http://www.physorg.com/news3376.html

Asian countries gain prominence in science and technology as US loses ground.

The global landscape for science and technology is changing, with increased competition for resources and recognition. That's beginning to look like bad news for the innovative edge the United States has long enjoyed.

"Will the United States own the technology of the future? Probably not all of it, and only if we compete harder to maintain our current position," said Diana Hicks, professor and chair of Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Public Policy.

...

China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and India -- showing particular gains.

I heard two panel members discuss science on Ron Reagan, and dimwit's show today. A nobel prize winner said the counry was going in the exact wrong direction with enviromental scientists being discredited, stem cell researchers reviled, and creationism creeping back. The woman mentioned for decades the US has relied on foriegn exchange students to be our answer to low math and science skills here, and at that time many chose to stay here after college. Now they study elsewhere, or come here for college and return home.

Ron Reagan has a show?
Where is this show?

MSNBC Coast to Coast it's on in this market(central time) at 11 am and 4 pm daily

Not my favorite time slot, but I'll try it out. Ron can be interesting some times.

Question:

Is Science and technology given more value outside the US? Let me put it another way. I sometimes hear people say that they don't understand science or mathematics and then will follow it up with a little laugh. The little laugh has always indicated to me that they don't consider these subjects as having a great deal of importance to them. In fact i interpret the little laugh as saying that people who indulge their time in these endeavors are a sort of fool. This is just one person's interpretation, but I've heard similar opinions from others.

Business persons look to engineers and scientists as a commodity. They value them no more than an item of machinery that has its uses and when these are done, to the scrap heap. Really successful business people almost always have an accounting or Finance background. Science and Technology persons are less valued.

Business people would just as soon get this commodity overseas for less money than have any loyalty to those in the US.

Fewer kids are going into these areas for their vocations and who can blame them.

Is this true everywhere in the world or just in the US? For that matter, you may disagree with my premise about the US.

U.S. May Be Abandoning Leadership in Science and Innovation, Business, Academic Leaders Warn; Call for Boost in Federal Research
2/16/2005 1:02:00 PM


"We are and remain the world's leader in innovation," said John Engler, National Association of Manufacturers president and former governor of Michigan. "But we do not enjoy that status by divine right, and we cannot assume that we are safely ahead of the world. Other countries are climbing the technology ladder just as eagerly as we are. The only way the U.S. can continue to create high-wage, high value-added jobs is to innovate faster than the rest of the world. Federally funded, peer reviewed, and patented scientific advances are essential to innovation. So we shortchange research at our peril."

Craig Barrett, Chief Executive Officer of Intel Corporation, added, "The competitiveness of the U.S. economy and its technological leadership depend on our companies, universities, and research institutions having access to the world's leading talent. U.S. employers are being forced to look overseas, as they face shortages of qualified technically trained talent in the U.S. As research goes, so goes the future. If this trend continues, new technologies, and the constellation of support industries surrounding them, will increasingly develop overseas, not here."

Examples of benchmarks identified by the group included the following:

-- The proportion of U.S.-citizens in science and engineering (S&E) graduate studies within the U.S. is declining. From 1994 to 2001, graduate S&E enrollment in the U.S. declined by 10 percent for U.S. citizens but increased by 25 percent for foreign-born students. In 2001 approximately 57 percent of all S&E postdoctoral positions at U.S. universities were held by foreign- born scholars.

-- There are rapidly increasing retirements from science and engineering (S&E) jobs, leading to a potential shortage in the S&E labor market. For example, more than half of those with S&E degrees in the workforce are age 40 or older. Unless more domestic college-age students choose to pursue degrees in critical S&E fields, there is likely to be a major shortage in the high-tech talent required by the U.S. defense industry, key federal research and national defense agencies (e.g. the Department of Defense, Department of Energy and NASA), and the national laboratories.

-- The U.S. share of S&E papers published worldwide declined from 38 percent in 1988 to 31 percent in 2001. Europe and Asia are responsible for the bulk of growth in scientific papers in recent years. U.S. output was passed by Western Europe in the mid-nineties, and Asia's share of the total is rapidly growing.

Regarding the trends for students, Nils Hasselmo, President of the Association of American Universities, said, "The U.S. may be about to experience a significant decline in the number of scientists and engineers it will have available to maintain, and further strengthen, its innovative capacity - just as international competition is picking up unprecedented strength. It's bad news for American universities and industry. And it's bad news for our nation's future economic and national security. If the federal government does not recommit itself to robust funding of research in these areas, we will lose students, and our nation will surely suffer."

