Physics Today - Politics and Policy

NASA invests in science, not human spaceflight

2010-02-01T20:26:02Z

The troubled Constellation program—which involved developing a replacement for the space shuttle as well as new heavy-lift unmanned vehicle, and a craft to take astronauts to the Moon—has been eliminated in the NASA budget.

The White House said that program was late, over budget, and unlikely to meet its deadline of returning astronauts to the Moon by 2020. In fact, even if the White House increased the human spaceflight program substantially it would still take NASA until 2030 to reach the Moon, said White House Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag and White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer in a telephone press conference yesterday. The US could not afford that level of investment they said. So far NASA has spent $9.1 billion on the Constellation program, and it may cost $2.5 billion to cancel it.

Although science did relatively well in the new budget, the Obama administration is currently implementing a three-year freeze on most nondefense discretionary spending.

This spending freeze impacted NASA's 10-year strategic vision which forecasted increases for the agency above inflation until the end of the decade in order to build equipment and vehicles to return to the Moon.

A private hope

Instead of relying on the Constellation program the Obama administration proposes expanding the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. Designed to help commercial companies develop launch vehicles to supply the International Space Station when the space shuttle retires at the end of the year, COTS will also develop vehicles that could be used for exploration outside of Earth orbit. Under this program, which will cost $6 billion over five years, NASA would rent the spacecraft developed.

The first major test under the COTS program of one of these launch vehicles—a Falcon 9 rocket made by by Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX)—is scheduled provisionally for March.

The trigger for canceling the Constellation program was the Augustine committee report from last fall that said the current human spaceflight program would require an additional $3 billion a year to remain on track.

Bretton Alexander, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, hailed the change calling it "a win-win decision" that would create thousands of high-tech jobs in the US.

A boost for science

NASA's budget will be up slightly, at $18.7 billion, from last year, but the biggest surprise may be increased funds for unmanned robotic space and Earth observation missions.

Orszag said that in addition to research and development, NASA's proposal invests in "advance robotics and other steps that will help to inspire Americans and not just return a man or a woman to the Moon but undertake the longer range research that could succeed in human spaceflight to Mars."

Although Congress is expected to come under intensive lobbying to reverse the administration's proposal, Pfeiffer said the White House is determined to fight special interests attempting to do so.

US Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), ranking member of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, today issued a statement sharply criticizing the Obama administration's proposal. "Congress cannot and will not sit back and watch the reckless abandonment of sound principles, a proven track record, a steady path to success, and the destruction of our human space flight program," he said.

The opposition wasn't a surprise. "We don't expect that this is going to be easy," Pfeiffer said. "There was a lot of opposition to some of the cuts that we proposed last year. And we had I think a historically very successful rate about 60 percent of the cuts we proposed were actually enacted into the law."

"I think this is a dramatic shift in the way we've gone about particularly human spaceflight over the past almost 50 years," said John M. Logsdon, former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University to the New York Times.

"It is a somewhat risky proposition," Logsdon said, "but we've been kind of stuck using the technologies we've developed in the '50s and '60s."

A complete summary of the 2011 budget, which includes increases for every science agency, can be found on the White House web site.

Paul Guinnessy

China's change on climate change

2010-01-25T20:16:18Z

At a press conference held in New Delhi in India yesterday, Xie Zhenhua, China's leading negotiator on climate change, while stating that global warming was a "solid fact," expressed doubts on the basic premise that climate change is being caused by human-made emissions because of "disputes in the scientific community."

Xie had been meeting with representatives from India, Brazil and South Africa—the so-called BASIC bloc that formed after the Copenhagen climate talks—over what emission limits to send to the UN. Countries are supposed to submit their proposed cuts at the end of the month.

Xie—who is vice-chairman of China's National Development and Reforms Commission—statements were based on two events: the so-called "climategate" emails and a correction to the glacial chapter of the fourth assessment report from the United Nation's InternGovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

"The major reason of the climate change is the unconstrained emissions of developed countries during the industrialization process," says Xie. "That's the mainstream view, but there are some uncertainties."

Xie said that it was important to include as many views as possible "to be more scientific and to be more consistent."

"There is a view that climate change is caused by cyclical trends in nature itself," said Xie, "we have to keep an open attitude."

A storm in a teapot

The "climategate" emails were from a number of leading climate researchers that were obtained by someone who hacked into the University of East Anglia's mail server and made public last month.

The IPCC recently acknowledged a claim in one paragraph that Himalayan glaciers could disappear within three decades which went into one of their reports was not based on scientific fact but a speculative comment made by Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain in an interview with New Scientist magazine ten years ago.

Non-peer reviewed literature can be used in IPCC reports, but all such data is supposed to be checked and verified for authenticity. "That’s where the failure took place," said IPCC chairman R K Pachauri to the Business Standard. "That failure should never have happened."

Hasnain never published this speculation in a peer-reviewed journal and has recently stated that the Himalayan glaciers are not receding as fast as to disappear by 2035.

Jeffrey S. Kargel, a glaciologist at the University of Arizona confirms this interpretation. "It is physically not possible to melt so much ice so quickly at such high alpine elevations," he said. "Even with rapid global warming."

"The melting rates are fairly typical of the rapid melting rates seen widely through the world," Kargel adds. "But they are not so rapid as to cause himalayan glaciers to disappear by 2035."

In fact, it will take at least 300 years for global warming to melt the glaciers.

Although the "climategate" hacked emails did not contain any material that disputed the basis of climate change, the conversations between the researchers did not leave a positive impression to those who read them of the scientists behavior towards climate skeptics.

A calculated stance?

Xie's comments at the BASIC bloc's press conference is being widely interpreted as a way of gaining concessions in the Obama administration's proposal to fund voluntary cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Both India and China would prefer for their greenhouse gas emission "intensity" to be reduced rather that have their emissions capped in order for their economies to continue to rapidly develop.

Under Obama's proposal—which is being negotiated separately from the official UN climate talks—developing countries would receive billions of dollars to switch towards more efficient energy technologies and negate the impact of climate change but countries would have to agree to capping their emissions. The fund is supposed to collect $100 billion by 2020.

