December 2008 Archives

Updated 12/21/2008: This week was dominated by President-elect Barack Obama's nominations of a number of individuals to cabinet-level positions relevant to science and technology. On Monday, Obama formally announced Steven Chu as his pick for Secretary of Energy. The Nobel laureate in physics and director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory shared the stage in Chicago with others who were named to key federal energy and environment posts, notably former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Carol Browner, who will fill a newly created White House post as "czarina" of energy and climate change. With a title of assistant to the president, Browner will report directly to Obama, and unlike Chu's, her appointment does not require Senate confirmation. Other appointments included Lisa Jackson, head of New Jersey's Environmental Protection Department, as EPA administrator; Nancy Sutley, deputy mayor for environment in Los Angeles, as chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality; and Heather Zichal, former legislative director to Senator John Kerry, to be deputy assistant to the president for energy and climate change under Browner. All will play major roles in developing policies to curb emissions of greenhouse gases and reducing US dependence on foreign oil.

On Thursday, word began to leak out that Obama would select Harvard physicist John Holdren to be his science adviser and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). On Friday, Harvard confirmed the selection, which Obama announced in his weekly radio address the following day.

Holdren directs the science, technology, and public policy program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs within Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. After beginning his career as a plasma physics researcher, Holdren moved into the science policy arena, where he has specialized in energy, climate change, and arms control issues. He was a member of the president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in the Clinton administration, and is also a past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Holdren's appointment brought cheers from scientific associations. H. Frederick Dylla, executive director of the American Institute of Physics and publisher of Physics Today , said Holdren's "solid research as a physicist speaks to his scientific credentials, but his extensive and highly-respected work on energy technology and policy, global environmental change, and nuclear arms control and nonproliferation attest to a remarkable man who believes that science and technology must play a crucial role in improving global economic and sociopolitical conditions in both developed and developing countries."

Alan Leshner, executive director of AAAS, commented, "John Holdren's expertise spans so many issues of great concern at this point in history--climate change, energy and energy technology, nuclear proliferation. He is widely respected in the United States and around the world as a science leader."

During the campaign, Obama pledged to restore the title of assistant to the president to the science adviser position. President Bush had lowered the rank of his science adviser, John Marburger, a notch in the White House bureaucratic structure, and many in the science policy community considered the demotion to have restricted Marburger's access to the Oval Office, and consequently his influence, compared with that of previous science advisers. Marburger himself dismissed the title change as irrelevant. Holdren's nomination to head OSTP requires Senate confirmation, although the science adviser post does not. If confirmed, Holdren will continue the perfect record physics has had as the discipline of every presidential science adviser since World War II. Holdren also has a PhD in aeronautical engineering.

It remains to be seen how Holdren will divide the energy and environment advising responsibilities with Browner, who is trained as a lawyer.

David Kramer

Obama has clearly indicated that energy and the environment will form a major part of his first term by appointing Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu to the Department of Energy and Carol Browner, who led the Environmental Protection Agency under President Clinton, as a White House "czar" to try to balance the demands between the various stakeholders, industry, and the environmentalists. Now the final piece of the jigsaw, the role of science, will be put in place with the expected announcement on Saturday of John P. Holdren as science adviser.

"Holdren's experience, depth of knowledge, and intellectual rigor make him uniquely qualified to lead the development and implementation of policies to address these issues," says Fred Dylla, executive director of the American Institute of Physics, which publishes Physics Today magazine.

Last year, in a speech about energy and the environment at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Holdren said, "After 35 years of reflection on this predicament I have concluded that the environment is at the heart of the energy problem, that energy is at the heart of the environmental problem, and the intersection of the environment, the economy, and energy is the most vexing problem in the sustainable prosperity picture for developing and industrial countries alike."

When a wide-range of scientists were asked by the Obama campaign to recommend candidates for the position, Holdren's name was frequently mentioned to the transition team. In early September there were five candidates who were being considered by the campaign say sources, before being whittled down to two by mid-November. Science magazine said today that Holdren had flown to Chicago earlier this morning to meet with the president-elect, who will describe the appointment in his weekly video address on Saturday.

