July 2009 Archives

The last couple of months have seen some significant budget cuts hitting the public university system, with California's universities being hit particularly hard.

Earlier this week California cut university funding by 20% ($813 million), creating a funding deficit for the university.

As part of fixing the deficit, the University of California Board of Regents implemented a scheme that effectively cut staff salaries by 8% (through a mixture of furloughs of two days each month and salary decreases) and by refinancing existing debt.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said during his testimony before the UC Board of Regents on 29 July that the furloughs will save 450 staff positions at Berkeley, but the continued cuts are not sustainable. Other UC chancellors agree. On top of the furloughs, each individual institution was asked to make additional sacrifices.

The student/adviser ratio will move from 300:1 to exceed 500:1, said UC Davis chancellor Larry Vanderhoef at the same meeting. Moreover, increasing the teaching and administrative workload of staff may decrease research output, said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block.

Block also said that they had cut 428 positions at UCLA, including 36 ladder faculty, 95 lecturers, and 109 teaching assistants. Reductions will increase during the current fiscal year, he added, and there will be fewer opportunities for faculty advancement.

On top of the staffing cuts, the regents increased student tuition by more than 32% for undergraduate degrees, to $4800 per year, and plans to cut enrollment by 40,000 students. The number of courses and services (such as extended opening times for libraries) available at UC campuses will also be cut on average by 10%.

UC President Mark G. Yudof renewed his call for both shared sacrifice and forward-looking innovation within the 10-campus system to balance the budget, particularly in light of an additional $335 million in increased costs from 11,000 extra students who enrolled this year, higher utility and health-care costs, and collective bargaining agreements and faculty merit increases in the 2008-09 and 2009-10 fiscal years.

"We're doing all we can to minimize the impact of these cuts on the quality of all we do," said Yudof, who announced a committee to look at the long-term financial and strategic direction of the UC university system. "This pattern of annual cuts in state funding is unsustainable."

Paul Guinnessy

The US Department of Energy has informally denied USEC Inc. a loan guarantee to build an uranium enrichment facility called the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon Ohio, but has given the company an option to withdraw and resubmit their application at a later date.

"We are shocked and disappointed by DOE's decision.  The ACP met the original intent of the loan guarantee program in that it would have used an innovative, but proven, technology, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and created thousands of immediate jobs across the US" says USEC's President and Chief Executive Officer John K. Welch.

Matt Rogers, a senior advisor to Energy Secretary Steven Chu disagrees. "Primarily the cost of the project has increased significantly since USEC's initial proposal," he says. "At this point in time there are not enough available funds to complete the project."

The proposed Piketon plant would have used thousands of centrifuges in a cascade arrangement to enrichment uranium, a technique that hasn't been used in the US for decades.

Over the last five years USEC had been working on some small test centrifuges and had been testing a production ready-cascade for the last couple of months. Although the prototype has been running for 235,000 machine hours, the failure of the prototype cascade during its initial test run seems to have given DOE's review board second thoughts about funding the plant.

USEC was originally formed to buy weapons-grade uranium from Russia in the 1990s and blend it down to be burned in civilian reactors. It also owns the Paducah uranium gas diffusion plant. The ACP was to have replaced Paducah, which is due to close sometime in the next 5-10 years.

USEC gambled heavily to the tune of $1.5 billion in researching and constructing ACP as it supplies more than half the US reactors with fuel, and a quarter of the world market. On top of another $1 billion USEC expected to spend, the project needed more than $2 billion in loan guarantees from DOE to finish the plant.

"It is unclear how DOE expects to find innovative technologies that assume zero risk, but the ACP clearly meets the energy security and climate change goals of the Obama administration," says Welch.

Rogers says DOE believes USEC should withdraw its application and continue to work on the prototypes for the next 12-18 months before re-submitting its application. As part of this deal, DOE will provide USEC with a detailed review of why their initial application failed. If the company agrees to withdraw, DOE will give USEC $45 million towards R&D.

"Should USEC accept this offer, it would allow them to continue operations, maintenance, and research activities at Piketon and Oak Ridge, and give USEC additional time to strengthen the technical and financial aspects of the application should USEC decide to resubmit it," he adds.

If USEC does not withdraw their application then DOE's review board will formally reject the loan later this week, and USEC would not be able to reapply at a later date.

