STEM EDUCATION
President Obama hosts first annual White House Science Fair
Over 100 students and their science projects packed into the White House this week to participate at the super bowl of young student science fairs. The need to graduate more students with STEM degrees is at the forefront of the President’s agenda.

STEM EDUCATION
President Obama calls for investment and new approach to science education
President Obama said his upcoming budget proposal, set to be released next week, would include a request for $80 million from Congress for a new Education Department competition to support math and science teacher preparation programs.

BIOETHICS
New book frames evolving ethics of DNA databases
The new book by Dr. Bernice Elger, “Ethical Issues of Human Genetic Databases: A Challenge to Classical Health Research Ethics?” brings in-depth research and intense application of bioethics to the uses of DNA databases. Going over the history and current legal framework, this volume will be a staple on the ethics debate for some time to come.

SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY
India brings charges under its “Biodiversity Act” against Monsanto for “bio-piracy”
India is charging the American company Monsanto for “bio-piracy” due to the alleged theft of indigenous eggplant varietal. There was controversy in 2009 over the genetically modified crop’s potential safety. Now, farmers with the backing of the Indian Government argue that the strain which conventionally developed over centuries has been stolen from them and modified.

CLEAN TECH
California’s green economy jobs more secure in recession
The clean economy sector in California lost only 3 percent of jobs compared to the overall 7 percent of jobs in the state of California in the great recession. Showing higher resilience to recession, it looks like green is fast becoming not just a more ethically sound investment but a safe investment.

DIVERSITY IN SCIENCE
Brainstorming on diversity in Science
The NIH has an open forum for comments from scientists on how they could increase diversity. From stronger mentoring programs to education about funding opportunities, NIH wants to know how to reach out to under-represented minorities.

CLIMATE SCIENCE
Malaria affected footprint to shift
A new study predicts that climate change will change the ranges of malaria carrying mosquitoes. A new “high-resolution” model shows the malarial zone shifting from the tropical parts of Africa into the sub-Saharan Sahel and East Africa, two of the poorest geographical locations on Earth.

STEM CELLS
Department of Defense stem cell investment may return big for soldiers suffering from severe bone fractures
Dr. Steve Stice and Dr. John Peroni of the University of Georgia Regenerative Bioscience Center used stem cells to develop a “fracture putty” that shows promise for speeding the healing of bones from weeks to days. The DoD grant of $1.4 million focuses on the men and women of the Armed Forces who have suffered severe fractures, allowing treatment of types of fractures for which current prognoses call for amputation.

BIOCOMPUTING
DNA used to process, store and render image data
Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in California and the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology demonstrate the potential of “biological computing,” by using DNA in a “well-defined” chemical process to render and store their own institutional logos.

EVOLUTION
The animal world just got a lot older
A team of international researchers have discovered the oldest remains of an animal in Namibia. The sponge fossils have been dated to an age of about 760 million years, closing a gap that geneticist had theorized long before. Previously the oldest animal fossil was dated to be 650 million years old.

ENERGY
USDA Funds Two Renewable Energy Programs
The USDA’s first Repowering Assistance Program made available $25 million to “provide a financial incentive to biorefineries to use renewable biomass in place of fossil fuels used to produce heat or power.” Payments will be made to producers of so called “advanced” biofuels, such as cellulose, sugar and starch, crop residue, vegetative waste material, animal waste, food and yard waste, vegetable oil, animal fat, and biogas.

This week’s news compiled by Science Progress intern Jason Thomas.

A far too common error of commentary on Brave New World and its ilk is to receive them as “prophecy.” This error is even perpetuated by the writers themselves who like Huxley, live long enough to look back, as in his truly grim, and what is worse, far less lyrical 1958 essay, “Brave New World Revisited,” proving that the author is as liable to the sin of retrospection that tarnishes the original work as anyone else.

Not a prediction in the pre-scientific prophetic tradition, Brave New World is a kind of evidence-based thought experiment: considering where we are now, where might we go? Dystopically but realistically speaking, how bad might it get? As I argue in my new book, The Body Politic, this is a key question in America’s culture wars.

Nor is Brave New World a futurist fantasy like a few of those of H.G. Wells who, in his remarkably long and prolific career, produced dozens of works. Some of Wells’ novels relied on devices that systematically defied contemporary science, like anti-gravity devices, or even logical possibility, like time travel. By contrast, in Brave New World Huxley stuck close to what was then known about Mendelian genetics, and his eugenically modified humans owed much to the timely introduction of chemicals like alcohol during fetal development.

Writing 20 years before Watson and Crick decoded the human genome and 40 years before recombinant DNA technology, Huxley did not have at his disposal the far more specific modifications made feasible by modern genetics. The chemical industry was, after all, far better developed in 1932 than was genetics, and what was supposed to be hereditary alcoholism was then a rationale for policies that attempted to weed out the “lesser types “.

Again, unlike the Christian apologist C.S. Lewis or the “high fantasist” J.R.R. Tolkien, Huxley was not a mythologist or a romantic Medievalist who depreciated the Renaissance. For Huxley there was no turning back from the scientific revolution, in spite of the attendant risks of dehumanization, especially when combined with the characteristic malady of the 19th century nation-state: totalitarianism. Rather, his longing for solace amid modernity took the form of psychical research and experiments with mescaline and LSD, part of his quest for an expanded consciousness beyond both science and Western religion. In this part of his life, explored in The Doors of Perception, Huxley’s ripples reached far and wide, including inspiring a young Timothy Leary fresh from Mexico with a suitcase full of mushrooms.

Besides eugenics, the happiness drug “soma” is the other technology most identified with Brave New World. But on re-reading the novel one is struck that a far more accessible, low-tech preoccupation is key to the order and stability of the 26th century: sex. In the London of 2540 virtually everyone is expected, and indeed virtually required, to engage in Bonobo-like promiscuous coupling. (Perhaps certain modern politicians and celebrities are in an advanced state of evolution, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.)

“Freemartins” (a decidedly unromantic term normally applied to masculinized female cattle), are sterile women who are therefore especially available. Again, as a man of his time who was au fait with the available technology, and as the younger brother of eugenicist Julian, Huxley knew plenty about sterilization but did not anticipate The Pill. The central character of Brave New World, and the only one who rejected sex without love, is “John the Savage,” a state-of-nature creature who, having no place in either society or the wild, would have met the requirements of neither Hobbes nor Rousseau.

Brave New World remains a success not because of what it literally foretells. Indeed, as prediction the novel is a flop. Like virtually every other science fiction novel before the 1970s it totally missed the information revolution (though an argument might be made for H.G. Wells in The World Brain, 1938), and recent remarkable advances in neuroscience, for example, not to mention their combination in implantable brain chips (see my book Mind Wars for more on national security interest in neuroscience). It anticipated cloning for reproduction but not for therapy. An artificial placenta, the key to the “ectogenesis” performed in the Central London Hatchery, has proven surprisingly difficult to develop, even in an era of prenatal diagnosis, fetal surgery and intensive care nurseries, and incidentally would require grossly unethical experiments.

Rather, where Brave New World shines, and what makes it so fresh even beyond the biblical four-score-and-ten, is what it says about being human in any age: the longing for love and for a society that makes us feel truly human.

(I am especially grateful to my friend and colleague Mark Adams for deepening my appreciation of Brave New World.)

Jonathan Moreno is the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, a Senior Fellow at American Progress, and Editor-In-Chief of Science Progress. This article is reposted from the Huffington Post technology page.

This report builds on earlier research from Battelle that looked more broadly at the economic impact and return on the federal investment in the Human Genome Project. The study of the HGP found that the public investment of $3.8 billion spread between 1988 and 2003 yielded $796 billion in economic output, and created nearly 4 million years of full-time employment, or job-years, between 1988 and 2010. This farsighted, bipartisan investment in genomics research helped seed new biotech industries, which in 2010 alone added $67 billion to U.S. gross domestic product—the largest measure of growth in our economy—created $20 billion in personal income for American families, and sustained 310,000 public- and private-sector jobs.

This $3.8 billion public investment in basic research yielded a 14,000 percent return for the economy, so it is no wonder that the ACLA is revisiting the investigation into public investment in biomedical research—it pays. The new study focused more narrowly on the economic impact of genetic and genomic clinical tests developed by the biomedical industry. Battelle’s new report brings to light figures about the benefits of genomic science and research that are just as impressive as the HGP results. According to the report:

Built upon U.S. investment in basic science and translational biomedical research, U.S. industry has produced a broad range of high-value biomedical technologies and products that create high-paying jobs and sustain America’s leadership in the modern innovation economy.

Spawned by the Human Genome Project itself, Battelle found that the genetic and genomic testing industry is currently contributing “more than 116,000 U.S. jobs; nearly $6 billion in personal income for U.S. workers; $9.2 billion in value-added activity; and $16.5 billion in national economic output.” The state and federal taxes collected from this young industry have states competing for the high-tech jobs and revenue generated by the highly profitable sector.

Battelle cites the states’ implementation of strategic planning to attract new biotech firms by “creating tax and regulatory environments to support and expand growing companies” and “supplying capital for facilities funding.” This 2008 report goes on to discuss the close working relationship states are developing with the firms to “develop and create a skilled workforce.” Now here is a jobs plan in action.

But looking beyond the numbers, the genetic testing industry is helping usher in a new era of biotechnology, personalized medicine, and forensics. According to the study, the genetic testing industry is already leading to positive outcomes in diverse fields such as:

Predicting risk of disease, screening newborns, directing clinical management, identifying carriers, and establishing prenatal or clinical diagnoses or prognoses in individuals, families, or population, as well as use for forensic and identity purposes.

The growth of this industry is paving the way for precision diagnoses and targeted therapies that improve health care outcomes. Oak Ridge National Laboratory says using genetic testing can give medical professionals a host of new tools to “clarify diagnoses” and make treatment more effective. One case in point: One study of genetic versus conventional diagnosis for retinoblastoma, a form of eye cancer, found the ability to act on “predictive” genetic tests “can help to save the vision and avoid unnecessary (and invasive) eye examinations for [patients] and their close relatives.” In conclusion the study found genetic diagnosis to be “cheaper” than conventional methods.

Treatments for diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and cancer—all diseases thought to have hereditary indicators—comprise 75 percent of U.S. health care costs, according to the Centers for Disease Control. So the ability to detect these diseases through genetic testing long before the symptoms set in may reduce costs associated with costly emergency treatments, and improve the lives of many, though such knowledge comes with its own set of ethical questions, particularly in the case of Alzheimer’s.

But the promise of genetic testing and personalized medicine can only be attained if we continue to invest in publicly funded research, and if we are willing to make some tricky ethical choices, whether they mean choosing to know what’s in our genes, or allowing our genetic information to be used in large longitudinal data sets.

Even Craig Venter, a renowned NIH researcher and biotech CEO who famously competed with the federal government to help unravel the human genome, advocated for the need for federal investment in a hearing before the House Commerce Committee in 2003. “To enjoy the promise of personalized and preventative genomic medicine, we must compare the genomes of tens of thousands of people to better understand the genetic causes of complex diseases,” he said. “Going forward, it is critical that both the NIH and DOE continue to support innovative projects that constantly encourage technological innovation and drive down the costs of sequencing.”

The sequencing of the entire human has decreased “100 fold” since the first human genetic tests became available. The U.S. National Library of Medicine has found “The cost of genetic testing can range from under $100 to more than $2,000, depending on the nature and complexity of the test.” As of 2011, it cost just under $10,000 to sequence a person’s entire genome. That cost reflects a significant “outpacing of Moore’s Law” considering that the first genomes cost nearly $100 million to sequence. (see graphic)

The cost decrease of whole genome sequencing to $1,000 has long been the point at which it is considered cost effective enough to have as a standard medical test. According to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, 2012 is likely to be “the year that the cost of whole genome sequencing will reach approximately $1,000.” And beyond the economics, the commission is also helping to sort through some of the ethics and privacy questions to genomic research, such as how whole-person genomic information is collected and stored, and what constitutes informed consent.

From the medical march toward increasing efficiency and accuracy in health care services, to the need to drive down costs, public investment in genetic medicine has provided new avenues for lawmakers and medical professionals to achieve their goals. The fact that such investment creates new industries and jobs is a silver lining that should make for easy legislative budgeting. As the debate rages on over whether or not government spending can create jobs or not, we need to continue to distinguish between spending and smart investments with positive economic and public health returns. As Battelle has once again demonstrated, federal funding for science, research, and development are some of the smartest investments we can make in our long-term economic future.

Jason Thomas is a Science Progress intern at the Center for American Progress.

That was 1999, and the book was a translation of a 1992 work by the German sociologist Ulrich Beck, called Risk Society. One of Beck’s key premises is that the modern world is typified by the exportation of risk. His examples include the industrial disaster in Bhopal, India, in which thousands of people died from a gas leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant. Doing a little background work on Beck, I came to understand that his ideas were hugely influential in Europe, especially among advocates of the “precautionary principle” who would put the burden of proof on claims that no harm will be caused by an action or policy.

With some exceptions, the idea of managing risks proactively and proportionately, let alone embracing the precautionary principle, hasn’t caught on here as it has in Europe. In the U.S., technological risk management has been seen as too much government intrusion that threatens innovation. Instead, as Harvard’s Sheila Jasanoff has observed, the American approach has been to “normalize” new technologies like certain genetic manipulations as merely extensions of what already happens in nature.

But that approach can put a lot of weight on distinguishing between genuinely new wrinkles and what’s been done before, and it doesn’t help sort out high- and low-risk products. So for genuinely innovative technologies that cannot plausibly be lumped as minor variants of existing and proven technologies, there is little choice but to bear the brunt of the full force of the U.S. regulatory hammer. Instead of restraining government oversight, the result is often sweeping and unnecessary bureaucratic obstacles to innovation that aren’t well-matched to actual threats. The case I know best is that of human experiments, which are overseen by the same process, whether they are pen-and-pencil surveys or phase-one cancer trials.

Happily, albeit with little notice, the way the federal government regulates the risks of innovative science and technology is undergoing substantial change, one that started in the George W. Bush years and is gaining momentum under Barack Obama. The challenge is to reshape the regulatory philosophy of the 20th century to fit 21st-century research and development. Rather than the one-size-fits-all approach of the post-World-War-II era, government is trying to fit the oversight of emerging technologies — such as nanotechnology, synthetic biology and genetic engineering — to their risks.

What’s intriguing about this shift is that the idea of managing technological risk has not only been quietly embraced by both parties and across ideological lines, but it crosses over many and diverse scientific and technological fields. Last March the White House told federal agency heads that “regulation and oversight should avoid unjustifiably inhibiting innovation, stigmatizing new technologies, or creating trade barriers.” The statement by several presidential office heads emphasized principles like scientific integrity, public participation, benefits and costs of federal oversight, communication, flexibility, risk assessment, and risk management.

Take the case of nanotech. The last three presidential administrations have supported a National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) that has invested $14 billion in research since 2001 to speed the development of materials and devices with novel and valuable electronic, chemical, mechanical, and optical properties. At the same time, however — recognizing that public and business confidence in nano products could be threatened without good evidence of safety–the federal government, at the urging of the president’s science advisors, significantly increased research on the health and environmental implications of nanotechnology. The idea is to gain information while an industry is still young to avoid unnecessary, knee-jerk, and obstructive regulation later on. Along the same lines, in December the administration announced that it will develop a National Bioeconomy Blueprint, including “regulatory reforms that will reduce unnecessary burdens and impediments while protecting health and safety.” In another example, the human research oversight system is now being revised to concentrate oversight resources on the riskiest studies.

All this is a good start toward replacing a one-size-fits-all regulatory philosophy with one that focuses on evidence-based risk. So far, though, an important potential problem has been underappreciated by planners as they’ve sought to predict on the basis of solid science the actual risk posed by various new technologies: the threat that emerging technologies like nano or synthetic biology could have illicit “dual use” by terrorist groups. A single documented biological attack using new technology could result in a huge blowback that would undermine investment and public trust for years, a consequence that the then-nascent field of gene therapy research suffered after the death of a clinical trial subject in 1999.

The dual use problem came up just a few weeks ago at the end of 2011, when bird flu experiments aimed at bolstering public health efforts raised concerns for the virus’ potential misuse by bioterrorists. Of course, not all risks can be anticipated, but we can surely learn from our mistakes. As the president’s bioethics commission concluded in its synthetic biology report in 2010, “risk assessment activities across the government need to be coordinated and field release permitted only after reasonable risk assessment.” Coordinated risk regulation in advance of product development would encourage America’s innovators to more aggressively explore low-risk/high-potential-value terrain while freeing up resources to move dual use oversight into the 21st century.

Jonathan Moreno is a Senior Fellow at American Progress and Editor-In-Chief of Science Progress. This article is reposted from the Huffington Post technology page.

GEOLOGY AND ENERGY
There’s Much Less Shale Gas Available in US Than Previously Thought
Natural gas industrialists and members of Congress from both sides of the aisle have been citing the vast supply of natural gas recently discovered in the United states as a reason to continue investing in fossil fuel based energy. A new study from the non-partisan Energy Information Agency however could put a damper on that message.

INTERNET PRIVACY
Here’s Google’s Response to Your Privacy Anger
Google writes a letter to Congress to do damage control after its abrupt announcement about consolidating personal information spooked internet users around the world.

STEM CELLS
Crystal ball gazing: human embryonic stem cells in 2012
BioNews gives a roundup of human embryonic stem cell research in 2011, and speculates about the new developments to come in 2012.

SCIENCE COMMUNICATION
Study explains why it’s useless to argue with climate deniers
It’s not that climate deniers, birthers, and 9/11 “insider jobers” are ignorant to the facts, they just don’t trust you or the authority your information came from, according to a Kent University study of the psychology of conspiracy theorists.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
North Carolina launches FCC-approved TV White Space network in Wilmington
A wired internet connection may soon become a thing of the past. The town of Wilmington, North Carolina recently became the first city in the country to put unused TV frequencies to use to distribute long distance wireless internet services. Developers hope that this demonstration test of commercial TV White Space, or TVWS, will be just the beginning of a multi-billion dollar wireless internet market transformation.

EVOLUTION
Evolution in Action: Study Finds Virus to Be Fast Learner
In a new study published on Thursday in the journal Science, a team of scientists at Michigan State University describes how viruses evolved a new way of infecting cells amazingly quickly—in less than 2 weeks. The lambda virus showed just how powerful the force of natural selection can be by overcoming one in a thousand trillion trillion (1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) odds to successfully evolve to infect a new kind of host in 25 percent of experiments.

GREEN TECHNOLOGY
Chevrolet pioneers Ecologic auto environmental label
It seems that green conscious products sell, and Chevy is betting the trend will continue by labeling its new vehicles with “ecologic” environmental labels. The new 2012 Chevrolet Sonic will roll out with the new label touting its environmental benefits.

CLIMATE SCIENCE
Extreme droughts could increase by 15 percent in Spain by the middle of the century
New methodology developed by Polytechnic University of Cartagena to track and predict drought conditions projects a 15 percent increase in climate change induced drought in Spain by mid-century. With water reserves already low, an increase in drought of that scale gives farmers and the people they feed much to worry about.

NUCLEAR ENERGY
After the nuclear disaster, Japan considers a green future
Following the 9.0 earthquake, devastating tsunami, and nuclear meltdown that ravaged Japan last year, the nation is beginning to rebuild under the slogan “build back better.” This will mean a comprehensive approach to sustainability, as well as a possible phasing out of nuclear in favor of renewable energy.

NUCLEAR ENERGY
Department of Energy Soliciting Proposals for manufacture of small scale, modular nuclear reactors
The DOE issued a Funding Opportunity Announcement, or FOA, for two grants worth $452 million over five years to fund research and deployment of Small Modular Reactors, or SMRs. The goal is to deploy the new technology by 2022 with the grant process considering the ability to implement the SMR’s earlier more favorably.

INVESTING IN SCIENCE
President Obama calls for sustained investment in research
The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology supports President Obama’s call sustained investment and his “federal commitment to research.” When it comes to tightening the federal belt, cutting investments in research for the biomedical sciences works against job creation.

This week’s news compiled by Science Progress intern Jason Thomas.

In the new book, Legally Poisoned: How the Law Puts Us at Risk from Toxicants, Carl F. Cranor brings together decades of legal and academic experience on regulation of industrial, agricultural, and pharmaceutical chemicals and outlines what we need to do better to protect the environment and public health.

In our podcast, Dr. Cranor walks us through the history of regulation and testing of commercial chemicals, from bisphenol A, or BPA, to lead, mercury, pesticides, drugs, and other chemicals. Because many industrial chemicals are designed to be persistent, they bioaccumulate, or build up in our bodies and in the bodies of other organisms, and can even be transmitted to fetuses in utero.

Recent science has shown that these chemicals rarely stay in the products they were designed for. More than 200 industrial chemicals can be found in the body of an average American today. Because they are transmitted to fetuses, even newborn babies have these chemicals in their bodies. Though the effects of many of these chemicals on human health is unknown, studies are showing that more and more chemicals previously thought harmless may have significant negative effects on the expression of genes and early development of babies, or cause disorders, chronic disease and premature death in adults.

We should assume that any molecule we put into the environment will get into our bodies, cross the placenta, and get into the breast milk.

 Though the ways in which industrial chemicals come to reside in our bodies is increasingly well understood, our nation’s testing and regulatory system has not evolved to keep pace. Though the FDA maintains strong testing requirements for new drugs–substances we put into our bodies intentionally–a corresponding process to test the hundreds of industrial chemicals that enter our bodies accidentally does not yet exist.

Because no pre-market testing is required of new industrial chemicals as it is for pharmaceuticals, companies have no incentive to ensure their products are safe for human use. Dr. Cranor argues persuasively, through rigorous scientific and legal research, that moving our industrial chemical safety laws toward a pre-market testing approach can help create incentives for companies to invest in safety and improve human health.

