Former AAAS President Francisco Ayala Wins Prestigious Templeton Prize

Francisco J. Ayala, an evolutionary geneticist and former AAAS president who long has argued that science and religion can comfortably co-exist, is the recipient of the 2010 Templeton Prize.

Francisco J. Ayala

[Photo (C) & courtesy of The John Templeton Foundation]

The John Templeton Foundation awards the annual prize, now worth $1.53 million, to “a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works.”

Ayala, 76, a naturalized American, moved to New York from Spain in 1961 for graduate study in evolution and genetics. He currently is the Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. His research on parasitic protozoa has opened new approaches to the understanding and treatment of malaria and other diseases.

Ayala opposes the entanglement of science and religion. He was an expert witness in a 1981 court case that overturned an Arkansas law mandating the teaching of biblical creationism alongside evolution.

“Even as he has warned against religion’s intrusion into science, Ayala, a former Dominican priest, also champions faith as a unique and important window to understanding matters of purpose, value and the meaning of life,” the Templeton Foundation said in a 25 March news release.

In a prepared statement, Ayala said there is no inherent conflict between science and religion. “If they are properly understood,” he said, “they cannot be in contradiction because science and religion concern different matters, and each is essential to human understanding.”

Ayala served as president of AAAS in 1995 and chairman of the board in 1996. During his term as president, the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion was founded.

He also served as a member of President Bill Clinton’s Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology. He won the AAAS’s Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award in 1987 and its 150th Anniversary Leadership Medal in 1998. He has won numerous other awards and honorary degrees, including the National Medal of Science in 2001. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

For more on the award, see the Templeton announcement

For more info about elementary school education visit http://heslw.org/.

Earl Lane

26 March 2010

Evolution of Pandemic Viruses Sweetly Deceptive, Yet Age May Add Protection

Evolutionary changes in viruses reveal why seasonal flu vaccines don’t protect against the 2009 H1N1 flu and provide insight into why older people have immunity to the pandemic virus, two new studies in Science Translational Medicine and Science report.

In Science Translational Medicine, Chih-Jen Wei and colleagues from the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show how the H1N1virus is different from seasonal flu viruses but similar to the pandemic “Spanish” flu that swept the globe in 1918. The findings are important for predicting how H1N1 will evolve in the future, and provide a model for developing a preemptive vaccine that could turn potentially pandemic viruses into more manageable ones.

The researchers injected groups of mice with seasonal and pandemic flu viruses from both 1918 and 2009. By analyzing the immune response to these viruses in mice, they found that the antibodies triggered by exposure to pandemic viruses protected mice from both the 2009 and 1918 flu.

Structure of the influenza virus hemagglutinin from pandemic and seasonal strains, highlighting sites of antibody neutralization and sugar modifications that confer resistance to antibodies. Shown here are surface renderings (side and top views) of the pandemic (left) and seasonal (right) influenza hemagglutinin viral spike (gray). In red, we show the site of antibody neutralization that is shared between the 1918 and 2009 pandemic viruses, called the RBD-A region. In blue, we depict glycosylation sites that interfere with the access of antibodies to the sensitive RBD-A site. The RBD-A region of HA is completely exposed in the pandemic strains, but in the seasonal strains, the added glycosylation effectively shields the RBD-A region from neutralizing antibodies.

View the full-size image.

[Image courtesy of Jeffrey C. Boyington and Gary J. Nabel]

A different outcome occurred with seasonal flu antibodies: they had no protective effect on pandemic viruses, although they protected against seasonal flu perfectly. These results indicate that the 2009 and 1918 viruses share some common elements that make it easy for antibodies to offer equal protection against these two otherwise distant viruses.

Wei and colleagues observed that antibodies that successfully guarded against the pandemic flu attached themselves atop the spike protein–a lethal molecule that sits on the surface of the virus and helps it to infect host cells.

Intriguingly, the spike proteins on the 1918 and the 2009 viruses are remarkably similar. Moreover, the spike protein on seasonal flu viruses has two sugar groups attached to the spike protein that the pandemic flu is missing; these sugar groups are particularly deceptive because they can mask the seasonal virus from recognition by the host immune system. This is one evolutionary trick the seasonal flu uses to evade vaccines that work on the pandemic flu.

The results may also explain the resistance of older people to the present H1N1 virus. Exposure to a close relative of the 1918 virus during youth means immune systems of older people may recognize the spike protein of the 2009 H1N1 flu virus, and so are able to halt its ability to infect host cells.