 Welch says that USEC has not yet made a decision over what action to take, and has hired outside consultants to evaluate their next move, which may include selling a stake to the French nuclear company Areva, Inc.—which has also applied for a DOE loan guarantee to build an US enrichment plant. The $2 billion Areva plant—scheduled to be built at Idaho Falls—is still going through the licensing procedures and does not expect to start construction until 2011. Another plant in New Mexico by the international group URENCO under the name Louisiana Energy Services is still on target to go operational later this year.

The most immediate impact at USEC will be redundancies. "With DOE's decision, we are now forced to initiate steps to demobilize the project.  We deeply regret the impact this decision will have on all those affected, but as we have stated in the past, a DOE loan guarantee was the path forward to completing financing for the project." USEC says that the plant was expected to create more than 8,000 jobs.
 

Paul Guinnessy

The National Research Council's Executive Office has announced the nominations of the scientists that will be in the four of the five panels—the Inner Planets, Mars, Primitive Bodies and Satellites—that form the Planetary Sciences Decadal Survey.

Membership of the Giant Planets Panel will be announced later in the year.

Paul Guinnessy

INNER PLANETS

Chair
1. Ellen Stofan, Proxemy Research

Vice chair
2. Steve Mackwell, Lunar and Planetary Institute

3. Ayana Howard, Georgia Institute of Technology
4. Douglas Stetson, Space Science and Exploration Consulting Group
5. Barbara Cohen, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
6. Martha Gilmore, Wesleyan University
7. Alan Treiman, Lunar and Planetary Institute
8. Steven Hauck, Case Western Reserve University
9. Charles Shearer, University of New Mexico
10. Edward Stolper, California Institute of Technology
11. Lori Glaze, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
12. David Grinspoon, Denver Museum of Nature and Science

MARS

Chair
1. Phil Christensen, Arizona State University

Vice chair
2. Wendy Calvin, University of Nevada, Reno

3. Bobby Braun, Georgian Institute of Technology
4. Glen Cunningham, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, retired
5. Raymond Arvidson, Washington University, St. Louis
6. John Grotzinger, California Institute of Technology
7. Linda Elkins-Tanton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
8. Penny King, University of New Mexico
9. Francois Forget, Institut Pierre Simon Laplace
10. Paul Mahaffy, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
11. David Des Marais, NASA Ames Research Center
12. Lisa Pratt, University of Indiana

SATELLITES

Chair
1. John Spencer, South West Research Institute, Boulder

Vice chair
2. David Stevenson, California Institute of Technology

3. Glen Fountain, Applied Physics Laboratory
4. Tom Spilker, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
5. Louise Prockter, Applied Physics Laboratory
6 Elizabeth Turtle, Applied Physics Laboratory
7. Francis Nimmo, University of California, Santa Cruz
8. Jerry Schubert, University of California, Los Angeles
9. Krishan Khurana, University of California, Los Angeles
10. Hunter Waite, South West Research Institute, San Antonio
11. Caitlin Griffith, University of Arizona
12. Chris McKay, NASA Ames Research Center

PRIMITIVE BODIES

Chair
1. Joseph Veverka, Cornell University

Vice chair
2. Harry Y. McSween, University of Tennessee, vice chair

3. Marc Rayman, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
4. Edward Reynolds, Applied Physics Laboratory
5. Jessica Sunshine, University of Maryland
6. Eric Asphaug, University of California, Santa Cruz
7. Timothy McCoy, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
8. Mark Sephton, Imperial College
9. Faith Vilas, Multiple Mirror Telescope Observatory
10. Donald Brownlee, University of Washington
11. Marc Buie, South West Research Institute, Boulder
12. Michael Brown, California Institute of Technology

The US Senate has easily confirmed former astronaut Charles Frank Bolden as the new NASA administrator, along with Lori Beth Garver as his deputy.

Bolden, a former Marine Corp pilot, flew in the space shuttle four times between 1986 and 1994 (STS-61C, STS-31, STS-45, and STS-60), which included the 1990 deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Bolden said in a press release, "It is an honor to have been nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate to lead this great NASA team. Today, we have to choose. Either we can invest in building on our hard-earned world technological leadership or we can abandon this commitment, ceding it to other nations who are working diligently to push the frontiers of space."

He continued: "If we choose to lead, we must build on our investment in the International Space Station, accelerate development of our next generation launch systems to enable expansion of human exploration, enhance NASA's capability to study Earth's environment, lead space science to new achievements, continue cutting-edge aeronautics research, support the innovation of American entrepreneurs, and inspire a rising generation of boys and girls to seek careers in science, technology, engineering and math."