Andrew C. Revkin reports at the New York Times that his information is that Obama met with Holdren about 10 days ago for about an hour. Holdren, like all previous candidates to cabinet appointments, declined to discuss the situation with Revkin when contacted by telephone.

Holdren, a physicist, worked as a consultant on re-entry vehicles in the 1960s at Lockheed Martin before receiving a PhD in plasma physics at Stanford University in 1970. For three years he worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. During the 1960s, Holdren became interested in the boundaries between science and government policies regarding nuclear weapons and became involved in Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. Holdren's involvement with Pugwash helped him develop an interest in energy issues, which, after moving to the University of California, Berkeley in 1973, led him to co-found and co-lead a campus-wide interdisciplinary graduate degree program in energy and resources at the University of California, Berkeley. In the 1980s Holdren was extremely active on the Pugwash Council, the governing board of the organization, which is why he was invited to speak in Norway at the acceptance by Pugwash of the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1996 he moved to Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and eventually became the director of the Woods Hole Research Center. In recent years he has been president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and currently serves as its board chairman.

Holdren is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has authored some 300 articles and papers. He has co-authored and co-edited some 20 books and book-length reports, such as Energy (1971), Human Ecology(1973), Ecoscience (1977), Energy in Transition (1980), Earth and the Human Future (1986), Strategic Defences and the Future of the Arms Race (1987), Building Global Security Through Cooperation (1990), Conversion of Military R&D (1998), and Ending the Energy Stalemate (2004).

Says Dylla, "His solid research as a physicist speaks to his scientific credentials, but his extensive and highly-respected work on energy technology and policy, global environmental change, and nuclear arms control and nonproliferation attest to a remarkable man who believes that science and technology must play a crucial role in improving global economic and sociopolitical conditions in both developed and developing countries."

Paul Guinnessy

FYI: The AIP Bulletin of Science Policy News: At 5:00 p.m. yesterday President-Elect Barack Obama announced that he will nominate Steven Chu, currently director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to be the next Secretary of Energy. In making this announcement, Obama said:

"Dr. Steven Chu is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who has been working at the cutting edge of our nation's effort to develop new and cleaner forms of energy. He blazed new trails as a scientist, teacher, and administrator, and has recently led the Berkeley National Laboratory in pursuit of new alternative and renewable energies. Steven is uniquely suited to be our next Secretary of Energy as we make this pursuit a guiding purpose of the Department of Energy, as well as a national mission. The scientists at our national labs will have a distinguished peer at the helm. His appointment should send a signal to all that my Administration will value science, we will make decisions based on the facts, and we understand that the facts demand bold action."

This announcement was praised by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM). A confirmation hearing for Chu will be held by this committee. Yesterday Bingaman released the following statement:

"This past October, I got to spend the better part of a day with Dr. Steven Chu at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, discussing energy research and technology frontiers. I was impressed with his knowledge and insights, and the leadership he has provided at the Laboratory. I support President-Elect Obama's choice of him, and I look forward to working with Dr. Chu as he takes on the responsibilities of Secretary of Energy at a pivotal time for our nation's energy policy."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) voiced his strong support of the nomination:

"Steven Chu is an extremely accomplished scientist and strong choice to lead America into a more energy-independent future. He has shown that he can work beyond the confines of a national lab to tackle real-world issues, and his expertise will greatly benefit our country.

"I have been impressed by his command and understanding of the serious energy and global warming problems we face, which is why I brought him to the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas this summer. I am confident that Dr. Chu will transform the Department of Energy into a smart and progressive weapon against our addiction to oil, making our economy vastly more energy efficient and bringing about a safer future.

"Dr. Chu also knows, like most Nevadans, that Yucca Mountain is not a viable solution for dumping and dealing with nuclear waste.

"I look forward to confirming Dr. Chu as quickly as possible."

