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In a meeting held on the 18 and 19 November, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) council, representing the fusion project's seven international partners: China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the US, did not automatically confirm the baseline cost, schedule, and design of ITER as expected.

Instead council members requested ITER staff to reevaluate the technical and organizational risks associated with the baseline proposal, particularly regarding the manufacturing and building schedule and report back in three months.

The concern is that the schedule, which calls for the reactor to be built and operational by 2018, may be too optimistic, and as Daniel Clery reported in Science, the cost could be much higher than the ITER partners expect.

Paul Guinnessy

A new web site called ScienceWorksForUS, has been launched that highlights research and science-related funding from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The data for the site was gathered by a group called the Science Coalition in collaboration with the Association of American Universities and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.

"This [funding] reflects what’s possible when smart investments in the public sector are placed in the hands of our scientists, innovators, and academies of higher learning," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who was at a press conference launching the site. "We will ensure that the Recovery Act was not the end of our investment in innovation, but the beginning of a sustained commitment to science," she added.

The stimulus contained $21.5 billion for scientific research, the purchase of capital equipment and science-related construction projects.

This money is less than 3 percent of the $787 billion stimulus measure.

"These research projects—large and small—are making a difference in hundreds of local communities by providing jobs for researchers, lab technicians, and graduate students," said University of Arizona President Robert Shelton.

Long-term impact

“When we invested nearly $22 billion in the Recovery Bill for scientific discovery, we set the stage not just for job creation today, but for the economic growth of tomorrow," said Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), co-chair of the Congressional Research and Development Caucus. "It is vital for our long-term economic prosperity that we maintain this robust commitment to scientific research and development."

How strong this commitment is from the Obama administration will clearly be seen in next year's budget. All the federal agencies have been asked to create two budgets, one with flat spending at 2009 levels (excluding stimulus funds) and the other with a 5% cut from 2009 levels.

Paul Guinnessy

The American Geophysical Union, the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and 15 other major science groups have written a letter to Congress asking them to take action on carbon emissions:

Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.

These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science.

Moreover, there is strong evidence that ongoing climate change will have broad impacts on society, including the global economy and on the environment.

For the United States, climate change impacts include sea level rise for coastal states, greater threats of extreme weather events, and increased risk of regional water scarcity, urban heat waves, western wildfires, and the disturbance of biological systems throughout the country. The severity of climate change impacts is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades.

If we are to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change, emissions of greenhouse gases must be dramatically reduced. In addition, adaptation will be necessary to address those impacts that are already unavoidable. Adaptation efforts include improved infrastructure design, more sustainable management of water and other natural resources, modified agricultural practices, and improved emergency responses to storms, floods, fires and heat waves.

We in the scientific community offer our assistance to inform your deliberations as you seek to address the impacts of climate change.

The Particle Astrophysics Science Assessment Group (PASAG) which was formed in April by the US Department of Energy (DOE) and National Science Foundation (NSF) to assess priorities in high-energy physics research under four different funding scenarios over the coming decade has released its conclusions.

The group looked at projects in dark matter, dark energy, high-energy cosmic particles (cosmic rays, gamma rays, and neutrinos), and projects seeking high energy physics resources to study the cosmic microwave background (CMB).

Budget numbers

The four scenarios are:

"These budget scenarios provided very tight constraints that forced difficult choices in the planning," says the report. But "by constructing the optimal science program possible in each budget scenario, there emerged a consensus view of the priorities."

On the list

Even under the tightest constraints DOE and NSF should fund two next generation dark-matter experiments: upgrading VERITAS, a ground-based VHE gamma-ray detector, and the proposed $15 million High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) gamma-ray observatory.

"Even in this very lean scenario, the diversity offered by [the VERITAS and HAWC] projects is a priority, and their impacts are large for a relatively small investment," they argue.

The SuperCDMS-SNOLAB., an underground dark matter experiment based in Canada, should also be funded says the report.

Moreover, "Given the central importance of the CMB to our understanding of energy, matter, space, and time, and the unique contributions high energy physics can provide," CMB experiments would continue as they are relatively cheap.