The theme was highlighted in his confirmation hearings when Bolden emphasized that NASA needed to re-ignite public interest in the space program, particularly among children. "If I go to a classroom today, it's different from when I went as an astronaut in 1980," he told members of the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

"I could ask, 'How many of you want to be an astronaut?' Every hand went up in the class. When I go to a school today and ask that question, I may see three hands. All of them want to go into business."
Bolden will have a number of critical issues to manage at NASA. The space shuttle is scheduled to be retired next year and the White House is reviewing plans for its replacement.

Paul Guinnessy

Lord Mandelson, the head of the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills which runs the universities, has announced a plan to expand by 10,000 the number of university places for science-related courses, but has refused to provide additional funds to science departments to teach them. Students will receive the standard grants and loans to pay their tuition costs.

“Our expansion of higher education is more important now than ever as we continue to invest in a highly skilled workforce to win the jobs of the future and lead the way in building Britain’s future,” said Mandelson in a statement to the UK parliament. 

The recession has caused university placements in the UK to be wildly oversubscribed—applications are up more than 10% this year. However, due to last year’s budget overspending on education by £200 million, the government introduced a cap on the number of students who could go to university. These new places exceed this cap and will be funded through budget cuts and through cutting the repayment holiday that students can take from five years before repayment to two years. “This is a fiscally neutral change,” said Mandelson.

Universities UK, the umbrella group for vice-chancellors, gave the extra placements a cautious welcome. "We understand the thinking behind tying the student support to the STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) agenda at the current time," said Diana Warwick, chief executive of Universities UK, "however we would be concerned if this were, in future, to have a negative impact on areas such as the social sciences, arts and humanities."

Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group, an association of the 20 most research intensive universities in the UK, said: “The Russell Group supports the Government’s longstanding aim to ensure that more students get the opportunity to benefit from going to university.  However, any growth in the number of students must be funded in a sustainable way that will not create real and long term difficulties for UK universities and undermine the quality of the student experience.”

“Maintaining quality is sacrosanct. Subjects like engineering and science are particularly expensive to teach and we know that there is already a funding shortfall for teaching at Russell Group universities,” he added. “As a recent government study¹ has highlighted, without further investment the ‘quality of the student experience and the reputation and contribution of English higher education will suffer.’"

Paul Guinnessy

(1) The Sustainability of Teaching in English Higher Education, a report by the TRAC Strategy Group chaired by Professor Geoffrey Crossick, warden of Goldsmiths, University of London, and supported by JM Consulting.

The White House has announced that Marcia K. McNutt has been nominated as the next director of the US Geological Survey and science advisor to the Secretary of the Interior. Currently she is the president and chief executive officer of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

McNutt studied geophysics at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California and earned her PhD there in Earth Sciences in 1978.

She spent 3 years with the USGS in California working on earthquake prediction before moving to MIT in 1982 as director of the Joint Program in Oceanography & Applied Ocean Science & Engineering, a program offered by both MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanography Institution.

McNutt has participated in 15 major oceanographic expeditions and served as chief scientist on more than half of those voyages. She has published 90 peer-reviewed scientific articles and also chaired the President's Panel on Ocean Exploration convened by President Clinton to examine the possibility of initiating a major US program in exploring the oceans.

She is a fellow for the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the International Association of Geodesy. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Paul Guinnessy

A new report by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press finds that overwhelming majorities of Americans believe that science has had a positive effect on society and that science has made life easier for most people. The public—even those skeptical of some scientific conclusions on such topics as climate change and evolution—rates scientists highly and believes government investments in science pay off in the long term.

But the study, of 3000 members of the public and 2500 members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), also finds that the public has a far less positive view of the global standing of US science than do scientists themselves. As the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing approaches, just 17% say US scientific achievements rate as the best in the world, compared with nearly half (49%) of scientists who hold that view.

Key findings include:

Science Slips as Nation's Greatest Achievement. Significantly fewer Americans volunteer scientific advances as one of the country's most important achievements than did so a decade ago (27% today, 47% in May 1999). Then, 18% cited space exploration and the Moon landing as the country's top achievement in the 20th century; now, 12% see it as the greatest achievement in the past 50 years.