In a related Science paper, Rui Xu of the Scripps Research Institute and colleagues use crystal structures to show how human antibodies bind to the top of the spike protein from the 1918 and 2009 pandemic viruses. They found that human antibodies generated by either virus can protect equally against both viruses. Taking a closer look, the researchers found that the viruses share a nearly identical epitope–a portion of a molecule that acts like a tag to which an antibody binds.

The findings may explain why older people, especially those over 65, have a pre-existing immunity to the 2009 H1N1 virus. A Perspective in this issue of Science Translational Medicine discusses the implications of these findings on the future of flu vaccine design.

Science Translational Medicine, the newest journal from Science, focuses on outstanding science with promise to improve human health and quality-of-life. Under the direction of Chief Scientific Adviser Elias Zerhouni, former director of the National Institutes of Health, and Editor Katrina Kelner, the journal aims to publish groundbreaking research from basic biology that will help make significant advances in medical care, along with commentary on the latest issues in translational medicine.

Nadia Ramlagan

25 March 2010

Graduate Students Gain Essential Skills While Showing Grade-Schoolers What It’s Like to be a Researcher

Megan Easterly (center), a third-year graduate student in analytical chemistry at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, works with students at Highland High School in Ault, Colorado.

[Photo courtesy of Kate McDonnell]

Bugs in candy, birds colliding with planes and the movement of bacteria–these may not sound like a typical mathematics curriculum. But for some seventh-graders in Brooklyn, New York, these are routine lessons in math class.

Seventh-grade mathematics teacher Michael Seymour has teamed up with Andrew Mugler, a doctoral student in theoretical biophysics at Columbia University, to enliven lessons by infusing math class with real-life applications. The teacher-graduate student team is part of a National Science Foundation program, administered by AAAS, that pairs graduate students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics with kindergarten through high school teachers.

Andrew Mugler is a GK-12 Fellow working with a seventh grade mathematics teacher in Brooklyn, NY. Mugler is also a fifth year doctoral student in physics at Columbia University.

[Image courtesy of Andrew Mugler]

“It’s like having a living, breathing example of science at work in the classroom,” said Seymour, in his third year teaching at the Park Slope Education Complex at Middle School 88 in Brooklyn.

Seymour and Mugler will be among more than 600 attendees at the annual meeting of the Graduate STEM Fellows in K-12 Education program, known as GK-12. The program is funded by the National Science Foundation, and AAAS organizes the conference, which runs 26-28 March in Washington, D.C. Graduate students, teachers and faculty members with GK-12 grants are expected to attend.

“GK-12 activities help Fellows discover the connections between their research and the ‘real world’ and make them realize the meaning and larger purpose to conducting STEM research,” said Sonia Ortega, the senior GK-12 program officer at NSF. “The GK-12 program is aligned very well with what President Obama has been advocating to have scientists involved in STEM education.”

While the approaches and topics vary, all GK-12 collaborations expose students from elementary grades through high school to research and researchers. Mugler’s graduate studies, for example, involve modeling microbiological behavior. When his work is paired with the mandated curriculum, “we get a brand-new perspective,” Seymour said. “We see where the applications lie, what the members of the scientific community are doing with the information” learned in class.

More than 7000 graduate students, nearly 11,000 teachers and more than 550,000 K-12 students have been involved in the program since it began 11 years ago. The NSF has funded 200 GK-12 projects in 140 universities across the United States and in Puerto Rico since 1999.

Oversight of the program falls under AAAS’s Education and Human Resourcesprograms. Daryl Chubin, director of the AAAS Center for Advancing Science & Engineering Capacity, and Betty Calinger, project manager for GK-12, help build the community of GK-12 projects by organizing meetings and updating the Web site developed by AAAS.

Under the program, graduate students selected as GK-12 Fellows spend about one day a week in the classroom, from elementary grades through high school. They teach and they help their partner teachers prepare or update lesson plans that include aspects of their STEM research. In return, the Fellows get a chance to hone their communication skills–and receive $30,000 yearly stipends plus up to $10,500 toward education expenses. The funds come through GK-12 grants awarded to colleges and universities by the NSF.

During a Saturday morning panel discussion at the GK-12 annual meeting, Seymour and Mugler will present ways they integrate research into mathematics lessons. “The annual GK-12 conference is a best-practices bazaar,” said Chubin. “In plenary, breakout, poster, and informal networking sessions, specific examples are shared of how teachers and GK-12 Fellows infuse research into classroom lesson plans. The conference, like the program, showcases the power of collaboration that propels young minds while renewing the STEM workforce with classroom-savvy Ph.D.s.”