Nearly all the projects have an international component: HAWC for example, would be based at a high-altitude site in central Mexico, and consist of 300 large, closely spaced water tanks, each outfitted with three 20-cm photomultiplier tubes to detect the Cherenkov light of charged particles from gamma-ray and cosmic-ray showers as they hit the tanks.

But funds from international collaborations would not help keep major US participation in other proposed projects—in areas such as dark energy—under scenario A, as there would not be enough funds to pay for major hardware.

No third generation dark matter experiments can be started in this decade under scenario A, says the report, "risking loss of US world leadership" in the field.

The best guess

The most likely budget for the field may be scenario C, as the NSF budget for 2009 is 7.8% above 2008, and the proposed 2010 budget is 8.5% above 2009.

Moreover Congress approved a doubling of science budgets over 10 years when it passed the 2007 America Competes Act.

In this scenario the US could have "a world-leading program [in dark energy]... with coordinated activities in space and on the ground," says the report.

PASAG recommended two additional third generation experiments for dark matter, and a global ground and space based program in dark energy.

"A significant DOE contribution to Joint Dark Energy Mission—a NASA-DOE space-based visible/NIR observatory—is possible, along with full support of BigBOSS—a new 4000-fiber visible/near infrared spectrograph for the existing Mayall 4-meter telescope in Arizona—and support for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)—a new ground-based 8-meter-diameter telescope to discover and measure the shapes and photometric redshifts of more than 3 billion galaxies," says PASAG.

Moreover, under this scenario C, the group recommends funding the Auger North observatory—a US$127-million array of 4,400 cosmic-ray detectors to be based in southeastern Colorado—as a northern counterpart to the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina. This project would be 60% funded by international partners.

"PASAG finds the science reach of Auger North to be important, and it recognizes the strong international support with the corresponding expectation that the US would be the host site," says the report. "Technically, construction could start in 2011."

PASAG suggests that the proposed US-led $299 million Advanced Gamma Imaging System (AGIS)—an array of 36 telescopes, each having a primary mirror diameter of 11m and making use of a novel two-reflector design—should be merged with the similar European-led Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). "It is generally understood on both sides of the Atlantic that a merger of the two projects should occur to develop a global effort," they say. Under this proposal the US would have a reduced, but still significant, role in the project.

A conservative position

Although the majority of direct research funding is from programs at DOE and NSF, there are indirect funds from facilities such as the proposed Deep Underground Science and Engineering Lab (DUSEL) could have been included in creating the recommendations.

Instead, PASAG decided to take a conservative approach and not include the potential of any additional DUSEL research funding due to the "uncertainty in [DUSEL] funding...even though the US dark matter program would be greatly strengthened by it."

Although PASAG lists the recommendations for each budget scenario, they did not state which scenario DOE and NSF should fund. A decision over which planning model to follow will be made by the agencies sometime around April next year.

Paul Guinnessy

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday announced that three prominent US scientists have been named “science envoys” to arrange scientific collaborations between the US and countries in North Africa, the Middle East, and in south and southeast Asia.

Former National Academy of Sciences president Bruce Alberts, former National Institutes of Health director Elias Zerhouni and Ahmed Zewail, a Nobel laureate professor of chemistry and physics at Caltech, will travel to the regions “to foster scientific and technological collaborations,” Clinton said in a speech delivered in Marrakech, Morocco.

The US also will expand the number of science, technology, environment, and health officers positions at its embassies by an unspecified number. And the government’s Overseas Private Investment Corp is to establish a “global technology and innovation fund” to finance S&T collaborations, she said.

“It was the Islamic world that led the way in science and medicine. It was the Islamic world that paved the way for much of the technology and science that we now take for granted,” Clinton said. “We want to look to your societies and we want to help Muslim majority communities develop the capacity to meet economic, social and ecological challenges through science, technology, and innovation.”

The measures come five months after President Obama promised to increase cooperation with Muslim-majority nations during a June speech at Cairo University.

Two of the envoys are foreign-born—Zewail is Egyptian and Zerhouni is Algerian—while Alberts spent much of his 12 years as NAS president engaging with science academies throughout the world. Zewail is also a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Responding to a question he posed during PCAST’s 22 October meeting, State Department science adviser Nina Federoff said the amount of US foreign assistance devoted to science and technology is “minuscule, probably not much more than a couple hundred million dollars, which is pathetic.” While funding is sparse, Federoff said a bright spot is a memorandum of understanding between the US Agency for International Development and the National Science Foundation, which commits the two to co-fund collaborations between US scientists and their counterparts in developing nations.

