Tag Archives: Funding

Science Seeks Stimulas Spending

Scientists Hope Stimulus Will Give Jolt To Research by Richard Harris

The stimulus package contains billions of dollars of funding for the National Institutes of Health — money that could create a quick financial jolt for young workers and university towns.

There are 3,000 institutions around the country that receive NIH grants to fund biomedical research. Raynard Kington, the NIH’s acting director, says those labs are also well-positioned to absorb a jolt of financial stimulus quickly.

“We have literally 14,000 applications that have been peer reviewed, that have been found to be scientifically meritorious and that have been approved for funding — but that we don’t have funds to support,” he says.

Give the NIH the money, he says, and in just a few weeks the money can flow out the door and into a thousand labs or more.

Billions for Science in Stimulus Bill

Science wins big in US economic plan

Democratic leadership in the US House of Representatives unveiled on Thursday an $825 billion economic stimulus bill that includes tens of billions of dollars in new funding for basic research, science infrastructure and clean-energy initiatives.
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House appropriators would pump $3 billion into the National Science Foundation (NSF), $2 billion into the National Institutes of Health (NIH), $1.9 billion into the Department of Energy and $1.5 billion into university research facilities. Much of that money would be directed toward science infrastructure like renovating buildings or laboratories, but the NSF and NIH would receive $2 billion and $1.5 billion respectively that could be used to pay for thousands of basic research grants that have already been approved but for which there was previously not enough money.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. And short term spikes in funding are problematic for numerous reasons. But I have long argued for the value of investing in science and engineering excellence for long term economic benefit. I am worried the government will fail to provide adequate strategic thought to investments.

Today is Martin Luther King Day in the USA: Watch the entire I Have a Dream Speech.

$100 Million to Tackle Energy Issues

Stanford launches $100 million initiative to tackle energy issues

The $100 million in new funds will enable the hiring of additional faculty and support new graduate students, in addition to the more than $30 million in yearly funding now spent on energy research.
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Precourt holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in petroleum engineering from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard University. He has spent his career in the energy industry, holding president and/or CEO positions at Hamilton Oil Co.; Tejas Gas Corporation, subsequently a Shell Oil Co. subsidiary; and ScissorTail Energy and Hermes Consolidated, gatherers, transporters and processors of natural gas, crude oil and refined products.

He is convinced that Stanford research can influence national energy policy for the better. “The wonderful resources that are available at Stanford, and the multidisciplinary approach they have to developing working solutions, are really attractive in terms of making things happen,” he said.

On a personal level, Precourt said, “Stanford made a huge impact on my life, as I look back on it. It was a superb education and I made some wonderful friends that I’ve taken with me for my lifetime.” Precourt donated $50 million to the energy institute that bears his name.

A $40 million gift from Steyer and Taylor will create a new research center as part of the institute, the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy.

NSF Funding for Engineering Education, Curriculum, and Infrastructure

The Innovations in Engineering Education, Curriculum, and Infrastructure (IEECI) program supports research which addresses four aspects of engineering education: (1) how students best learn the ideas, principles, and practices to become creative and innovative engineers, and how this learning is measured (2) how application of cyberlearning resources of networked computing and communication, interactive visualization capabilities, and well designed user interfaces can be used to develop easily transportable tools and systems with low barriers to adoption which significantly improve learning, (3) integration of sustainability into engineering education, and (4) future directions of U.S. engineering doctoral programs.

Two types of awards will be supported: Expansion Projects (approximately 10 grants are anticipated) will only be available for area (1), Innovations in Teaching and Learning. Exploratory Projects (25-30 grants are anticipated) will be available in areas (2-4).

Anticipated Funding Amount: The total anticipated funding in fiscal year 2009 is $8,500,000. Expansion Projects will be funded at a level of up to $400,000. Exploratory Projects will be funded at a level up to $150,000, but exploratory projects involving multiple universities may apply for grants up to $200,000.

Full proposals are due by 11 March 2009.

Open Source Abandoned by OLPC

Not Free at Any Price by Richard M. Stallman

When the OLPC appeared, it fell one step short of full freedom: the highly publicized wireless mesh network device, which allows OLPCs to connect to the Internet through nearby OLPCs, required a non-free program. This piece of non-free code prevented me from fully endorsing the OLPC. But that would not stop me from using one: I would just have to delete the non-free code and do without the internal wireless device.