The BASIC block, which called for both sets of talks to be merged into one legally binding agreement yesterday, confirmed at the press conference it would give its part of the US$10 billion expected to be raised this year, under informal agreements signed at the Copenhagen climate talks.

Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, called on the developed countries to quickly meet their pledge to contribute to the fund as a sign of "sincerity."

Meanwhile, an analysis of the Copenhagen agreements of what would happen if they were to be followed suggest that average global temperatures would rise above 3°C, by 2050 much higher than the 2°C target.

Paul Guinnessy

Publishers and consumers of scientific journals reach consensus on 'open access'

2010-01-25T01:31:27Z

A committee of individuals drawn from all sides of the ongoing debate over free access to the peer-reviewed scientific literature has urged each federal agency that funds research to quickly develop and implement its own policy for providing the material to the public for free. In a consensus report commissioned by the House Committee on Science and Technology, the group known as the Scholarly Publishing Roundtable left the divisive issue of "embargoes"—the post-publication period when journals restrict access to scholarly articles to their subscribers—and their duration, up to individual agencies. While an embargo of up to 12 months will suffice for journals in many science disciplines, the committee said, a longer duration may be needed for those of other fields, particularly for humanities and social sciences.

The panel's membership included librarians, university provosts, academic researchers, and publishers (including Fred Dylla, executive director of the American Institute of Physics, which publishes Physics Today), and was chaired by John Vaughn, executive vice president of the Association of American Universities. The roundtable report also reaffirmed the necessity for peer review, and emphasized that the various public-access databases should be built to be interoperable from the outset. The Office of Science and Technology Policy should guide the development of federal-wide standards to ensure development of interoperable navigation tools and other applications, and an advisory committee on public access should be created to guide OSTP.

Withheld endorsement

The roundtable's consensus, however, was marred by the decision of two of its 14 members to withhold their endorsement. Mark Patterson, director of publishing for Public Library of Science (PLoS), a publisher of open-access online journals, said the report "stops far short of recognizing and endorsing the opportunities to unleash the full potential of online communication to transform access to and use of scholarly literature." Patterson argued that the public should get "comprehensive public access to the research that they paid for, with no delay and no restrictions on reuse." The other dissenter, Y.S. Chi, vice chairman of publishing giant Elsevier, complained that the recommendations included "an overly expansive role of government."

Since April 2008, all peer-reviewed articles that are published from research funded entirely or in part by the National Institutes of Health are required to be made available for free no later than one year after their publication in a scientific journal. That work is deposited in the PubMed Central database operated by the NIH's National Library of Medicine. The open-access mandate was enshrined in an NIH appropriations bill after a years-long struggle between journal publishers and open-access proponents. The requirement has not yet spilled over to apply to research that is funded by other agencies, such as NSF, Department of Energy, NASA, or Department of Defense.
Many scientific societies depend on their journal publishing for much, or most of their revenues. They have argued, with limited success, that libraries would likely drop their subscriptions if they could simply obtain the articles from the free repositories that are operated by federal agencies. Open-access mandates, of course, would apply only to that body of work that is publicly funded.

House S&T Committee chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) said the roundtable's recommendations "strike a good balance by allowing public access to the results of research paid for with federal funds, while preserving the high quality and editorial integrity of scholarly publishing so critical to the scientists and seasoned science writers on whose expertise we all depend." A committee staffer said a hearing on open access could be held in the spring. But the panel's attention has turned to renewing the America COMPETES Act, the multifaceted 2007 law that aims to restore US competitiveness, which is set to expire on 1 October.

The roundtable released its work a few days before the 21 January close of a public comment period on OSTP's own review of the open-access issue. Officials at OSTP said that once they have completed their analysis of the more than 400 comments that were submitted, their findings will be presented to an OSTP-led interagency committee on information and innovation. That group could then develop policy recommendations calling for agency actions. The officials did not provide a timescale for the completion of that process.

OSTP's review occurs in the context of Obama's directive—issued on his first full day in office—for agencies to take steps wherever possible to improve openness and transparency in their operations.

In the Senate, a bill called the Federal Research Public Access Act (S. 1373), introduced in July 2009 by Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) would require that agencies provide free access to the articles from research they sponsor within six months of their publication in a journal. But that bill has yet to have had a hearing, despite having been referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which Lieberman chairs. No comparable measure has been introduced in the House.

David Kramer

DARPA director has a plan to revive US manufacturing

2010-01-19T21:54:47Z

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is embarking on a five-year, $1-billion effort with no less ambitious a goal than reversing the decades-long decline of US manufacturing.

Regina Dugan says to do so, DARPA will attempt to replicate the successful model of the US semiconductor manufacturing sector in other industries, ranging from pharmaceuticals to micromechanical devices to gradient-index optics.

"DARPA wants to do for US manufacturing what it did for the communications and IT industries with the Internet," Dugan told the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) on 7 January. The key, as she described it, will be transferring the semiconductor manufacturing paradigm, in which product design companies outsource the manufacturing of their products to so-called foundries, which don't make products of their own. That model has created a more efficient manufacturing process, compared to the vertically integrated model typically found among US manufacturers, in which the foundries are able to distribute their costs over thousands of semiconductor products, while so-called fab-less design firms can use the nimble and flexible foundries for their fabrication needs, from prototypes through high volume production.

Adoption of that model led to "a period of explosive growth" in the semiconductor design business, Dugan told the PCAST. "When the means by which we produced became rapid, cost-effective and seamless in the semiconductor industry, hundreds of designers became tens of thousands of designers," she said. Among those fab-less design firms is Akustica, which was founded by former DARPA program manager Kaigham Gabriel to design microelectromechanical (MEMS) devices used in consumer electronics. Dugan, who also did a stint as a DARPA program manager before founding an explosives detection business, said that she and Gabriel, who is now the agency's deputy director, "both know on a visceral basis how difficult it is to make new products." The two, she said, have concluded that the fundamental technical challenge confronting US manufacturers of all types is "the seams between each stage of development; between design and prototyping, early production runs, limited, and large-scale manufacturing." Those seams, she continued, "create extensive rework and are the source of production delays, surprises, and cost overruns."