"Knowledge economies rely on the capabilities of highly skilled people to create new knowledge and ideas," added Diana Hicks, Chair of the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "European and Asian knowledge creation is dynamic. It's growing fast. When they occupy more room at the top, it leaves less room for us. As the still leading innovative nation in the world, we could ignore this. However, to the extent that we are concerned for our economic future, we must develop our innovative capabilities to their fullest."

"It is easy to ignore long-term needs because of pressures from short-term needs," said Burton Richter, Nobel Prize-winning physicist and Paul Pigott Professor in the Physical Sciences at Stanford University, in a written statement. "We have been able to get away with it for decades because we were so far ahead of the rest of the world. But the rest of the world is catching up. The foundations of new technological products now generally start with laboratory breakthroughs achieved by scientists conducing government funded long-term research at universities and national labs. However, as a fraction of GDP, such funding has been declining for decades - a bipartisan failure of vision. Only strong federal investment can ensure the healthy research enterprise that is essential to our innovation future."

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=43212

DWB OH FOUR:



For once I partially agree with the dogma preached by the current rascals in office.

Why is it the government's job?

Isn't a good part of the decline due to the current MBA mentality which does not believe in long term planning of American industries? If the people running industries were made more responsible, i.e., made to run their businesses for the long term, there would be a resurgence in the need for engineers and scientists.

It seems as though more and more of the innovative products come from abroad and all that US companies are becoming is marketing organizations. Wasn't the last president of HP trying to head HP in that direction?

The government certainly has a part in supporting research, but industry should be the ones pushing the envelope in researching potential new products.

"Researching potential new products" is usually several years removed from developing new information which usually comes from basic research. One of the main reasons the goverment isn't funding basic research as it used to is because the culture
is rapidily becomming more anti-intellectual. This degenerative effect was set
in motion by the Raegan Administration and has persisted ever since except
for a slight recovery during the Clinton administration. The cheap labor conservatives and Christian Fundamentalists are openly anti-intellectual. We
are badly in need of a new age of enlightenment.

And we wonder why programming and other tech jobs are getting exported to Asia. It's not just cheap labor. I'm afraid we're a civilization in decline and it may be too late.

An aside: Hans Bethe, the last of the Los Alamos physicists
died last week. Incredible intellect, incredible life.

GitUSA

but since you're keeping your moral high ground, who cares about the rest?

Yeah, and that is part of the problem...

In this "New World Order" -- Industry is now made up of entities without borders. Today, a global corporation is an entity that calls no country home.

Yeah sure, we think of Ford and General Electric as "American" Companies, but how much of GE and Ford and IBM are "off-shore".

Just recently I read that "Western" corporations are building 200 new R&D centers in China this year. Yes, the purpose is for "cheap" labor, but the laborers have PhDs. And, the R&D centers are free from intrusive federal regulations. (No doubt, some Harvard MBA figured this all out.)

So, you are right - Industry is "pushing the envelope in researching potential new products" they just aren't doing it in the good old USA.

A graph for Chemistry, and engineering would look very much the same as this graph for physics:


During the Second World War, quite a number of people who were going to get degrees didn’t because they were fighting in the war, or working on the Manhattan Project, or developing Radar. But later they got back into graduate school and got their PhD’s, and that’s what this little bump is (1950s). But a huge surge here happened as a result of Sputnik. And then we sort of dropped off a bit (1970s), and we seemed to recover a bit (1980-1990), but most of this recovery is all from foreign nationals. In fact, the number of U.S. citizen students pretty much well leveled off.

You can see this is the Sputnik generation. They got into science and engineering because of Sputnik or because they heard about Sputnik. If you look at the authors of most scientific papers coming out now, they’re still from the Sputnik generation.


Look at what’s happening just recently in the U.S.. Look at this drop-off in PhD production. In the U.S., we’re doing fine getting kids into computer sciences and information technology. We’re doing pretty well in the life sciences and biotechnology, too. But in the case of the physical sciences, we’re basically opting out. The people that are opting in are people in Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, and Singapore. They’re going into these critical fields in record numbers. If this trend continues, by 2010 90% of all physical scientists and engineers -- the people that are going to make the advances, if we’re ever going to make them – will be Asians practicing in Asia.