The OLPC had practical inconveniences, too: no internal hard disk, a small screen, and a tiny keyboard. In December 2007 I test-drove the OLPC with an external keyboard, and concluded I could use it with an external disk despite the small screen. I decided to switch.
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If you want to support a venture to distribute low-priced laptops to children, wait a few months, then choose one that donates MIPS-based machines that run entirely free software. That way you can be sure to give the gift of freedom.

He is more anti-microsoft than I am but I agree with this contention that what we should support is a open source solution to provide laptops to children around the world. It is a shame, I really liked the potential for OLPC. I still wish them success I just am not interesting in directly supporting that effort but instead would like an alternative open source solution.

The Sylvania Netbook is available from Amazon now with the Ubuntu operating system (linux version). I use Ubuntu and it is excellent.

Appropriate Technology: Self Adjusting Glasses

Self Adjusting Glasses for 1 billion of the world’s poorest see better

What if it were possible, he thought, to make a pair of glasses which, instead of requiring an optician, could be “tuned” by the wearer to correct his or her own vision? Might it be possible to bring affordable spectacles to millions who would never otherwise have them?

More than two decades after posing that question, Josh Silver [a physics professor at Oxford] now feels he has the answer. The British inventor has embarked on a quest that is breathtakingly ambitious, but which he insists is achievable – to offer glasses to a billion of the world’s poorest people by 2020.

Some 30,000 pairs of his spectacles have already been distributed in 15 countries, but to Silver that is very small beer. Within the next year the now-retired professor and his team plan to launch a trial in India which will, they hope, distribute 1 million pairs of glasses. The target, within a few years, is 100 million pairs annually.
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Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device’s tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.

The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.
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Oxford University, at his instigation, has agreed to host a Centre for Vision in the Developing World, which is about to begin working on a World Bank-funded project with scientists from the US, China, Hong Kong and South Africa. “Things are never simple. But I will solve this problem if I can. And I won’t really let people stand in my way.”

Cool. A couple points I would like to make:

1) this professor is making a much bigger difference in the “real world” than most people ever will. The idea that professors are all lost in insignificant “ivory towers” is a very inaccurate view of what really happens.
2) Spending money on this kind of thing seems much more important for the human race than spending trillions to bail out poor moves by bankers, financiers… It sure seems odd that we can’t find a few billion to help out people across the globe that are without basic necessities yet we can find trillions to bail out the actions of few thousand bad actors.

Online Education in Science, Engineering and Medicine

The National Academies state that they want to develop websites, podcasts, and printed information featuring the topics in science, engineering, and medicine that concern you the most, and that you’d like to understand better. Great. I am very disappointed in how little great material is available now (from them, and others).

Fill out their survey and hope they hire some people that actually understand the web. I must say the survey seems very lame to me.

The internet provides a fantastic platform for those that have an interest in increasing scientific literacy. But there is still very little great material available. There are a few great resources but there should be a great deal more. The National Academies of Science have a particularly stilted web presence – it is as though the web were just a way to distribute pages for people to print out. Though they are very slowly getting a bit better, adding a small amount of podcasts, for example. While hardly innovative, for them, it is a step into the 21st century, at least.

Some of the good material online: Public Library of Science – Science Blogs – Encyclopedia of Life – The Naked Scientists – Berkeley Course Webcasts – BBC Science News – MIT OpenCourseWare (though it is very lacking in some ways at least they are trying) – TED – Mayo Clinic – Nobel Prize – SciVee

It seems to me universities with huge endowments (MIT, Harvard, Yale, Standford…), government agencies (NSF, National Academies), museums and professional societies should be doing much more to create great online content. I would increase funding in this area by 5 to 10 times what is currently being dedicated right now, and probably much more would be wise. I believe funding this would be most effective way to spend resources of those organizations on what they say they want to support.

Engineers and Scientists in Congress

I started maintaining a list of Congressmen with PhDs and graduate degrees in science, engineering and math awhile back.

Please comment with any additions that you know of.

The following were re-elected:
Vernon Ehlers, Michigan, physics PhD; Rush Holt, New Jersey, physics PhD; John Olver, Massachusetts, chemistry PhD; Brian Baird, Washington, psychology PhD; Bill Foster, Illinois, physics PhD.