In December, the White House released its plan for helping US manufacturers to restore their competitiveness. That "framework for revitalizing American manufacturing" outlined actions the Obama administration will take to mitigate seven "cost drivers" for manufacturers. That plan does not include making changes to the manufacturing process itself; most of the drivers identified were external factors, such as labor costs, trade policy, regulation, tax policy, access to markets, and business investment in intellectual capital.

A DARPA spokeswoman could offer no details of Dugan's plan, but said the agency is currently working to "integrate and synthesize the structure of" the more than 20 existing programs that are manufacturing related. Funding for those programs currently totals about $200 million annually.

Dugan left no doubt that she means business. "We have our sights set on the synthesis of these ideas into an integrated whole. The results we think in time eventually will be massive growth in new industries driven by real capabilities for defense and for the nation," she told PCAST. "At DARPA we are ruthless about our product focus. It's not enough to know of a problem, or even enough to know that solving it would have a profound impact. We must have an idea of how we might accomplish such revolutionary advances. Today at DARPA we have the seeds for this sea change in US manufacturing already growing. We intend to nourish these ideas further and to synthesize them into whole, integrated efforts."

But one PCAST member, Richard Levin, president of Yale University, challenged Dugan's vision, asserting that decoupling the product design process from the manufacturing process would provide a greater incentive for US nondefense companies to move their manufacturing operations abroad, where labor costs are lower. While acknowledging that process could occur, Gabriel told the committee that growth would occur in product design, where entry costs would be slashed. "When you lower the barrier for people to prototype, and for people to become part of the manufacturing and design process, you go from tens or hundreds of people to tens of thousands of people who can take part," he said.

David Kramer

Doomsday Clock now at 6 minutes to midnight

2010-01-14T16:18:34Z

Physics Today: Citing a more "hopeful state of world affairs" in relation to the twin threats posed by nuclear weapons and climate change, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) is moving the minute hand of its Doomsday Clock one minute further away from midnight. It is now 6 minutes to midnight—the symbolic end of civilization. The decision by the BAS Science and Security Board was made in consultation with the Bulletin’s board of sponsors, which includes 19 Nobel laureates.

In a statement supporting the decision to move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock, the BAS board said:

"For the first time since atomic bombs were dropped in 1945, leaders of nuclear weapons states are cooperating to vastly reduce their arsenals and secure all nuclear bomb-making material. And for the first time ever, industrialized and developing countries alike are pledging to limit climate-changing gas emissions that could render our planet nearly uninhabitable. These unprecedented steps are signs of a growing political will to tackle the two gravest threats to civilization—the terror of nuclear weapons and runaway climate change."

"...By shifting the hand back from midnight by only one additional minute, we emphasize how much needs to be accomplished, while at the same time recognizing signs of collaboration among the US, Russia, the European Union, India, China, Brazil, and others on nuclear security and on climate stabilization."

Created in 1947 by the BAS, the Doomsday Clock has been adjusted only 18 times prior to today, most recently in January 2007 and February 2002 after the events of 11 September 2001.

The move of the clock's minute hand brought a number of BAS board members to a press conference organized by the BAS earlier today, which included Arizona State University physicist Lawrence Krauss, the cochair of the BAS Board of Sponsors. "We encourage scientists to fulfill their dual responsibilities of increasing their own, as well as the public's understanding of these issues and to help lead the call to action," said Krauss. "We urge leaders to fulfill the promise of a nuclear weapon-free world and to act now to slow the pace of climate change. Finally, we call on citizens everywhere to raise their voices and compel public action for a safer world now and for future generations. Even though we are encouraged by recent developments, we are mindful of the fact that the Clock is ticking."

Jayantha Dhanapala, president of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, said:

"In the saga of human history civilizations have been threatened both by natural causes and by man-made folly. Some have survived by making the necessary rational responses to the challenges. Others have gone under leaving only their ruins. Today it is the entire planet that stands imperiled by the danger of nuclear weapons and the real risk of climate change inexorably threatening our ecosystem. Both impending disasters are within our capabilities to remedy. The opportunity must be seized now out of a recognition that these are global dangers that transcend national boundaries."

Nuclear physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy from Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan, said:

"We may be at a turning point, where major powers realize that nuclear weapons are useless for war-fighting or even for deterrence. Threats to security are more likely to come from economic collapse, groups bent on terrorizing civilians, or from resource scarcity exacerbated by climate change and exploding populations, rather than from conflict between nuclear-armed superpowers. Against these new threats, nuclear weapons are a liability."

Paul Guinnessy

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RECOMMENDED ACTION STEPS

The BAS statement outlines the need for action on the following:

Developing new nuclear doctrines that disavow the use of existing nuclear weapons, reduce the launch readiness of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces, and remove them from the day-to-day operations of their militaries;

Finishing the job of consolidating and securing military and civilian nuclear material in Russia, the United States, and elsewhere and continuing to eliminate the excess;

Completing negotiations, signing and ratifying as soon as possible the new U.S.-Russia treaty providing for reductions in deployed nuclear warheads and delivery systems;

Upon signing of the treaty, immediately embarking upon new talks to further reduce the nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States;

Completing the next review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in May 2010 with commitments to weapons reduction and nuclear nonproliferation by both the nuclear haves and have-nots;

Implementing multinational management of the civilian nuclear energy fuel cycle with strict standards for safety, security, and nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, including eliminating reprocessing for plutonium separation;

Strengthening the International Atomic Energy Agency’s capacity to oversee nuclear materials and technology development and transfer;

Adopting and fulfilling climate change agreements to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through tax incentives, harmonized domestic regulation and practice;

Transforming the coal power sector of the world economy to retire older plants;

Vastly increasing public and private investments in alternatives to carbon-emitting energy sources, such as solar and wind, and in technologies for energy storage, and sharing the results worldwide.