For example, Seymour and Mugler got some help from microorganisms to teach the Pythagorean theorem. Instead of showing their class a bunch of triangles with two sides of known length and having the seventh-graders do standard calculations of the length of the third side, Seymour and Mugler showed their students a line with three right-angle turns in it. They told their students that a bacterium, moving with flagella, navigated that jagged path as it sought food. They asked their students, “How far would the bacterium have had to swim if it went in a straight line instead?”

The problem, which is among the activities described on Seymour and Mugler’s class blog, turned into a classroom discussion, said Mugler, a fifth-year physics doctoral student at Columbia University. Students soon saw that the jagged line and the straight line together defined a series of right triangles. “What I liked most about this lesson is that it involved just that one insight of drawing that line and viewing the problem as triangles rather than a jagged path,” Mugler said. The students “had to figure out how to answer the problem with their classmates. It made the lesson sink in, and it gave them more confidence.”

Kate McDonnell and Megan Easterly are another teacher-GK-12 Fellow pair who will share lesson ideas at the GK-12 annual meeting. McDonnell teaches physical science, including an introductory class for ninth-graders and chemistry and physics classes for 11th- and 12th-graders, at Highland High School in Ault, Colorado. Easterly is a third-year graduate student in analytical chemistry at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

“Having Megan around has really energized me,” McDonnell said. “My weakness is in chemistry, and she is an amazing resource for all my questions. She has helped me to strengthen my chemistry curriculum, especially with hands-on and exciting labs.”

In one such lab, a flame experiment well-known in chemistry classes, Easterly was particularly helpful. Easterly and McDonnell devised the experiment so that students soaked cotton swabs in different chemical solutions and then lit them on fire with a Bunsen burner. The flammable solutions then glow different colors, which is the basis for different colored fireworks. Easterly explained to the students how electrons gaining and losing energy cause different colors and how the electromagnetic spectrum works.

“She even got up in front of my students and did a dance to show how electrons can move,” McDonnell said. “This lesson was so successful with my juniors and seniors that we actually did it again with the freshmen. They absolutely loved this lab.”

Having explained the basics of glowing–or fluorescing–chemicals, Easterly took the lesson a step further and talked about her own work on developing an electrode that can detect the brain chemical nitric oxide in slices of brain tissue. She will present a poster at the GK-12 conference on this work.

“I really enjoy my research and I love presenting it to the class,” Easterly said. And, she said, her experiences in McDonnell’s classroom have helped her become a better communicator. When she started, Easterly said, she used “scientific words and was shocked when the students didn’t know” what she meant.

Easterly has adapted her vocabulary: She still uses the scientific words, but she explains them in a way that relate to the everyday lives of her students. Her improved communication skills reflect another value of NSF’s program. Beyond exposing children to research, the GK-12 program is intended to broaden communication skills in researchers. By discussing research with younger students and teachers, graduate students learn how to explain their science to a variety of audiences.

Former GK-12 Fellow Karen McNeal collects sediment in Corpus Christi Bay, Texas. McNeal is now an assistant professor in geosciences at Mississippi State University.

[Image courtesy of Karen McNeal]

Former GK-12 Fellow Karen McNeal agreed that her fellowship helped her become a better science communicator. She did her fellowship in 2006 until 2007 through the GK-12 grant at Texas A&M University, where she obtained her doctorate in geology.

McNeal, now a faculty member in the department of geosciences at Mississippi State University, received a GK-12 grant of her own this spring. At the AAAS-organized GK-12 conference this weekend, McNeal will participate in a Saturday afternoon panel discussion of faculty members who are GK-12 alumni. They will describe how their fellowship experiences are helpful in their current jobs.

For McNeal, the experiences were an asset during her search for an academic job in 2007. She interviewed at a range of schools, from community colleges to top-rated research universities. “I knew I wanted to have a geoscience education component to what I do,” McNeal said. She looked for an academic job that would allow her to study geosciences education while maintaining her geosciences lab and field research.

For McNeal GK-12 helped her see different avenues for outreach and what NSF calls “broader impacts” of her research. She learned how to package skills developed through GK-12 in ways that would appeal to different academic institutions. For research-focused universities, she said, her teaching experiences demonstrated impacts on new audiences that are required in research grant proposals.