If the United States were a company and you saw this plot, the comparison of our workforce trend and what the competition is doing, you would short this company. You would fire the CEO and put in new management. You would do something dramatic.

Excerpt of a speech at the MIT Enterprise Forum, Houston, January 22, 2003
Given by Nanotechnology pioneer and Nobel laureate, Professor Richard Smalley
www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/energychallenge.html

In a country that gives rise to a bunch of people who can cause a film on Volcanos to be pulled because they believe in creationism to the exclusion of scientific evidence, I expect science to suffer. They have to impose their beliefs on others and inject them into every aspect of our lives that no advance medical research can go forward. Their narrow views impact every aspect of science.

I saw a report on evangelicals, which included a segment on one who was an avid scuba diver. He felt it was his duty to raise awareness about global warming. The intro included the following disclaimer: while he's not accepting the Democrats mantra...

Knock it before the case is made, that ought to do the trick.

Dr. Smalley went on to say:

So the bottom line is that I believe the biggest challenge for the next few decades is Energy. We need to solve this problem developing the necessary technology and implementing it on a vast scale for this planet with 10 billion people [26]. At minimum, that will take a additional 10 TW, corresponding to 10,000 nuclear breeder reactors.

For the world prosperity and peace, we have to make energy cheap. We simply do not have the way to do this with the current technologies. We don’t have the science base to do this. We need American boys and girls to enter the physical sciences and engineering as they never have – with the exception of those few years after Sputnik. By 1965, going into the physical sciences and engineering was no longer the most romantic thing you could do. In ’65, we were in Vietnam; there was the counterculture and the civil rights movement. That’s where the action was. It wasn’t with guys walking around with thick pocket protectors and slide rules.

But we need a new generation to come into the physical sciences and engineering now. And this time the motivation will be sustained, because this Energy problem is going to get even more pressing with every passing year until it’s solved. We need to inspire this generation with this sense of mission: that of being a scientist.

Although it may seem corny, I think it’s true: Being a scientist can literally save the World.

In order to make this, we need a new Apollo level program to find that new energy technology and to do it as quickly as we can.

So here I have Rick Smalley’s nickel and dime solution for this biggest of all problems. Let’s nickel and dime it to death [27]. For the next five years, let’s collect five cents – one nickel – from every gallon of gasoline, every gallon of fuel, or every gallon of jet fuel in the country and put it in a pot. That will generate $10 billion a year. And let’s direct that at frontier research in physical sciences and engineering that will give us that energy technology.

Go to your gas station and see these SUVs coming in there to fuel up. Are you going to tell me that there would be a big problem if you raised the cost of gas by five cents? Of course not. Money is not the problem; people are the problem. Money of the magnitude we need is easy to get if the purpose is to really solve the energy problem.

After ten years, increase the cost to a dime per gallon, from which we’ll get more than $20 billion per year. We’ll start making decisions about what things we ought to really beef up in the engineering to actually start the development part of this project.

I believe that a third of the money – roughly – should go into new energy research centers located on or close to major research universities.



www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/energychallenge.html

I think Freedom4all' s plan to increase energy scientists is a good start
but I would like to see it broadened to a massive increase in the use
of the scientific method through better education and a concerted effort to build public support for rational thinking through a renewed committment to the arts and sciences. It would also help if we all agreed to poke public fun at the Fundamentalists whose literal translations from a single outdated text are causing so much trouble.

rla -

You are right, a progressive society should strive to build public support for rational thinking through promotion of the arts and sciences.

I believe that such an effort will eventually "lift" the knowledge level of society beyond the "literal translations" of an ancient text... but patience please...

I don't think poking fun is a good idea, because it offends people like me who are Christians. Although I am not a fundamentalist, its like family you know. If your adult brother drools a bit in public, or wets himself, you just don't want people making jokes, right

Showing respect will win friends and influence people much more effectively. However, I agree that humor has a role to play in shaping public opinion – perhaps we can leave the insults to the comedians on Saturday Night Live


I want to emphasize a very important point that Dr. Smalley has made >>>

Dr. Smalley points out that life in the USA was going along just fine after WWII, people were adapting to the nuclear strike air drills and such but then the Russians launched Sputnik and everybody had nightmares of nuclear missiles in outer space aimed at their bedrooms.