Carl F. Cranor is author of Legally Poisoned: How the Law Puts Us at Risk from Toxicants, and a distinguished professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. Sean Pool is Managing Editor of Science Progress.

This is the core case of the new UNEP Report, “Green Economy in a Blue World,” which urges protecting the oceans from pollution, overfishing, and climate change, while fueling economic growth through developing new marine industries.

Among other immeasurable benefits, the ocean provides coastal populations food, millions of jobs, a thriving tourism industry, transportation, sites for renewable energy development, and vast carbon sinks.  The implications of mismanaging such a bountiful resource are clear and coastal communities cannot afford to do it.

Achim Steiner, UNEP Executive Director warns that with the growing population, “pressures and impacts [on the ocean] are likely to intensify unless the world becomes more intelligent about managing these essential resources.”

The report outlines management strategies in three main areas: existing industries (fisheries, tourism, and maritime transportation), emerging industries (wave, wind, and deep sea minerals), and ocean nutrient pollution (agriculture, wastewater, and fertilizer).

To existing marine industries, UNEP outlines strategies for smarter fisheries management, which can help reduce carbon emissions, replenish stocks, and help local communities. According to the report, restoring fisheries stocks around the world could add $50 billion a year in value to the fishing industry.

The report also makes a strong case for marine-based renewable energy, including wave and wind, calling on countries to make greater investment in research and development.  The marine-based renewable energy sector is an alternative for struggling coastal communities that may have taken a hit by struggling coastal

UNEP estimates that wave energy has the potential to provide almost four times the current global electricity production, while wind has the potential to provide almost double.  For these technologies to develop and scale-up, governments need to assist the industry in overcoming technical and cost barriers.  The report also calls for the careful exploration of deep-sea minerals as a new revenue stream, ensuring the preservation of the fragile deep-sea ecosystem.

Many countries, including the United States, have begun taking ocean policy seriously. President Obama has established a National Ocean Policy, dedicated to protecting American oceans, coasts, and the Great Lakes.  American fisheries are rebounding.  Off-shore wind projects like Cape Wind,  and Fisherman’s Energy are investing in cleaner energy and economic development.

This report calls for all countries to continue developing policies and practices that ensure healthy oceans and healthy economies for generations to come.  It not only sustains one of our most important ecosystems but the livelihood of millions.

Arpita Bhattacharyya is a special assistant on the energy team at the Center for American Progress. This article is a cross-post with our partners, Climate Progress.

But BrightSource Energy, a major player in the market for concentrating solar power, or CSP, recently announced the installation of new thermal energy storage technology at three of its planned power plants in California. This thermal energy storage technology will go a long way toward solving the intermittency problem for concentrating solar power. BrightSource’s announcement demonstrates that we can in fact get reliable baseload power from the sun.

The thermal energy storage system, built using SolarPLUS technology, works by using hundreds of flat glass mirrors–called heliostats– to concentrate the rays of the sun, heating molten salts to several hundred degrees above the boiling point of water. The superheated salt is then stored in a giant insulated container. When the power plant needs to add additional output, it can use the heat stored in the molten salt to boil water to create steam to drive its turbines.

The added storage capacity will allow BrightSource’s new concentrating solar thermal power plants to continue producing electricity up to two hours after the sun stops shining. It will also enable the power plants to produce electricity at a steady and predictable rate throughout the day and will smooth out fluctuations that make managing solar power tricky for grid operators. Even better, the new thermal storage systems will allow the CSP plants to produce twice the electricity on the same amount of land as could be produced by traditional photovoltaic panels. This advance is yet another step toward the near future when solar energy can replace rather than simply supplement energy produced by fossil fuel power plants.

Adding this storage capacity to three existing plants will increase production by 4 million megawatt-hours, according to BrightSource. The company had originally planned to build seven plants at its location in California, but by applying storage technology, it discovered it could decrease the number of plants while producing more energy. The new plants are slated for completion over the next five years.

The deal is awaiting approval from the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC, which tentatively gave the green light to Pacific Gas and Electric to make a power purchase agreement with the Mojave Solar Project amid objections that the agreement would be too costly. But the CPUC has little to worry about with BrightSource and Southern California Edison. The technology BrightSource employs, which consists of mirrors and a water boiler, is cheaper and more cost-efficient than the older CSP technology that the Mojave Solar Project utilizes, and since the plants are air-cooled, they consume low amounts of precious desert water resources. By increasing storage capacity, BrightSource estimates it will actually lower costs for customers.

Additionally, the CPUC should approve the contracts because the deal is a natural consequence of a 2010 California bill, AB 2514, imploring the CPUC to determine good commercial targets for improved energy storage. The bill would hold the commission responsible for identifying cost-effective storage targets for power producers and then creating the appropriate regulations and incentives for storage deployment. BrightSource’s announcement of thermal storage technology shows the company is remaining a step ahead of the game.

Some environmentalist opponents object to the impact that the solar plants will have on Mojave ecosystems. But the storage technology will allow BrightSource to produce as much power with six plants as it otherwise would have with seven. The decision to scrap the seventh plant will translate to even more price cuts for consumers, as well as 1,280 acres of desert spared from development.

In what looks like a win-win for BrightSource, Southern California Edison, the environment, and consumers, solar storage is evolving from a distant dream to the reality of the present. Altogether the Ivanpah project will lead to 1,400 union construction jobs at peak construction, $650 million in worker wages over the life of the project, and avoid 13.5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Said BrightSource Chief Executive John Woolard, “We came out very strongly with what I believe is the largest solar storage deal in the world.” If the CPUC approves the landmark contracts, the rest of the nation could also come out very strongly, as the region and the nation reaps the economic and environmental benefits of this new and dynamic industry.

Lauren Simenauer is a former intern with Science Progress, and Sean Pool is Assistant Editor of Science Progress.

President Obama’s State of the Union address last night demonstrated the importance of U.S. science and economic competitiveness to a prosperous and growing middle class. His focus on “keeping the American Dream alive,” invoking core American values of “fair play,” and “shared responsibility,” were inexorably linked to his administration’s past innovation policy actions and proposals for 2012.

This reflects the Obama administration’s clear understanding that innovation is an intrinsic aspect of the American identity, and an indispensable tool to ensuring the future success of our economy and middle class. Indeed, as the president said last night, “innovation is what America has always been about.”

Certainly, technology can be a double-edged sword. It creates, as the president said, “new American jobs, and new American industries,” but “technology… also [makes] some jobs obsolete.” The only way to compete for the new jobs, new businesses, and new industries that technology brings is to keep our economy on the cutting edge by investing in the building blocks of innovation—the assets our businesses, workers, and industries need to stay best in class. The blueprint the president unveiled last night outlined a robust vision to invest in those building blocks, which include:

• Innovative manufacturing
• A work force with technical skills
• Thriving small and startup businesses
• Modern infrastructure
• Access to international markets
• Robust public research and development

These innovation building blocks mirror closely the broad policy areas we identified and developed in our recent package of five policy reports on U.S. science, innovation and economic competitiveness.

The president in his speech gave key examples of these innovation factors now at work in our economy. First, he alluded to the importance of innovation in manufacturing when he touted his policies that helped Detroit retool and restructure to adapt to changing market conditions. Proposing that high-tech manufacturers who innovate here at home rather than outsourcing their facilities get a tax deduction, Obama suggested “what’s happening in Detroit can happen in other industries. It can happen in Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Raleigh.” Our work on innovation clusters has long argued the same thing, and a forthcoming paper on manufacturing innovation looks into this in more detail.

The next part of the president’s blueprint for an innovative economy is technical skills for the workforce. “Higher education,” said the president, “is an economic imperative,” and outlined the problems our innovation-intensive industries face today:

“I hear from many business leaders who want to hire in the United States but can’t find workers with the right skills. Growing industries in science and technology have twice as many openings as we have workers who can do the job. Think about that: openings at a time when millions of Americans are looking for work. It’s inexcusable. And we know how to fix it.”

To address the problem, the president invoked the story of Jackie Bray, who benefited from a regional partnership between a Siemens gas turbine factory and a local community college that helped her get the skills she needed to help fill one of these technology job shortages.

In order to better equip our students with the skills they need to stay competitive in the 21st century global innovation economy, he outlined proposals to expand access to higher education, transform community colleges into community career centers, and streamline access to scattered federal workforce training assistance programs through a single program. Our papers “Building a Technically Skilled Workforce” and “Rewiring the Federal Government for Competitiveness” contain detailed versions of these proposals.

The president also noted that another piece of the puzzle to building the workforce we need is to “stop expelling responsible young people who want to staff our labs or start new businesses.” Our paper “Immigration for Innovation” addresses this need to reform our high-skill immigration system to ensure the United States remains the land of opportunity for all.

The president also spoke forcefully about the importance of inventive entrepreneurs to our economy and of the returns on public investment in research and innovation. Noting “most new jobs are created in startups and small businesses,” President Obama called for policies to help them succeed.

“Thousands of Americans have jobs,” he said, thanks to our public investments in clean technology innovation. He also pointed out that “the payoffs on these public investments don’t always come right away. Some technologies don’t pan out; some companies fail.” The fourth paper in our series on science and competitiveness, “Universities In Innovation Networks” contains five broad pieces of policy that would help accelerate the motion of basic research to market through the commercialization of university research.

President Obama also reiterated his proposal to consolidate trade and commerce agencies to make the federal government work better in ensuring businesses large and small have access to international markets for their products and technologies. Our paper “Rewiring the Federal Government for Competitiveness,” takes this proposal and goes into deeper detail about how consolidation of federal trade, technology, workforce training, and economic development programs and agencies can help promote more strategic coordination of these activities and promote innovation and competitiveness of U.S. businesses and regional economies.

The president’s State of the Union address demonstrates the importance that science and innovation policy play in his larger efforts to rebuild our middle class and return to our core American values. Innovation policy is a key piece of the toolset the Obama administration will use to develop an economy build to last and keep alive the American dream for the middle class.

Ed Paisley and Sean Pool are the coordinating editors of the series on U.S. science and economic competitiveness by the Center for American Progress. Ed Paisley is Vice President for Editorial at the Center. Sean Pool is assistant editor in charge of the Center’s Science Progress project.

One fact and one imperative appear to be on a collision course. Federal spending will decrease in the coming years, yet the  importance of boosting our nation’s science and economic competitiveness cannot be overstated. How do we reconcile the  two?

The traditional language used in such circumstances is to seek more bang for the buck. But even that’s not good enough  anymore. The federal budget has to deliver the “best” for the buck, meshing the most efficient use of taxpayer resources with the most effective structure. That is particularly true where the federal government works with businesses, workers,  communities, universities, and state and local governments to grow our economy. The historical evolution of federal functions and the jurisdictional scope of congressional committees no longer justify the current grab-bag organization of trade,  technology, economic growth, and workforce functions in our federal government.

Today, there are more than 3,000 federal assistance programs that provide grants, loans, credit enhancements, and financing and technical assistance to firms, educational institutions, nonprofits, and local governments to pursue job-creating activities related to science and economic competitiveness. These programs are currently administered separately by the Economic Development Administration, Employment and Training Administration, Small Business Administration, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Agriculture, and a swath of other federal agencies. Beyond assistance programs, other federal efforts that affect competitiveness—such as industry contracts, regulatory frameworks, and existing management structures—are equally fragmented.

That is why we propose reorganizing the functions of the Department of Commerce, moving significant portions of the current agency to other parts of the executive branch, and bringing in competitiveness-relevant functions from agencies outside the Department of Commerce. The purpose: to create a new, focused Department of Competitiveness that integrates federal policy around four interconnected areas of competitiveness:

• Trade
• Technology
• Economic growth
• Workforce development

Where federal efforts are focused on general-purpose outcomes, such as export promotion and infrastructure technologies, we suggest that they be placed within the new department to boost their effectiveness. Where federal efforts are specialized and mission-specific but share overlapping constituencies with the new department’s work, we propose the creation of a new “Common Application”—a single point of access to related federal programs—to ensure that programs also work smoothly across governmental agencies in a manner that is most convenient for their users, such as small businesses and universities.

It is a testament to American ingenuity and our talented people, within and outside government, that we get the outcomes that we do from the many disjointed existing efforts. Our science successes range from the sequencing of the human genome to social networking technologies, and our economic successes range from our nation’s leading edge biosciences industries to the job-creating power of new industries proliferating across the Internet. Yet the press of global competition requires that we do better—much better.

To its credit, the Obama administration, recognizing the disjointedness of these many different programs, has launched a series of initiatives to harness the best of these efforts into a new national innovation and competitiveness strategy for the 21st century. President Obama has also issued a presidential memorandum instructing agencies to assess possibilities for government reform for competiveness. And already likeminded federal agencies with missions and money that clearly overlap are teaming up to offer competitive grants to develop cutting-edge technologies and the workforce needed to commercialize them in energy efficiency, advanced nuclear technology, and solar-made fuels, just to name a few. These efforts have another common purpose—to tap the comparative advantages of key regional economies and scientific centers of learning so that federal efforts align with the unique competitive strengths of our nation—our bottom-up scientific development and economic engine.

These competitive-grant programs offer policymakers some clear lessons on how our federal government can play to the strengths of our scientists, our engineers, our entrepreneurs, our financiers, our experienced workforce, and our eager students at universities, community colleges, and high schools across the country.What’s missing is a federal government structure that also plays to these strengths, is institutionalized effectively, and delivers efficient and competitive federal funding to fuel the bottom-up economic capabilities of our economy.

Simply put, government structures from the 19th and 20th centuries no longer conform to the demands of the 21st. Budget exigencies and economic-growth objectives require that the economic-growth efforts of the federal government be reconstituted so that our nation:

• Makes the most efficient use of federal resources
• Aligns most effectively with the businesses that create business plans and the state and local governments that implement regional growth strategies
• Encourages bottom-up growth strategies attuned to the unique needs of the United States’ many regional economies

There has never been a U.S. cabinet-level agency like the one we propose. And there has never been a time when it is needed more than it is today. This new department would retain many of the existing functions of the Department of Commerce centered on economic growth and business formation, but would add to their critical mass while reducing redundancies across the federal government. Bringing together key competitiveness functions around trade, technology, training, and economic growth under one umbrella will elevate the effectiveness and the status of the newly created department within the government, and increase the influence of its secretary in the cabinet.

Today, national macroeconomic policies are managed by the White House, the Department of the Treasury, and the independent Federal Reserve Board. Mission-specific economic policies find their home in agencies that include the Departments of Education, Energy, Housing, Labor, and Defense, and the National Institutes of Health. But economic growth is not simply a matter of macroeconomic policy plus the sum total of mission-specific policies. The creation of businesses, the hiring and training of workers, and the growth of communities stem as well from opportunities fostered by governments seeking to boost economic growth in all sectors of the economy in all the different parts of our nation.

Crafting a new Department of Competitiveness would align federal programs more effectively and efficiently with the realities of our uniquely American competitive strengths. That process can start right now, before legislation is passed, with an executive order that, as explained below, improves the efficiency of current microeconomic policies. And that same goal would be the charge of the new Department of Competitiveness.

Any plan to revamp the Department of Commerce must ultimately find a home for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. A recommendation about the most appropriate location for NOAA is beyond the scope of this report. But regardless of its ultimate home within the bureaucratic landscape, NOAA must maintain its structural integrity and fiercely protect the preeminent role of science in management of our nation’s oceanic and atmospheric resources. Further, NOAA must ensure that its regulatory decisions remain free of undue pressure from external sources. As the conversation about government reorganization continues to evolve, the Center for American Progress’s environment and ocean policy teams will be developing specific recommendations about an appropriate structure for this agency.

Similarly, in addressing the issue of what to do with the federal government’s various economic statistics functions, we quickly found that the scope of the question outgrew the space in this paper. One approach, as CAP suggested in its “Focus on Competitiveness” paper, would be to bring the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis together as part of a consolidated economic statistics agency. We asked George Washington University research professor Andrew Reamer to write a separate paper for this series titled “Economic Intelligence.” He makes a number of practical, achievable recommendations to upgrade our national statistics efforts for the 21st century.

Uniting these four focus areas—trade, general-purpose technology, place-based economic growth, and workforce training—under one department would increase efficiency and enable the government to more effectively create and implement a truly comprehensive strategy to foster American innovation and economic competitiveness. The result would be more and better job creation and sustained economic growth.

We do not assert that the recommendations are unquestionably correct. In particular, we understand that questions of coordination can arise even if functions are managed within the same department; there is no single, perfect solution. But we hope that this paper begins a real dialogue about what it would take to design and implement a coherent national competitiveness strategy insulated from the quadrennial shifting of political fortunes.

In the main pages of this report, we detail our vision for this new Competitiveness Department, including an overview of its new functions and an explanation of which existing agencies, programs, offices, bureaus, and programs might be incorporated and why. We then examine how to better network and integrate other mission- specific innovation programs in the departments of Defense and Energy, and the National Institutes of Health, with the new work of the rewired Department of Competitiveness. First, though, here is our proposal in a nutshell.

Jonathan Sallet is a partner in the Washington D.C. office of O’Melveny & Myers LLP. Sean Pool is the assistant editor of Science Progress, the Center for American Progress’s online science and technology policy journal.

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New federally funded research could lead to more cost-effective materials for using waste heat for electricity and cooling – opening up innovation in a new class of waste heat conversion technologies. The research was conducted with funding from the Department of Energy’s Energy Frontier Research Centers program, an innovative approach to developing early-stage breakthroughs on the cutting edge of energy technology, and used resources from at Brookhaven National Lab.

High-efficiency thermoelectric materials – technologies that convert heat to electricity, and electricity into refrigeration – have been improved by researchers in New York, who say they have developed a process to increase conversion efficiencies and reduce material costs.

When connected to a circuit and insulated properly, these technologies can contribute significantly to energy efficiency. For example, thermoelectrics are used today in portable, lightweight refrigerators and coolers, as well as in automotive exhausts, where excess heat converted by thermoelectric converters has been found to increase fuel economy by three percent.

Materials scientists and engineers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed new processes that allow manufacturers to break down and microwave bismuth telluride, a popular thermoelectric material, into “hexagonal nanoplates”—tiny thermoelectric particles that, when pressed together, form extra-efficient heat (and energy)  transferring materials.

Past advances in the field have been stymied by the lack of ability to produce both electron (“n-type”), and proton-heavy (“p-type”), nanoparticles, both necessary for electricity conversion, and a problem that RPI researchers have overcome:

The technique, presented in a Nature Materials paper posted online last week, makes p-type materials that are as efficient as the best ones on the market, while the n-type materials are at least 25 percent more efficient. One of the biggest commercial thermoelectric device manufacturers is now interested in adopting the new materials and process.

The key breakthrough of the RPI work, according to Badding, is that the researchers are building the nanostructured materials from the bottom up using chemistry. This means they can fine-tune the properties of the building blocks and their assembly to improve the material’s properties. “The way they’re making the material is a big deal,” he says. “The hope is that in the future, this type of approach could lead to better [efficiency].”

The Institute’s advancements in production and process are already being picked up by thermoelectric device manufacturers in the market. These new materials could be used to help cool electronics, large buildings and power vehicles. Not only is this an encouraging story for energy efficiency technologies, but also a textbook example of how our federal innovation system can help not just advance basic understanding of science but also lead to useful new products that solve real problems. This research was funded by two different federal agencies, and the experiments could not have been done without the federal government’s investment in advanced physics equipment at Brookhaven National Lab.

Zachary Rybarczyk is an intern with American Progress’s Energy Department, and a senior at Ohio State University.

In a December 2010 report, “A Focus on Competitiveness,” John Podesta, Sarah Rosen Wartell, and Jitinder Kohli detailed why President Obama’s proposed restructuring makes sense for America. But it’s worth taking a closer look at how such a move would affect NOAA and in turn affect how we manage our oceans.

The president’s plan would relocate NOAA to the Department of the Interior. In his remarks, President Obama went so far as to suggest that the Department of the Interior was a “more sensible place” for NOAA, and that it only ended up at Commerce at its inception in 1970 because then-President Richard Nixon was feuding with then-Secretary of the Interior Walter Hickle, who had publicly criticized President Nixon’s handling of the Vietnam War.

While this storied example of Beltway pettiness has circulated among ocean policy wonks for years, the reality is rather more complex. In fact, when NOAA was established in 1970, 80 percent of its budget and more than two-thirds of its employees came from the Environmental Science Services Administration—an agency that included the Weather Bureau, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and Environmental Data Services—which was already housed at the Department of Commerce.

Since the announcement, many environmental groups have decried the move as potentially compromising NOAA’s scientific integrity by shifting the agency to a department that has developed a reputation for being industry friendly. Certainly, degradation of NOAA’s science-first attitude is to be avoided at all costs. Yet there is no reason the agency’s mission can’t be maintained under the auspices of Interior provided the agency retains its structural integrity and its budgetary clout.

Are oceans interior?

The greatest inconsistency about relocating NOAA may be the name of its possible new home. Suggesting that oceans should be considered “interior” is clearly a stretch. The United States’ exclusive economic zone—the area of ocean over which we have internationally recognized jurisdiction—extends 200 miles from our shores and is nearly one-and-a-half times the size of our land area. A stronger case could be made that the continent is interior to our oceans.

Still, while NOAA’s contributions to business and industry are numerous—try running a shipping company or planning farming operations without accurate weather forecasting, for example—it’s hard to make a case that NOAA is better suited to be managed alongside the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the International Trade Administration, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (Commerce) than with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the National Parks Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Interior).

And let us not forget that Interior is a department that is, at its core, tasked with conservation. Listed first among its tasks in its mission statement is that it “protects America’s natural resources.” After all, Interior established our first national park at Yellowstone in 1872.

While Interior’s conservation ethic has been compromised in recent decades by interference from extractive industries like oil and gas, forestry, and mining, the Obama administration has made great strides in regaining control of our natural resource agencies. In fact, bringing NOAA into the fold may actually provide a positive example to other Interior agencies and drive the department back toward its conservation-oriented roots.