Public, Scientists Agree on Government Role in Funding Research. Fully 84% of scientists name government as a top source of research funding in their specialty. Large majorities of the public think that government investments in basic scientific research (73%) and engineering and technology (74%) pay off in the long run, and 60% says that government investment in research is essential for scientific progress. Majorities of both Democrats (80%) and Republicans (68%) say that government investments in basic science pay off in the long term.

But Substantial Gaps Exist on Evolution and Climate Change. Most notably, 87% of scientists—but just 32% of Americans in general—say that humans and other living things have evolved over time and that evolution is the result of natural processes such as natural selection. A large gap also exists on the issue of climate change; 84% of scientists—but just 49% of the public—say that Earth is getting warmer because of human activity.

Politics and Science. Majorities of both the public and the scientists say that it is appropriate for scientists to take part in political debates about issues such as nuclear power and stem cell research. But they differ in their views on many of these issues. Scientists are much more likely than the public to support the expansion of nuclear power, federal funding of stem cell research, and the use of animals in research. One recent political controversy—charges that the Bush administration censored government scientists—was largely invisible to the public, as 54% said they heard nothing about it. On the other hand, most scientists (55%) say they had heard a lot about it, and 77% believe that the charges are true.

Scientists Highly Regarded, Even By Those Skeptical of Scientific Conclusions. Scientists are very highly rated compared with members of other professions; only members of the military and teachers are more likely to be viewed as contributing a lot to society's well-being. More than two-thirds (67%) of those who say science conflicts with their religious beliefs still say that scientists contribute a lot to the well-being of society. A similar proportion (63%) of those who accept a creationist view on the origins of life say scientists have contributed a great deal to society, compared with 78% who accept the theory of evolution.

Scientists Fault Public, Media. Fully 85% of scientists see the public's lack of scientific knowledge as a major problem for science, and about three-quarters (76%) say a major problem for science is that news reports fail to distinguish between findings that are well-founded and those that are not.

But Overall, Scientists Are Upbeat about the State of Their Profession. About three-quarters (76%) say this is generally a good time for science and nearly as many (73%) say it is good time for their scientific specialty. Despite the country's economic problems, 67% say it is a good time to begin a career in their scientific field.

The Public's "Science IQ." Americans are knowledgeable about basic scientific facts that affect their health and their daily lives, but they are less able to answer questions about other science topics. For example, 91% know that aspirin is an over-the-counter drug recommended to prevent heart attacks—but fewer than half (46%) know that electrons are smaller than atoms.

Paul Guinnessy

A blue-ribbon panel—chaired by Thomas Young, former head of Goddard Space Flight Center—has called on the White House to overhaul the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) program as costs have spiraled out-of-control to nearly double its original $7 billion price tag.

NPOESS, which was established in 1993, is designed to replace weather forecasting satellites from the Department of Defense and National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, and to help gather long-term climate data. But the instruments have been scaled back and the project has "extraordinarily low probability of success," says the panel's report.

At an oversight hearing held by the House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology last month, that also included an assessment from the Government Accountability Office, Young stated that maintaining access to weather data is "at extreme risk" and placed management—a committee with equal weight given to representatives of NASA, NOAA, and DOD—as the main reason for the program's failure.

"This Committee has devoted years of oversight to NPOESS," said Subcommittee Chairman Brad Miller (D-NC). "Despite our pressure to get this program under control, we are again facing cost overruns and slipping schedules. At the current pace, we won't see a NPOESS launch until 2039. That is obviously unacceptable. The time has come to reorganize the management of this program to guarantee a successful launch."

Young recommended that NOAA, which is the principle stakeholder in the project, be put directly in charge.

Paul Guinnessy

Related Links
Subcommittee Examines Troubled NPOESS Program
Thomas Young report
GAO report

University of Tennessee emeritus professor J. Reece Roth, 71, was sentenced to four years in prison last week for breaking the Arms Export Control Act reports the Knoxville News Sentinel

Roth was prosecuted for allowing two graduate research assistants—one from Iran and one from China—to access sensitive military arms information related to a US Air Force contract on studying the use of plasma technology on unmanned military aircraft. Roth also disclosed some of his research in lectures given abroad in China.

US District Judge Tom Varlan said Roth's actions could have caused "harm to the security of the United States." The Air Force scrapped the research project, although there was no testimony at Roth's trial last year that any foreign government had accessed the information or that Roth ever had tried to sell or give the information to foreign governments says reporter Jamie Satterfield.

