative assistants, plumbers, electricians, and house-keeping staff to keep the research enterprise running. The remaining money is used to buy things, from high-end items such as computers, microscopes, DNA sequencers, and chemicals, to every-day items like office supplies and airline tickets. Most of these things are purchased from American companies and, in the case of my own institution, preferentially from local minority and woman-owned businesses. In addition, scientific institutions provide a significant portion of developmental aid at low cost, by training thousands of students and colleagues each year in developing countries.
The scientific community is all set up and ready to respond in creative, diverse and societally important ways to stimulate the economy. It’s unfortunate that this critically important funding for science is being cut like some of the well publicized pork items, and that science cuts are not being discussed. Please ask your representatives in Washington about this unique way to stimulate the economy now. By supporting a strong stimulus budget in this area, we can help improve the economy this year and maintain scientific excellence in the United States for many years to come.
Mark Westneat is Curator of Zoology and Robert A. Pritzker Director of the Biodiversity Synthesis Center at the Field Museum of Natural History. His research focuses on marine biodiversity, biomechanics, and development of web resources in biodiversity such as the Encyclopedia of Life.