Ocean advocates would do well to recall that government reorganizations are cumbersome and don’t come along all that often. Thus, we must take the longer view of this effort. Rather than simply considering how NOAA would fare in today’s Interior Department, we should consider how it would interact in an ideal Interior Department. Viewed through that lens, the move takes on a more positive outlook.

Concerns about regulatory oversight

Under previous administrations, the Department of the Interior did about as good a job cementing its conservation reputation as BP and Halliburton did cementing the Macondo well in the spring of 2010. One need look no further than that disastrous oil spill, which exposed massive failures of oversight in Interior.

In the aftermath of the disaster, accusations abounded suggesting the agency had allowed the fox to guard the henhouse by, among other things, hiring a former BP executive to serve as deputy administrator for lands and minerals management. The independent National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill found that the Minerals Management Service (subsequently split into two agencies in Interior and renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement) had committed a “serious and ultimately inexcusable shortfall in supervision of offshore drilling.”

Perhaps no environmental organization has been more vocal in its opposition to move NOAA to Interior than the Natural Resources Defense Council, whose president, Frances Beinecke, said the move “could significantly undermine efforts to safeguard our oceans and marine life.” As a member of the oil spill commission, Beinecke saw behind the curtain and knows exactly how dysfunctional the Minerals Management Service’s regulatory efforts actually were, so her opinion on the matter should not be taken lightly.

In short, it’s no secret that Interior’s modern-day oversight of natural resource extraction in our oceans has been inherently flawed. But thanks in no small part to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill’s efforts, the Obama administration has been taking steady steps to overhaul the problems exposed by the BP catastrophe.

And it’s possible that bringing NOAA and its history of fairly strong regulatory oversight could help turn the tide within a department that in recent years has too often caved to pressure from those it is tasked with regulating. It would certainly stand to reason that having NOAA under the same roof as the agencies that permit and regulate offshore drilling would give NOAA a stronger voice in offshore drilling decisions.

Maintaining NOAA’s integrity

NOAA’s potential move to Interior is sensible given that they share a conservation mission. And as just mentioned, NOAA could bring some much-needed regulatory experience to the department. The issue that remains is how to keep the agency operating most effectively after the transition—something we should strive for no matter which way the political winds blow.

Until midway through President Ronald Reagan’s term, the president held the authority to reorganize cabinet departments and federal agencies, but that provision of law expired in the early 1980s. Congressional Republicans will be loath to allow President Obama to score political points by executing a successful reorganization of government functions in the run up to an election. Many feel this political reality will prevent them from voting to reinstate this authority, but there is no guarantee.

Meanwhile, ocean advocates must recall that the president’s initiative is not fueled by their pet issue. Rather the reorganization of business and commercial agencies is the priority here, and shifting of NOAA out of the Department of Commerce is fallout, not fundamental. This decision will not be made on the merits of natural resource policy.

As such, they must prepare for the possibility that if the business community sees sufficient value in the red-tape reduction that could result from this move, it will pressure its political allies in the Republican Party to give in to President Obama’s request.

Should that come to pass, there are three key areas that must be addressed.

Maintaining scientific integrity

NOAA has a strong history of keeping its science free of interference from undue political influence. Last month, the agency released a new scientific integrity policy—something the Obama administration has vowed to implement for all federal agencies. According to the White House, these policies “will help ensure that federally supported science and scientific information remain undiluted and untainted—not only for policymakers but also for the public.”

NOAA’s was among the first to be released, and Francesca Grifo, the director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, calls NOAA’s policy “the best that I’ve seen.”

By contrast, she called the Department of the Interior’s proposal “sorely lacking in detail and public accountability.” She went on to say, “By itself, [Interior’s new policy] is insufficient. For example, it’s troubling that the new process for evaluating allegations of wrongdoing lacks transparency.” She ultimately gave the department a grade of “incomplete.”

Policies required by law, like the mandate that all U.S. fisheries operate under scientifically based annual catch limits, will remain in place regardless of which department claims jurisdiction over NOAA. More critical, however, will be ensuring NOAA’s science-first attitude remains paramount among the agency’s priorities.

Maintaining structural integrity

NOAA is comprised of five fundamental components—referred to as line offices—and it is attempting to establish a sixth. These are the National Ocean Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the National Weather Service, the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, and the National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service. The current NOAA administrator is also attempting to set up an NOAA Climate Service to coordinate research efforts on global climate change.

While those seeking greater government efficiency may, at first blush, see more opportunity to pare off portions of these line offices to be combined with existing Interior agencies (handing over control of fisheries or protected marine resources to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, for example), such efforts should be rejected. Over the course of NOAA’s 40-year history, these offices have come to be inextricably interwoven and any efficiency gained by splintering them apart would be overwhelmed by disrupting those decades of collaboration.

NOAA’s response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was a prime example of this collaboration. Personnel and data from all five line offices came together, bringing their specific expertise to bear from fisheries and protected resources to satellite and surface mapping of ocean currents, wind, and weather patterns, to coastal restoration and habitat concerns. This partnership and cooperation ensured NOAA’s response to this tragedy was far greater than the sum of its individual parts.

Maintaining budget priority

One of the biggest assets NOAA has enjoyed within the Department of Commerce is the size of its budget relative to the rest of the department. In recent years, the agency has represented approximately 60 percent of overall spending within Commerce. In fiscal year 2012 NOAA received $4.9 billion in funding, a figure that would still make it the elephant on Interior’s budget sheet—currently the highest funded agency is the National Park Service at about $2.6 billion.

But given Interior’s role as regulator of revenue-generating activities such as oil-and-gas production, mining, and other resource rents on public lands, a direct comparison of budget line items doesn’t tell the whole tale. Because activities regulated by Interior are critical moneymakers for the federal government, the department can often attract a higher degree of attention from Congress and other political entities.

While political leaders often promise the moon when it comes to prioritizing agency budgets, there are never any guarantees. In 1970, when President Nixon made the initial decision to place NOAA within the Department of Commerce, Steven Schanes was one of Secretary of Commerce Maurice Stans’s field generals. Schanes, who passed away in 2010, immortalized the budget concerns in a blog post in 2008:

Since there was very little likelihood of [NOAA receiving sufficient funding], I decided to make a special advance effort toward making NOAA effective after it came into our Department. In an early private meeting with [Office of Management and Budget Associate Director] Dwight Ink, I said, “Dwight, on behalf of the Secretary, I must tell you that we are not interested in acquiring NOAA unless you can assure us that the necessary funds will be provided to carry out the recommendations of the Stratton Commission [America’s first ocean policy commission that recommended establishment of NOAA] concerning research and services. We want to do the job right. Otherwise this entire exercise becomes one big public relations thing, and we’re just not interested.”

Dwight gave me the appropriate assurances.

A year later, our request for NOAA’s budget was cut so severely that very little of the Stratton Commission’s recommendations could even be initiated. Of course.

Ensuring NOAA’s voice continues to be heard by the secretary of its overseeing department as well as within the halls of the Office of Management and Budget—the office that consolidates and prioritizes departmental budget requests—and ultimately in cabinet meetings will be fundamental to its future success.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, the department in which NOAA resides is less vital to its underlying mission than the integrity and independence with which it carries out its mission. Regardless of which department houses the agency, we must continue to battle for adequate funding to carry out the vital recommendations of the Stratton Commission’s successor—the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, which produced its final report in 2004 and formed the basis for President Obama’s National Ocean Policy, which was finalized in 2010. Whether at Interior or Commerce, healthy oceans will remain fundamental to our nation’s economic and environmental future.

Michael Conathan is Director of Oceans Policy at American Progress. This article is cross-published at American Progress. 

If by going dark for a day to protest pending anti-piracy legislation, Wikipedia and other sites can cause the US Congress to change course, could they do a sequel about something even more important, such as global warming? James L. Powell imagines how it could work.

April 22, 2012: Earth Day

Thousands of Internet sites are taking part in a “blackout” to protest the lack of government action to prevent dangerous global warming. The most prominent social networking and communication sites went down for 24 hours starting at midnight last night, showing a dark homepage and directing users to the protest movement’s central site.

Included were Facebook, Google, Tumblir, Twitter, Wikipedia and WordPress, which urged the owners of the 72 million sites that use its service to join. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said, “A few months ago we went dark to protest legislation that the U.S. Congress was considering that would fatally damage the free and open Internet.” He continued, “But something much more important than the Internet is at stake: the future of humanity.” Twitter CEO Dick Costelo said, “We declined to join the earlier protest because we thought it was foolish to close a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics. But global warming threatens all businesses and all peoples.” He summed up, “Twitter is in.”

By the end of the day, President Barack Obama, surrounded by the senior members of his party and a surprising number of Republicans, told the press that, “Our society cannot function without the Internet and it cannot function for long with global warming. It is time for reason and scientific knowledge to direct congressional action to curb carbon emissions and put the world on track to limit global temperature rises to 2°C.” The president went on, “Everyone who has children and grandchildren should demand that their elected representatives act and act now.”

Many dark US sites urged visitors to call their Congressional Representative, providing the name and number. Techfleece.com went further by offering to call a visitor, provide talking points, and connect the visitor with his or her member of Congress.

Congressional telephone lines and e-mail servers were jammed as millions joined the protest. Following President Obama’s press conference, Republican Leaders Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and John Boehner (R-OH) jointly pledged to take up action to curb carbon emissions as their highest priority.

The protest site asked each member of Congress to take the following pledge: “I accept the findings of the US Academy of Sciences that ‘Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.’” By the end of the day, every Democrat and many Republicans had signed the pledge and the number was growing hourly.

Many university sites joined in the blackout, including MIT, Oxford, Stanford, and the University of Queensland. Scientific journals including Science Magazine and Nature also went dark. Shutting down for the day were the British House of Commons and the German Bundestag.

Many climate blogs joined the Day of Darkness, including RealClimate.org, ScienceProgress.org, and SkepticalScience.com.

Noted climate scientist James Hansen, who has been arrested for joining protests against carbon polluters, said, “This may be humanity’s last chance.”

Dr. James Powell is a geochemist and author who formerly served as president of Reed College and for 12 years on the National Science Board.

• Rewiring the Federal Government for Competitiveness by Jonathan Sallet and Sean Pool
• Universities in Innovation Networks by Krisztina “Z” Holly
• Building a Technically Skilled Workforce by Louis Soares and Stephen Steigleder
• Economic Intelligence by Andrew Reamer
• Immigration for Innovation by Marshall Fitz.

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Innovation is and always has been the engine that drives economic growth in the United States. Economists believe that innovation—new technologies, products, processes, and the industries they create—is responsible for between half and 80 percent of all economic growth.

Indeed, U.S. companies and industries, with the help of federally funded research, have invented many things that the world wants to buy—think light bulbs, assembly line automobile production, computers, Internet applications, handheld wireless devices, photovoltaic solar cells, Global Positioning System satellites, and the list goes on. This innovative spirit of the American people, protected by the rule of law, keeps us in the world’s top position in innovation, and subsequently ensures we are home to the world’s best-paying jobs and highest standards of living.

But in the 21st century our lead is beginning to erode. It’s not that we’ve started doing anything wrong—we are still home to the world’s most productive workers and innovative companies. Rather, it is because others have followed in our footsteps, and in some cases gone even further to invest specifically in the interrelated building blocks of a high-performance innovation engine. Across a spectrum of metrics—from education and workforce readiness, to research and development, to manufacturing, to infrastructure—our nation’s competitive position is slipping relative to other countries that are investing more in the driver of economic growth and prosperity. This slippage costs us jobs, investment, and wage growth.

In response to these emerging challenges, Congress reauthorized the America COMPETES Act in January 2010. The law is a crucial piece of legislation that ensures investments in the building blocks of innovation and competitiveness: research, education, infrastructure, manufacturing, and innovation networks.

But realizing that the COMPETES Act is only a stopgap measure, Congress also asked the secretary of commerce to complete two important studies of our national innovation capacity and economic competitiveness. The first, released earlier this month by Commerce Secretary John Bryson at an event at the Center for American Progress, was a comprehensive analysis of the competitive position of the U.S. innovation system. The second, due in January of 2012, will outline a 10-year strategic plan to give our national innovation engine a major tuneup.

The Center for American Progress applauds this action by the federal government. But we as a nation need to move faster. That’s why two CAP teams, one from Science Progress and the other from the Doing What Works project, convened a taskforce in early 2011 comprised of innovation policy experts to assess these same issues in tandem. This taskforce identified six key areas where policy barriers inhibit innovation and hold back national competitiveness:

• The structure of federal programs itself is out of date and thus unable to respond strategically to the innovation challenges of the increasingly competitive 21st century global economy.
• Federal data and statistical systems are not optimized to gather key 21st century innovation metrics. What isn’t measured, isn’t managed.
• The U.S. workforce development system does not adequately connect students and working learners to the needs of innovation-intensive industries on the cutting edge of the global economy.
• Federal research and development efforts are not optimized to make the most of basic and applied research occurring in universities in communities across the country.
• The U.S. immigration system needs to reform to ensure that talented foreign-born workers with bright ideas can start business and help contribute to innovation and job creation.
• Better policies are needed to strengthen the vital link between U.S. manufacturing and technical innovation capacity.

These six areas form the basis for the Center’s Series on U.S. Science, Innovation, and Economic Competitiveness. Each report in the series focuses on a different building block of our national competitiveness.

In “Rewiring the Federal Government for Competitiveness,” Science Progress advisor and former Commerce Department official Jonathan Sallet and Science Progress Managing Editor Sean Pool identify areas where existing federal programs and services could be coordinated more strategically to promote innovation and competitiveness. Specifically, the paper identifies four key competitiveness areas where the splintered nature of existing programs and policymaking inhibits national competitiveness priorities:

• Trade
• Technology
• Workforce training
• Economic development

The paper proposed that the Department of Commerce become a more robust “Department of Competitiveness,” absorbing several other government agencies and programs to ensure the federal government supports innovation and economic growth more effectively and efficiently across these four competitive arenas. Importantly, the paper presents a “common application” program that would allow for more strategic coordination between the federal government, state and local governments, businesses, universities, and regional economic development players.

The second report, “Economic Intelligence,” by Professor Andrew Reamer, addresses the federal data system that is so important to policymaking. Any national competitiveness strategy must be guided by good data and metrics. Reamer’s paper finds that the current public statistics system leaves both the government and the private sector in the dark about key drivers of innovation and competitiveness, inhibiting our ability to manage and maximize these important economic forces. He proposes four pragmatic and targeted reforms that would:

• Improve competitive analysis in U.S. traded industries—the ones on the front lines of global competition
• Better measure intermediate outcomes of innovation, such as rates of entrepreneurship, invention, and network formation
• Conduct factor analysis structural building blocks of innovation—workforce capacity, R&D, financial capital, physical infrastructure, and clusters
• Directly evaluate the impact of public-sector innovation programs

These reforms are designed to empower not only the government but also technology companies, manufacturers, exporters, entrepreneurs, students, research institutions, and workforce training organizations to make smarter decisions and stay on the cutting edge of innovation.

In “Building a Technically Skilled Workforce,” American Progress workforce experts Louis Soares and Stephen Steigleder address the shortage in our pipeline of middle-skill workers—such as welders, technicians, and nursing assistants—needed to meet the emerging demands of innovation-intensive industries including biotechnology, nanotechnology, clean energy, and advanced manufacturing. The authors find that the projected shortage of 5 million middle-skill technicians by 2018 will hamper the ability of our companies to get the human capital they need to stay on the cutting edge of innovation. To address this problem, they propose converting an existing federal grant program into a competitive Community College and Industry Partnership Grant designed to catalyze the development of new and better workforce training systems.

In “Universities and Innovation Networks,” Krisztina “Z” Holly brings her experience as University of Southern California Vice Provost for Innovation to bear looking at how federal policies affect the commercialization of university research. Universities are at the heart of our national innovation engine, and Holly identifies five areas for improvement of federal R&D policy to help get the most out of them:

• Increase investment in high-risk, large-scale, potentially transformative early stage research projects
• Help bridge the innovation gap between lab and marketplace with policies that promote small business spinouts and collaboration with cutting edge industries
• Refocus federal economic development funding on capacity building for place-based innovation ecosystems where spinout companies can thrive
• Develop a better infrastructure for measuring the impact of federally funded university research on human capital, jobs, and markets
• Address shifts in the increasingly competitive and hyper-collaborative global innovation landscape and reward “flows,” rather than “stocks” of information

These reforms would help tap the potential of universities to act as engines of innovation and job creation.

Marshall Fitz, in “Immigration for Innovation,” assesses the impact of high-skill immigration on our nation’s economic competitiveness and finds that high-skilled immigrants who have started their own high-tech companies have created hundreds of thousands of new jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars of economic activity. But our current immigration system stops many of the world’s best and brightest from starting companies and creating jobs in the United States, and inadequately safeguards against abuses that harm American-born workers. To stimulate innovation and enhance competitiveness, Fitz outlines reforms to target “job shops” that abuse the system, enhance worker mobility, and strengthen recruiting requirements, while establishing a market-based mechanism to set high-skill immigration rates to the economically optimal level.

Forthcoming in our series are several reports on the importance of manufacturing, particularly advanced manufacturing, to our nation’s continued global competitiveness. Each of these areas—federal program structure, metrics gathering, technical workforce development, university technology transfer, high-skill immigration, and manufacturing—represent key components of the innovation engine that drives long-term economic growth. Giving that engine a tuneup by implementing the policies in these papers is the first step to ensuring a prosperous and broadly shared economic future for all Americans.

Today we call upon the Obama administration and Congress to create a bipartisan commission to consider and then implement these kinds of reforms to our federal science and economic competitiveness programs. The new commission, modeled after the so-called Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission that enabled the Department of Defense to restructure our military bases so effectively, would be able to overcome congressional and executive branch inertia to retool our innovation engine for competitiveness in the 21st century.

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The bills

Politico’s overview is a good starting point for readers completely unfamiliar with the situation. The Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, in the Senate and the PROTECT IP Act, or PIPA, in the House both aim to reduce piracy by cracking down on “rogue sites” that link to and profit from pirating copyrighted material. Opposition to the bill is largely based not on opposition to protecting copyrights, but due to concerns about the potential for abuse in the vagueness of the legislative language.

For instance, as written, SOPA would empower the attorney general to blacklist sites through Internet service providers, or ISPs, search engines, ad networks, and payment networks without a court hearing or trial and allow companies to sue service providers for unknowingly hosting copyrighted materials. This could leave room for collective reprisals against entire online networks such as Twitter or Tumblr for the copyright infringements of a single user, arguably resulting in the mass censorship of entire online communities. From an economic standpoint, it could also require ISPs to monitor and censor network use to ensure users are not infringing, placing heavier cost burdens on Internet startups that rely on user-generated content. Many Internet users and technology companies argue this would slow innovation in the increasingly interconnected and networked 21st century information economy.

Supporters of the legislation say the purported dangers of the legislation are overstated and that the legislation is aimed to take down only rogue sites with no legitimate business purpose. They even responded to earlier criticism in December with a manager’s amendment aimed at reducing the impact on domestic websites, although it appears that while the legislation may target foreign sites, the legal liability might very well apply to domestic sites and companies as well.

The debate has been escalating for months online and in Washington, where both bills started with wide bipartisan support. As online protest has grown, that picture has somewhat changed, with the Obama administration commenting on issue. The White House’s statement walked a fine line of moderation, saying the “important task of protecting intellectual property online must not threaten an open and innovative internet,” which has been interpreted as an anti-SOPA position, although by not referencing the specific pieces of legislation, the statement indicates the fight clearly isn’t over yet.

The blackout

At the forefront of the blackout was online encyclopedia Wikipedia, whose English homepage was replaced for 24 hours with a message stating SOPA and PIPA “could fatally damage the free and open Internet,” and offering more information and an opportunity for U.S. visitors to contact their congressional representation. Similarly, popular social link-sharing site Reddit.com went down for 12 hours and provided a technical run down of their opposition. Search giant Google obscured their logo with a black rectangle and featured a call to action on their homepage, leading the charge of numerous sites raising the online equivalent of protest flags.

Additionally, online freedom and privacy advocates including the Internet Society, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Center for Democracy and Technology have all provided supporting documentation outlining their objections to the legislation. A list of confirmed participants in the online blackout can be found here.

The backlash

The Motion Picture Association of America, or MPAA, a major backer of both pieces of legislation, called the black out, “an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information” and “an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today.” PIPA author Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) had harsh words for the sites blacked out in protest yesterday, telling Politico:

“[M]uch of what has been claimed about the Senate’s PROTECT IP Act is flatly wrong and seems intended more to stoke fear and concern than to shed light or foster workable solutions. The PROTECT IP Act will not affect Wikipedia, will not affect Reddit, and will not affect any website that has any legitimate use. A foreign rogue website is clearly defined as one that has no real purpose other than infringement. Theft and fraud on this scale undermines consumer trust in online transactions.”

Despite Sen. Leahy’s comments, some original co-sponsors of both pieces of legislation have pulled support since the announcement of yesterday’s online protests and those still supporting the legislation are working to remove some of the most controversial provisions.

The future

So where will this legislation go? No one honestly seems to know. Despite early hopes that the bill would sail uncontested into the law books, the online backlash against SOPA and PIPA in coordination with hesitation from the Obama administration and some members of the Republican leadership appear to have slowed the charge. No one expects, or wants, the MPAA or Recording Industry Association of America to stop working to protect intellectual property rights, but the flood of co-sponsors abandoning ship due to activism and the associated increased media scrutiny may signal a change in how those advocates approach major Internet regulations in the future—or at least force them not to underestimate the power of online communities to make their side of the story known. But at least for now, the future of these bills, and the debate between online freedom and protecting intellectual property rights, are up in the air.

Andrea Peterson is Assistant Editor for Online Outreach and Analytics at American Progress.