Other scientists, engineers and mathematicians that were reelected include: Ron Paul, Texas, biology BS, MD; Jerry McNerney, California, mathematics PhD; Dan Lipinski, Illinois, mechanical engineering BS, engineering-economic systems MS; Todd Akin, Mississippi, management engineering BS;Cliff Stearns, Florida, electrical engineering BS; Louise Slaughter, New York, microbiology BS; Joe Barton, Texas, industrial engineering BS, Pete Stark, California, engineering BS, Mike Honda, California.

Lost: Nancy Boyda, Kansas (BS chemistry).

Newly elected: Bill Cassidy, Louisiana (BS Biochemistry, MD); Pete Olson, Texas (BA computer science); Kurt Schrader, Oregon (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine); Martin Heinrich, New Mexico (BS engineering), Gregg Harper, Mississippi (BS chemistry), Joseph Cao, Mississippi (BA physics); Brett Guthrie, Virginia (BS mathematical economics); Erik Paulsen, Minnesota, mathematics BA; Parker Griffith, Alabama (BS chemistry, MD); Cynthia Lummis, Wyoming (BS animal science and biology).

Before you leap to the conclusion that scientists are taking over Congress, remember 2 things: 1) I have probably been missing plenty that were in congress already and 2) this is still a total of less than 10% with even a BS in science, math or engineering. I attempted to determine the status of all those newly elected this year.

Please comment, if you know of others in Congress with science and engineering backgrounds. If we get this list to be relative close to accurate then we can start tracking the total representation in congress and see if it is increasing, decreasing or randomly fluctuating over time.

Britain’s Doctors of Innovation

Susannah Fleming, a PhD student at the University of Oxford life sciences interface doctoral training centre. She is developing a monitoring system to assess children when they first present to medical care. Source

Minister of State for Science and Innovation, Lord Drayson, announced the Â£250million (about $370 million) initiative which will create 44 training centres across the UK and generate over 2000 PhD students. They will tackle some of the biggest problems currently facing Britain such as climate change, energy, our ageing population, and high-tech crime.

17 of the centers will put specific emphasis on integrating industrial and business skills with the PhD education. This approach to training has been extensively piloted by EPSRC through a small number of thriving Engineering Doctorate Centres and Doctoral Training Centres in Complexity Science, Systems Biology and at the Life Sciences Interface. This new investment builds on the success of these and will establish a strong group of centres which will rapidly establish a pre-eminent international reputation for doctoral training.

The multidisciplinary centres bring together diverse areas of expertise to train engineers and scientists with the skills, knowledge and confidence to tackle today’s evolving issues. They also create new working cultures, build relationships between teams in universities and forge lasting links with industry.

As I have said before I think countries are smart to invest in their science and technology futures. In fact I believe creating centers of science and technology excellence is a key to future economic wealth.

Full press release: Â£250 Million to Create New Wave of Scientists and Engineers for Britain

DoE: Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program

The United States Department of Education’s Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program (MSEIP) provides funds to schools to provide awards to students. 20 new awards (average value of $139,000) were awarded this year. That brings total funding this year to 71 awards (50 continue from previous years). Institutions recieving funds include: Clark Atlanta University, Rust College, New Mexico State University, Spelman College, Virginia State University and the College of Menominee Nation.

The program is designed to effect long-range improvement in science at predominantly minority and engineering education programs to increase the participation of underrepresented ethnic minorities, particularly minority women, into scientific and technological careers.

Wiley College, one of the new recipients, aims to increase the number of science majors, especially in the fields of biology and chemistry. A key feature of this grant is the creation of a high school science competition that will allow local and regional high school students to visit the campus and compete in a variety of scientific events.

This event will bring five area high schools together to compete in ten scientific events based on biology, chemistry, mathematics and physics. Individual first-place winners will be given scholarships to Wiley College. There will also be an overall grand champion awarded. This event will allow high school students to experience life at Wiley College and the possibilities of a career in science.

“This event not only gives students a financial reason to enroll at Wiley, but also allows them to become familiar with the campus and its faculty and students, said Dr. Shumate. “This grant also furthers a connection between Wiley and both the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Arkansas, allowing current Wiley students to attend these schools in the summer for biomedical research.”

Wiley hosts HS science competition Saturday