The Task Force on the Future of American Innovation, to which the American Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society belong, commented as follows:

"The Task Force on the Future of American Innovation congratulates President-elect Obama on his choice of Dr. Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy. In addition to his extraordinary scientific achievements, Dr. Chu has demonstrated outstanding management and leadership skills as Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"Dr. Chu is a strong advocate of enhancing and coordinating the federal investment in the Office of Science and other critical research offices at DOE. This investment and the coordination of these offices are essential for meeting our energy security and environmental challenges.

"Moreover, as a member of the committee that wrote the National Academies' 'Rising Above the Gathering Storm,' Dr. Chu understands that DOE basic research, as well as basic research at such agencies as the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is essential to maintaining our innovation edge. With the nation working to recover from recession and chart a path to long-term economic growth, no investment is more important in the long run than basic research.

"President-elect Obama has been a strong advocate of this investment, as well, and we look forward to working with his administration and the new Congress to help restore our nation's economic strength and maintain our global economic leadership."

Chu appeared at a Task Force event in September to highlight the importance of basic research to solving the nation's energy needs. Selections from his presentation appeared in FYI #94.

The confirmation hearing for the current Secretary of Energy, Samuel Bodman, was held the day before President Bush's second inauguration in January 2005. This two-hour hearing went very smoothly, with most of the questions from the members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee centering on energy-related issues. In commenting on the Chu Nomination, Secretary Bodman said yesterday:

"The United States is faced with a series of challenges critical to its long-term energy and national security. Over the past four years, the U.S. Department of Energy has worked to ensure the availability of clean, diverse, and affordable energy supplies; to safeguard the nation's nuclear stockpile and support national security efforts; to restore and rehabilitate this country's Cold War legacy sites; and to maintain America's status as the world's leader in science and technology.

"To do all this and to do it safely is a task of considerable difficulty. So I am pleased to learn that President-elect Obama has selected Dr. Steven Chu to lead the Department. As the Director of the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Dr. Chu understands the significance of our energy and environmental challenges, and more importantly, understands the technical solutions necessary to address them. He is also aware of the vital role that DOE plays in matters of energy and national security and appreciates the necessity of the Department's voice on these matters. I fully expect the Department to continue as the leader of scientific funding and alternative energy technology development in the next Administration.

"I have worked with Dr. Chu for the past four years, and I hold him in the highest regard. I am confident he will provide the Department with the necessary leadership, vision, and expertise we need to continue to fulfill our mission."

Richard M. Jones

President-elect Obama met with former Vice-President Al Gore and Vice President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday, just before Gore flew off for the final few days of climate talks in Poznan, Poland. "All three of us are in agreement that the time for delay is over, the time for denial is over," said Obama. "This is a matter of urgency and national security...[but] it is not only a problem, it is also an opportunity," he added. "We have the opportunity now to create jobs all across this country in all 50 states to re-power America, to redesign how we use energy and think about how we are increasing efficiency to make our economy stronger, make us more safe, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and make us competitive for decades to come -- even as we save the planet."

The urgency came across clearly when the next day the Obama transition team all but announced Steven Chu's appointment as Department of Energy secretary through selective leaking to the press (see yesterday's posting). The news was widely praised by members of the physics community. Chu is reported in the Wall Street Journal as raising doubts on the viability of clean coal technology and carbon dioxide sequestration. On nuclear power, Chu said, "The waste and proliferation issues still haven't been completely solved." The Washington Post reports that "Chu's views on climate change would be among the most forceful ever held by a cabinet member."

Less coverage has been given to Lisa Jackson, a former environmental policy official in New Jersey, has been picked to head the Environmental Protection Agency and Carol Browner, who led the EPA under President Clinton, will fill a new White House "energy czar" role. Both officials have been years working as regulators and it is that experience that Obama hopes to tap into says David A. Fahrenthold of the Washington Post. In the New York Times John M. Broader wonders how much authority Browner will wield as s White House coordinator of energy and climate policy.

Jonathan Stein in Mother Jones magazine writes that a new GAO report states that Obama will inherit a federal government rife with waste, fraud, and mismanagement:

"The Department of Homeland Security and Department of Agriculture have no plan to work together in the event of a food-borne disease outbreak or terrorist attack. The Department of Defense's security clearance process takes so long it jeopardizes classified information. The EPA's chemical risk assessment program is improperly influenced by private industry," says the report.