Build links between science and politics, says UK's Miliband

2010-01-13T21:04:49Z

UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has called for better connections between the worlds of science and politics. He was speaking at a meeting of the InterAcademy Panel which is being hosted by the Royal Society as part of its 350th anniversary celebrations.

Miliband highlighted the UK's high standing in the worlds of science and diplomacy and commented on how science had already played a significant role in keeping lines of communication open during the cold war. He also praised SESAME—the synchrotron light source project in Jordan, which brings together scientists from across the Middle East including Israel, Iran, Pakistan, and the Palestinian Authority.

"The scientific world is becoming inter-disciplinary," said Miliband. "But the biggest inter-disciplinary leap we need is across the boundaries of politics and science. On resource conflicts, global inequality, nuclear security and counter terrorism, science is our ally. I hope this [Royal Society] anniversary opens eyes not just to how far science has come, but what we can do together in the future."

At the same meeting the Royal Society also published a joint report with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): New frontiers in science diplomacy investigates the valuable role that science can play in international policy making and diplomacy.

Paul Guinnessy

Bolden speaks on space science

2010-01-05T22:59:06Z

At a speech to members of the American Astronomical Society's annual meeting, NASA administrator Charles Bolden spoke about the major scientific discoveries that NASA facilities had helped produce, but remained quiet on the results expected of the report of the Augustine committee (headed by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine) of the future strategic direction for human spaceflight. The current strategic plan is unsustainable unless NASA's budget is increased dramatically said the Augustine report which provided four options for the Obama administration to consider under different budget scenarios.

"I'm sure all of you would like to know what direction President Obama will choose for the future of the space program," said Bolden. "All I can say for now is that NASA is working closely with the executive office in helping him determine the best path forward."

The result is expected to be an extra $1 billion in funding, but at the cost of canceling the Ares 1 launcher that would take astronauts into space.

Instead NASA will concentrate on building a new simpler heavy lift launcher based heavily on the Shuttle-C concept says Science magazine. Some services, such as supplying the International Space Station, would be contracted out to commercial companies such as Space X, which would use its Falcon 9 medium-lift launcher that is scheduled to fly for the first time in March.

The European Space Agency, which recently confirmed an agreement to work more closely with NASA on lunar and Mars missions, along with other partners such as Japan, may be asked to share costs and provide hardware for joint missions.

A future for space science?

Bolden assured the audience that "the future of human spaceflight will not be paid for out of the hide of the science program," a comment that received cheers and a round of applause.

However, in an interview with Physics Today held last month, associate administrator Ed Weiler who is in charge of NASA's science program, said that the community will soon be faced with "hard decisions" over which programs will receive funding as too many science missions are extended beyond their initial design life, and that the space mission budget would likely be constrained in the near future.

Paul Guinnessy

Japan cuts budget while France's rises

2009-12-22T20:53:34Z

As the UK science community reels from steep budget cuts, other countries are facing unexpected financial pressures, and in some cases bonuses.

The French university sector is expected to receive an €11-billion (US$16-billion) windfall from a government initiative intended to create an "Ivy League" of research centers, reports NatureNews.

The fund is part of a €35 billion package announced by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on 14 December. Sarkozy has indicated for weeks that he considers investment in research and development crucial for the long-term viability of France, particularly in light of the billion-dollar investment the US made in science as part of the stimulus package.

A shock to the system

The new Japanese government, which was elected in September—the first new government by a major opposition party in more than 50 years—campaigned on a platform of increased science spending only to announce drastic budget cuts of up to 50% to a number of high-profile science facilities and programs as part of a program to cut next year's budget by ¥3 trillion (US$ 33.7 billion).

The cuts were planned by a new cabinet-level government advisory unit called the Government Revitalization Unit and chaired by the country's Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.

The cuts will hit Japan's Subaru telescope in Hawaii, SPring-8 synchrotron in Harima, a planned $1.3 billion supercomputer that was destined to be the world's fastest, neutrino research at the Super-Kamiokande detector, ocean drilling projects and basic grant programs.

A statement on the SPring-8 website says

"The working group of the Government Revitalization Unit, identifying wasteful spending, recommended that our budget request for the fiscal 2010 should be cut by between 1/3 and 1/2, and the Unit has agreed to respect the recommendations made by the working group on November 30, 2009.
"Under the circumstances, we are deeply concerned that if the budget is compiled according to the recommendations, the funding shortfall would seriously affect our users, possibly making it impossible for us to provide synchrotron radiation at all. We will do our best efforts to avoid such a situation."

Fighting back

It did not take long for researchers at the facilities to start campaigning to get their funding restored.

Yoichiro Suzuki, the spokesperson for Super-Kamiokande, points out that the detector is expected to make several important future observations, beyond the previous discovery of the neutrino mass.

"If the observations are stopped even for a short period by a budget cut, [Super-Kamiokande] may miss the possibility of the detection of the neutrinos from a supernova burst. Also, the quality of the detector may deteriorate.

Neutrino research in Japan, which has developed over the past 10 years or more to the top rank in the world, will be stopped and the researchers will disappear.

The drop will be fast.

Japan could quickly become a second- or third-class power in science. Once it falls, it will take another 10 or 20 years to catch up with the top level of the world."

Four Nobel laureates and a Field's medal winner argued against the cuts at a symposium at the University of Tokyo, and presented Hatoyama the next day with a statement signed by eight Japanese Nobel laureates warning that, "Weakening science and technology will lead to the decline of our resource-poor country."

Last week, the Council for Science and Technology Policy (CSTP), Japan's highest science-policy-making body, proposed continued support for those projects and many others.

Final budget decisions will be made later this month, but Hatoyama has called the CSTP proposals "valuable opinions," and said that he would "work to ensure they were reflected in the final budget."

Paul Guinnessy

NSF gets a budget increase

2009-12-21T18:15:01Z

The House and Senate have passed H.R. 3288, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2010, and sent it to President Barack Obama for his signature. Under the bill, funding increases for the National Science Foundation by $436.1 million or 6.7% over the FY 2009 appropriation to $6,926.5 million (excluding additional funds provided by the stimulus bill). The increase is consistent with the ongoing effort to double the agency's budget over a 10-year period.