I interviewed Eugenie Scott, the longtime head of the National Center for Science Education, about her new push into defending the teaching of accurate climate science in classrooms. Climate has fast become the “new evolution” when it comes to attacks on teachers who simply share mainstream scientific knowledge with their students–and there was a crying need for a national organization to get involved in supporting teachers, disseminating accurate information, and rebutting misleading educational materials on climate change.

And no one has more experience in this general area than Eugenie Scott and NSCE.

That is not to say it is going to be easy. The climate issue is extremely ideological and people are highly polarized–and in some communities, the weight of sentiment is going to be very much pitted against accurate climate education. It will be very difficult to make headway in such contexts–especially since, as Scott explains in our interview, legal recourse does not seem to be an option (unlike it is when creationism gets taught).

Nevertheless, if anyone knows how to navigate the politics of science and schoolboards, it is Eugenie Scott. I wish her well in her new endeavor and am glad to have such a strong ally.

For more information on NCSE’s new climate initiative, see here. For my Point of Inquiry interview with Scott, see here.

This post was republished from Culture of Science.

“What have we learned from the research performed on the International Space Station?”

“Why don’t we hear about the ISS research and other space missions in the news?”

These are among the questions that I’m asked when I give talks around the country on the current status of space activities and how space development could more directly address the challenges we’re facing today. People want to know what we’re doing in space, and considering that we are in the midst of what has been called The Year of the Solar System – the period from October 2010 through August 2012 (that’s a Martian year, in case you are wondering) – when more missions will be launched or will reach their destinations than during any previous comparable period, the scarcity of news coverage is frustrating, especially for space enthusiasts.

Occasionally there are news items about SpaceX or Virgin Galactic or the final Space Shuttle mission or the discovery of possible Earth-like planets around other stars, but, in general, space activities receive little notice by the media, unless there is a failure, such as the recent launch of the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission. Part of the explanation is that there are other newsworthy events such as the recession, congressional deadlocks, and the Occupy movement. Another part of the explanation, particularly regarding ISS research, is that it is difficult to find current information on the results of the research being performed, which leaves the impression that not much scientific research is actually occurring on-board the ISS. This situation needs to change, and there is hope that it soon will.

I believe there are two primary, and related, reasons why ISS research hasn’t been clearly reported, and recognizing these factors can lead to improved reporting. Following completion of the Apollo, Skylab, and Spacelab missions, comprehensive mission reports were released [such as the Spacelab 3 Mission Science Review]. The limited durations of these missions provided clear end-points conducive to such reports. In comparison, the ISS mission and research is ongoing, with no clearly defined end-point for the mission. While allowing for more in-depth research, this is not conducive to comprehensive reports.

In addition to not having a clear end-point, the ongoing operation of the ISS also allows for long-term and more complex experiments, phased experiments, and the opportunity to make adjustments while performing an experiment, possibly extending its duration. This leads to experiments being completed at different times. So, experiments are typically reported on individually (or the results may not even be publicly available), but those reports just don’t have the weight of a comprehensive report and don’t receive as much attention. How can this situation be addressed so that the results of the ISS research are clearly reported and widely available?

The ISS has similarities with established research labs that previous space research missions did not have and, in 2005, the U.S. segment of the ISS was designated as a National Laboratory, similar to Argonne, Oak Ridge, Lawrence Livermore, Pacific Northwest, and all the others. These labs perform a variety of on-going research activities and most of them also publicize their research in a number of ways, including through journals, annual comprehensive reports, and conferences. The methods used by these labs could serve as models for reporting ISS research.

Research on-board the ISS has been managed by NASA as part of overall ISS management, but, in July 2011, a new non-profit organization, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), was awarded the responsibility of managing the ISS U.S National Laboratory. Since then, CASIS has set up a website and is co-sponsoring, with the American Astronautical Society, the 1^st Annual International Space Station Research and Development Conference, set for June 26-28, 2012 in Denver, CO. They are seeking presentations on topics related to science and technology activities (past, present, planned, and proposed) performed on the ISS.  Topics of interest include Biology and Biotechnology, Earth and Space Science, Educational Activities, Human Research, Physical Sciences, and Technology. (If you are interested in presenting, the deadline for abstracts is January 15, 2012. See http://astronautical.org/node/96.)

This conference will, hopefully, jump-start a more robust effort to disseminate the results of ISS research, including publishing the conference proceedings and initiating a periodical journal of the ISS research activities. The reports should include status updates of research in progress as well as the results of completed research experiments.

As CASIS takes on more of the responsibility from NASA of operating the ISS National Lab, I’m also hoping that CASIS will post on their website up-to-date information on research results and other activities being performed on-board the ISS. The public needs to know what is being done in order to make informed decisions and having one primary website with that information would help. Also, it would sure make it easier for me to answer those questions that I’m asked about the ISS. And maybe those questions wouldn’t even need to be asked, because the answers would already be in the news.

Paul O. Wieland is a professional engineer who worked for NASA at the Marshall Space Flight Center for over 20 years, on programs including SpaceLab3, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Space Shuttle Challenger accident investigation, and, primarily, on developing the life support system for the International Space Station. He was also the fire protection engineer for several ISS payloads including the Materials Science Research Rack (MSRR-1).  He authored Designing For Human Presence in Space: An Introduction to Environmental Control and Life Support Systems, published in 1994 as NASA Reference Publication RP-1324. Since retiring from NASA in 2005 he wrote Crossing the Threshold: Advancing into Space to Benefit the Earth, which was awarded a gold medal in May 2011 by the Independent Publisher Book Awards. See www.threshold2020.com for more information and join the facebook page. This post was republished from  at Culture of Science.

Here are some examples of S&T budgeting that give a flavor of short-term ups and downs.

Increases over 2011 appropriations were claimed by the Department of Energy’s research wing ARPA-E, which receives $275 million, up from $180 million last year. Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy programs receive $1.8 billion, 1.6 percent above ’11. These are all far short of the president’s requests but still not horrible The DOE’s Office of Science gets a one percent increase at $4.9 billion, and Basic Energy Sciences within the office receives $1.7 billion, a small increase.

The National Institutes of Health budget will make some medical school deans breathe a modest sigh of relief. They received $30.7 billion in appropriations, $300 million or 1 percent above the amount in 2011, resulting in the same level of grants funded as last year. Included for NIH is $576 million specifically for the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), allowing NCATS to begin its work. Simultaneously, as proposed by NIH, the National Center for Research Resources is de-authorized and many of its programs moved to NCATS.

Important efforts to keep track of Mother Earth took a few hits. The Department of the Interior’s U.S. Geological Survey receives $1.07 billion, $14 million below the 2011 enacted level. The 40-year old remote land sensing project called Landsat is stuck in the mud, though, as the USGS didn’t receive the increase requested to begin the next phase, which would have provided images to advance research on agriculture, geology, forestry, regional planning, education, mapping, and global change. Along these lines, Science and Technology in the Environmental Protection Administration was funded at $795 million, $18 million below 2011. The cut came mostly from air and climate change research. And a renewal of an old provision requires the President to submit a report on all Federal climate change spending within 120 days. One may read here a worrisome attitude between the lines.

In keeping with skepticism about the Department of Education’s Race to the Top, that program is cut by more than 20 percent from $698 million in 2011 down to $550 million in 2013. Congress would not provide funding for the president’s ARPA-ED and 100,000 STEM teachers proposals.

Reflecting changing national security priorities and perhaps some continuing reservations about the organization of the Department of Homeland Security, the Science and Technology Directorate receives only $688 million, well below $828 million enacted in 2011 and a $1.2 billion 2012 Budget request. S&T fared better in the Defense Department, with $12.4 billion and so well above the 2012 Budget. But the Pentagon’s cutting edge science agency, DARPA, never a big-budget outfit, gets reduced by $160 million down to $2.8 billion, affecting portfolios across the board.

Though these are only some of the numbers, they give a sense of the continuing problem of public investment in long-term science and technology, at the same time that over two trillion dollars in venture capital is waiting in the wings. The defense authorization bill awaiting the president’s signature includes a smart and long overdue gesture toward leveraging small businesses that happen to have venture capital: National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) programs may give up to 25 percent of their SBIR funds to majority venture capital-owned businesses. Other federal agencies are authorized to award up to 15 percent. The willingness to allow a combine of venture capital with small business grants should help some companies over the “valley of death” that too often impedes a good idea from getting into the marketplace.

When money is tight more creativity is needed. As many have observed, and as the founders wished, immigration policies that encourage skilled and energetic young people to become Americans built the country. Today’s odious currents of xenophobia and nativism are nothing new to America, but neither is the determination to overcome them. Whether our generation rises to the challenge of putting this piece of a new American century into place is an open question.

Jonathan D. Moreno is the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. This article is cross-posted in Huffpo’s new science section.

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Investment in research and development is a significant driver of technological progress and economic growth, particularly in high-wage developed countries. The United States spends more than any other nation in the world on research and development, or R&D, but its relative position (measured by the share of such investment in national income) has been falling even as other countries increase their investments in research. In the United States, as in most other countries, business finances and carries out the majority of R&D activities.

Economic theory provides a strong justification for government support for R&D, including subsidies and incentives for business research. Without such support, companies are likely to underinvest in research (from the standpoint of the economy as a whole) because the results of R&D cannot be fully appropriated by the investing firm. Business accounts for a large and growing share of U.S. R&D spending, financing about two-thirds of the total in 2008, but business R&D as a share of U.S. gross domestic product has fallen behind the share in several other countries, including Japan and South Korea.

The U.S. government supports business R&D both through direct R&D funding, mostly dedicated to national-priority areas such as defense and health, and through tax incentives such as the research tax credit—the subject of this report. The United States was one of the first nations to provide tax incentives for business R&D, but many other countries have now introduced similar incentives, and many of their incentives are more generous. Tax incentives for business R&D have become an important tool used by countries to build their innovation capabilities and bolster their growth.

At the same time, business R&D investment is becoming more globalized. The large multinational companies headquartered in the United States, Europe, and Japan that account for more than 90 percent of business R&D worldwide are locating more of their R&D outside their home countries. Their location decisions are driven by many factors, including the growth of foreign markets, lower costs, the availability of foreign talent, and the tax and other incentives offered by foreign governments. Foreign investments in R&D by U.S. and other multinational companies are facilitating the development of R&D capabilities and the growth of high-technology industries in many emerging-market economies, particularly China.

Competition among nations to attract business R&D and to develop technology-intensive industries is growing. This challenges U.S. policymakers to strengthen policies that make the United States an attractive location for these activities. The most important of these tax incentives is the corporate research tax credit, formally known as the Research and Experimentation Tax Credit and also referred to by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as the Credit for Increasing Research Activities. The goal of this corporate R&D tax credit is to encourage R&D investment by domestic and foreign firms alike by rewarding incremental, qualified research in the United States.

Broad federal corporate tax reform is now under discussion in Washington, including the appropriate role of tax expenditures—special features of the tax code to encourage specific activities with incentives such as the corporate R&D tax credit. This tax credit in particular is ripe for examination because it is one of the largest corporate tax expenditures in the federal budget, amounting to between $5 billion and $10 billion every year. The credit has, in fact, lapsed as of January 1, 2012, but Congress can reinstate it retroactively as it has done nine times previously.

There have been many careful empirical studies of the efficacy of the corporate R&D tax credit. Most studies find that the credit is effective in the sense that each dollar of foregone tax revenue causes businesses to invest at least an additional dollar in R&D. In other words, the credit stimulates at least as much R&D activity as a direct subsidy. And unlike a subsidy, which is usually linked to a particular kind of R&D related to a specific national goal, the credit allows businesses to select projects on the basis of the anticipated returns from incremental research dollars.

In this report, we examine the role of the credit in federal government support for R&D, evaluate the credit’s performance in realizing its objectives, and make recommendations to simplify, modify, and strengthen its effectiveness. Our recommendations fall into two broad categories:

• Measures to simplify the corporate R&D tax credit
  • Evaluate the revenue and incentive effects of replacing this credit, which isdesigned to apply only to incremental R&D spending by a company, with a similar credit that applies to the company’s full level of R&D spending.
  • Evaluate the revenue and incentive effects of replacing this credit with a “superdeduction” for R&D expenses or with an R&D jobs credit for the wages paid to R&D employees.
  • Replace the complex definition of qualified-research expenses eligible for this credit with the simpler definition of research expenses eligible for the research expense deduction.
  • If this credit is continued in its current form, then change the base period to a period in the more recent past, such as the most recent five years.
• Measures to strengthen the corporate R&D tax credit
  • Extend a simplified version of the tax credit for a period of 5 years to 10 years, during which the effectiveness of its new design can be assessed.
  • After this period, make the simplified tax credit permanent in order to increase its effectiveness.
  • Increase the tax credit by about 20 percent to keep it competitive with the tax incentives offered by other nations.
  • Provide small firms a larger and, in some cases, refundable version of the tax credit.
  • Drop the tax credit from the list of credits that are disallowed under the Alternative Minimum Tax.
  • Coordinate data gathering and assessments of the tax credit across agencies, making as much detail as possible available to independent researchers.

The report ends with a brief discussion of the implications of comprehensive corporate tax reform for the corporate R&D tax credit. Given the spillover benefits of R&D investment and the demonstrated effectiveness of the credit, we believe it should be preserved and strengthened as part of corporate tax reform. Otherwise, innovation and growth will languish in the United States as both U.S. and foreign companies locate more of their increasingly mobile R&D to countries offering more generous tax incentives.

Laura Tyson is the SK and Angela Chan Professor of Global Management at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Greg Linden is a research associate at the Institute for Business Innovation, a research unit at U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

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Universities are not only on the front lines of scientific and technological discovery but also at times hotbeds of entrepreneurship. In 2010 alone 651 new startup companies formed around the commercialization of university-licensed technology, and more than 3,600 such small businesses founded in previous years continue to operate.

But many promising patents remain stuck in university labs, inaccessible to the market. The result: Despite the roughly $50 billion of federal dollars spent annually on university research, too few new technologies make it through the pipeline from paper, to patent, to product.

There are many structural and cultural reasons why many universities do not maximize the potential of their small-business technology spinoffs. A key one is that the federal funding on which much university research depends does not encourage universities to prioritize the commercialization of the resulting technology. As a result, universities and the researchers they employ too often do not have strong incentives to take time away from research—and applying to basic research grants—to acquire and maintain the physical, human, and financial capital required to develop technological discoveries into new and useful products.

To be sure, programs such as federal Small Business Investment Research and Small Business Technology Research grants, which we discussed last month in this series, do exist to help small businesses conduct advanced technology research and development. But these programs are geared toward entrepreneurs who already have a business plan. They do little for the thousands of potentially useful patents, those with the potential to spawn new businesses and jobs quickly, that sit idle in university labs or technology transfer offices.

The solution: Help universities develop robust innovation programs where small technology spinoff companies can flourish

The government should ensure that federal research money also supports university-led initiatives to develop innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems that nurture tech spinoff companies. In a forthcoming paper from the Center for American Progress’s “Doing What Works” and Science Progress projects, Krisztina “Z” Holly, vice provost for innovation at the University of California, outlines a multipoint policy package to achieve this goal. Here we focus on a few of the most important components as they relate to small business success.

Next steps: Authorize changes to existing research funding

In the forthcoming paper, “Universities and Innovation Networks,” Holly proposes changing all federal research grants to ensure they cover the costs of patenting and licensing of the most promising technologies. Today many federal research grants don’t actually cover the diverse costs of extracting the economic value of funded research through commercialization.

In 2010 universities spent $323 million on legal fees associated with technology licensing alone. Certainly not all research leads to a patentable product, nor should it. But setting aside even 1 or 2 percent of existing research funding to cover not just research, but also the first steps toward commercialization, where appropriate, would make a big impact.

Next, the government should create an automatic glide path for technologies from paper, to patent, to product. Bringing university research and small-business grant makers together under a federal common application assistance program, like the one we suggested earlier in this series, would allow application procedures to be coordinated to help university researchers connect with the business expertise needed to develop patents into marketable products.

Finally, we should set aside some federal funding to incentivize universities to acquire and maintain the human, physical, and financial capital needed to support a culture of entrepreneurship. As we alluded to in a previous article in this series, setting aside even a few million dollars for technology commercialization proof-of-concept centers could go a long way. These funds would not be used to invest in specific research projects themselves, but rather to encourage universities to invest in the infrastructure of technology commercialization, such as technology transfer offices, entrepreneur-in-residence programs, and business incubators.

Evidence shows that supporting technology spinoff companies yields a great return on investment. As Holly pointed out in a 2010 Science Progress paper, a $10 million grant spread between the University of San Diego and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for proof-of-concept centers leveraged $160 million in outside investments. At the University of Southern California a $22 million gift from a private donor for similar activities has leveraged $148 million in private capital and supports 500 jobs.

And it’s not just big name academic institutions or top-50 schools located in populous states that are creating good business opportunities with their technology. The University of Utah in the past six years has spun out 125 companies, an average of one new small business for every $12 million in federal research funding, compared to the national average of one company per $100 million. All in all, small business spawned from research at the University of Utah accounts for more than 15,000 jobs, $755 million in annual personal income, and $76 million in annual tax revenue.

Smart federal investments can help many other research universities identify and capitalize on their competitive strengths. That also helps the small businesses these campuses spin out, as well as the surrounding communities that benefit from new job creation and economic activity.

Ed Paisley is Vice President for Editorial at the Center for American Progress. Sean Pool is Assistant Editor in charge of the Center’s Science Progress online magazine. Paisley and Pool are the project coordinators and lead editors for the forthcoming series of papers on U.S. science and economic competitiveness.

Questions like these are bound to arise more often as scientific discovery and technological development proceed inexorably. “I worry about how this develops,” said California Sen. Diane Feinstein in an interview with the Washington Post. “I’m worried because of what increased technology will make it capable of doing.”

“Each step in the laboratory toward understanding what makes a pathogen tick… ratchets up the dual-use dilemma.” The knowledge can be used for protection, or aggression.

Feinstein was not talking about H5N1 experiments—about mutations created in a biosafety laboratory that allow the deadly virus to infect through the air—but about what the newspaper headlined as “an emerging global apparatus for drone killing.” Remotely piloted drones are quietly but surely changing the face of warfare. Advances in electronics, physics, optics, materials, and other fields represent the “increased technology” Sen. Feinstein alludes to, technology that is certain to evolve because it goes to the heart of national security. Thus funding will be plentiful.

Defense agency funding has flowed generously into biology for two decades and massively since 9/11 and the anthrax attacks that followed. One of the predictable consequences of the federal largess has been the rise of a national biodefense industry with its hub in Arlington, Virginia. Bioprotection against bioterror attacks is offered as the justification for the buildup. Of course, bioprotection is also advanced by microbiologists, virologists, public health agencies, and drug and vaccine manufacturers as justification for experimenting with dangerous microbes.

The problem is that each step in the laboratory toward understanding what makes a pathogen tick and what modifications would make it more robust or enable it to go airborne or evade immunity (in the event evolution consents to such modifications outside the lab) ratchets up the dual-use dilemma.  The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) defines dual-use research as “biological research with legitimate scientific purpose, the results of which may be misused to pose a biologic threat to public health and/or national security.”  Because the human immune system is our most vital biodefense shield, technology that mimics its function and discloses its vulnerabilities also ratchets up the dual-use dilemma. As we know, technology rarely stays safely at home.

When asked by the New York Times about what information should be shared from his experiments with the H5N1 virus, Dutch scientist Ron Fouchier said three types: information about the fact that the virus can be genetically modified to go airborne between mammals; information necessary to direct surveillance in the field to these mutations; and information necessary to prepare ourselves “by evaluating vaccines and antivirals.”

As we explain in a chapter of our book The Stem Cell Dilemma, technologies for “rapid vaccine assessment” do exist thanks to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA banks on high risk, high reward projects. The agency that brought us the Internet, stealth technology, and global positioning system, or GPS, satellites routinely excludes from funding consideration “research that primarily results in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice.” In 2002, DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office launched an engineered tissue constructs program. The stated goal of the program was “to develop an interactive and functional human immune system” in the laboratory from “a common stem cell source” using tissue-engineering technologies. Such a system would be used to develop and test new vaccines rapidly in a human immune system replica rather than in mice and rats.

The program morphed into “Modular Immune In Vitro Constructs,” or MIMIC, in 2009, one of three prongs of a new DARPA program called “Blue Angel” designed to speed up the development of vaccines in response to the H1N1 pandemic. The MIMIC machine was developed by VaxDesign, Inc., an Orlando, Florida-based company established by former DARPA program manager William Warren. In 2006, Warren and members of his scientific team filed patent applications in the United States, Canada, and Europe for an “Automated artificial immune system” to test vaccines, drugs, and biologics. According to the application, “Functional equivalency to the human immune system is achieved by building engineered tissue constructs (ETCs) housed in a modular, immunobioreactor system.” The MIMIC, which is manufactured by robots, enables researchers to test the immune response to an experimental vaccine or drug developed to fight natural or engineered viruses or other pathogens. Each well in MIMIC’s 96-well plastic plate is said to represent a human immune system complete with B cells, T cells, and dendritic cells, the progeny of blood-forming stem cells.

The success of VaxDesign’s immune system-mimicking technology was borne out when the French multinational firm Sanofi Pasteur, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, purchased the company in 2010. VaxDesign and Sanofi scientists have filed patents claiming propriety interest in using additional immunological components, such as lymph node germinal centers, to enhance the performance of the machine. Step by step, the human immune system is being mechanized.

We write in our book: “What would it mean to capture the power of the human immune system, a system that took evolution millennia to create? The drive to disclose the secrets of the stem cell is relentless. Just as war accelerated the harnessing of the power of the atom, the prospects of bird flu as well as bioterror accelerate the application of molecular and stem cell biology for bioprotection.”