The cost of manned spaceflight

Tensions between the transition team and NASA administrator Mike Griffin also appears to be rising says the Orlando Sentinel. Griffin is not cooperating and is obstructing efforts by the space transition team to obtain information about the Ares I rocket and Orion capsule that form the heart of the manned space program once the space shuttle retires. The Ares rocket, which ran into technical difficulties earlier this year, is behind schedule and over-budget. The transition team, headed by Lori Garver, had asked the agency to to quantify (1) how much money could be saved by canceling Ares I and (2) what it would cost to accelerate the program. The query about scrapping the program caused consternation.

"According to industry officials, Griffin started calling heads of companies working for NASA, demanding that they either tell the Obama team that they support Constellation or refrain from talking about alternatives," says the Orlando Sentinel. "The companies, worried that Griffin may remain and somehow punish them if they ignore his wishes, have by and large complied."

The Washington Post reports this morning that Griffin disputes Orlando Sentinel's report, but does confirm that Griffin did question whether the Obama transition team had the engineering qualifications to analyze the merits of the different rockets. A new email by Griffin was sent to Orlando Sentinel to refute the charges, and to NASA employees to encourage them to work with the transition team.

"We strongly urge full and free cooperation by companies performing work for NASA," says Griffin's email. "I am appalled by any accusations of intimidation, and encourage a free and open exchange of information with the contractor community."

Climate change for international agreements

While Obama was planning out his energy/environment team, the Pozann talks for laying the framework for extending and replacing the Kyoto Protocol triggered a number of announcements from US states, the European Union and elsewhere over climate change.

The EU has finally agreed to a compromise deal on how to cut carbon emissions reports the Guardian. The scheme involves offering eastern European nations billions of euros to help to tackle climate change and modernize their power-generating industry which mainly relies on coal.

The proposal contains four key laws that will:

• Mandate 20% cut in greenhouse gases from 1990 levels by 2020
• Reduce energy consumption by 20% in Europe in the same timeframe
• Stipulate that 20% of Europe's energy mix comes from renewable sources.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is currently in charge of the rotating EU presidency aims to get the agreement signed before the end of the year. One of the most controversial sections of the agreement consists of transportation and the auto industry in particular.

Earlier this year the French government commissioned Jean Syrota, the former French energy industry regulator to write a report on all the options for building cleaner, more efficient mass-market cars by 2030 says Paul Betts in the Financial Times. The report was completed in September but has yet to be released to the public. "It concludes that there is not much future in the much vaunted developed of all electric-powered cars," says Betts. "Instead, it suggests that the traditional combustion engine powered by petrol, diesel, ethanol or new biofuels still offers the most realistic prospect of developing cleaner vehicles. Carbon emissions and fuel consumption could be cut by 30-40 per cent simply by improving the performance and efficiency of traditional engines and limiting the top speed to around 170km/hr." The American Physical Society's recent report on energy efficiency reached a similar conclusion.

In California, the California Air Resources Board voted unanimously on Thursday to adopt similar regulations to the EU proposal that aim to reduce California's CO2 emissions to 1990 levels in under 12 years. The plan includes a 'cap and trade' program that formed a major environmental planck of Obama's campaign. Currently California's CO2 emissions are 30% above where they were in 1990. An editorial in The Sacramento Bee says that the plan "underestimates the possible costs involved in transforming the state's modes of transportation, its energy sources and its industries, according to several economists who peer-reviewed the document."

The announcements could be too late to save the Pozan talks which are proceeding slower than expected says Eoin O'Carroll in the Christian Science Monitor. "At the heart of much of the disagreement is that perennial struggle between rich and poor [countries], says O'Carroll.

In the meantime, Senator John Kerry (D-MA), who has been asked to report back to the forming Obama administration, told the BBC that the new incoming Congress and administration would be more engaged with other nations in climate change issues.

The issue will be near the top of Obama's to-do list, along with talks with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program that collapsed yesterday.