A Joint Explanatory Statement (JES) provides the appropriators' recommendations regarding the foundation.

The JES expressed concern over the level of support NSF is receiving, particularly in light of the 2011 budget, and hence lawmakers requested that the Obama administration plan for a 7% increase for 2011.

The committee also stated the following:

"The conferees support House direction to the Foundation to convene a panel of experts to survey pre-K to 12 schools that are highly successful in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and submit a report of the findings and recommendations of this panel to the Committees within 180 days of the enactment of this Act."

The report stated:

"Within the funds provided, the conferees direct NSF to maintain funding at the levels requested for the following activities:
Climate change

Cyber-enabled discovery and innovation

Science and engineering beyond Moore's law

Adaptive systems technology

Dynamics of water processes in the environment

National Radio Astronomy Observatory

"In addition, the conferees support House direction on high-risk, high-reward basic research,...support for 2,000 graduate research fellowships across all of NSF; climate change education; and funding of EPSCoR [the Department of Energy's Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research]."

The JES also refers to the Gemini telescope, which the UK is pulling out of in 2012.

"The conferees recognize that the Gemini international telescope agreement is scheduled for renewal in 2012. The US currently has a 50% share in this project, which originated in 1992, and today includes the UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile as partners. Given the scientific importance of the Southern Hemisphere Gemini Observatory, NSF is encouraged to continue and, if possible on favorable terms, expand US support in the upcoming renewal negotiations to acquire additional telescope time for NSF investigators."

The bill includes $46.3 million for Advanced LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory), a gravity wave detector; $42.7 million for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array; $13 million for the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST); $14.3 million for the Ocean Observatories Initiative and $950,000 for the IceCube neutrino telescope.

Written by Richard M. Jones and originally published as FY 2010 National Science Foundation Appropriation
Edited by Paul Guinnessy for Physics Today

UK physics budget slashed

2009-12-16T22:47:41Z

One of the UK's leading research councils, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), announced today that it is to drastically cut funding for physics despite an earlier promise by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown in February that "the downturn is no time to slow down our investment in science but to build more vigorously for the future."

The cuts, designed to save at least £115 million ($200 million), include the UK withdrawing from a number of international projects, including the A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE) at the Large Hadron Collider, UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT), the New Light Source (NLS), and the Gemini telescopes, (the complete list can be found at the end of this article). They also include cutting PhD fellowships and student grants by 25% next year.

Nuclear physics, as expected from leaks earlier this year, is hit particularly bad with a 52% cut in funding and withdrawal scheduled for the Advanced Gamma Tracking Array (AGATA), a European project to build a powerful spectrometer to look at the structure of atomic nuclei, and the Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey (PANDA), a project linked to the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR), a particle accelerator in Germany.

All of the UK's nuclear physics professors have signed up to a letter sent today to the Science Minister Paul Drayson alerting him to the implications of the cuts to the government's proposed push to build 10 new nuclear power plants.

"These out-of-proportion cuts have the potential to kill off the UK skills base in nuclear physics," said Paddy Regan at the University of Surrey.

"How this can be happening at a time of discussions of building new nuclear power plants is incredible. Where does the STFC think the trained manpower that the UK produces from nuclear physics and associated instrumentation and measurement is going to come from?" he added.

A measured retreat

The cuts were announced as the STFC published its funding roadmap for spending £2.4 billion ($4.08 billion) over the next five years. "The council of STFC has approved an affordable, robust and sustainable program," said Michael Sterling, the STFC chairman. "This has involved tough choices affecting the entire program including a managed withdrawal from some areas."

The withdrawal could take up to three years to complete, said STFC CEO Keith Mason, and the STFC may have to conduct another round of funding cuts going forward. "We will ensure a managed withdrawal from those activities that we will no longer support," he said, "taking into account the fact that the academic and research community of scientists is a national resource."

Mason continued, "The program adopted by [the STFC] is extensive and will require both external and internal re-alignment and change. The managed withdrawal from identified projects will allow members of our scientific communities to redirect their efforts, or where possible to seek other sources of funding for their projects.
We have already initiated this process with our staff, universities; partner Research Councils, the Institute of Physics and Royal Astronomical Society, project leaders, international partners and others."

Mason blames the cuts on the devaluation of the pound, caused by "the impact of the international financial situation," which led to a 15.1% rise in its subscriptions to CERN and other international facilities from £214.9 million ($365.3 million) last year to £247.3million ($420 million) in 2009–10. The SCFC also gets £20 million ($34 million) less funding next year.

A bad birth?

The STFC has been plagued with controversy since it was formed from the merger of two research councils the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) and and the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC), in 2007 and immediately found an £80 million ($137 million) shortfall. To balance its budget for next year, the other funding councils are chipping in £14 million ($24 million).

Mark Lancaster, head of particle physics at University College London, called the cuts "being nothing less than disastrous in terms of the shameful waste of a decade's investment in new facilities across STFC science."

"A lost generation of students will be created who are denied the opportunity to do a PhD and cutting-edge science," he added.

The behavior of the UK is viewed with disbelief by countries that can now see that the UK is no longer to be trusted as an international partner in major scientific programs. In several cases, the projects targeted for major cuts or cancellation had elected UK spokespersons whose positions must now look distinctly untenable with a direct loss of UK leadership. The situation for scientists in the UK is made particularly bitter by the knowledge that competitor countries are making investment in science a strategic priority as their economies emerge from recession, while the UK, which used to boast of its desire to build a "knowledge economy" cuts science again and again.
The funding squeeze within the STFC is particularly acute because it failed to secure an adequate settlement when it was formed from the merger of PPARC and CCLRC and has underperformed in attracting funding ever since due to its well-documented failures of leadership.

Brian Foster, head of particle physics at Oxford University, said that the cuts "give the lie to" the promise that science funding was protected from cuts. "This is a sad day for British science: the prime minister should hang his head in shame."

Ian Leslie, pro-vice-chancellor for research at the University of Cambridge, said, "The funding of international subscriptions and major domestic research facilities clearly needs to be rethought.