As if on cue, just before the second edition of our book was published last fall, DARPA announced a partnership with the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in launching its Microphysiological Systems program. The five-year $140 million program ($70 million from DARPA and $70 million from NIH) “will develop a platform that uses engineered human tissue to mimic human physiological systems” including the immune system. Human cell types found in different human physiological systems will be arranged in 3D constructs so they can “talk to each other” on a chip. Biochips equipped with embryonic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells, progenitor cells, or cells found in specific tissues and organs will be used to predict whether a drug or vaccine is safe and effective.  A candidate vaccine designed to be protective against Fouchier’s airborne H5N1 virus could be tested and, in theory, perfected.

Such knowledge platforms would be of incalculable value to medicine and public health. They would also be an incalculable hazard were they to fall into the wrong hands, hands capable of engineering lethal agents. With the expansion of biological knowledge around the world, these hands are proliferating, too. The complementarity of sword and shield, arrow and armor, bullet and vest, and bomb and shelter is represented today by engineered viruses and engineered immune systems. The click-click cadence of the dual-use ratchet will surely grow louder.

William Hoffman is co-author with Leo Furcht, MD of The Stem Cell Dilemma: The Scientific Breakthroughs, Ethical Concerns, Political Tensions, and Hope Surrounding Stem Cell Research (Arcade Publishing, 2011). Both are in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Minnesota.

However,  there was no intention to discontinue it, and indeed, with the start of this year my plan is to enliven it dramatically.

For nearly a decade now, the Intersection has been ground zero for coverage of the…intersection between science and politics. But recently, and more specifically due to my research for The Republican Brain, I’ve realized that there’s one aspect of this topic in particular that is little understood, but has the potential to revolutionize how we think—namely, the science of politics itself.

Writing the new book has convinced me that a dramatic merger between previously disparate fields—biology (broadly speaking) on the one hand, and political science on the other—is now underway. For a brief précis, see this 2008 essay by political scientists James Fowler and Darren Schreiber, entitled “Biology, Politics, and the Emerging Science of Human Nature.”

The Republican Brain is my attempt to apply this emerging science to the crucial question of why the political right today is in such denial about scientific, economic, and just plain factual reality. And I think that application does indeed yield a lot of insight—but it’s only the beginning.

Psychological research, brain studies, evolutionary psychology, and even genetics are increasingly being used to explain anything from voter turnout to the intensity of partisan attachment. We’re on the verge of a dramatic new way of thinking about politics—but it’s a terrifying one for many folks, because it suggests that despite what we all like to think, philosophy and ideas may not actually be the real drivers of our political behavior. Rather, much of politics is  emotional, and indeed, appears to be driven by automatic responses that we’re not even aware of.

Accordingly, the political mainstream likes to conveniently ignore this new body of knowledge. But here, we won’t. And to that end, I’m bringing in two contributors who can help to advance our thinking:

Andrea Kuszewski.  Andrea is a penetrating writer on psychology and the brain, and focuses on understanding autism, intelligence, and creativity. And, well, politics. She’s the author of the brilliant and much cited guest blog post at the former home of the Intersection, entitled “Your Brain on Politics: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Liberals and Conservatives.” And as I worked on the book, her input has been invaluable. With Andrea, I’ve also organized a session at ScienceOnline 2012 entitled “Covering Political Neuroscience in the Blogosphere,” which will be on January 19 at 4pm.

Everett Young. Everett is a recent political science Ph.D. from Stony Brook, whose thesis was entitled “Why We’re Liberal, Why We’re Conservative: A Cognitive Theory on the Origins of Ideological Thinking.” It is quite long, but I seriously suggest you give it a read, because I think you’ll be fascinated. (I certainly was.) More recently, Everett designed an experiment, at my suggestion, to test liberals and conservatives on their tendency to engage in motivated reasoning—and the results (which were surprising!) are reported in a co-authored penultimate chapter of The Republican Brain. Suffice it to say that thanks to Everett, I have a much deeper understanding of why conservatives today seem so misaligned with reality—and in fact, the core reason does not appear to be what I originally thought it was. But more on that as the book publication date nears.

I still remain the chief blogger here, of course. But both Andrea and Everett will be chiming in from time to time and sharing their expertise. In addition, Jon Winsor will also continue to write here—his expertise on the intellectual history of conservatism and is deep and in fact, he has a new item in the hopper about the Tea Party and anti-intellectualism. Stand by for that.

So to summarize: I’m reshaping this blog to carry forward its original expertise, but also to push into a critical area that, in my view, very few (if any) political commentators know how to handle. And that has to change.

Every couple of weeks–and sometimes more frequently than that–a new paper comes out in a peer-reviewed journal about the science of our politics. Sometimes these create temporary media blips–like the conservatives-amygdala/liberals-ACC paper, co-authored by the British actor Colin Firth (!), did. But there is very little sustained discussion of what it all means, in large part because few know how such a discussion ought to be carried out.

If anything, we instead see a vast number of fundamental misconceptions. Many people seem to think that studying political neuroscience leads to reductionism or determinism, for instance (it does not). And they still think of “genes” and “environment” as being in opposition with one another, failing to realize that they work together, in intricate ways that are barely beginning to be unraveled, to shape who we are.

Here, then, I hope we can help to shape a much more fruitful and informative discussion. One thing is certain: The science of politics is a topic that can no longer be ignored.

The FCC’s new net-neutrality rules outline three basic points of compliance for Internet Service Providers, or ISPs:

1. “Transparency. Fixed and mobile broadband providers must disclose the network management practices, performance characteristics, and terms and conditions of their broadband services.”
2. “No blocking. Fixed broadband providers may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices; mobile broadband providers may not block lawful websites, or block applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services.”
3. “No unreasonable discrimination. Fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic.”

If on the surface these rules seem rather benign, it’s because they are: Net-neutrality proponents were dismayed upon their initial announcement due to their leniency. The rules cover only the bare minimum of net neutrality and provide leeway for disclosed network-management practices, in addition to allowing mobile broadband exemptions in many cases. These exemptions led to at least one public-interest lawsuit complaining the rules are “too weak” on mobile broadband protections, showing clearly the rules are not an unrepentant love letter to net-neutrality activists.

And yet the rules have been blasted by the telecom industry since they were announced a year ago, with Verizon filing a suit claiming the FCC has no authority to implement the rules. The FCC’s opponents take a hyperbolic cue from Glenn Beck—who is on the record proclaiming net neutrality will “destroy the free market that created the Internet”—arguing net neutrality stifles the incentive to innovate by limiting the avenues for possible profits. This argument extends to suggest ISPs are entitled to profit from tiered access and content discrimination to offset the costs of creating and maintaining network infrastructure.

Unfortunately for opponents, their argument stands on a shaky foundation. The Internet did not spring from the free market, nor has private industry solely shouldered the financial obligations of creating and maintaining network infrastructure: The Internet we know today emerged from the ARPANET project, funded by the Department of Defense, and the federal government has heavily invested in broadband infrastructure through programs such as the Broadband Initiatives Program. This is not to say ISPs should have no right to maintain their networks and ensure they are working to the benefit of themselves and their consumers—indeed, this is very argument for the flexibility regarding network management practices clearly outlined in the regulations. But by citing innovation as the reason they should maintain de facto control of the Internet, opponents of net neutrality have unsheathed a double-edged sword.

Many net-neutrality proponents argue that an open Internet actually allows for the ultimate free market, spurring innovation across the economy, and not just for a few large companies. Allowing ISPs to control consumer access would fundamentally undermine the ability of consumers and content providers to compete in the information economy. Nicholas Economides, professor of economics at NYU Stern School of Business and executive director of the NET Institute, explains:

The Internet’s design allows businesses and consumers connecting to it (“at the edge” of the network) to innovate without obtaining approval from network operators. As a result, all innovation that is expected to yield benefits greater than its costs can occur; this is different than in a centrally controlled network where innovation at the edge would be restricted by the network operator based solely on whether the innovation brought profits to the network operator rather than whether the benefits of the innovation to the whole society exceeded its costs. This unleashes a huge potential for innovation.

This huge potential for innovation is available because of the unique openness enabled by net neutrality. An open Internet allows innovative entrepreneurs to be able to reach a vast audience of potential customers at minimal cost and compete in established niches. Driven purely by consumer interest and demand, small startups like eBay, Amazon, and Google were able to flourish based on the quality of their products. If ISPs are permitted to charge web-content providers for different tiers of service, small businesses, independent artists, and those who can’t afford preferential treatment will all be left behind—and with cable companies and telecommunications providers already teetering dangerously close to the edge of forming Internet access cartels, this is not a mere threat, but a very real possibility in the upcoming decades. The economic argument for net neutrality is simple: It is the level playing field the next Skype or Facebook needs in order to compete.

When Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) ended her remarks in support of the FCC rules in the Senate in November, she called on her colleagues to “make sure that it stands until we can even get stronger Internet freedom protection.” Perhaps that is where we should be: with the FCC’s moderate net-neutrality rules as a compromise while our society continues the dialogue. Net neutrality is both a technically and ideologically complex issue where both sides have clear agendas—although the contributions of telecom industries to members of Congress’ campaign coffers would seem to suggest their agenda is better funded.

Telecom industries are not inherently evil for working to maximize profits for their shareholders, nor are net-neutrality advocates Marxists for fighting to maintain a status quo that allows for consistent content access across providers—to define either side in such black and white terms does a disservice to both—but at the end of the day, modest net-neutrality rules provide protection for consumer choice and preserve the Internet as a space for economic growth through innovation.

 Andrea Peterson is an Assistant Editor at American Progress, Lauren Simenauer was an intern with Science Progress.

A good illustration of this truism is the unanimous recommendation by the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) that two leading journals not publish certain details about experiments with a version of the H5N1 virus, also known as “bird flu.”

The board’s concern is that the information about the experiments, which involved genetic mutations that made the virus much more virulent than the versions seen in nature, could lead to a bioterror weapon. But the reaction by the editors of the journals Nature and Science to the proposed de facto censorship of research results was, as described by a Washington Post report, “chilly.” An expert not on the NSABB was quoted as saying that that the recommendation was “ridiculous” because the risks the results present to humans are remote.

The board’s recommendation doesn’t go directly to the journal publishers, scientists or their institutions (one is the University of Wisconsin, the other in The Netherlands), but to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), which in turn can only urge the journals to withhold information. One sticking point that gives the U.S. government leverage is that the research in both institutions was apparently done using federal funds. But the U.S. surely doesn’t want to look like it’s trying to keep the data to itself.

Beyond these short-term calculations, the incident reveals a deep philosophical divide about biological research that could threaten national security and public health, one that I have observed for years as an unpaid advisor to several government agencies including the NSABB (but not having to do with the current studies): How risk-averse should the life sciences community be in an era of asymmetric warfare? In the twentieth century nation-states found biological weapons to be pretty useless and unmanageable, but non-state actors and rogue states might still find them of interest.

Unlike physicists, whose modern discipline grew up in an atmosphere of the deepest possible relevance to national security during World War II, the culture of life scientists is not so woven in with security concerns. An interesting exception was scientists’ self-imposed mid-1970s moratorium on recombinant DNA research, but that didn’t last very long and didn’t involve terrorism fears but rather environmental risks. Obviously that has changed somewhat since the October 2011 anthrax attacks, but international treaties have imposed successful prohibitions on novel development of biological weapons (BW) since 1970. The most extensive effort to develop innovative BW was the secret and illegal Soviet program that continued right up to the end of the cold war. Further complicating the picture is the fact that quite a bit of funding for biology has resulted from post-9/11 worries, particularly in the form of secured laboratories for research on potentially dangerous pathogens.

Still, the default position of biologists is usually that more publicity is protective rather than threatening, that in the long run secrecy works against security rather than for it. Published results, it is generally thought, will help the scientific community and responsible authorities prepare for threats that might be posed by new knowledge well in advance of any actual attempts to use them.

Aiming at a compromise, before accepting the NSABB recommendations the two journals have asked for detailed plans from government that would enable “responsible scientists” to have access to the experiments’ details. How such a program would operate, especially in the hotbed of shared information created by the Internet, is not at all clear. What is clear is that the biological science community is very far from adopting anything like a “prudential principle” that would put the burden of proof on those who say there is no risk to a new source of knowledge.

Jonathan D. Moreno is the Editor-In-Chief of Science Progress. This article is cross-posted at the Huffington Post.

Part 1 in this series introduced a database of global warming skeptics and the number of peer-reviewed papers each has published. Part 2 examined the “takeaways” from these papers.

To generate these lists we identified some 120 global warming skeptics, searched the Web of Science for their peer-reviewed papers, then read the abstracts and sometimes the entire paper to flag those that denied or attempted to cast substantial doubt on human-caused global warming. (This study differs from the one by Oreskes (2004) who did not count papers that “cast substantial doubt.”)

We have now sorted the papers by argument and by year. The list sorted by argument has links to the rebuttals, allowing these conclusions:

• The principal claim of each of these arguments has been thoroughly rebutted in the scientific literature, as summarized on Skeptical Science here.
• Some of the arguments that rank highly by popularity are conspicuous by their absence among the skeptic papers ranked by Skeptical Science. None argues that (1) climate’s changed before, (4) there is no consensus, (8) animals and plants can adapt, (9) it hasn’t warmed since 1998, (10) ice age predicted in the 70s, (11) Antarctica is gaining ice, or (12) CO2 lags temperature. Global warming skeptics continue to make these arguments at every opportunity, but demonstrably it is not possible to back up any of them with evidence that will pass peer-review. Until there is such evidence, there is no reason anyone should pay attention to these unsupported and misleading claims.

To reiterate the principal conclusions of this series:

• 70% of the global warming skeptics identified, including some of the most outspoken, have no scientific publications that deny or cast substantial doubt on global warming.
• None of the papers provides the “killer argument,” the one devastating fact that would falsify human-caused global warming.
• Each skeptic argument has been debunked in other peer-reviewed papers.
• The skeptics have no plausible theory to explain the observed global warming.
• Even though the evidence for human-caused global warming and the scientific consensus have grown stronger, no skeptic who wrote in the first half of the 1990s has recanted. To be a climate skeptic is to remain a skeptic.

The answer to the question of this series is resounding no: there is no case against human-caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature.

Dr. James Powell is a scientist, author, former president of Reed College, and was appointed by two different presidents to the National Science Board.

Bloggingheads Chris Mooney Jonathan Moreno

SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY
NASA releases long awaited Scientific Integrity Framework
NASA’s new guidelines implement the principles outlined in President Obama’s two Memoranda instructing agencies to develop unified scientific integrity guidelines. Science Progress’s commentary of the rest of the process is here.

SMALL BUSINESS INNOVATION
Critical Small Business Technology and Research Grant Programs Reauthorized
Today’s National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, which funds the military and other key technology programs across the government contained language long-sought after by innovation advocates to reauthorize and extend the Small Business Innovation and Research and Small Business Technology Transfer gran programs, both aimed at helping start up companies create jobs and commercialize new and innovative technology. See our analysis of this and a number of other recent moves to accelerate entrepreneurship and innovation here.

BIOETHICS
14 Senators Protest HHS’s Plan B Decision
Thirteen Democrats and one independent in the U.S. Senate are questioning last week’s announcement by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius that she would not allow over-the-counter sales of Plan B, the emergency contraceptive, to girls under 17.

CLEAN ENERGY INNOVATION
Cost of Solar in India to Match Conventional Power this Decade
With the price of solar plummeting globally, India has announced that it will move up its target date to achieve solar grid parity by 5 years, from 2022 to 2017.

NEUROETHICS
Courtroom Neuroscience Not Ready for Prime Time
A new report on neuroscience and the law presented today by the U.K. Royal Society suggests that cutting edge neuroscience, such as using a brain scanner to determine whether a witness is lying, or a genetic analysis to determine whether a murder suspect is predisposed to commit violent crimes, is not yet ready to withstand public scrutiny of UK courts.

PHYSICS
Scientists Detect Preliminary Traces of the Higgs Boson
At the CERN particle accelerator 100 meters beneath the Franco-Swiss border, scientists are starting to narrow the window of possible masses for the long-sought Higgs Boson, the particle responsible for the existence of mass.

ELECTRONICS INNOVATION
New Path to Flex and Stretch Electronics
Researchers at Berkeley National Lab and funded by the Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Science Foundation are developing new techniques for fabrication of low-cost flexible and stretchable electronics in the future.

JUST FOR FUN
Never Wash Your Clothes Again, with Science
Chemical engineers in China say they’ve developed a cotton fabric that cleans itself — all it needs is a little sunlight.

The problem: Federal government assistance for innovative startup companies too often misses the mark

High-growth startup companies are one of the most important drivers of job creation in the economy today. They are also vital to tackling some of our most pressing long-term societal challenges such as improving our health care, education, and energy systems. It’s clearly in our national and economic interest to help entrepreneurs and innovators succeed.

Unfortunately, many existing small-business loan and assistance programs are not optimized to help the innovative startup firms reach their job-creation potential. The reason: Fledgling startup companies—those with great a idea but without a clear path from proof-of-concept to commercialization—face unique financing challenges that the federal government’s small-business policies are not tailored to solve.

Fully unlocking the power of America’s innovators to create jobs will require Congress to act to support high-potential startup companies at their earliest stages of growth.

The solution: Revamp small-business financing programs to get companies with high growth potential through the crucial proof-of-concept phase

Here’s a solution: Revamp small-business financial assistance programs to better serve the needs of innovative, high-growth potential startup firms.

The Obama administration has already taken some encouraging steps toward this end. In October 2011, the president issued a presidential memorandum asking agency heads and federal lab directors to review current technology transfer priorities and develop plans for improvement. And the just last week the administration announced the creation of a $1 billion Early Stage Innovation Fund. This fund will provide matching capital to private loans already made through the existing Small Business Investment Company program. To help with this, the Startup America Partnership, a public-private partnership between the White House and more than 50 corporate partners, pledged an additional $1 billion in donated services geared toward helping 100,000 entrepreneurs and innovators get businesses off the ground over the next three years.

The 50 companies involved will provide free software, consulting, and legal services to the innovative startups with the most job-creating potential. And not a dime of this $1 billion commitment comes from taxpayers.

But the federal government can do more to help bridge the gap between early-stage research and the marketplace. It needs policies and programs that:

• Increase mutually beneficial flows of knowledge and intellectual property between academia and industry
• Support university technology-based spinoff companies
• Encourage public-private partnerships that support translational research and proof-of-concept projects that demonstrate to private investors the viability of new ideas in the marketplace

Here are the avenues to achieve these ends: The Small Business Innovation Research, or SBIR, and Small Business Technology Transfer, or STTR, programs administered by the U.S. Small Business Administration allocate 2.5 percent of federal agency grants for small businesses. That’s a key resource for some small companies seeking to bring early-stage innovations to market. Yet many university innovations are created too early to spin out into a company, so this program does not fully address the need for earlier-stage proof-of-concept funding.

Although some universities have managed to secure donor and private-sector funding to cover some of the costs of proof-of-concept programs, even the most successful programs struggle to become sustainable on these sources alone. That’s why the federal government should encourage other funding sources such as industry and donor support to extend the impact of the federal funding. Given the importance of transitioning between early-stage research and spinout startup companies, funding proof-of-concept projects is an appropriate role for the federal government to play.

Next steps: Reauthorize SBIR and STTR programs and set aside money to fund proof-of-concept centers

The chairs of the Republican-controlled House Small Business Committee and House Science, Space, and Technology Committee announced on Monday they had reached a deal with congressional democrats to reauthorize the SBIR and STTR programs through 2017. While the deal contains progress on many important fronts—including increasing program funding levels and maximum award amounts, increasing eligibility for companies with more diverse investment profiles, and setting new standards and oversight—it could go further to support the journey of innovative technologies from lab bench to assembly line.

One important way to do this would be to enhance the program by setting aside a portion of funding for proof-of-concept centers. Krisztina “Z” Holly, the vice provost for innovation at the University of Southern California and executive director for the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation, first proposed this idea in a 2009 policy paper called “Innovation Model Program for Accelerating the Commercialization of Technology.”

In a forthcoming paper by Holly from the Center’s Doing What Works project and online magazine Science Progress, she elaborates on this idea, noting that “the need is now acute. If past experience can be a guide, even a modest investment of $80 million could potentially stimulate $1 billion in private-sector investment in ideas that would otherwise be too early and risky for investors to currently bet on.”

That’s an effective, efficient way to bring federal money to bear in helping the private sector create more innovative small businesses that contribute so much to job creation in our country.

Ed Paisley is Vice President for Editorial at the Center for American Progress. Sean Pool is Assistant Editor in charge of the Center’s Science Progress online magazine. Paisley and Pool are the project coordinators and lead editors for the forthcoming series of papers on U.S. science and economic competitiveness.

Issue 3: “Infrastructure Build out vs. Market Penetration”

Consumer choice: or “why am I not charging my electric car right now?”

There are a host of reasons for the rate of EVs flowing into the market, but here we will look at two: cost and convenience.

What goes into the cost of EVs? First, battery prices play the biggest role in the overall cost of electric vehicles, and those are dictated partly by the markets for rare earth and necessary technology. While the technology keeps getting better and cheaper, most of the rare earth metals that goes into making them is imported. This means that (barring a significant market disruption) this portion of battery prices are likely to stay relatively constant.

Second, subsidies have classically played a huge part in the price of EVs, making prices dependent on the policy signals that industry and consumers get from Washington in the near term. Third, gas prices influence the competitiveness and desirability of EVs as compared to other vehicles.

Convenience is another huge barrier. The consumer wants to know they can readily and easily use the product. If the hassle is too great (i.e. the charging infrastructure is not in place) they won’t bother. In fact, there are plenty of people who will pay more for a product to avoid any extra work.

The question of infrastructure vs. markets will be gauged by the cost and convenience to consumers. A lower total cost of the car combined with incentives and rising gas prices will encourage sales. Likewise, if consumers can just plug the car in at home or pull into the charging station on the way to work they may be willing to pay more.