It wasn't until President Kennedy challenged the American People with the goal of landing a man on the moon that the public fear focused on a positive goal. Dr. Smalley credits this to both Kennedy's leadership and the very real fear aroused by Sputnik.

JFK asked young Americans to commit their lives to a career in science to help solve the problems our nation faced - the space program inspired young Americans - and Richard Smalley was one of the young men that committed his life to science. He went on to co-discover the carbon-60 molecule and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering work.

Dr. Smalley believes that 9/11 is this generation’s Sputnik. The fear of a terrorist strike today is as real as his generation’s fear of nuclear war with the Soviets in the 1950's.

What America needs now is another John Kennedy - a true leader who can inspire young Americans to commit their lives to science. The obvious threat this time is not nuclear war; it is a fight over limited energy resources. This generation must be awakened and inspired to take on the challenge of energy.

Too many people still don't get it. This is because of an absence of leadership. The Democrats are missing an opportunity with this one. Sure, John Kerry spoke about energy, but only to a small degree, and then appealing to whatever special interest group he was addressing at the time. His energy plan was wimpy and lacked vision – hardly anything that would inspire a smart kid to change majors in college.

Dr Smalley is painting a bigger picture. It is awesome. The numbers just blow away anything we face in the USA today. The expanding global economy is awakening the world. The world population is estimated to increase by 40% by the year 2100. Ten Billion humans on this planet will need and expect as much energy or more than the average American consumes today. Modern technology is hungry for energy.

And NO, conservation is not going to work. Yes, we need greater energy efficiency, but we also need more energy not less.

The technology to produce and deliver that much energy - everywhere - in the world does not exist today. Anywhere!

We need to invent it.

We need a National Leader who will give voice to this issue. And inspire young people to commit to a career in science and engineering like Christian Missionaries - not for personal gain, but to save the world!

www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/energychallenge.html

Take a look at this link - on that web page you will find another link to a video lecture by Dr. Smalley titled, Columbia University Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center presents "Our Energy Challenge"

Columbia University produced the video - it is a lecture in front of a live audience. Dr. Smalley answers questions from the audience after the lecture.

Isn't the internet great!

Starting to lose ground....we've lost it!!!!

I started my college career in 1979 - I planned on being a veterinarian. I didn't have the grades, but I did have to take non-calculus physics, and I aced it. I loved it. So I decided I'd go for that. Now, it wasn't one of the best moves I ever made - but I did get my degree in Physics. Skin of my teeth, I really struggled because partly I came from that era when "women didn't go into math or science".
We also shuddered when we had one or two Chinese students in the class - they would screw the curve for us. I'm serious here. Part of our problem is cultural


Folks, there's pure physics and then there is applied physics and engineering. I work for a manufacturer of elevators - there are tons of people in production (they're called struco employees - part of the structural environment) and then there's the office help, then there's R & D. From what I've heard over the years, industrial engineers are somewhat a thing of the past - manufacturing is on a decline here in the US, so not many people get into it. We have a glut of software engineers, though - so much so that a lot are out of work.

I agree, business does not plan ahead - to them, scientists are like bottles of soda, get what you can out of it and toss it away once your thirst is quenched. We've also assisted in shooting ourselves in the foot by trading technology - its a hell of a lot easier to slide in on someone else's bootstraps by copying technology and having a workforce that pays sub-sub-sub minimal wage.

I hate to play the pragmatist, but people going to college want a future. Many people look at employment opportunities when choosing a vocation. If college students see that the moguls of industry are not hiring certain professions, they are less likely to devote the sweat and years it takes to get that sheepskin.

There must be a commitment to continual development of the sciences for the future. From the previous posts, it seems to be the concensus that the commitment does not exist in the United States.

To a large part, it never did. Look at the tremendous ups and downs a company like Boeing has had in supplying the military with its toys over the years. There's never been a plan of long term stability for those who did the work.

I am not advocating a program of job security by the government, but the government can set direction and the big business sheep will follow. If the government "stays the course," a lot of good things can happen. If the government sets this course in an area that needs scientists, engineers and technicians, then persons will be encouraged to get training in these areas.

How could this be done?

Which of these two ideas is better or are they both bad?

1) Direct spending by the government in a massive energy research program? (Manhattan type project)

2) Tax incentives by the government to encourage private enterprise to use its resources to develop the energy of the future.