While it is evident that there will be substantial cuts, this [STFC] statement at least now gives some reassurance to those involved in priority programs.
...Nonetheless, the loss of good science that will result from this announcement is highly regrettable.

At a time when the United States is investing heavily, we believe British withdrawal from international collaborations and proposed cuts to fellowship and PhD funding will prove extremely damaging."

The outcry has not gone unnoticed by the government. Drayson released a statement in which he said:

"It has become clear to me that there are real tensions in having international science projects, large scientific facilities and UK grant giving roles within a single Research Council. It leads to grants being squeezed by increases in costs of the large international projects which are not solely within their control. I will work urgently with Professor Sterling, the STFC and the wider research community to find a better solution by the end of February 2010."

Astronomy cuts

Along with the pullout from Gemini and UKIRT, UK involvement in five space missions will also be phased out—Cassini, Cluster, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, Venus Express and >XMM-Newton.

Andy Fabian, president of the Royal Astronomical Society, said:
"With these cuts UK-based researchers will struggle to retain their leading position in astronomy and space science.

Astronomers in the UK are highly productive and deliver this excellence for a relatively low investment compared with their counterparts elsewhere. Research in astronomy is not an area where large 'efficiency savings' can be made without a detrimental impact on the quality of that work.
Given the difficult economic times we live in, we recognize that public sector budgets are all under pressure. But these cuts are a result of the structural and financial problems that have beset STFC since its creation in 2007, rather than being a consequence of the current recession. These problems have led to an ongoing funding gap that now has to be plugged by cuts in the research base, particularly in the budgets for astronomy and particle physics.

We also welcome today's commitment by the Science Minister Drayson, to examine the tensioning that arises from funding international science projects, large scientific facilities, and UK grants within a single research council, and the negative impact this has on the funds available for facilities and researchers."

Fabian continued, "Despite this, we are now seriously concerned at the effect the loss of so many smaller projects will have on the health and morale of physics groups in British universities. The Government has rightly recognized the strategic importance of science for a healthy and more diverse economy. Blue-skies research in subjects like astronomy is an essential component of that scientific base and cutting it now will make it harder for the UK to recover its international position once the economy recovers.

We call on the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) to take the opportunity to back blue-skies research, including astronomy, in the same way that it has increased its support for the life sciences. UK scientists are world leaders in this area and in recent years have attracted the brightest talent from across the globe to share our success. We urge the Government to plan for the long term and recognize that realizing our shared goals depends at least in part on a sustained investment in a diverse science portfolio.
The savings from cutting astronomy research are, in the scale of public expenditure, trivial. By contrast, the potential damage to one of the UK's leading activities could be huge."

Budget cut

Facilities that the STFC funds that will also see some reductions over the next five years include the Diamond Light Source, the ISIS neutron source, the Central Laser Facility, the Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU), and the Wide Field Astronomy Unit (WAFU) at Edinburgh.

A generic particle-physics detector called SPIDER and the upgrade to the vulcan laser at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory will now both be delayed by a year.

Looking to the future

The move to cut funding from NLS "was a regrettable outcome," said Jon Marangos, NLS project leader, who also looks to the future. "If it is true that the UK cannot at the present time afford to build a free electron laser (FEL) of her own it has also become abundantly clear to me over the last two years that she cannot afford not to play a major part in FEL science."

Jocelyn Bell Burnell, president of the UK Institute of Physics, said, "The greatest shame about today's announcement is the reduced investment in people. With all of the challenges we face, from climate change and energy security to a rapidly aging population, we urgently need individuals well-trained in physics. Today's announcement...runs counter to this need.

"The amount needed to avoid this unfortunate cut is minor in comparison to the huge sums of money spent saving the financial sector, surely money can be found to avoid it."

Paul Guinnessy

]]> List of facilities, projects, and programs that the UK is withdrawing from.

Astronomy
Auger, Inverse Square Law, ROSA, ALMA regional centre, JIVE, Liverpool Telescope, UKIRT. Additional reduction imposed on ongoing projects of £16m. Total savings of £29m over 5 years

Particle Physics
Boulby, CDF, D0, eEDM, Low Mass, MINOS, Particle Calorimeter, Spider, UK Neutrino Factory. Additional reduction imposed on ongoing projects of £25m. Total Savings of £32m over 5 years

Nuclear Physics
AGATA, ALICE at CERN, PANDA. Additional reduction imposed on ongoing projects of £2m. Total Savings of £12m over 5 years

Space
Cassini, Cluster, SOHO, Venus Express, XMM. Additional reduction imposed on ongoing projects of £28m. Total Savings of £42m over 5 years

Centers to withdraw from
NLS, Photon Science Institute, European X-Ray Laser Project (XFEL).

The basis of the Copenhagen climate talks

2009-12-10T23:10:44Z

While negotiations continue over the formation of an international emissions treaty in Copenhagen (COP15), the run up to the conference helped develop a rash of announcements regarding emission caps and research and development from Brazil, China, India, South Africa and the US.

Although many of these announcements fall short in meeting the goal of trying to limit the mean global temperature rise to 2 °C, it is progress compared to their earlier commitments and lays the groundwork for further negotiation at the COP15 meeting.

All emission data was obtained from http://wwww.climateactiontracker.org

China

During President Barack Obama's recent trip to China, the two nations signed agreements to enhance "cooperation on climate change, energy and environment" announced Chinese President Hu Jintao.

The agreement included the formation of a $150 million US-China clean energy research center, equally funded by both countries for 5 years. The center will act as a clearing house to aid researcher in both countries in areas such as the so-called "clean-coal" technology.

The US and China will also develop joint standards and conduct demonstration projects in more than a dozen cities for the next generation of electric vehicles, and develop a new energy efficiency action plan to improve the energy efficiency of buildings, industry and appliances.

In a surprising move both countries agreed to develop a detailed roadmap to improve and increase electricity generation from renewable energy sources such as wind power—China is already close to being the world's largest user of a wind power despite wind producing only 0.4 percent of China's electricity—and is investing in a "smarter" electrical grid to balance load with demand.