So what’s the problem?

One side argues that it would be irresponsible to pour significant investment in infrastructure for a product that may not gain market velocity. On the other hand, some have pointed to the lack of infrastructure preventing EVs to penetrate the marketplace. Of course, it’s both. These forces need to work in tandem.

However, the scale does tip to the infrastructure issue when we consider that even in a very low market penetration scenario, our grid system may not be able to handle a massive increase in load.

Currently, the reliability of our grid is dictated by the tension between generation capacity, storage, and demand. Energy demand functions in peaks and troughs, with the peaks during midday and the troughs (generally) in the evening. EV charging, if done during peak hours, would add strain onto an already overloaded system and decrease reliability.

For example, if you pull into your garage after work and start charging your EV, this would correspond to neighborhood load peaks (as everyone arrives home and turns on the lights etc.) which would wear our transformer systems and pass along increased cost through the rate base to the community. Since reducing peak demand through demand response is already an issue, it may serve utilities well to update existing infrastructure in a way which can accommodate and encourage increased EV use.

Wait, if EVs are an additional burden, why encourage them?

The exciting part of EVs is the potential for bidirectional flow on the grid. Simply, the ability for EVs to act as storage units for offloading excess energy from the grid and sell their unused energy back onto the grid at needed times. Rather than being part of the problem, EV could be a revolutionary part of the solution. The trick is a combination of competitive rate structures, real time pricing, and enabling technology.

Competitive rate structures would function as a demand response mechanism by incentivizing use at off-peak hours and, by providing better rates at times when the grid is under less duress, utilities could encourage consumers to charge at different times. Also rate structures could provide consumers with good reason to sell energy back at peak hours and take some weight off generators. Real time pricing would enforce rate structures with pay-as-you-play energy purchases; tracking when you use and sell energy, and giving you the corresponding rate.

Enabling technology to do vehicle to grid operations needs to become commonplace and changes to batteries and transmission would have to be made. Additionally, mechanisms would need to be in place to ensure that when you agree to have your car float some energy back to the grid, utilities can access your EV. This requires automation across the system, which will be required of the Smart Grid moving forward with or without EV.

The endgame

While studies vary as to the potential for EVs in the market, infrastructure changes must go full steam ahead. Hopefully, EVs will empower consumers and increase their energy independence. But in the medium-term it is much more likely — as a report published by MIT’s Energy Initiative concludes — that their impact will be highly localized and community specific. Because utilities, too, are community specific, there are likely to be some that need to take certain parts (rate structure, technology) more seriously. Other components like real time pricing are important not just for EVs, but also for efficiency and renewables — so this is a piece that could form the fastest.

Adam James a special assistant for energy policy at the Center for American Progress, in a Climate Progress cross-post.

See also:

Part 1: Data Access Versus Security

Part 2: Interoperability Standards “Doing it Fast” Versus “Doing it Right”

INNOVATION & ENTREPRENEURSHIP
White House Launches New $1 Billion Fund to Spur Entrepreneurship
The federal government launched a $1 billion Early Stage Innovation Fund. It will provide matching capital to Small Business Investment Companies targeting early stage firms seeking funding from institutional investors.

INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Bipartisan pair of Senators Introduce “Start Up Act” To Accelerate Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Citing data from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, U.S. Senators Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Mark Warner (D-VA) this morning introduced bipartisan legislation aimed at jumpstarting the economy through the creation and growth of new businesses.

INNOVATION & ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Why the Crowdfunding Bill is Good for Start-ups
New legislation that could free up start-ups to fundraise online is gaining steam. Here’s how it could disrupt traditional capital formation.

BIOETHICS
Bioethicist: Plan B ruling trumps good science with bad policy
Art Caplan, Ph.D., argues that the HHS move to override the FDA and forbid the sale of Plan B to minors over the counter is based in bad science.

INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE
Raising $100 Billion for Climate Fund in Dispute
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has urged negotiators in Durban to raise $100 billion for an international climate change fund, but the U.S. has said it thinks environmental initiatives should come from private investments.

GENETICS
Clone a mammoth? Not so fast
Japanese scientists have hinted that they could be cloning a Wooly Mammoth in the next five years. But an analysis by Alan Boyle explains why that is unlikely.

BIOETHICS
NIH Accused of Dishonesty Over Chimp Research Plans
In August 2010, after public outcry, the NIH announced it would wait to review the analysis from an independent panel before sending over 100 retired chimpanzees back into traumatic medical research. However, animal advocacy groups have accused the NIH of returning the chimps to research before the publication of the review.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
What America’s piracy act means for business and innovation
America’s proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), if passed, has massive ramifications for creativity and innovation. Here is a nifty info graphic that gives a good overview.

PERSONALIZED MEDICINE
Personalized Medicine Conference to Convene in London in January 2012
The conference will bring together scientists, researchers, investors, public health policy professionals, and the pharmaceutical industry to discuss barriers and opportunities in the increasing adoption of personalized medicine.

INNOVATION AND THE ECONOMY
Despite Fiscal Crisis, EU Remains Committed to Supporting Science and Technology
According to State of the Innovation Union, a comprehensive progress report on the EU’s “Innovation Union,” the old world is on track to implement most of its commitments to innovation, science and technology, despite the looming debt crisis. Innovation the center piece of the EU’s Europe 2020 growth strategy.

SPACE PROGRAM
NASA scientists confirm Mars’s watery past
Discovery by Mars rover Opportunity “tells a slam-dunk story that water flowed through underground fractures in the rock.”

Science Progress Editor-In-Chief Jonathan D. Moreno, in a Huffington Post cross-post.

When the politics of biology rears its head all bets are off.

As I argue in my new book The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America, we are in the midst of a new biopolitics in which the power of science confounds the usual left-right spectrum of public policy, one that by no means favors one side or the other. Witness Governor Rick Perry’s awkward defense of his executive order on the HPV vaccine and the rush to defend his policy (if not the governor himself), by women’s health advocacy groups.

Now comes the firestorm over Plan B (the so-called “morning after pill”)

These days the left and the right approach politically desirable science policy in somewhat different ways. The right’s approach is to use evidence when it’s available (or if someone can be found who appears to qualify as an “expert”), but quite willing to default to traditional values and to be explicit in doing so. The left’s approach to a desired political outcome when science is involved is to deny that there is a conflict with evidence and engage in a search for facts to support the wanted theory.

The decision to deny over-the-counter-access to Plan B is particularly awkward for an administration that early on pledged to “base our public policies on the soundest science,” and to be “open and honest with the American people about the science behind our decisions.”

Whatever its political wisdom of foolishness, the administration’s Plan B decision qualifies as a theory in search of the facts. For example, in her statement overruling the Food and Drug Administration (a remarkable event in itself), DHHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stated that young girls might not understand the consequences of using Plan B. Yet evidence that reached precisely the opposite conclusion was instrumental in the FDA’s approval recommendation.

As to the sort of expert opinion so valued on the left, The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine all “denounced” the HHS’s decision.

Cynics will ask, why should science be different? As in business, finance, sports, entertainment and all fields of human endeavor there is always politics. In general that is a good thing, since the only alternative to politics as a way to settle our differences is violence.

Nonetheless, one feature of modernity is the intuitive sense that somehow science should be different. The value of evidence and public demonstration through experimentation is a hard-won Enlightenment principle that, seen through the 200,000-year lens of human history, occurred to us just moments ago. Considering the blood, sweat and tears that took us to this point, cynicism about science and politics is cheap and lazy.

In the short run there’s still a political element when policy decisions are being made, but in the long run the scientific method does make science unique. Our task is to defend the science even — and especially — from those who claim to be its friends.

Issue 2: The Fast standards vs. The Right standards

What are ‘interoperability standards’ and why do they matter?

In the last issue we discussed how the “smart” in Smart Grid are the revolutionary communications technologies that allow different parts of the grid to communicate with each other. Interoperability standards are the rules of the road that make this communication possible, and ensure that the technologies are able to work in synchronization.

As a consumer, you want the product you purchase to fit into the overall package of energy efficiency for your home. For example, if you purchase a smart thermometer, you would expect it to be able to signal temperature changes to your AC/heating system. You would also expect those changes to be reflected in your energy use as tracked by the meter. Unless the companies who make all those technologies conform to a standard, nothing can function effectively. Interoperability is like the universal remote for operating all these technologies.

Getting the technical details right, particularly for issues like Phasor Measurement Systems for time synchronized energy prices, are going to be essential in moving forward in every aspect of the grid. Without corresponding technologies, new pricing structures can’t take root. And while regulatory bodies are doing their best to establish a framework for demand response compensation (the mechanisms which help curtail consumer demand at peak hours), there have to be fundamental changes in our system to make the right things happen.

How does the standardization process work?

The National Institute for Standards and Technology, or NIST, was mandated under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 to set the national standards for interoperability. There are two primary bodies within NIST designated with tackling this task: the Smart Grid Advisory Committee (composed of 15 voices from industry) and the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (public forum composed of all stakeholders). There is a collaborative wiki page on each standard to engage the community on concerns and paths forward, and the participatory process isolates a consensus on standards (via working groups) before bringing them to FERC for approval.

So what’s the problem?

The democratic nature of the standardization process, engaging a wide variety of stakeholders to make sure interests are all represented, is certainly the only way to ensure that all the bases are covered and no one feels left behind. However, that process is (by virtue of how many parties are involved) very slow and cumbersome.

Countries like China, however, do not have the same problem with engaging stakeholders because of their governance structure. What does that have to do with us? If China (or any other country) moves ahead on syncing their domestic technology with their grid build out, American companies may lose out on the ability to set standards and IP rights for budding technologies – instead having to settle for “innovating in a box,” and penetrating the market at a disadvantage. In this way, the dominant standard becomes the de facto standard because it is driving the market.

So domestically, Smart Grid proponents are grappling with a dilemma of “doing it fast” and rolling out standards that can guide developing technologies and enable us to compete, and “doing it right” by making standards which reflect industry needs and provide flexibility for new innovations while protecting stakeholder interests. This tension is not easily resolved, but some have proposed changes to the existing system. This includes adopting families of standards as opposed to individual standards, or gauging the necessity of standards in various parts of the grid and then adopting them at a more “macro level combined with policies to encourage people to meet them.

Whatever the solution may be, the standard setting process will need to be streamlined considerably to keep pace with our competitors. Failing to rise to this challenge means our producers might miss out on a chance to compete in the global marketplace, and our consumers will have to rely heavily on foreign products.

Adam James, special assistant for energy policy at American Progress in a Climate Progress cross-post.

Previous Post: Hottest Issues in Smart Grid, Part 1: Data Access Versus Security

Next up: “Electric Vehicles: Market Penetration Versus Infrastructure Build out”

So how is the country doing in biotech investment? A fascinating and richly detailed new industry report from Jones Lang Lasalle allows us to reach two salient conclusions: first, the United States is holding its own as the global leader; and second, since the 2007 downturn, industry clusters in China, India, and Singapore have displaced traditional powers Ireland, Italy, Germany, and Spain in direct pharmaceutical investment.

This result confirms the narrative we hear in so many fields these days about the turn toward Asia, and well justifies the Obama administration’s reassertion of American interests as a Pacific power.

Digging deeper into the U.S. data, what is striking is the opportunities for development in so much of the country, which is currently dominated by a few regions at the top. According to the report’s ranking system, the top three regional biotech “clusters” are Boston, New York/New Jersey, and the Bay Area. But while it’s pretty clear that clusters in the Northeast and California dominate the biotech industry today, at the same time emerging clusters across the South and Midwest–Atlanta to Denver to Indianapolis to Houston–could have tremendous potential with the right policies and investments. As the report notes:

Some clusters, like Chicago and Houston, have very strong intellectual capacities and research institutions, but struggle to translate innovation from bench to marketplace due to lacking fiscal support or programming. While others, like Florida, Minneapolis and Indianapolis, have strong industry representation but remain challenged by fragmented framework, most notably lackluster funding from NIH and VC sources.

So policy frameworks do make a difference in regional success or failure. The online science policy journal I edit for the Center for American Progress, Science Progress, has long advocated for the value of investing in regional economic clusters as way to accelerate innovation and create jobs. Political candidates should take note that emerging clusters abroad are taking advantage of government policies that make them more competitive in high technology, especially India, China, Singapore, and Brazil. So while the last few years have shown U.S. resilience, there’s no time for complacency. In my new book, The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America, I argue that biotechnology needs to become part of the American narrative of progress and innovation. Creating incentives and programs to help level the playing field for nascent innovation clusters across the country would make America more competitive in the face of the emerging clusters abroad.

And a candidate who addresses those regional potentials might just strike a responsive chord that translates into votes.

Science Progress Editor-In-Chief, Jonathan Moreno, in a Huffington Post cross-post.

While President Obama’s Grid 21 and Better Buildings Initiative prove this issue is being taken seriously, the wildfire spread of the discussion has outpaced a general understanding of what the Smart Grid is and what some of the key debates are. This series will highlight some of the big sticking points and the arguments that underlie them.

A Quick Definition of the Smart Grid

The phrase “Smart Grid’” can be misleading, since that implies we are working to a particular endpoint. What is actually happening is that we are progressively developing a smarter and smarter grid as new technology development and policy mechanisms spark changes within the system. For example, widespread smart meter roll out has been happening nationwide for some time. Incorporating renewable energy into the existing electricity generation structure has been steadily gaining momentum. The development of newer and better batteries has revolutionized storage capacity. That’s not all; the proliferation of Energy Star rated appliances shows efficiency is becoming a higher and higher priority among consumers.

Tying all those elements together in a coordinated way is what makes the Smart Grid truly “smart.”

Issue 1: Secure vs. Accessible Data

The “smart” component to the grid is the communication between its various parts. These communications will yield vast amounts of data about electricity users. Where utilities used to collect 1 data point about each consumer per year, they will soon be collecting over 6,500 per consumer, per year. All this information, paired with unclear ownership rules, creates a quandary for those in the Smart Grid field.

On one hand, this data can be mined to create inferences about your preferences, behaviors, and desires, which many Americans are uncomfortable having shipped out to the highest bidder. What appliances you use and when, what you watch on TV and search for on the Internet, when you are home and how often; all of these variables can be extracted from careful examination of electronic signatures.

On the other hand, this data unlocks massive potential for consumer empowerment. Real time information about energy use will make each user the master of their domain. Adjustable settings for your home can ensure that the AC and heating doesn’t run when you aren’t home, that your refrigerator gets power 24/7 but your TV does only when you use it, that you will allow your thermostat to ‘float’ an extra degree or two, for which you will receive monetary compensation for alleviating peak demand.

The tension begins with ownership. The meter which measures energy usage is technically the property of the utility, but the information that they are tracking is about you and your habits. Does the utility own the data because they own the meter? If so, can they sell it to third parties? Will they disclose it to consumers free of charge? If the individual owns it, is the utility permitted to look through it? How does the individual get the data off the meter?

There is a reasonable minimum threshold on the ownership question, determined since the utility needs a certain amount of information to do their job effectively. The whole purpose of metering is to track energy use to determine demand and rates. While strides in communications and technology will increasingly automate this system; that data still is central to the utility business model. So the ownership spectrum will run from “shared between individuals and utilities” to “solely utility owned,” since “solely individually” owned isn’t a credible option.

There is a common opinion that the closer you move to shared (but mostly individual) owned data, the harder it is to incentivize innovation based on creative uses of data (such as smart thermostats and water heaters). This is not entirely true. Perhaps if the data were public record, there would be a feeding frenzy of innovative start-ups that would rush to mine that information. But the popular backlash for exposing private information in that manner would also be severe. Similarly, only opening up the data to the highest bidder would restrict solutions and innovation to a select few companies.

A Possible Compromise?

There is a middle ground that would preserve consumer protection while enabling utilities to do their jobs effectively and ensure that the innovation that makes America great can take root. Data could belong to the consumer, but be viewed by the utility “blind” and in aggregate. This would make the specific energy usage of each home (the inferences you can make from the energy ‘signature’) the property of the homeowner, but the data over the scope of a utilities territory readable. This way, third parties could work with utilities for access to aggregate data to improve their top-level technologies, and with individuals to craft the specific functions of their technologies.

It is important to remember that this is not a new challenge; in fact, it is the same hurdle that was faced by users of Facebook and online banking. The reality has been that by using the service, you waive a degree of privacy, but you have an expectation that different kinds of information still have various levels of security. While your name, address, and favorite band might be up for grabs, your bank account routing number is not. It seems reasonable that this same sliding scale could apply to data: you understand that by having electricity running through your home that you waive a degree of privacy about your macro-level consumption trends. However, your specific habits should be at your discretion to divulge.

In order for a legal framework for data ownership to be successful, it must reflect the needs of stakeholders in the Smart Grid space. If a policy is too harmful to utility rate structures and business models, it will hamstring the rollout of better technologies. If it plays fast and loose with individual privacy rights, distrust towards the new and emerging systems will evolve. If it is too inhibitive towards third party innovators, America risks being left behind in the global marketplace. Striking the right balance requires recognizing the needs and rights of each of these entities, which the “blind aggregation model” successfully incorporates.

Next, in this series: “Standards and Interoperability: Doing it fast v. Doing it right”

Adam James is a special assistant for energy policy at the Center for American Progress. This cross-post comes from our partners at Climate Progress.

The National Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, identified six natural disaster events thought to be exacerbated by climate change. Those events include ozone air pollution, heat waves, the spread of infectious disease, river flooding, hurricanes, and wildfires. Tragically, extreme weather ravaged Durban itself just days before international delegates arrived. Torrential rains caused severe flooding that destroyed 700 homes and resulted in the deaths of 10 people. But beyond the immediate effects, all these disasters have wide-reaching consequences for national health, and a study published in Health Affairs magazine estimated that health costs incurred from the tragedies exceeded $14 billion from 2000 to 2009.

In the national debate on health care, it is imperative that the international community and our lawmakers at home not ignore the value of preventing the damage that climate change will cause to both the environment and human health.

The whole story

In a 2003 report, the World Health Organization, or WHO, posited that perhaps not all effects of climate change will be detrimental. Milder winters in temperate areas might mean a decrease in the death toll during the coldest months. Further, higher average temperatures in tropical areas could kill off mosquitos that carry deadly infectious diseases.

The WHO was careful to note that human vulnerability to climate change depends on population density, economic stability, food availability, income distribution, and various other mitigating factors. Thus, it is possible that not everyone will suffer uniformly. The WHO concluded, however, that on the whole, the ill effects of climate change will disproportionately affect lower-income regions and nations compared to post-industrial nations. The disadvantages to global health, the WHO concluded, will outweigh the few potential perks of climate change.

Direct impact

The immediate effects of climate change on human health are perhaps clearest. It is no secret that heat causes dehydration and that carbon emissions result in air pollution. The Centers for Disease Control, or CDC, noted that heat waves account for the highest proportion of weather-related deaths annually, with children and older adults most susceptible. The CDC estimated that heat-related deaths could climb from about 700 a year to between 3,000 and 5,000 by the year 2050, given expected levels of human-caused warming. In order to counteract the loss to human life, the CDC recommended air conditioning for poorly ventilated areas, though such utilities are hard to come by in the lower-income areas that need them most.

The Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, reported that an increase in particulate matter will exacerbate respiratory diseases. While some air pollutants may occur naturally, as in the case of volcanic ash and dust, there is reason to believe that a significant portion of particulate matter in the air is anthropogenic—that is, humans produce them by burning fossil fuels. NASA estimates that humans cause at least 10 percent of aerosols, a particularly hazardous type of air pollution that contributes to the greenhouse gas effect and the deterioration of human health. An increase in ground-level ozone is also associated with decreased lung function, as well as cancer.

The CDC elaborated on potential detriments to asthma and airway diseases; fine particles in the air are associated with heart attack and blood clots. Indirectly, early flower blooming increases pollen, which can cause allergic reaction. Higher temperatures also increase mold spores, further irritating respiratory diseases. Furthermore, more frequent droughts may lead to increase in airborne dust, and increasingly frequent wildfires caused by climate change may also contribute to particulate matter.

A January 2010 report from the EPA offered a conservative estimate that heat waves cost the public $5.1 billion a year in health costs. The EPA put the baseline cost for asthma and respiratory illness at $5 billion. Additionally, the EPA estimated that public health costs incurred by poor indoor air quality and communicable respiratory diseases could exceed $10 billion.

Natural disasters

With climate change comes extreme weather: more frequent and severe flooding, storms, and forest fires. The 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, found that the number of hurricanes had increased annually since 1970, writing, “There is observational evidence for an increase of intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic since about 1970, correlated with increases of tropical sea surface temperatures.”

The IPCC went on to predict an influx of hurricanes in the near future:

Based on a range of models, it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increases of tropical SSTs. There is less confidence in projections of a global decrease in numbers of tropical cyclones. The apparent increase in the proportion of very intense storms since 1970 in some regions is much larger than simulated by current models for that period.

The cost to human life from extreme weather is significant. Scientists and economists from the NRDC estimated that Florida hurricane season racked up $1.4 billion in health bills in 2004 alone. California wildfires cost $578 million in 2003, and flooding in North Dakota cost $20 million in 2009. Many of these figures do not take into account the added cost of damage to hospitals and other health care infrastructure, as well as the costly effects to health that pervade the population years later in the form of heart disease, cancer, and disorders of mental health.

Implications for disease control

As the globe heats up, the outlook for the containment of pathogens is becoming increasingly dismal. Rising average temperatures worldwide expand the range and seasonality of communicable diseases unique to warmer months. The WHO estimated that climate change was responsible for 2.4 percent of deaths from diarrhea and 6 percent of deaths from malaria in middle-income countries in the year 2000.