Is the first another example of government waste?

Is the second another example of corporate welfare?

Perhaps, you believe the market by itself will make the best choices for future energy. Any opinions?

In response to Eino's question:

The goverment should stop wasting resources on Empire Building, Waging War
and pursueing the self-destructive "War on Drugs."

The Goverment should channel all available resources into Universal Health Care
including Mental Health and Universal Quality Education and Training to whatever level persons desire to go as long as they show satisfactory performance. This would include training and counseling in Career Development.

You nailed it.

Business people, especially those with financal background, often boil everything down to money and devalue anything that doesn't equate to profit on paper, including science and art.

Yes, training people is a priority in countries like India and China.

I agree that the fundamentalist religious culture is part of the problem with the anti-intellectualism. However, it's not the fundamentalist religious culture that is killing science the most. It's the greed culture that is inherit with capitalism and corporations. Thank the Republicans for perpetuating both.

Did we think that rolling out the red carpet for greed was going to work forever?

It's greed that makes us more concerned with short term interest than long term. It's greed that makes us care more about our excessive lifestyle than our great grand children's social security. The short term interests makes us devalue education.

It's greed that makes us care more about exploitation than innovation. We think that if we have enough money, we can just buy out the best ideas rather than create them. The selfishness that comes with greed makes us devalue the cultural diversity we need to stay creative, artistic and scientific.

What most people don't understand is capitalism has a shelf life, and ours has expired.

I agree that greater energy efficiency is needed, but conservation is a part of efficiency, not apart from efficiency.

I would say both ideas would work with a change in focus. The first idea, direct spending by the government in a massive energy research program would attack the problem from only one end, production. If you only address production, then consumption will go up excessively. People consume simply because they can. If you only address consumption, then people will not use energy when they need to. Either way energy is not produced or used wisely. To solve the energy problem both production and consumption need to be addressed simultaneously. Physics and chemistry will help the production. Information technology would help the consumption. I opened a thread on telecommuting, which is the key to reducing consumption without hurting productivity.

The second idea of tax incentives is good only if the incentives encourage better production and consumption simultaneously, and keep the business in America. Businesses should be encouraged to telecommute. We should be leading the world in alternative energy and telecommuting infrastructure. Tax incentives are a good idea because they don't just pay lip service to the business or the consumer. But the incentives need to be part of a complete plan or they won't work.

Rla -

I like your education initiative idea. I believe free education to all, is the "great equalizer".

The "trickle down" worldview is nothing more than a thinly veiled version of the old "Aristocracy" - a society controlled by a privileged elite. Bush sees himself as a modern-day benevolent Aristocrat.

Billfmsd -

You are right on about telecommuting. The cost of running fiber optics around the country is a lot less than building freeways.

But, the greed-machine will object because the telecom companies would lose money if the government subsidized the fiber and the connections... and politicians would lose their campaign contributions…

The global market may end the capitalist system. The Chinese are acting as a single giant corporation that envisions a future... who is acting in the "selfish interest" of the citizens of the USA?

If we solve the world's energy problem, the way Dr. Smalley has proposed, then we will have solved many of the underlying problems of society.

Energy Is the Lifeblood of our modern world

billfmsd and I agree about a lot of things but we disagree about whether the
worse problem is a capitalistic economy or a fundamentalistic culture. I think that a small amount of goverment ownership of the means of production of wealth
and a little more well-designed goverment regulations on business entities
would contain the excesses of capitalism. I can't conceive of any way to convert
fundamentalist religions into a positive force for society.

billfmsd emphasizes the importance of "word" usage (definition, scope, context).

I see where you are going with the notion of "well-designed" and regulated capitalism. I agree with you for this reason: Adam Smith's definition of capitalism is that of a "principle", like the principle of gravity or electricity. He observed capitalism... "The invisible hand", just like Newton observed gravity... "The apple".

Smith said, when people are allowed to pursue their own selfish interests, the results are like an invisible hand that serves the interests of the greater good.

However, Smith spent the last years of his life writing and speaking about "business ethics". We don't hear much about that, do we?

I agree with billfmsd that capitalism has come to the end of its "shelf life", but not if that means we revert to socialism, which has already proven to be a dead end -- and Communism is worse.