China announced it is aiming for a 40-45 percent "energy efficiency" improvement by 2025 from 2005 levels. This allows for China's greenhouse gas emissions to continue to grow.

The result in Copenhagen "will mostly be on what will be delivered by the United States and China," said EU environment spokesman Andreas Carlgren to reporters on Monday. He said he would be astonished if Obama did not put more on the table.

As well as signaling its willingness to strike bilateral deals with the Chinese, the Obama administration also laid the gauntlet down to Congress's reluctance to pass a climate bill.

Earlier this week the Environmental Protection Agency presented its official "findings", that growing concentrations of greenhouse gases "in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations."

The US Supreme court announced that the EPA could regulate greenhouse emissions under the clean air act four years ago but it was not until the new administration came into office that the EPA formulated an official finding on the matter.

"This administration will not ignore science or the law any longer, nor will we ignore the responsibility we owe to our children and our grandchildren," said said EPA secretary Lisa Jackson in a press conference.

The implication is that this new policy allows the EPA to regulate all greenhouse gas emissions in the US without input from Congress if the Senate and House of Representatives does not pass a climate bill.

Moreover it strengthens the US public position in the Copenhagen negotiations as it gives the impression that the US is now more committed to cutting emissions than they were three months ago, and has the tools to implement cuts—unlike the previous climate treaty—the 1997 Kyoto Protocol—which was not ratified by the Senate and never went into US law.

Currently the US is aiming for a 3-4 percent cut in CO₂ emissions from 1990, or 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, 42 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050.

Europe

Although Prime Minister Gordon Brown's labour party is unlikely to win the next election, they have committed the UK to reducing its greenhouse gas emission by proposing a massive increase in the number of new nuclear reactors to be built in the UK from 1 to 10. The UK government is also proposing additional funds to support the development of renewable power sources such as wind, wave, and solar power. As part of the UK's internal target Brown is proposing that the UK cut CO₂ emissions by 20% over the next ten years (compared to 1990 levels) and 80% by 2050.

According to the Guardian newspaper Brown is proposing that Europe as a whole aim for a 30 percent reduction by 2025.

France is already attempting to cut its CO₂ emissions by 75 percent by the year 2050 by implementing a carbon tax.

Developing countries

Nearly all the improvements proposed by developing countries (and China) is tied to money.

South Africa said it would slow the growth of its emissions to 34 percent below the current annual growth rate by 2020 and to 42 percent by 2025, as long as international aid is forthcoming.

Despite investing in prototype nuclear reactors, South Africa is currently relying heavily on coal-fired power plants to generate electricity and demand continues to exceeds supply.

A similar situation exists with India's growing population and energy demand. India is offering—assuming it can tap into a climate change fund—to improve its energy efficiency by 20 or 25 percent better than 2005 levels. The Indian government also proposed a new climate research center last week to look at climate impacts specific to India.

There are two developing countries that have offered actual cuts (for a fee): Brazil and Mexico. Brazil is offering 36 to 39 percent below 1994 levels by 2020. Mexico is offering 50 percent by 2050.

End game

On average these promises on emissions reductions or efficiencies fall well short of meeting the targets required to stabilized the temperature rise.

Developed countries average out between 8 to 14 percent reduction below 1990 levels by 2020. In reality, cuts of 25 to 40 percent by 2020, and more than 80-95 percent by 2050 is required. For developing countries a dramatic cut in emission rise is needed.

There is another week to go before the international negotiations in Copenhagen conclude, but as the pre-conference pledges clearly show, it is likely that further emission cuts on top of those already proposed will be announced, or the meeting will be cast as a failure.

Paul Guinnessy

Hacked climate emails update

2009-12-10T22:55:04Z

Updated 12/11/2009 with "Anatomy of a public relations disaster."

Fallout from the release by hackers of a series of emails by climate scientists has continued this week while negotiations to try and reduce greenhouse gas emissions continue in Copenhagen. For earlier coverage see Jones steps down as head of climate unit and climate data allegations to be investigated.

Anatomy of a public relations disaster

Fred Pearce, a UK science writer says that the way that climate scientists have handled the fallout from the leaking of hacked e-mails is a case study in how not to respond to a crisis.

Pearce adds that it also points to the need for climate researchers to operate with greater transparency and to provide more open access to data. In the short term he ends his column with the following:

...I have been speaking to a PR operator for one of the world’s leading environmental organizations. Most unusually, he didn’t want to be quoted. But his message is clear. The facts of the [hacked] e-mails barely matter any more. It has always been hard to persuade the public that invisible gases could somehow warm the planet, and that they had to make sacrifices to prevent that from happening. It seemed, on the verge of Copenhagen, as if that might be about to be achieved.

But he says all that ended on Nov. 20. “The e-mails represented a seminal moment in the climate debate of the last five years, and it was a moment that broke decisively against us. I think the [Climatic Research Unit (CRU)] leak is nothing less than catastrophic.”

UK Parliament asks for answers

Phil Willis, the chairman of the UK's House of Commons science and technology committee, has written to Edward Acton, the vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia, requesting a "comprehensive note" setting out what had happened with the hacked climate email servers and what steps have been taken to investigate the allegations.

Willis also asks how the CRU can "justify its commitment to academic transparency" and how the university proposes to restore confidence in the research.

A Skeptical Media?

Ian Plimer's uncritical coverage in the hacked emails row is frustrating says Bob Ward in the Guardian:

One of the many frustrations for climate change researchers arising from the current hacked climate emails saga has been the way that so-called skeptics have been given so much uncritical coverage by journalists who are not properly scrutinizing their misleading and inaccurate claims...
Take Ian Plimer, who helped the UK Independence party last week to launch its declaration of climate change denial and is a member of the academic advisory board of Lord Nigel Lawson's new lobby group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Plimer is gaining lots of new publicity as an "expert sceptic" says Ward, but the... "trouble is that Plimer is not a climate researcher and has not published any scientific papers on the change in climate that we have been witnessing over the past century. He is an Australian mining geologist who gained fame in his native country for publicly tackling creationists over their denial of the evidence for evolution...."