To complement the science envoys program, Federoff said her office is implementing a new “embassy science and entrepreneur fellows” program where scientists from other federal agencies, as well as university fellows already working at State, are assigned to certain US embassies for periods of up to three months.

In his Cairo speech, Obama promised additional steps to elevate S&T cooperation with Muslim, African and Southeast Asian countries, including “centers of scientific excellence,” and expanded scientific exchanges and scholarships.

In August, Obama further signaled his interest in aligning US S&T with foreign policy, directing his national security and economic advisers to reevaluate US foreign aid policy to take into account such global factors as climate change and natural resource scarcities.

David Kramer

Related Politics & Policy link
Progress for Obama's science diplomacy

A brief roundup of policy news stories last week indicates that political temperatures are rising in the run up to new climate talks, and that Iran is slowly becoming more flexible over opening up its nuclear program.

Climate bill faces hurdles in Senate
The climate-change bill that has been moving slowly through the Senate will face a stark political reality when it emerges for committee debate on Tuesday reports the Washington Post: With Democrats deeply divided on the issue, unless some Republican lawmakers risk the backlash for signing on to the legislation, there is almost no hope for passage.

US Envoy: No bilateral climate deal with China
Todd Stern, President Obama's envoy for climate change has dashed hopes of a bilateral deal on climate change during this month's presidential trip to China in an interview with NPR's Louisa Lim.

"There is no agreement per se," Stern says, adding that there had been no intention of cutting a separate bilateral deal.

Obama's trip will focus on clean energy cooperation, and aligning Chinese and American positions ahead of the upcoming global climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The US is pushing for China to cut its greenhouse gas emissions.

"They absolutely have to cap their emissions in the sense of having them reduced significantly as compared to where their trend line is," Stern said. "China could make a reduction twice as ambitious as the US is doing, and that would still involve their emissions going up somewhere from where they are now."

But Beijing is resisting US pressure, arguing that it is using other measures. It already has announced a goal of improving energy efficiency by 20 percent by 2010. China also is planting trees over an area the size of California.

Jiahua Pan of the Institute for Urban & Environmental Studies in, Beijing says that negotiations will depend largely on decisive mitigation action being taken by the developed nations. China will have every reason to follow suit if the rich nations demonstrate leadership and commit to more substantial cuts than they have offered so far.

India pushes for common responsibility
Rajendra K. Pachauri says in Nature that India wants to be a constructive partner in Copenhagen negotiations on climate change. The country is taking domestic action even though it cannot accept mandatory emissions limits.

UN inspectors visit uranium enrichment facility in Iran
UN inspectors have received their first formal look inside Iran's once-secret uranium enrichment facility that has raised western suspicions about the extent of their nuclear program.

The semi-official Mehr news agency reported that the four-member team visited the heavily protected facility, carved into a mountainside south of Tehran. The tour marked the first independent examination of the site, but no conclusions about the state of the facility are expected until after the next IAEA committee meeting.

Chart: How the ‘Darpa for Energy’ is slicing its $150-Million pie
Wired.com has created a chart describing which area's the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency will be handing out more than $150 million for what the agency describes as “bold, transformational” energy projects (see also DOE awards 'Smart Grid' and ARPA-E grants).

High energy physics and the Large Hadron Collider in particular were put under intense scrutiny at a hearing of the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment of the House Science and Technology Committee earlier this month (video available).

Money spent on the LHC was compared to that of the never completed Superconducting Super Collider (SSC). The taxpayer had "got nothing really out of it," said subcommittee chairman Brian Baird (D-WA). (see video at the 1:15:00 mark)

Baird then described the "tremendous" amount of money contributed to the LHC and how it failed to operate properly, adding "we put a hell of a lot of money into this thing on the promise that certain things would be achieved and now it’s not going to be achieved."

Baird predicted that investigations would have been undertaken and oversight hearings convened if this had occurred any other US government program. "You get to skate, partially because you know stuff that we don’t have a clue what you are doing," he said. "And I think that’s neat. I admire your knowledge, I admire your intellect."