The Commission on Climate Change and Development, or CCCD, emphasized the importance of containing the rise of vector-borne diseases. Though the WHO does not predict that climate change will incite the mutation of new diseases, climate change could precipitate the resurgence of diseases that have plagued human history. Aside from malaria and diarrheal diseases, the CCCD warned of an influx of cholera, which is linked to low river flows in the dry season, and possibly due to pathogen infection of standing pools of water that result. Also of concern is an increase in rodent-borne diseases after flooding, and meningitis is linked to drought and heat, though the mechanism for transmission is still unclear.

Dengue fever and a spike in food-borne illnesses could also result from continued climate change, according to the same WHO study. A report from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, suggested that an increase in temperatures will result in more contamination of crops. The NIH also reported that drought increases the prevalence of insects and other pests that can hamper agricultural productivity.

Of particular concern is the seafood supply. The CDC warned that algal blooms are known to release harmful neurotoxins that cause death in humans; marine organisms can also pick up these neurotoxins. The most common neurotoxin that blue-green algae releases is anatoxin-a, which interrupts neurotransmitter activity at neuromuscular junctions and can cause muscle paralysis and even death from respiratory failure. Because cooking seafood does not necessarily kill harmful biotoxins, these harmful chemicals pose a unique threat to the food supply. Measures to prevent contamination of the food supply may not be consequential, however, as the CDC reports that it is also possible that marine neurotoxins will be aerosolized by the surf crashing onto the beach and dispersing into the wind.

Communicable diseases are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to health impacts of climate change, according to the CDC. With increases in temperatures comes an increase in the volatility of certain dangerous chemicals associated with cancer. Such hazardous chemicals like ground ozone, black carbon, diesel exhaust, and ammonia, are also known to be dispersed with heavy rainfall, which is associated with climate change. Further, the depletion of ozone means that more harmful UV radiation penetrates the atmosphere, increasing the occurrences of skin cancer.

The ripple effect

The direct consequences of climate change on public health are not relegated to the immediate effects of hotter averages and more extreme weather. The direct effects of extreme weather, like injury, property damage, and loss of life also create ripple effects that cause additional damage to society and public health. For example, the CDC warns that diminished access to food and water caused by drought could cause migration from rural to urban areas or vice versa. Migration itself is linked to health problems that impose a steep price tag for public funds. The International Organization for Migration reported that, among other health concerns, migration increases physical trauma and spreads diseases.

Additionally, climate-enhanced food insecurity has its own ramifications for human development. Starvation leads to malnutrition in mothers and, consequently, stunted development in fetuses and children.

Coastal flooding and pollution could impair food manufacturing and health care facilities. Reactions will vary regionally, but the consequences of population displacement, as well as the erosion of food manufacturing industries, may not be apparent for several decades.

Climate change is no longer just a looming threat in the abstract. Climate change is a hidden culprit with real impacts on health care costs, and, more gravely, human lives. Finding solutions to the climate crisis is no longer just an environmental issue. The effects of climate change permeate through all facets of human life, and preparing for the impact on health care should be a priority.

Lauren Simenauer is an intern with Science Progress and a senior at the University of Virginia.

FINANCING INNOVATION
Crowdfunding entrepreneurship bill gains in Congress
U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte is co-sponsoring a bill that would let entrepreneurs raise up to $1 million a year by selling ownership stakes in their companies through what are known as crowdfunding websites. A similar version of the bill breezed through the U.S. House early last month. This proposal is one of the initiative in the President’s jobs package.

SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY
Bad scientist sent to jail
How a collapsing scientific hypothesis linking a mouse virus to chronic fatigue syndrome ended in an arrest.

NUCLEAR SAFETY
Environmental Group Says Limerick Nuclear Plant Needs New Safety Study
The Natural Resources Defense Council is trying to block the re-licensing of a nuclear plant in Limerick, Pennsylvania, amid concerns that its disaster-mitigation precautions are out of date.

SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY
Complaint Tests Rule Protecting Science From Politics
On Wednesday, a group of scientists filed a complaint with the Department of the Interior alleging that the government tried to compel researchers to exclude data about the environmental impacts of livestock in order to protect the interests of ranchers.

CLIMATE NEGOTIATIONS
Durban: The early skirmishes
The first week of the Durban climate talks have focused on delegates surveying the political landscape. One major point of contention is expected to be the Kyoto protocol, which several superpowers seem inclined to drop for a less binding agreement.

STEM EDUCATION
Experts Say Social Sciences Are ‘Left Behind’
In the push to institutionalize K-12 science education, school districts and curricula are de-emphasizing behavioral science and economics that could help students connect abstract content to their everyday lives.

CLIMATE SCIENCE
Thawing permafrost vents gases to worsen warming
In the next century, scientists predict that hundreds of billions of metric tons of gas will be released into the atmosphere as permafrost in the arctic melts. This process will undoubtedly accelerate the effects of global warming.

MEDICAL RESEARCH
In AIDS fight, a question of funding, not science
Scientists now believe they have the capacity to decimate HIV, but government funding cuts are thwarting progress.

INNOVATION CLUSTERS
New report maps global life science clusters
The global consulting firm Jones Lang Lesalle has released a meaty report focusing on several metrics determining innovation cluster success in the life science industry. The report provides data about existing and emergent life science innovation clusters around the globe.

STEM EDUCATION
Ill. among six states to set new K-12 science standards
Six states are working with the National Research Council and the AAAS to develop more comprehensive requirements for knowledge that students should have to graduate high school.

INTERNET PRIVACY
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg: ‘We’ve Made A Bunch Of Mistakes’
The FTC censured Facebook last week for bad privacy practices. The social network company must pay $16,000 and will be subject to biennial privacy audits for the next 20 years.

This week’s news compiled by Lauren Simenauer.

Dr. Jason Karlawish, author of 'Open Wound'

But in the name of charity and goodness, Beaumont ignores the orders and saves the young man’s life. What neither the doctor nor his patient understands—yet—is that even as Beaumont’s care of St. Martin continues for decades, the motives and merits of his attention are far from clear. In fact, for what he does to his patient, Beaumont will eventually stand trial and be judged.

Rooted deeply in historic fact, Dr. Jason Karlawish’s marvelous new book traces the peculiar career of 19th century clinician-turned-scientist Dr. William Beaumont, who became a scientific one-hit-wonder by exploiting the body of the man who’s life he saved.

Open Wound artfully fictionalizes the complex, lifelong relationship between Beaumont and his illiterate French Canadian patient. The young trapper’s injury never completely heals, leaving a hole into his stomach that the curious doctor uses as a window to understand the mysteries of digestion. Eager to rise up from his humble origins and self-conscious that his medical training occurred as an apprentice to a rural physician rather than at an elite university, Beaumont seizes the opportunity to experiment upon his patient’s stomach in order to write a book that he hopes will establish his legitimacy and secure his prosperity.

As Abigail Zuger writes in her review of the book in Tuesday’s New York Times:

Over the next few decades, the two danced around each other in an extraordinary display of mutual dependence, hostility, loyalty, guilt, gratitude and greed. Who owed whom, and how much? Where did the moral right lie? With the doctor, who had saved St. Martin’s life, supported him financially for years, and aimed to benefit all of humanity with his investigations? Or with St. Martin, a hopeless alcoholic but still a free man with the right to walk away, as he repeatedly did?

Ultimately, in perhaps the only such document to link doctor and patient until today’s informed consents for research subjects, a legal contract was drawn up between them, the patient promising to “serve, abide and continue,” and the doctor promising reasonable compensation. It worked, for a little while.

Dr. Karlawish, a physician and medical ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, is well attuned to the overtones of his compelling story, from the graphic examples of the principles of autonomy and beneficence to the clear parallels between the rough American frontier and the primitive state of medical research. His Beaumont is a true tragic hero, an unpedigreed nobody determined to succeed on his own merits, yet undermined by exactly that determination.

Beaumont, always growing hungrier for more wealth and more prestige, personifies the best and worst aspects of American ambition and power.

The excerpt below takes place at the moment when Dr. Beaumont, a dedicated clinician, first recognizes the value of his patient’s wound to medical science and also to his career. On this day, Doctor Beaumont would begin his transformation from doctor to researcher, to employer, to entrepreneur, while Alexis would suffer his parallel transformation from patient, to subject, to employee, to object.

Excerpt from Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont

Part I – The Taker Made Mad

By early October, three months after the shooting, summer was fast vanishing. Days were shorter but the light brighter, as if the sun were burning more intensely in a futile gesture to stall the onset of winter. The agents from the American Fur Company, and the American soldiers and their officers prepared Mackinac Island for the interminable months of frozen isolation. The brigades of voyageurs and Indians dismantled their tent and lean-to village along the lake shore and embarked in their bateaux and canoes and paddled north to Canada or south to the Michigan Territory to take shelter in the pine and hardwood forests of the mainland. The white children returned to school.

Alexis’ days had settled into a routine which began when Beaumont stepped into the infirmary of the ramshackle hospital carrying his basket of medical supplies.

“Good morning Alexis.”

He smiled as he watched Alexis yawn and rub the mount of his palms against his eyes.

“Good evening mon Doctor Beaumont.” Alexis laughed. “Good morning. Morning.” His accented English ran hard on the d’s, swallowed the r’s.

Still sore from his wound, Alexis lay flat upon his back, gathered his nightshirt under his armpits, then folded over the thin blanket to reveal his abdomen swaddled with the bandages Beaumont had applied the previous evening. Beaumont took care to wrap the bandages tightly around Alexis’ torso from his breasts to his navel. To keep them in place, he passed a final wrapping like a Sam Browne belt, across his right shoulder. The bandages themselves revealed the progress of the wound’s healing. It had been at least four weeks since the outer layer showed the ruddy stain of discharge.

As usual, Alexis gazed straight up at the ceiling, waiting patiently, blinking. “Madame Beaumont, she is well?”

“She’s well. Quite well.”

Alexis nodded and smiled. “Little Sarah?”

“Very well, thank you. They wish you well too. Now please Alexis, if you could just lie still as usual.”

Beside Alexis’ cot Beaumont placed the simple brown wicker basket that held bandage rolls, his surgeon’s pocket kit and a bottle of diluted muriatic acid he had gathered from the supply room. He sat on the edge of the bed, just inches from Alexis. The bed frame creaked as it always did.

Beaumont took his surgeon’s kit from the basket, unrolled it on the mattress, took up his jack knife and set to work methodically cutting away the dressings. Someone whistled as he passed close to Alexis’ window, and Beaumont hummed a few bars of that tune. He found himself tapping his foot to the timing of the blacksmith’s hammer.

He folded away the sliced bandages to reveal a wad of carefully packed bandages the size of a tea saucer. The skin around the wound was still inflamed but no longer grossly purple. It blanched under the gentle press of Beaumont’s thumb. He had not bled Alexis in over eight weeks.

He began to peel away the lint packing and with that packing now removed, the pink ruggated puckering of the inner lining of stomach bloomed through the wound like some large rose. Alexis coughed and the bloom expanded, glistening and covered with a limpid fluid, uniformly spreading over its whole surface and trickling to the edges of the wound. Beaumont gazed upon this display for some moments, then he applied three fingers of gentle pressure to the center of the bloom and it slowly depressed into the blackness of the space that was Alexis’ stomach. An amazing sight each time he witnessed it.

Beaumont folded a clean lint bandage into a square, soaked this with muriatic acid and began to wipe the edges of the wound and the track where once Alexis had a fifth rib. In time, Beaumont thought, all in time, this wound will close and I will have a case worthy of the Medical Recorder.

Alexis coughed again. A bit of meat, chewed, but unmistakably meat, popped out from the aperture and onto the bandages and a slow trickle of gastric juice flowed out from the lower margin of the wound.

Beaumont picked up the meat and inspected it. He had instructed Alexis to keep an empty stomach to prevent just such soiling of the wound during morning dressing changes. Now he held in his hand the evidence that Alexis had stolen a meal some time in the early morning hours. He was disobedient to be sure, yet this clandestine meal also was another sign of his slow, but now certain recovery.

Alexis laughed and muttered in French. Beaumont had seen food in just this state before. There was nothing unique about this morning and this piece of meat.

As he held the partly digested bit of meat between his thumb and forefinger and gazed at the wound, two facts came together for him. He felt as he did that morning some ten years past when he first stepped into his assigned hospital tent at the camp in Plattsburgh. Or when taking calls as apprentice to Dr. Chandler. It was the same sense in his guts and rush of blood to his head as when he was a boy jumping from the barn’s rafters into the hay pile.

For weeks he had observed that the hole into Alexis’ stomach gave off no odor or other evidence of putrefaction. Perhaps the cavity did not work as he had been taught, like a barrel to churn and ferment food, but in some other and, it seemed, more elegant manner. The action of the muriatic acid with which he painted the wound to cleanse it and stimulate healing was the same as the action of the stomach upon this piece of salt pork. The action was like a solvent upon the flesh, a solvent that affected a steady dissolution of the tissues. The stomach was perhaps not as he and so many of his colleagues had thought it to be some grinding bag or fermenting vat. It was some manner of chemistry, like an alchemist’s trick that made flesh disappear.

On this morning, an idea kindled not reason’s ordered plans, but desire laid to make the taker mad.

Alexis was his patient, of course, but he could be something else too. Beaumont could not conjure that proper word but whatever the word, on this morning he realized that this man, this wound, was his window to discovery.

Wondrous discoveries. Discoveries of the secrets of digestion and diet that would rival the work of the famous Parisian physicians. There wasn’t another proper doctor within hundreds of miles, a situation not only conducive to a steady and good income but now there was also the discovery of this treasure. It was his and it was simply waiting to be explored and written into a book. It was like the vast western lands that President Jefferson purchased and Captains Lewis and Clark charted and from which the American Fur Company extracted profits. The unknown was waiting to be known, and once known, rewards would follow. Promotion to Surgeon secured, election to medical societies. He would erase the humility of his medical training as an apprentice and the condescension of the medical college graduates. His reputation would be solid and preserved for posthumous time.

He shook his head like a drinker who’d swallowed more than his fill.

I am a doctor, not a scientist, he thought. This was work he had no sense of how to do, where to begin or how to finish before the wound fully healed and sealed its secrets. How would he convince Deborah of the worth of this sacrifice of time and their family’s money? And if it was ever done, whatever it really was, he had no idea how to sell it. The idea was swallowed bait, a folly even.

“God-damn,” he muttered.

Alexis grew concerned.

“What is it? Is there problem? A type of what you call, what you call, pains. Oui?” His smile had vanished.

Beaumont tried to calm his patient. He began to quickly wrap the bandages into a wad.

“Nothing’s wrong, Alexis. Nothing at all. You’re doing well. Truly, yes, all is well.” He reached out and embraced Alexis. He smiled as best he could. “You’re the very model of recovery.”

Alexis wrinkled his brow, then relaxed and returned his doctor’s smile like a moon reflecting the light of its sun but ignorant of the nature of fire that kindled that illuminating light. He spoke in unusually clear English.

“No, my Doctor Beaumont, I am your miracle.”

To learn more, visit www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=3849699 and www.jasonkarlawish.com.

In the late 18th century, Benjamin Franklin was something of an icon in Europe. The French hung portraits of Franklin on their walls much in the same way college students pay tribute to John Belushi or Jim Morrison in their dorms. Everywhere Franklin went, his feisty personality preceded him, and it was this reputation in Europe that played a key role in securing the foreign aid the revolutionaries needed to triumph over the British. Many consider the celebrated polymath to be the first “American” in numerous regards—in entrepreneurialism, in political discourse, and, of course, in partying. As it turns out, Franklin was also the first American environmentalist, and his inventions influenced the scientific community for decades.

Energy Efficiency

In the age of clean energy technologies racing to meet grid parity, we often forget that there was a push for cleaner energy in the time of the founders. Ben Franklin himself designed a four-sided street lamp to replace the commonly used globe lamps. A build-up of soot darkened the globe lamps, which required near-daily cleaning, and let off an excess of smoke. The Franklin lamp increased air circulation within the lamps, allowing for better fuel efficiency and less cleaning.

Similarly, Franklin sought to design a more fuel-efficient stove that consumed less wood and produced more heat. Incidentally, though Franklin managed to sell multiple sets, the stove did not work very well. It was later improved upon, however, and has come to be known as the “Franklin Stove.”

When Franklin was holed up in the suburbs of France due to a debilitating case of gout, his friends encouraged him to find ways to keep busy. And so, Franklin occupied himself in the only way he knew how: by devising ingenious and occasionally self-deprecating plots. In a 1784 letter to the Journal de Paris, Franklin parodied his penchant for sleeping late, observing, after a loud noise awoke him at dawn, “Your readers, who with me have never seen any signs of sunshine before noon… will be as much astonished as I was, when they hear of [the sun] rising so early.”

As a more serious corollary, Franklin observed that, should he or any of his French compatriots rise with the sun, they would not have to burn candles for extra hours in the evening—a chore that Franklin, as a self-proclaimed cheapskate, found decidedly inefficient. It was from this observation and the desire to save a few bucks that Franklin outlined a rough idea for daylight saving time as a means for farmers to maximize production during light hours and cut down on fuel costs of illuminating the dark. The idea would not be adopted until after 1895, when George Vernon Hudson proposed the modern conception of daylight saving time.

It is no surprise that the first man to demonstrate that lightning was electrical would take a keen interest in electricity and energy. And take an interest, he did. Amid his busy schedule of promoting the American agenda, learning French in parlors, and drinking to excess, Franklin was the first to propose the theory of conservation of charge. Franklin also supported the controversial wave-theory of light. Among other contributions to physics, Franklin’s work with electricity precipitated his ascent to the first presidency of the American Philosophical Society, at the time a herald of scientific inquiry, which would later be headed by another famous scientist-statesman, Thomas Jefferson.

Environmentalism

Despite his humble birth, Ben Franklin rose to prominence via his publication of Poor Richard’s Almanack, a collection of aphorisms and amateur guide to meteorology. This interest in meteorology extended itself into other environmental realms, including those of forestry, oceanography, and clean air.

Franklin built his own paper mill in order to furnish himself with a cheaper, more efficient supply of newsprint that would save trees. In doing so, he undercut his competitors. In the 1740s, he encouraged his friends to do the same, and eventually found himself at the center of a wholesale paper mill industry that was also environmentally friendly.

It was in his study of postal routes that Franklin took an interest in oceans and currents. When sailors took Franklin’s advice on the Gulf Stream, they managed to cut their commute by two weeks. Franklin’s studies into oceans lent itself to a concern for clean water. In 1739, Franklin petitioned the Philadelphia government to prohibit local tanneries from dumping waste into the tributary of the Delaware River. Similarly, in the 1760s, Franklin led a commission to monitor water pollution and waste disposal in Pennsylvania. Franklin also urged people to decrease their chimney use so as not to pollute the air.

Public health

Franklin also concerned himself with promoting public health. His contemporaries assumed that wearing damp clothing caused the common cold; however, Franklin observed that sailors wore wet clothes frequently and remained healthy. Before germs were deemed the culprit of compromising the immune system, Franklin suggested that the common cold was transmitted from people living in close quarters—a trend that happened to coincide with winter.

In keeping with his commitment to public health, Franklin launched a campaign to open a public hospital. Franklin diverted funds to the nation’s first hospital, also known as the Pennsylvania Hospital, in order to care for the poor and the mentally ill—two demographics long marginalized by colonial society.

In his will, Ben Franklin stipulated the construction of a water pipeline to provide fresh, clean water to the city of Philadelphia. This construction led to the Philadelphia Water Commission, which institutionalized Franklin’s belief that the public right to health should supersede private interests.

Given his commitment to environmental issues and sustainable business practices, it may be prudent to say that Franklin would have opposed some of the House cuts that stand to strip the public of food safety and farming innovation grants. He certainly would have taken no pleasure in the “Drill, Baby, Drill” chants, and not just because he would have found them lacking in wit.

Today’s political discourse supposes that the Founding Fathers were suspicious of the popular majority and favored limited government. Yet while our nation’s founders may not have intended the government itself to be run by direct democracy, they certainly believed that government had an obligation to protect the welfare of all its citizens. For Ben Franklin, a truly self-made man, that welfare included clean air, clean water, and general hygiene and sanitation. In retrospect, Ben Franklin did a couple things right. Maybe we should follow his lead in the arena of civic duty to protect our earth and our health.

Lauren Simenauer is finishing her bachelor’s degrees in biology and psychology at the University of Virginia.

Daniel Engber has authored an excellent, three-part expose at Slate that answers these and other questions about the animal research industry.

Part One, “The Mouse Trap,” looks at the realities and dangers of our dependence on cheap, couch-potato mice for medical research.

Part Two, “The Trouble With Black-6,” examines the peculiarities of the world’s largest research mouse supplier’s best-selling mouse, an inbred, alcoholic critter called Black-6.

Part Three, “The Anti-Mouse,”  looks at recent research using a hairless African rodent called the Naked Mole Rat. What makes this rodent worth study? Researchers have found that it seems to be completely immune to cancer, no matter how many carcinogens it is exposed to.

Additionally, Slate put together this excellent slide show, where you can meet the 10 most common lab rodents. An excerpt from part one follows.

The Mouse Trap

The dangers of using one lab animal to study every disease

The government’s top researcher on tuberculosis—still one of the world’s most deadly infections—seems to be running a midsized wildlife park out of his Maryland home. In a modest house on a tree-lined street in Germantown, Clif Barry keeps two kinds of turtles, three veiled chameleons, two Jackson’s chameleons, six species of frogs, half a dozen fish tanks (filled with cichlids, goldfish, and piranhas, kept separately), two dogs (named Jacques and Gillian), and an Australian tree python. “I’m an animal person,” he tells me. “My house would require a zookeeper’s license if Montgomery County knew what I had.”

Each step leads to the next: No drug can be tested in man until it’s been shown to work in mice, and no drug is tested in mice until it’s been shown to have a reasonable effect in the dish. “The bad part of that,” says Barry, “is that no part of it is predictive:” A new compound that succeeds in the dish might flunk out in the mouse, and something that can cure tuberculosis in a mouse could wash out in people…

The fact that nothing gets to humans today without first passing the mouse test, says Barry, “has cost us a new generation of medicines.” … Read the rest of this article at Slate.