Capitalism, if regarded as only a natural force emanating from human emotions, needs, actions... is a force that can be "engineered" and controlled just like the forces of gravity and electricity via technology. I think that is where you want to go with it, right?

Faith based capitalism is dumb. Lassie-faire Capitalism is barbaric. We can do better.

I think billfmsd wants to give the: “We can do better” a new name.

Which is how I would respond to your concerns about “fundamentalist” religion. It can be transformed. Very few Christians would accept the idea that Jesus is a hard-ass like Tom Delay or some of the people you might be thinking of.

Let’s work together to solve the energy problem here in the USA. Let’s oppose the lassie-faire capitalists and build a national education system that would honor a God who went to all the trouble to create a universe and give humans intelligence. Literacy is a big thing for Christians.

Perhaps you give too much credit to the big mouths that think they represent Christianity. Here is a clue, how many Catholic women use birth control? They will never tell…

Like the Iraqi woman who said that she would agree in public with anything her husband says, but when she gets inside that private poling booth to caste her ballot, she will vote her conscious.

Freedom4all.

I place a great deal of value on the spiritual realm of human existence
but I make a clear distinction between what is spiritual and what is religious
In reference to particular persons and groups of persons I have pretty much
live and let live attitude. I find it easy to be accepting, empathic, non-judgemental
and even affirming to most persons in most situations but I'm not the least bit shy about being very critical of goverment or business policy and practices or other
organizational or cultural structures that I think impact negatively on the common good. I'm not overly impressed with women who use birth control on the sly but
not able to tell the Pope where to put his Fatherly dictates that cause so much suffering and death because people have too many children to take care of.
Though I liked Bill Clinton and thought he was a pretty good President for his time
I wasn't at all impressed with his,"Don't ask, don't tell" policy for the military for
the same reason. The improvement of human society is probably more often retarded by premature compromise than by sticking to principle.

Yes, me too.

Then you would agree that "change" must grow from within?

If you agree that is true, and if we value our spiritual progress, our spiritual existence... we must work together to help create the best conditions that will nurture and encourage change from within the human heart... free education, at all levels through adult and vocational ed, and on to "golden age" self-improvement classes... in every community in the nation.

More information, more thinking, sharing, opportunity, health, creativity, positive experiences...

Energy is the foundation of our modern world. Our telecommunications, data processing systems, transportation, health, education, etc., require energy. The world needs more, much more energy. Let's solve the energy problem. We need to invent the technology. We need more scientists and engineers to do that - we need a national energy development program on the scale of the 1960's space program to make this happen.

Very Good Responses - Thank You



No - They didn't teach that part in Economics. I guess we hear the part of the message that some wish us to hear and not the whole story.

I believe Senator John Glenn made the remark on this subject that we are "eating our seed corn." It appears to be true? People are the greatest resource this country has and when that resource is squandered, we have dire consequences.

Freedom4all,
Actually I think the statement,"Change must grow from within" may be somewhat misleading. I think one usefull way of defining human behavior is as a change in the relationhip between the person and the person's environment. The outline of the person is the inline of the person's environment. There is no Self except
Self-in-Situation. I think change (typical behavior) occurs at the boundarbetween self and situation. One of the key differences between "liberals"
and "conservatives" is that liberals try to use the power of goverment to change the culture and conservatives identify with big chunks of the present culture and
use it to prevent change in the goverment

I agree that energy constitutes a big problem for earth's people and I applaud your attempt to rally folks to work at this common problem. It is through comming together to convert common problems into common goals and developing strategies to reach them that community is built. At a more basic level I believe that the lack of interpersonal trust is a more significant problem than lack of energy. I see this problem blocking progress at every level of every domain of human experience more than anything else.

RLA:



I think you made a good point. I see a lot of people not trusting government, businesses, certain groups, etc. We are not pulling together to solve the problems of today.

The US erosion in Science and Technology may be a symptom of this overall lack of trust. These people study problems and solve problems. Trust will help develop concensus. Concensus will help define direction. Direction will find a need for Scientists and Technologists to solve the problems in that direction. The need will generate value and more people will be able to pursue Science and Technology as an attractive vocation.

This is a recent article from MIT's Technology Review. It says the US Federal government is spending all of its R&D on security and neglecting basic research that is needed for the development of future civilian technology in the USA.

