ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
Nor Any Drop to Drink?
Federal legislation that would enhance the Environmental Protection Agency’s role in protecting our most valuable resource advances to the Senate.
Issue Pulse: Bush Administration To Change Endangered Species Rules
The Bush Administration has proposed new rules that allow federal agencies to assess on their own threats to endangered species, side-stepping scientific review of environmental impacts for regulatory decisions. Here’s what some experts have been saying in the mainstream media and blogosphere over the past few days about the proposed rule change.
LIFE SCIENCES
Anthrax and the Mad Scientist
The FBI’s case against Bruce Ivins summons mythical fears of science as a perilous ethical endeavor—and that’s a threat to the image of scientists everywhere.
MILITARY TECHNOLOGY
More Than Meets the Eyes
Bugs pack an amazing set of capabilities into a very small package. Understanding and mimicking those abilities can allow researchers to shrink the size of autonomous robots to proportions like those of household pests.
Doping Difficulties
The line between legal and illegal performance enhancement is unclear, and our ability to detect illegal enhancement is even shakier.
ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Another Intelligence Fiasco
The President and Congress can’t craft sound energy policy when the EIA mis-predicts oil prices by a factor of two.
End-of-the-Week Review: Anthrax, Booger, Carbon, and Drugs
A quick look at the issues making the rounds on the science blogs this week.
STEM CELLS
The Wild West of Reproductive Technology
Unproven and experimental fertility treatments, combined with an ill-conceived presidential policy on stem cells, have created an industry that needs corralling.
EPA Denies Texas Waiver Request to Relax RFS Mandate
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson announced today that the agency will deny the request of Texas Governor Rick Perry for a waiver that would reduce government ethanol production requirements.
Program to Help Developing Nations Forecast Natural Disasters Loses Funding
The National Center for Atmospheric Research has shut down a program that helps developing nations predict and prepare for natural disasters such as droughts, floods, and cyclones, Andrew Revkin reports in The New York Times. The program, called the Center for Capacity Building, was created in 2004.
Financing Science
It’s the Money, Stupid
It isn’t a scientist shortage or a poor public education system. It’s the lack of decent-paying, tenured job opportunities for young graduate and postgraduate research scientists.
ENERGY
A New Mission for American Science
While everybody is talking about energy these days, they’re not necessarily talking about the scientific opportunity so much as the business one. The moment is right for researchers to take up—with a sense of unshaking mission and purpose—the grand cause of a generation.
Leveling the Playing Field: The Olympics, Doping, and the Enhancement Debate
The opening of the Beijing Olympics this Friday has provided another occasion for much public reflection on the ethics of sports doping. It is not hard to imagine that betting pools will be created not only on the number of medals won in this Olympiad, but also on the number of medals withdrawn due to doping rules violations.
COMMUNICATING SCIENCE
Open Up
The processes of decision making in science policy requires public engagement, participation, and broad-based deliberations. Multicriteria Mapping is a way to ensure the reasoning behind choices made are transparent and well understood.
One Eye Open for Dual-Use Research
The recent federal investigation of Dr. Bruce Ivins, the Army bioterrorism researcher suspected of facilitating the 2001 anthrax attacks, is drawing media attention to dual-use research and could provide an opportune moment for biotech researchers to take another look at the rules that govern work with deadly pathogens.
Intern with Science Progress
College-age readers may be interested to know that the Center for American Progress is accepting applications to its internship program, which includes Science Progress. Other readers may know students interested in the program.
Doubling Down on NIH Funding
This week’s Policy Forum in Science addresses the “structural disequilibria” in biomedical research that has resulted from the recent funding history of the National Institutes of Health. Addressing these problems would create a more hospitable career path for young researchers and yeild more medical advances.
CLIMATE
The Tipping Points
Like an unstable canoe that tips without warning, sudden climate changes can bring dramatic and unpredictable ecosystem transformations. If an abrupt change hit, would it doom our best efforts to save the planet?
RENEWABLE ENERGY
Here Comes the Sun
With a concerted push by policymakers on research, development and deployment of solar technologies, solar renewable energy could dot our landscape.
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Science, Innovation, and Competitiveness
Science Progress and American Progress's Doing What Works project teamed up to produce a set of policy proposals that the Obama administration and Congress can adopt to reinvest in the building blocks of American science, innovation, and economic competitiveness. Read the overview of the five reports.
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Science Progress proceeds from the propositions that scientific inquiry is among the finest expressions of human excellence, that it is a crucial source of human flourishing, a critical engine of economic growth, and must be dedicated to the common good. Scientific inquiry entails global responsibilities. It should lead to a more equitable, safer, and healthier future for all of humankind.