Baird said it was a Member’s responsibility to ensure that federal revenue is well spent, saying that constituents’ taxes allocated to research facilities like the LHC could have been used for a child’s education, a new car, or to repair a roof.

Money used on "big gizmos," said Baird, could be spent on programs with a more immediate and a more direct benefit to a society. Besides curiosity, "how can this spending be rationalized?" he asked.

The witnesses respond

"It really has to be justified by the results," said Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Director Pier Oddone, one of four witnesses testifying in the hearing.

"I completely agree with you that our field is in deep, deep trouble globally if we do not deliver on the LHC," Oddone added, "our intent is absolutely to deliver." In a reference to Christopher Columbus's unexpected discovery, he added, "we may be going toward the spices in India, but we may run into America."

Another witness, Dennis Kovar, the director of the DOE High Energy Physics Program, responded that the US contribution to the LHC was working as designed, and under the Office of Science’s project management practices, was on cost and on schedule.

He said the LHC was a very complicated machine that is defining the state of the art, and as such is a "high risk." While acknowledging that it is "not good right now," Kovar said that there is "the expectation that it is going to run at some point."

A larger problem, Kovar stated, was the difficulty of better documenting and communicating the value of highly technical research performed at facilities such as the LHC to the larger public.

People need to better experience science, he said. Among immediate gains from US participation in the LHC are advances in US technology, the training of a workforce that goes on to work in many areas, and the appeal of cutting-edge discoveries to the public.

Hugh Montgomery, director of the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility described how metrics have measured the success of accelerator performance at Jefferson National Laboratory, Fermilab’s Tevatron, SLAC’s B Factory, and Brookhaven’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. "You are getting real scientific measurements and return on your dollars in general," he told Baird.

Lisa Randall from Harvard University expressed disappointment that the SSC was not completed, and assured Baird that it was only a question of time before the LHC would be operating. Governments, she said, were the only source of funding for cutting-edge basic research of this type.

The role of physics

Earlier in the hearing, the witnesses discussed the likelihood of profound consequences from future discoveries in high energy and nuclear physics research, expressed concern over the number of US high energy physics facilities that were closing, and the necessity of maintaining US leadership in the area.

In response to Rep. Daniel Lipinski’s (D-IL) observation that research in these fields is expensive and that more needs to be done to better communicate its results, the witnesses spoke of the importance of the media and other programs to engage the public. Oddone and Montgomery described the public’s enthusiastic response to outreach and teacher education programs at their laboratories.

Kovar expressed concern that advances in accelerator technology have moved overseas, and with it the vendors who provide it.

It was, Kovar said, extremely important for the US to maintain its leadership in these fields.

Other witnesses explained how the construction of accelerators in the United States has strengthened domestic technologies leading to advances in areas such as the web and medicine. Laboratories serve as "the great attractors" said Montgomery, drawing the world’s best scientists to the US.

The subcommittee continues its work on a reauthorization bill for DOE’s science programs over the coming weeks.

Originally published as FYI's Questions Raised About DOE High Energy Physics and Nuclear Physics Programs by Richard M. Jones.
Edited for Physics Today by Paul Guinnessy.

On 2 October, 100 Russian researchers who permanently work abroad published a letter in the leading Moscow business newspaper Vedomosti complaining of "the disastrous situation in Russian basic research" reports Science and Radio Free Europe.

Official Russian statistics suggest that 25,000 scientists emigrated from Russia between 1989 and 2004, and another 30,000 went abroad under temporary contracts says the newswire service RIA Novosti. Independent reports estimate at least 80,000 emigrated in the early 1990s alone.

According to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's press office, Medvedev responded by initiating work on a plan for developing Russian science.

Both Medvedev and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have called for increased science investment in the last year, triggered in part by the US stimulus bill which channeled billions of dollars to basic research.

Medvedev's visibility with science investment increased recently when he opened the Second International Nanotechnology Forum held in Moscow, which was attended by a number of government officials.

In his speech, Medvedev said that Russia had all the intellectual, organizational and financial resources necessary to become a leader in nanotechnology by investing $10.5 billion of government funding over the next few years to 2015.