American technology—just like its foreign policy, domestic politics, and popular culture—has been swept up into what Presi­dent George W. Bush calls “the global war on terror.” The U.S. R&D establishment has narrowed its interests in the years since September 11, 2001, concentrating its resources on technologies that provide security: weapons systems, defenses against biological weapons, biometrics, network security. The U.S. government’s research-and-development budget is now bluntly militaristic. In fiscal year 2005, federal R&D spending rose 4.8 percent to $132.2 billion, but 80 percent of that increase went to defense research. And most of that increase is committed to the development of new weaponry, like the ­ballistic-missile defense system. In all, the government will spend 57 percent of its R&D budget for 2005, or a record $75 billion, on defense-related projects. President Bush’s proposed 2006 budget, now being debated in Congress, would introduce cuts to many civilian programs but spend an additional $600 million on defense research.

The Department of Homeland Security is particularly flush: its 2005 R&D budget increased 20 percent from the previous year. In 2005, the new Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) received $300 million. But the administration plans to give the agency an extraordinary $1 billion in 2006. HSARPA is concentrating on late-stage technologies that the government could procure in only three to five years. But according to Lita Nelsen, director of MIT’s Technology Licensing Office, such a near-term focus is “robbing from the future, because that’s not basic, curiosity-driven research.”

The data support Nelsen’s contention. The National Science Foundation had its 2005 R&D budget cut by .3 percent in 2005, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) enjoyed a budget increase of only 1.8 percent. It will get worse: the government plans to increase NIH’s budget by only .7 percent in 2006.

The U.S. government’s pre­occupation with security would be less important if the private sector were investing in basic research. It is not: for years, corporate R&D has stressed return on investment through the timely creation of new products. And U.S. venture capitalists have responded to government and corporate demand by disproportionately funding security-related startups. Since 2000, according to Venture Economics, communications funding has dropped 83 percent, and software investment is down 77 percent; but during the same period, defense investment fell only 58 percent. Fields like robotics, nanotechnology, and genomic medicine are underfunded. Venture capitalists have a “lemminglike instinct when it comes to investment themes,” admits Bill Kaiser, a general partner at Greylock Partners in Waltham, MA.

The U.S. obsession with security may yet yield wondrous technologies; it has happened before. “Uncle Sam might be investing in the next Internet,” Nelsen says. Ken Morse, managing director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, insists that security investment “is a good thing.” After all, he says, “thoughtful government funding years ago has spawned cool companies.”

Recent funding of defense and security has already produced technologies for civilian use. Lincoln Laboratory, a research institution at MIT that works mainly with the Department of Defense, has created several interesting “dual use” technologies. Using luminescent proteins produced by a jellyfish gene, for instance, the lab has developed a biosensor that glows in the presence of biowarfare agents. In 2003, the device, known as Canary (which stands for “cellular analysis and notification of antigen risks and yields”), was licensed to Innovative Biosensors in College Park, MD. The company believes it may be useful for medical diagnosis, too.

But technologists worried about the future of innovation in the United States may share Nelsen’s gloomy assessment. “Everyone is frightened that some Iraqi is going to put anthrax in our hamburger meat,” driving up spending on defense and security, she says. “But in the meantime, what’s happening to the other technologies?”

http://www2.technologyreview.com/articles/...p_us.asp?trk=nl

So the US is developing protection rather than exploring new frontiers.

Seems like quite the shift from a generation or two back when JFK was president. We were reaching to the moon and exploring new technologies.

Sounds like the US today is putting all its eggs into protecting the wealth of the old rich men that control the country. Sounds rather stagnant. However, maybe they'll develop a new kind of fence or something.

Here's another bit of data on our losses in science and technology, even the Russians are warning us we're in trouble:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?...es/art0621.html
Lunch with Mikhail Gorbachev, by Ray Kurzweil

With only 53,000 engineering graduates a year compared to Russia's 200,000, the U.S. needs to "communicate the importance of science in today’s world," Mikhail Gorbachev told Ray Kurzweil in a luncheon discussion that ranged from blogs to nuclear disarmament and longevity.

Political rivals unite over math-science grad 'crisis'
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Robert Reich (left) and Newt Gingrich will speak at tomorrow's Workforce Summit.

April 28, 2005
By Michael Kinsman

It isn't often that conservative Newt Gingrich and liberal Robert Reich find themselves on the same side of an issue.

But when it comes to the nation's commitment to science and math education, both see a serious threat to the economic foundation of the United States.