Al Gore's interview

Former Vice President Al Gore was interviewed in Slate.com. A number of the questions turned to the hacked emails. Here's one of Gore's responses.

Q: What's your view on the medieval warm period and the charge that the East Anglia e-mails suggest data was manipulated to "contain" that anomaly?
A: I haven't read those e-mails in detail, but the larger point is that there are cyclical changes in the climate and they are fairly well-understood, and all of them are included in the scientific consensus. When you look at what has happened over the last few decades the natural fluctuations point in the opposite direction of what has actually occurred. When they run the models and plug in the man-made pollution, the correspondence is exact. Beyond that, the scale of natural fluctuations has now been far exceeded by the impact of man-made global warming.

And again, we're putting 90 million tons of it into the air today and we'll put a little more of that up there tomorrow. The physical relationship between CO2 molecules and the atmosphere and the trapping of heat is as well-established as gravity, for God's sakes. It's not some mystery. One hundred and fifty years ago this year, John Tyndall discovered CO2 traps heat, and that was the same year the first oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania. The oil industry has outpaced the building of a public consensus of the implications of climate science.

But the basic facts are incontrovertible. What do they think happens when we put 90 million tons up there every day? Is there some magic wand they can wave on it and presto!—physics is overturned and carbon dioxide doesn't trap heat anymore? And when we see all these things happening on the Earth itself, what in the hell do they think is causing it? The scientists have long held that the evidence in their considered word is "unequivocal," which has been endorsed by every national academy of science in every major country in the entire world.

If the people that believed the moon landing was staged on a movie lot had access to unlimited money from large carbon polluters or some other special interest who wanted to confuse people into thinking that the moon landing didn't take place, I'm sure we'd have a robust debate about it right now.

Statement from the UK science community

The criticism over the emails has led to the following statement issued and signed by more than 1700 scientists (the full list of signees is available on the extended page).

We, members of the UK science community, have the utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming and the scientific basis for concluding that it is due primarily to human activities. The evidence and the science are deep and extensive. They come from decades of painstaking and meticulous research, by many thousands of scientists across the world who adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity. That research has been subject to peer review and publication, providing traceability of the evidence and support for the scientific method. The science of climate change draws on fundamental research from an increasing number of disciplines, many of which are represented here. As professional scientists, from students to senior professors, we uphold the findings of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, which concludes that "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal" and that "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations".

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Advisory board members quit Australian synchrotron

2009-12-10T19:32:33Z

The future of the AUS$200 million Australian Synchrotron (AS), looks uncertain after it's director, Robert Lamb, was fired last month, and six of the nine science advisory committee members resigned yesterday. More resignations are expected to follow.

After hearing of Lamb's firing, the AS staff went on a "work-to-rule" protest in which they would only provide services 9:00am–5:00pm only says Science magazine's Elizabeth Finkel. The facility is designed to run on a 24-hour cycle.

Lamb issued a statement last week:

I have not been informed in detail or really at all of the reasons for the ending of my secondment to the Australian Synchrotron 5 weeks ago. I don't know why this would of occurred. It is personally distressing but I am very concerned about the smooth operation of our Australian Synchrotron. We were running at 1% below budget in the past year, have raised in conjunction with the science community almost $55 million in 2009 alone and are successfully meeting the research needs of both the national and international science community. I am at a loss and until I am enlightened I am unable to usefully comment further. I appreciate the support of the scientific community and the overwhelming support of other groups that have contacted me. Most recently I accepted an invitation from the Asian Synchrotron Science community to be their guest at the annual Asia Synchrotron meeting held in Shanghai this past week. I know the University of Melbourne has demanded an explanation from the Board but it is several weeks overdue.

The synchrotron's Science Advisory Committee (SAC) met with board director and lawyer Catherine Walter yesterday, and six SAC members followed through on their threats to resign unless Walter herself leaves.

All the Australian SAC members, Frank Larkins, chairman of the advisory committee; Peter Lay of the University of Sydney; and Jenny Martin of the University of Queensland were among those who resigned.

Earlier this week, a synchrotron researcher who asked to remain anonymous reported to Nature's Stephen Pincock, "If the [SAC] committee resigns, no eminent scientist from around the world is going to touch the Australian Synchrotron with a bargepole."

Paul Guinnessy

Peer review not popular at Homeland Security

2009-12-09T15:35:31Z

When it comes to funding basic research at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), program officers seem to rely mostly on their own opinion reports Science. An analysis of the agency's $1 billion science and technology directorate has found that only about 40% of the $175 million spent on basic science was awarded through a competitive process. And only a portion of that slice is subject to outside peer review.

Climate data allegations to be investigated

2009-12-05T00:24:02Z

Physics Today: Rajendra Pachauri, the director general of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said in an interview with BBC Radio 4's The Report program that the IPCC will investigate allegations of data manipulation brought to light by the release of e-mails from a hacked server at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

"We will certainly go into the whole lot and then we will take a position on it," he said. "We certainly don't want to brush anything under the carpet. This is a serious issue and we will look into it in detail."

Pachauri told the Guardian last week there was "virtually no possibility" of a few scientists biasing the advice given to governments by the IPCC.

"The processes in the IPCC are so robust, so inclusive, that even if an author or two has a particular bias it is completely unlikely that bias will find its way into the IPCC report," he said.

Andrew Watson, from the University of East Anglia's School of Environmental Sciences, says that "despite the best efforts of the skeptics, there is no instance in these e-mails that anyone has found so far—and there are millions of people looking—that suggests the scientists manipulated their fundamental data."

The next stage of international negotiations regarding a new greenhouse-gas emission treaty starts in Copenhagen on Monday and there is concern that the accusations by climate skeptics may derail progress in developing a new treaty.

The UK's climate change secretary Ed Miliband said: "We need maximum transparency including about all the data, but it's also very, very important to say one chain of emails, potentially misrepresented, does not undo the global science. The science is very clear about climate change and people should be in no doubt about that. There will be people that want to use this to try and undermine the science and we're not going to let them."

Paul Guinnessy