Narrative vs Evidence-Based Medicine—And, Not Or

The week before the US Preventative Services Task Force, or USPSTF, released its recommendations against routine prostate screening for healthy men, celebrity patients including Joe Torre and Rudy Giuliani had already lined up to challenge the population-based recommendations. To promote their position that screening for prostate-specific antigen is lifesaving,  these individuals relied on a powerful tool: their own personal narratives. However, the experts whose goal is to  disseminate and translate population-based evidence will, in the name of science, shun individual stories. This one-sided use of narrative has played out repeatedly, from the USPSTF recommendations on screening mammography to the US Food and Drug Administration labeling hearings on bevacizumab for advanced breast cancer. Each time, those who espouse only evidence—without narratives about real people—struggle to control the debate. Typically, they lose.

Patients and families have a right to tell their stories. But what about scientists? Facts and figures are essential, but insufficient, to translate the data and promote the acceptance of evidence-based practices and policies. Narratives— in the forms of storytelling, testimonials, and entertainment— have been shown to improve individual health behaviors in multiple settings. Moreover, evidence from social psychology research suggests that narratives, when compared with reporting statistical evidence alone, can have uniquely persuasive effects in overcoming preconceived beliefs and cognitive biases. Therefore, although narrative is often maligned as anecdote and thus scrubbed from the toolbox of guideline developers, epidemiologists, and regulatory scientists, these experts should consider narrative to develop and translate evidence-based policies. This is especially important because the federal government has made substantial investments to improve the dissemination and translation of evidence from comparative effectiveness research and patient-centered outcomes research.

Scientific reports are genuinely dispassionate, characterless, and ahistorical. But their translation and dissemination should not be. Stories are an essential part of how individuals understand and use evidence. A narrative—defined as a cohesive story with a beginning, middle, and end—includes information about scene, characters, and conflict and raises questions and provides resolution. From this framework, stories that link individuals and their experiences to evidence are tools to translate (not drive) science without introducing anecdotal bias.

Scientists can use narrative in at least 2 ways. First is in the form of counternarratives, designed to neutralize stories that promote disproven theories. Take the largely negated theories of a causal link between childhood vaccines and autism. As recounted by Offit in his book on this topic, a celebrity actor claimed that she does not need real science to know that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine triggered her son’s autism: “[My son] is my science,” she stated on television to thunderous audience applause. Such narratives, challenging scientists who come to the table (or television studio) armed only with data, often succeed in the court of public opinion and weaken efforts to promote evidence-based health decisions.

When scientists encounter stories that promote unscientific approaches to health and health care, they should deploy an evidence-based counternarrative. The story of a mother in San Diego whose infant, too young for the MMR vaccine, became sick after exposure to an unvaccinated child with measles would add persuasive weight in a debate with the actor mentioned above. These counternarratives may also be useful when the evidence addresses individual risks as well as effectiveness. The FDA’s decision to remove breast cancer as an approved indication for bevacizumab was based not only on the absence of evidence to support its effectiveness in a general population but also on the relatively high risks of serious individual adverse effects, including death. In such cases, real and personal narratives can be told that embody, with characters and action, the evidence of a risky intervention. The public needs to hear the stories of patients, and their families, who encountered a drug that offered hope but was ultimately ineffective and even dangerous.

Another role for scientific narrative is found within the process of evidence discovery and translation…

Visit The Journal of the American Medical Association to read the rest of this article for free.

What do George Washington and critics of fracking have in common?  More than you might think.

George Washington, commander of the Revolutionary Army and the first president of the United States, performed some early experiments in microbiology, when he and a team of collaborators, including Thomas Paine, paddled out into the Millstone River to set it aflame.

Washington had long admired Paine’s writing, and had selections of The American Crisis (best known for its opening line “These are the times that try men’s souls”) read aloud to his troops for inspiration during the war. In an effort to secure a pension from Congress for his service to the growing nation, Paine went to see General Washington at Rocky Hill, New Jersey in the fall of 1783. It was near the close of the Revolutionary War and the United States and Britain had recently signed the Treaty of Paris, but the British had not yet left New York and the Continental Congress was meeting in Princeton. They had heard that there was a river in the area that could be set on fire, and Washington, Paine would later write, “had a mind to try the experiment.”

General Benjamin Lincoln of Boston made preparations for a systematic study of the problem to take place on November 5, 1783, in a quiet section of the river. The experiment, as it was planned, would involve disturbing the river bottom and attempting to ignite whatever was released with a flame held just above the surface of the water.

There was a spirited debate (perhaps fueled by spirits) on the likely outcome of the experiment, with Colonels David Humphreys and David Cobb, both aides to General Washington, opining that bituminous matter —a viscous, oily residue of petroleum distillation—would float to the surface and ignite. Paine, on the other hand, believed strongly that stirring the mud would release a gas that would then rise to the surface and ignite. “Each party held to his opinion,” wrote Paine, but the experiment would show which hypothesis, if either, was correct.

The next night, Washington, Paine, Lincoln, Cobb, and several soldiers were ferried out to a scow stationed near the mill dam. Each member of the “research team” had a job to do. The soldiers stirred the river bottom with poles while Washington and Paine, positioned at opposite ends of the scow, held lighted parchments a few inches above the surface of the water to ignite whatever substance emerged from the mud.  The results, as described by Paine, were clear:

When the mud at the bottom was disturbed by the poles, the air bubbles rose fast, and I saw the fire take from General Washington’s light and descend from thence to the surface of the water, in a similar manner as when a lighted candle is held so as to touch the smoke of a candle just blown out, the smoke will take fire, and the fire will descend and light up the candle. This was demonstrative evidence that what was called setting the river on fire was setting on fire the inflammable air that arose out of the mud.

Incidentally, the “inflammable air” was most likely methane (also known as “swamp gas”), and it is produced in landfills, cow and termite guts, and the muddy bottoms of ponds and streams by a group of microorganisms that derive chemical energy from the conversion of organic matter into methane. By some estimates, upwards of a billion tons of methane are released into the atmosphere annually. A contributor to global warming, methane’s high heat capacity is comparable to carbon dioxide, a more abundant greenhouse gas. Methane is also the major component of natural gas, a substance of renewed interest in the energy debate.

Of course, Washington, Lincoln, Cobb, and Humphreys didn’t know any of this, but it’s interesting to note that nearly two centuries before the discovery of the double-helix, citizen-farmer-statesmen-scientists were studying the natural world to understand the how and why. Much is known about Washington and Paine, but less about the others.

Cobb, for example, went to Harvard College and was a physician before the revolution.  Benjamin Lincoln, who would become the first secretary of war, was raised on a farm and only later in life pursued science and literature, while Humphreys was a writer-poet-entrepreneur who imported Merino sheep from Spain for their prized wool. They may not have known about atoms, molecules, or the scientific method as practiced in the 21st century but, like any good scientists, they designed an experiment to test a hypothesis, they made observations, and analyzed their results. They may have disagreed about what could happen, but they used science as a tool to learn what did happen.

We could ask how Washington, Lincoln, Paine, Cobb, and Humphreys would respond to contemporary questions on the energy versus environment continuum. Here’s one: Is “fracking” safe? Fracking, the release of natural gas from shale deposits through the high-pressure injection of water, sand, and a mixture of sometimes unknown chemicals is a little like what the Washington-Paine experiment accomplished when they released methane from the river bed. Proponents of fracking maintain that it is safe and offers a cleaner-than-coal energy source from a vast domestic supply. Critics argue that it poses a significant environmental risk of contaminating our water supply, while doing little to accelerate the development of truly sustainable energy sources.

Washington, Paine, and their farming contemporaries would surely appreciate the critical importance of the domestic water supply to themselves, their livestock, and their livelihoods, and they would have had the wherewithal to devise and understand experiments that assess the risks of fracking. So do we. While science provides many tools for developing new drugs, quantifying with increasing accuracy the details of the natural world, and for designing and evaluating new technologies to secure our energy future, we don’t have to work in a lab to help solve the problems of our day.

Like Washington and Paine in their time, we have the capacity to understand and can contribute to the debates on energy, the environment, and the host of issues arising from advances in genomics–by asking questions. What is the nature of the chemicals used in fracking? Are they released to the environment during or after fracking?  Are they toxic? Are they present in our water supply? These are not complicated questions, and it’s a good bet that Washington, Paine, and their contemporaries would ask them too.

Here are the top 10 reasons why the House Republicans’ war on the NCS is inherently indefensible and will be particularly damaging to small businesses, industry, the economy, and the American people.

1. Axing the NCS didn’t save any money. A House Appropriations Committee release last week implied that refusing to fund the proposed climate service saved $322 million. But as The Washington Post pointed out on November 20, Congress is still giving NOAA those funds for climate research and data delivery. In fact, NOAA didn’t ask for one additional penny of spending to create the service. Now, instead of enabling the agency to use taxpayer dollars more efficiently, those funds will be spread throughout multiple departments. Same investment, less return.

2. The NCS would increase government efficiency. As budget belt-tightening is all the rage on Capitol Hill these days, maximizing organizational efficiency should be a priority for the entire federal government and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. The proposed strategic reorganization would have allowed NOAA to advance science and deliver services more effectively with the funding it receives.

3. House Republicans based their opposition to the NCS on nothing more than climate denial. As Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) told NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco at a hearing in June, “Our hesitation is that the climate services could become little propaganda sources instead of a science source.” And Rep. Hall, chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, launched an investigation of NOAA in September, claiming the agency was running a “shadow climate service operation.” These allegations are absurd—again, according to the November 20 Post article, “For supposedly being in the dark, a lot of light shines on NOAA’s climate data: It’s been public for decades.” And the only thing the NCS would provide is data. Just like NOAA’s current climate operations, the NCS would not be regulatory or political—it would simply provide accurate information to governments, industry, and individuals to enable informed decision making.

4. Current services are already falling behind demand. Climate data help the public make informed decisions to prepare for and become more resilient to a changing world. The rapid increase in natural disasters and extreme weather has only heightened demand for these forecasts. As Lubchenco told Congress, the amount of climate data taken from the agency’s websites jumped 86 percent from 2009–2010. The rapidly increasing user demand has outpaced NOAA’s capacity to effectively deliver requested products and information and exceeded its ability to meet or be responsive to future needs.

5. Not having an NCS keeps benefits from accruing to large industries, small businesses, and farmers. According to NOAA, up to one-third of the U.S. gross domestic product—the largest measure of economic growth—depends on accurate weather and climate information. Insurance companies rely on climate data such as mean temperatures, precipitation, mean height above sea level, and storm frequency to calculate insurance premiums. The U.S. home-building industry estimates it provides savings of more than $300 million per year in construction costs. Farmers depend on NOAA’s climate data to determine what crops to plant and when, and to plan their irrigation needs.

6. The NCS would stimulate investment and economic growth. The NCS would allow NOAA to support the development of the private-sector climate industry that is emerging in much the same way that NOAA’s National Weather Service has spawned a roughly $1 billion weather industry. New markets could be created allowing businesses to take information and products generated by the government and convey them to the public, using a similar model to those that provide weather products.

7. The NCS would help businesses and communities become more prepared and resilient. Climate change will occur whether we track it or not. Without an NCS, the federal government states and cities will lack an authoritative, single source of information on the likelihood of extreme weather, sea level rise, and temperature shifts, to help address long-term vulnerabilities, plan infrastructure development, and establish adaptation plans.

8. The NCS would help firefighters predict extreme fire and drought seasons. NOAA’s climate forecasts, from seasonal precipitation outlooks to weekly on-the-ground U.S. Drought Monitor assessments, help firefighters in multiple states prepare for and respond to wildfire season. The record-breaking extreme fire season in Texas this year highlights the increased demand for NOAA’s climate data and the importance of delivering accurate and timely information.

9. The NCS would strengthen our national security. Testifying before Congress in June, U.S. Navy representative Robert Winkour emphasized efficient access to climate information is integral to the Navy’s mission to anticipate future threats to national security and the proposed service would help with “resource allocation and management” while also “facilitating data that we would need for national security.”

10. A few House GOP extremists derailed a proposal with widespread support. The concept of a consolidated NCS was first brought up back in the 1970s and gained traction in the Bush administration. The latest effort passed the U.S. Senate and has the support of Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, NOAA administrator under George W. Bush, as well as multiple scientific, industry, and nonprofit users of climate information, including the Alliance for Earth Observations, Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems, and the Reinsurance Association of America.

Kiley Kroh is the Associate Director for Ocean Communications and Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at American Progress.This is a crosspost with our partners at the American Progress Action Fund. 

Why do we have trouble defining what a “person” is? The answer may lie in human evolutionary antiquity.

Recent efforts by radical pro-life conservatives to establish a definition of personhood that specifically includes the embryo at the moment of conception have failed both in at least three ways. First, they have been rejected by voters in Colorado (twice) and Mississippi. Second, they have failed to win the hearts and minds of most cultural conservatives themselves, with even respected leaders like outgoing Mississippi Haley Barbour withholding an enthusiastic endorsement. Third, moderate voters worried about the implications for contraception and fertility treatments. The Mississippi initiative defined a person as “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof.”

The ambiguous language of “humans”, “human beings” and “persons” is too rarely noticed as a key factor in the ways that people talk past each other. Progressives might blanch at the intuitive implications of calling a human embryo a human being, but (as a leading conservative intellectual pointed out to me years ago), it is surely not a non-human being. Conversely, conservatives worry about the arbitrariness of “person” or “personhood” that could result in dehumanizing those with impaired cognition (like Terri Schiavo), or those who don’t measure up based on some racial or other social prejudice, or of course embryos. For them the term might also be too inclusive, as it might apply to our higher primate relatives or perhaps someday to super-intelligent machines with self-awareness.

Is the idea of personhood like pornography? Do we know it when we see it? As the neuroscientists Martha Farah and Andrea Heberlein put it in a 2007 paper, “personhood is a concept that everyone feels they understand but no one can satisfactorily define.”

Farah and Heberlein note that there is evidence our brains are “hard-wired” to distinguish between persons and non-persons. They cite a rare condition called prosopagnosia. People with this disorder cannot recognize a human face, yet some of them can still recognize an animal face. Brain imaging has even given evidence that there is a specific brain region, called the fusiform gyrus, for human face recognition. Other experiments show that the sight of human bodies themselves, even with the faces obscured, is associated with the activation of the fusiform gyrus and another brain region. Another brain area is active when actions are perceived to be intentional and still another when we just think about someone else’s mental state; in other words, when we think about someone else thinking.

So it seems evolution has set us up to see the world as divided between persons and non-persons. But here’s the problem: we evolved in a world in which we rarely encountered ambiguous cases. As Farah and Heberlein wrote in 2007, during 200,000 years of hunting and gathering, “Sonograms did not show us our fetuses; people did not live long enough to develop Alzheimer’s disease, and vegetative states were fatal. ” They continue:

It is interesting that infants and young children may be the one class of ambiguous cases that our ancestors did encounter on a regular basis, and for these cases it would be adaptive to attribute personhood even in the absence of intelligence and self-awareness. Protohumans who accurately judged their offspring to be lacking in the various traits associated with personhood and accordingly treated them as non-persons would not have many surviving descendents!

It seems that the neuroscientific and evolutionary evidence for a hard-wired but increasingly dysfunctional idea of personhood is compelling (and of course one can accept the neuroscience data without accepting the evolutionary explanation).

In The Body Politic I argue that this kind of disconcerting boundary-erasure is one of the reasons that the new biology, including neuroscience, has stimulated a new biopolitical era. The advocacy group Personhood USA is not giving up, with efforts like the failed Colorado and Mississippi ongoing in other states. And presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has reportedly advocated a federal law that would define a person as present at conception. Although Personhood USA blames Planned Parenthood and the radical left for its defeats, the fact is that the vast majority of voters in a culturally conservative Southern state rejected their campaign.

The possibility that people are giving the matter deeper thought than simply following a convenient ideological line is encouraging. The problem of personhood is even deeper than gaining agreement about the beginning of life. The challenge it presents is the beginning of wisdom, one for which evolution has, we may hope, also prepared us.

So what was I doing inside the Vatican walls? Attending a rather unusual conference sponsored by the Pontifical Academy for Culture.

The general theme of the conference was “can religion and science ever get along?” Specifically, can stem cell research proceed with the blessing of religion? The Roman Catholic Church thinks so. That is why the Vatican held this unprecedented three-day meeting of mainly Catholic theologians, a few ethicists, politicians, doctors, patients, and scientists from around the world that wrapped up this past Saturday with an audience with Pope Benedict XVI.

The Vatican will issue a statement in a week or two about the conference. But since I was given the chance to be one of the invited speakers, I can offer a peek into what they will likely say.

The leaders of the Roman Catholic Church have made it clear time and again that they oppose the destruction of embryos as a way to get stem cells. No news there. In fact, the scientific status of embryonic stem cell research never got a spot in the three-day event. The point of this meeting was partly to reemphasize Rome’s implacable moral opposition to any research involving embryo destruction.

The Vatican is throwing its ethical might and even its money into the debate about where to get stem cells and how best to study them.

That stance leaves the Roman Catholic hierarchy in a tough ethical spot. The church wants to find cures for a long list of awful diseases. But the prelates face the prospect of a possible cure coming from embryonic stem cell research now ongoing in many nations and then having to take a position, likely to be negative, on the morality of the desperately ill using such a cure on themselves or their children.

A major point of the meeting was to address these dilemmas and make it clear to the world that the Vatican is aware of the need to find cures. The meeting was designed to illustrate a new possible way forward via what the church believes is promising research using stem cells found in your own body—so-called adult stem cells. They, the Vatican thinks, hold the moral and scientific answer to the challenge of not having to deal with the possible positive results of embryonic stem cell research.

Efforts to transplant naturally occurring adult stem cells or to tweak them and put them back in more powerful states to fix what ails you is, in the view of the Vatican, worthy of enthusiastic support. So much so that at the meeting, high-ranking church leaders explicitly endorsed the efforts of a new startup company, Neostem.

Neostem is an international biopharmaceutical company with aggressively marketed adult stem cell operations in the United States, a network of adult stem cell therapeutic providers in China, as well as a 51 percent ownership interest in a Chinese generic pharmaceutical manufacturing company. The company has had issues in the past with its highly optimistic recruitment of people to bank their own bone marrow or cord blood at significant cost with uncertain benefit. The connections to China, given a history of problems with the integrity of clinical trials there, also are reasons for concern. Still the church chose Neostem as something of a partner.

The Roman Catholic Church, by holding this meeting sponsored at the highest levels of the church, is trying to steer an emerging area of science—stem cell medicine—down a particular path using a particular moral position as a rudder.

By throwing its ethical might and even its money into the debate about where to get stem cells, how best to study them, and praising the work of scientists and companies that follow the church’s position, the church is telling scientists and investors to focus on adult stem cell work anywhere in the world. That message is what the Vatican will offer when a statement about the conference is issued in the coming weeks.

Do men in red caps and clerical collars know best about how scientists should seek to find cures for terminal and disabling diseases? Not yet and not just because of the battle over the value of researching cells obtained from embryos.

At this meeting, the Vatican’s earnest desire to offer hope without compromising a core moral stance led to way too much enthusiasm about the prospects for current research in adult stem cell research. While some top-tier science was presented at the conference, including research involving the use of adult stem cells to repair damaged heart muscle (out in The Lancet this past Monday), there was too much time given to claims of cures that had little to support them. Time and again patient testimonials, studies with very small samples of subjects with no real long-term follow-up, and, to be blunt, some adult stem cell science that has nothing but the backing of a handful of very optimistic scientists looking to attract a grant or an investor were mixed in with the real thing in terms of legitimate, truly promising adult stem cell work.

The church is not yet very good at picking the wheat out of the biomedical chaff. In its enthusiasm to remain a leading voice on how to help the hundreds of millions of people worldwide suffering from chronic and miserable incurable diseases, the Vatican is dangerously susceptible to hyperbolic claims of cures involving nonembryonic stem cells. To give but one such example, one Italian bishop talked about an alliance he had created with a scientist to procure fetal stem cells in Italy obtained from the brains of spontaneously aborted fetuses to pursue treatments for neurological diseases. This is a horrendously bad idea since it is very hard to control the quality of such cells and the chance of their being abnormal or infected with nasty microbes or necrotic material is significant.

Adult stem cell research holds promise for many diseases. But the Vatican needs to realize that it has its own ethical pitfalls including a lack of adequate international regulatory oversight, companies rushing to hype their work to attract investment, the outsourcing of trials to places where protecting human subjects’ interests is iffy, an absence of standardized registries to evaluate short- and long-term claims of cure, and not a few outright shysters looking to make a quick buck off of the desperate. Pushing for adult stem cell research as the right course to take means pushing for it to be ethical in all regards, not just because embryo destruction is not involved.

It remains to be seen how this effort by the Vatican will play out. Many researchers, patient advocacy groups, and companies pursuing embryonic and cloned stem cell research in the United States, Britain, Singapore, China, Korea, and elsewhere will pay no attention to the church’s message about why adult stem cell work is the most promising avenue to pursue. Politicians in the United States and other nations with large groups of Catholic and evangelical Christian voters are likely to press harder for reorienting funding toward only adult stem cell work. Tommy Thompson, the former secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and likely senatorial candidate from Wisconsin, did exactly that in his talk at the meeting. Catholic medical schools and universities will be encouraged to move forward with adult stem cell research.

As remarkable as this conference was in explicitly seeking to use an ethical view to shape the science and industry of stem cell research, it left much more to be done. When it comes to adult stem cell research, the Vatican still has a ways to go in distinguishing good science from hype and overpromising by scientists. In pushing for adult stem cell work, the Vatican must insist that both high-quality science and a reliable ethical infrastructure to support it constitute the foundation for what the church wishes to promote as good.

Art Caplan is the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius

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