"Every American should understand what a crisis this is," said Gingrich, a former speaker of the House. "I don't understand why the failure of our country to educate its young people in math and science gets so little attention. This is crucial issue for America, but we're just not responding with the urgency it deserves."

Reich, secretary of labor under former President Clinton, said the United States has "simply not shown young people how math and science fit into our economy" and now risks losing its economic clout as other countries capitalize on the missed step.

"We have become fat, happy and lazy," he said. "Now, when we go looking for the engineers we need, we have to depend on other countries."

Gingrich and Reich meet tomorrow in San Diego for the 2005 Workforce Summit, which brings business, government policy-makers, educators and career counselors together to share information on the needs and opportunities for the regional work force.

The two men are expected to address America's declining competitiveness because its workers lack math and science skills necessary in today's technology world.

Organized by the San Diego Workforce Partnership, the event is open to the public but requires a $150 registration fee at the door. The event runs from 7:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the San Diego Convention Center.

The math-and-science education issue is crucial to San Diego because of the heavy cluster of technology companies that require engineers and scientists, said Jane Signaigo-Cox, senior vice president of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp.

For several years, local technology companies have complained about the dearth of college graduates with math and science educations. Some companies have employed foreign workers under the HB1 visa program, but reductions in the allotment of those visas is causing problems.

"We really haven't done a good job educating students in the careers and opportunities that await them if they get a math and science background," Signaigo-Cox said. "The job opportunities are tremendous, but I don't think students in middle and high school realize what they can do in biotech, life sciences, medical instruments or other industries. There are fabulous careers here in our communities, but the students don't realize it. The companies that we have in San Diego can't continue to compete or continue to expand, unless we help grow the work force here."

This month, Gingrich spoke in favor of federal legislation that would forgive up to the first $10,000 of a student loan for math, science or engineering graduates who work at least five years in one of those fields.

"The Hart-Rudman Commission said that the greatest threat to America by 2025 was the detonation of a weapon of mass destruction," Gingrich said. "It said the second greatest threat was our country's failure to remain competitive in math and science. Why aren't we listening to that?"

Gingrich, who owns a consulting company in Atlanta, also said he favors paying middle school and high school students to remain in math and science classes.

"Kids are dropping those classes and working at Burger King or McDonald's so they can make money for their Saturday night dates," he said. "Why not pay them minimum wage as long as they make good grades in this classes? That's how we can turn this around. Money talks."

Reich, now a professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., said he is confident that businesses that depend on math and science graduates will find a "business solution."

"Unfortunately, the business solution may not be good for America," he said. "Businesses will expand in those parts of the world that can supply the educated workers it needs, whether or not that is in the United States. That's not a good solution for our country, but it will solve their problems."

Gingrich and Reich are urging businesses to push for legislative answers.

"Every business leader should be lobbying to triple the funding to the National Science Foundation," Gingrich said. "That's the way we will get this started."

Reich said business should also take on a larger responsibility for training workers.

"Much of the public has no idea how far down our competitiveness in math and science has gone," he said. "I would hope that the business community sees it as their responsibility to go to Congress and to state legislatures to apply pressure that will lead us to fix it."

www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050428/news_1b28summit.html

Bush is talking energy tonight but Energy summit with Cheney is still confidential.
The question I ask is was raising oil prices part of the energy plan. Was digging in Alaska and anartica part of the plan. Was rewarding by using closed military bases already poluted with weapons waste.

I don't know but again secrecy on the administrations part makes all things said by the administration end up with no credability.

As children we would spot these sneaky kids on the playground and yell LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE!!!!!!

Wow! These guys are like the North and South of a magnet. This problem must be pretty bad.

Newt wants to solve the problem with money. If there is really a true demand for these people shouldn't the market respond with good pay and secure jobs? Odd to see Newt wanting Socialist programs to solve the problem. Odd indeed, coming from one of those who helped encourage the "free market" mantra that swept so much of the nation. Has he somehow become partially reformed?

And what comments did Reich have?



Jeepers! He sounds like the Republican. You'd expect him to say we should pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.

Odd juxtaposition here.

worldchanging - another world is here Community Networking in the 21st Century:

Pope sets predecessor on road to sainthood in record 26 days Guardian Unlimited

Among all the industrialized nations of the world, Students in the US rank next to last in math and last in physics.