Medvedev praised the university system suggesting that "they represent a genuine potential advantage" compared to international competitors.

He also stated that Russia needs to facilitate the return of researchers who fled the country and create favorable conditions for research, and expressed concern how Russia will train up the 100-150,000 workforce needed for nanotechnology.

"It is obvious that we need modern, informed, qualified professionals in this [nanotech] field, people who have been trained in the new programs.... If the existing nomenclature of specializations does not provide the capabilities we need, then we simply need to change it and to prepare the sort of professionals that we do need," he said. "A shortage of personnel remains a serious barrier to Russia’s serious engagement in nanotechnology."

Paul Guinnessy

The National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Advisory Committee for Geosciences (AC-GEO) has released a new report that calls for re-focusing research in the geosciences in the US.

"For most of its history Earth has experienced vast alterations," states the report, "in response to natural variations in our planet." But humans are now emerging as the dominant agent of change it says.

"It is essential going forward that we have the scientific tools and evidence to understand and anticipate how the Earth will be transformed in the future, and at what rate, in response to these growing pressures," says geoscientist George Davis of the University of Arizona, chair of the AC-GEO.

"To identify these influences and their potential impacts requires an understanding of the Earth, its history, and its systems that's grounded in basic science," he adds.

The report recommends that NSF coordinate US research into these areas. "The [NSF] geosciences directorate must engage other NSF directorates and external partners in an ambitious research program that furthers our understanding of Earth, and provides the basis for objective and sound policy formulation and decision-making," says NSF director Arden L. Bement, Jr.

The challenges ahead for the geosciences, says the report, are:

"We as geoscientists must work to meet the challenge of understanding [the Earth's dynamic and complex interactions], and use that knowledge to advance our [governmental] stewardship of its systems," says Tim Killeen, NSF assistant director for geosciences.

Society as a whole must learn to use a grounded and rational set of guidelines for making decisions regarding environmental and resource management says the report, and "leading many of those discussions will be geoscientists ... who will share their understanding of the Earth system with the public and with decision-makers, providing the scientific knowledge that will ultimately guide society as it comes to understand its evolving relationship with the planet."

The AC-GEO's recommendations for NSF's directorate for geosciences, which has three divisions--atmospheric and geospace sciences; earth sciences; and ocean sciences—are to:

"We as a society face a daunting task," says Killeen. "Through the help of [this report], we will make great strides in realizing a new vision for the geosciences—and for the future of our planet.

Paul Guinnessy

Physics Today: Johns Hopkins University is again the leading US academic institution in total research and development spending for the 30th year in a row, according to a new the latest annual NSF Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges.

The total funding ranking includes research support not only from federal agencies, but also from foundations, industry and other sources.

The university pulled in $1.68 billion in medical, science and engineering research in fiscal 2008, half of which was based at the Applied Physics Laboratory. Since NSF changed its methodology in 1979 to include spending by the Applied Physics Laboratory in the university’s totals, the university has remained top of the list.

APL employs 4,300 people working specifically on some 400 R&D projects with annual funding of about $800 million.

The institutions ranked second through fifth—University of California at San Francisco; University of Wisconsin at Madison; University of Michigan and UCLA—all reported spending in the $800 million to $900 million range.

Top of the federal list

Johns Hopkins also ranked first on the NSF’s separate list of federally funded research and development, spending $1.42 billion in FY2008 on research supported by NSF, NASA, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense.

"More than half of our annual expenditures is invested in research," said Lloyd Minor, provost and senior vice president of academic affairs at Johns Hopkins. "Our success in attracting external research support is a testament to the talent, dedication and leadership of the faculty, staff and students."

In FY2010, positions on the list may change slightly due to the heavy investment in R&D as part of the administration's billion dollar stimulus package.

Virginia Tech dropped from 42nd to 46th out of 679 universities, not because of a lack of funding—which increased by $7 million to $373 million in 2008—, but because funding increased more dramatically at other institutions.

"While our overall growth was below our goals, the areas that account for competitive research awards continued to grow," said Robert Walters, vice president for research. "We increased our external federal funding by more than 5 percent and our industry funding by almost 20 percent. In the current economy, those numbers are encouraging."

Paul Guinnessy