Paul Guinnessy

President-elect Obama's transition team is expected to shortly announce that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu will be nominated as secretary of energy, while Lisa Jackson, a former environmental policy official in New Jersey, has been picked to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Carol Browner, who led the EPA under President Clinton, will fill a new White House "energy czar" role. The announcements came from Democratic officials on Wednesday night.

Chu, who will be the first Nobel Prize winner to be appointed to the US cabinet, is the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and has played a key role in moving the lab in the direction of specializing in renewable energy, particularly in the field of new fuels for transportation. LBNL is experimenting with making biofuels from different types of biomass, using algae in fermentation tanks to make fuel, and applying solar energy to convert water and carbon dioxide to fuels. "[President-elect Obama] certainly needs somebody who can focus on the science and energy policies and I can't think of a better guy than Steve," says Mike Lubell from the American Physical Society.

Originally his father wanted him to be an architect as "the competition in physics was too strong." Chu did both his graduate and postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley. He then spent nine years at Bell Labs before joining Stanford University's physics department where he remained between 1987-2004. He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Phillips for cooling and trapping atoms with lasers.

During the presidential campaign, Obama said he would invest $150 billion over 10 years in clean energy and proposed requiring that 10 percent of electricity in the United States comes from renewable sources by 2012. Chu, has been one of the most public faces of promoting renewable energy. At the National Clean Energy Summit held in August, Chu said "I think political will is absolutely necessary. But we need new technologies."

Chu is also one of the co-authors of the 2006 National Academy of Sciences' report Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, in which he lobbied for the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) at the Department of Energy as a way of funding risky hich-tech technologies to solve the US energy crisis. ARPA-E, although legislation creating its existence has passed into law, has yet to be receive a budget as the proposal is not supported by the Bush administration. Chu's appointment increases the likelihood that the ARPA-E will finally be created.

The largest part of the Department of Energy's budget however, goes towards maintaining the nuclear weapons stockpile. It is too early to say what the implications are for Chu's appointment to the long term future of the three main nuclear weapons labs at Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia. According to the Wall Street Journal, Chu is likely to focus his attention on the Energy Department's core missions: basic science, nuclear weapons and cleaning up a nuclear-weapons manufacturing complex contaminated since the Cold War.

Paul Guinnessy

Related Physics Today articles
Chu Named Berkeley Lab Director (August 2004)
Politicians skeptical about need for ARPA-E (June 2006)
'Gathering Storm' Report Urges Strong Federal Action to Save US Science and Technology Leadership December 2005
Could 'green gasoline' displace ethanol as the biofuel of choice? December 2008
Blueprint for new energy institute February 2007

Related Physics Today science articles
Laser Beam Focus Forms Optical Trap for Neutral Atoms September 1986
New Mechanisms for Laser Cooling October 1990
Atom Interferometers Prove Their Worth in Atomic Measurements July 1995
Work on Atom Trapping and Cooling Gets a Warm Reception in Stockholm December 1997
Atom Interferometer Measures G with Same Accuracy as Optical Devices November 1999
How the Laser Happened: Adventures of a Scientist December 1999 (review by Steven Chu)

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Nobel Winner Chu To Land Top Energy Post (NPR)
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Obama Picks Team to Guide Energy, Environment Agendas Wall Street Journal
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Although President-elect Barack Obama has named more than half the important cabinet positions for the incoming administration (13 out of 24), so far only one appointment has been related to science: Bill Richardson, the former head of the Department of Energy, has been nominated as head of the Department of Commerce, which runs the National Institute of Standards and Technology

Still to be filled are the secretaries of departments for education, energy, NASA, and--assuming Obama keeps his campaign promise to promote the position back to its cabinet status--the national science adviser. This situation is expected to change in the next few days as Obama aims to announce the significant remainder of his candidates for the cabinet before Christmas. This is faster than any recent presidential transition and reflects Obama's publicly stated belief that, with the current state of the economy and threats to national security, he cannot allow months to pass before these appointments are made.