Roth was twice warned by UT officials about the following law before he was arrested.

Paul Guinnessy

Related Link
Ex-UT prof gets 4 years for mishandling defense secrets

The Department of Defense (DoD) today announced the appointment of Regina E. Dugan as the new director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

DARPA is the principal agency within the DoD for high risk research and development.

“Regina Dugan is precisely the dynamic leader DARPA needs to open new technology frontiers and transition revolutionary technologies to serve our nation’s interests,” said Zachary J. Lemnios, director, Defense Research and Engineering. “I am delighted she will be leading this agency and look forward to working closely with her."

Prior to this appointment, Dugan was president and chief executive officer of RedXDefense, LLC—which she co-founded in 2005—a company that develops defense against explosive threats. She worked at DARPA as a program manager between 1996 and 2000.

She is also the recipient of the deFleury Medal, the office of the secretary of defense award for exceptional service, and the award for outstanding achievement. She has participated in wide-ranging studies for the Defense Science Board, the Army Science Board, the National Research Council and Science Foundation, and currently sits on the Naval Research Advisory Committee and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency Science and Technology Panel.

Dugan earned her doctorate in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology and her master's and bachelor's degrees from Virginia Tech. She is the co-author of “Engineering Thermodynamics,” 1996, sole inventor on one issued patent and inventor or co-inventor on nine additional pending patents.

Expressing concern that the nation’s research universities may be losing their preeminence, a bipartisan and bicameral group of lawmakers has asked the National Academies to assess the competitiveness of the US institutions and recommend steps to ensure their continued world leadership.

The letter to the academies was signed by senators Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), chairwoman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, and Lamar Alexander (R-TN), chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. Representatives Bart Gordon (D-TN) and Ralph Hall (R-TX), the respective chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Science and Technology, also requested the report.

The lawmakers pointed out that a similar congressional request in 2005 resulted in the academies’ report Rising Above the Gathering Storm, which warned of declining US technological competitiveness and led to the 2007 America COMPETES Act, which called for doubling federal funding for physical sciences research and improving science and mathematics education.

“The United States is home to most of the best research universities in the world. They are our secret weapon for creating jobs,” Alexander said. “But other nations are catching up. We need the best minds in our country to help us figure out how to maintain this competitive advantage.”

“America’s research universities are powerhouses of innovation, incubators for the ideas and breakthroughs that have made America an economic superpower,” said Mikulski. “We need the best minds working on what steps we can take today to keep our nation innovating tomorrow and every day after that.”

In their 22 June letter, the lawmakers asked the presidents of the academies to recommend the “top 10” actions that Congress, state governments, universities and others could take “to maintain the excellence in research and doctoral education needed to help the United States compete, prosper and achieve national goals for health, energy and the environment and security in the global community of the 21st century.”

The study should include an assessment of the relationship (or lack thereof) between universities and other parts of the nation’s research enterprise, such as the national laboratories and corporate research labs, the letter stated.

David Kramer

New enrollments in graduate science and engineering programs at US universities rose by 3.3% in 2007 compared to 2006—nearly twice the growth rate of 2005–06 and the highest increase since 2002, NSF reported.

Full-time enrollments of foreign students, defined as those holding temporary visas, surged to an all-time high and eclipsed the record set in 2001. It’s an indication that post-September 11 restrictions and red tape on student visas have eased.

First-time, full-time enrollments by temporary visa holders in graduate S&E programs grew 8.3% in 2007, the most recent data available, compared with an increase of 1.7% by US citizens and permanent residents that year.

The influx of foreign graduate students was especially pronounced for computer science and engineering, where enrollments grew 12% in 2007 from 2006, to 6275. That followed a 20% surge in new foreign enrollees to those programs that occurred from 2005 to 2006.

The number of US citizens and permanent residents enrolling in the computer fields, meanwhile, fell by 9%, to 3077. As recently as 2005, more than 3600 new US graduates had enrolled in those fields.

Foreign students enrolling in US graduate engineering programs also continue to outnumber new US students. But the number of new enrollments by US students in graduate physical sciences programs grew by 2.5%, slightly, and by 2.3% among visa holders, to 2641.

David Kramer

Related Link
S&E Graduate Enrollments Accelerate in 2007; Enrollments of Foreign Students Reach New High