Since August, when he was appointed to head the transition team, John D. Podesta, President Clinton's former chief of staff, has been collecting names and vetting potential candidates. In turn, Obama has been meeting potential candidates for the cabinet positions, sometimes weeks before he won the election, asking them for advice or briefings on a number of issues. Only in the last few days has he actually been offering candidates jobs in the administration.

The New Science Adviser

At least five candidates were seriously considered for the science adviser position, which number has now been whittled down to two, according to sources close to the transition team. Obama has several advisers who are helping with the selection process, including Podesta; Rahm Emanuel, the incoming White House chief of staff; Obama's longtime adviser Valerie Jarrett; Pete Rouse, his chief of staff in the Senate; and Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. The final stage of the process will be completion of the candidates' security checks and meetings with Obama, who will make the final decision. Harold E. Varmus, Obama's science adviser during the campaign, has already ruled himself out as a candidate. A commonly-held view among policy analysts in Washington DC is that the nominee is likely to have a background in energy policy and climate change.

Climate talks

The science adviser appointment will have to be made soon as politics does not stop nor wait for Obama's cabinet announcements. Earlier this week, Harlan Watson, the chief US climate negotiator, continued to push the current administration's view at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change talks in Poznan, Poland. The talks form the basis of the next round of emissions reduction commitments after the Kyoto Protocols expire. Nearly 9000 delegates from 186 countries are attending the two-week conference. US Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky had requested Watson to defer the US position until next year, when Obama's team was in place.

In a press conference, Watson said that "There are no differences (between Democrats and Republicans) on the fact that we need major developing countries on board," and that Obama has been "relatively silent" on the international dimensions of climate change (for counter evidence, see last week's summary and Obama's campaign statements on climate change). The issue of capping developing countries' CO₂ emissions had caused the collapse of other climate negotiations in the past, although both the US and the European Union believe they have found a solution, which involves the reduction of trade tariffs to get around this point.

Watson stated that he thought there would be no Congressional action "anytime soon on the issue" and downplayed the prospects for an international agreement, saying that reaching international consensus to have quantitative greenhouse gas reduction goals realized by industrialized countries by 2020 and halving their emissions from 1990 levels by 2050 would be unlikely to be forthcoming. Earlier in the week, however, the UK passed a climate change bill, which aims to cut UK emissions by 80% by 2050. President-elect Obama stated that he would push for the same target in the US.

According to Dobriansky in a teleconference on Wednesday, the Obama team has not sent anyone to Poznan but is depending on Senator John Kerry and his staff to inform them of any developments on their return.

An electric goal

On Tuesday, Hawaii--which has one of the most ambitious goals among all the states to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels--and the Hawaiian Electric Company endorsed an effort to build an alternative transportation system based on electric vehicles with swappable batteries and an "intelligent" battery recharging network.

Such a vision is appealing to Wired magazine's Dave Demerjian, who points out in an editorial that the "daunting list" of repairs to the nation's transportation infrastructure requires Obama to pick an innovative transportation secretary. Among the list of candidates that are being bandied about, Demerjian particularly likes R.T. Rybak, the mayor of Minneapolis.

David Brooks at the New York Times has been studying the conflicting requirements for the education department. Brooks argues that there has never been a better time to implement change and improve US education.

A deadly threat?

Advice is something the transition team is receiving a lot of nowadays. A nine-member, bipartisan panel commissioned by Congress cites "growing risks" that the world will see a devastating nuclear attack within five years and provides some recommendations for the US to avoid such a fate. The report added biological terrorism to the watch list, calling it the greatest threat because of the growth of the biotechnology industry and lax controls at university and army labs. The report was given to Vice President-elect Biden as a roadmap to the incoming administration, who promised to implement some of the recommendations.

More advice was presented yesterday at an annual conference on US strategic nuclear weapons. Air Force General Kevin P. Chilton, the leader of the US Strategic Command, said that the US needed to modernize its nuclear weapons as the Chinese and Russians were upgrading their systems. "The path of inaction is a path leading toward nuclear disarmament. . . . The time to act is now," he said.

Another report, this one from David Heyman from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, provides a blueprint of how homeland security should be developed under the Obama administration.

Paul Guinnessy