“I wanted to make an impact that went beyond the traditional research arena and into everyday lives,” she added, explaining why she applied for her own GK-12 grant. “I felt that the GK-12 project would allow me to continue to be a scientist in the research field that I enjoyed, but also allow my impact to go beyond the traditional science community.”

Obtaining participation and letters of commitment from frenzied school administrators can be the biggest challenge for GK-12 grant-seekers, and it was a challenge for McNeal as well. She sent emails and cold-called administrators at five school districts in her area, and she is pleased that three of them agreed to participate. After describing the program to them, McNeal asked what the schools needed. Administrators told her “our students need to know more about college. We need to present it in as many different ways as we can.”

And so, beginning this fall, McNeal and her 10 already selected GK-12 Fellows will become a presence in three rural middle and high schools near Mississippi State University, in northeast Mississippi. Apart from classroom lessons, they have field trips planned to Mississippi State University. GK-12 Fellows in McNeal’s program will show students the research labs they work in, and perhaps students will have the chance to do research in the labs.

The NSF GK-12 Annual Meeting begins today (26 March) in Washington, D.C. Poster sessions will showcase GK-12 activities and research throughout the three-day meeting. Sessions on Saturday will focus on discussions featuring teachers, project managers, and GK-12 Fellows about approaches to integrating research into the K-12 classroom to foster interest in and learning of science and mathematics. In the afternoon, teachers will go on field trips to area museums, and GK-12 program officers from NSF will be available to speak with faculty members seeking GK-12 funding.

Molly McElroy

26 March 2010

Project 2061′s Atlas of Science Literacy Illustrates Standards-Based Science Learning from K-12

Science: Cassini Spacecraft is a Window to Saturn

After six years of up-close observations, the Cassini space mission is painting the most detailed picture ever of Saturn and its complex ring system.

One of the most remarkable images of Saturn that the Cassini spacecraft has captured is the sweep of the rings from the unlit side–a view not visible from Earth. The central B ring is dense enough that sunlight doesn’t penetrate to the northern regions of the planet, making it appear darker than the other rings. Sunlight filters easily through the lower- density rings.

[Image courtesy of NASA/JPL/CICLOPS]

Data returned by the robotic spacecraft–and explored in this week’s issue of Science–have shown that the rings, shaped by vigorous evolutionary processes, are tumultuous and constantly changing, a finding that lends some support to the theory that Saturn’s rings are quite young compared to the solar system. Cassini is also informing scientists about the planet’s atmosphere, ionosphere, and magnetosphere, making it clear that they are distinct from those of other planets.

This week in Science, two Review articles explore this new Cassini data. In one, Jeffrey Cuzzi from NASA and colleagues from around the world put a spotlight on Saturn’s ring system, which is the most complex and extensive in the solar system.

“The ongoing evolution suggests that Saturn’s rings, or parts thereof, might be only one-tenth the solar system’s age… ,” Cuzzi writes. “An emerging perspective, after almost six years of study, is that Saturn’s rings show dramatic variability on much shorter time scales–decades, years, even weeks.”

Cuzzi and his colleagues also say that many of the processes affecting Saturn’s rings can be observed in proto-planetary disks–the precursors to new planets.

The rings are made mostly of water ice and organized into multiple layers, each one unique. Based on Cassini’s near-infrared observations, Cuzzi and his research team suggest that a mysterious reddish coloration, which contaminates portions of those layers, could be attributed to small clusters of carbon rings or by negatively charged iron compounds.

In a separate Review, Tamas Gombosi from the University of Michigan and Andrew Ingersoll from the California Institute of Technology turn their attention to Saturn’s atmosphere, ionosphere, and magnetosphere.

Using the tools on-board Cassini, these researchers analyzed the wind speeds and jet streams influencing the planet’s atmosphere, and listened in on lightning storms rocking the planet’s face.

They describe Saturn’s magnetosphere, which forms around planets when solar winds interact with a planet’s magnetic field, as a distinctive hybrid between Jupiter’s and Earth’s, unlike any other planet’s in the solar system.

“There are two types of magnetospheres, those like Jupiter and those like Earth. Saturn is in between,” Gombosi writes in the Review. “Cassini showed that Saturn’s magnetodisk is bowl-shaped and bent above the equator, whereas Saturn’s magnetic south pole was tilted toward the Sun. This is different from Jupiter, where the magnetodisk warps downward, and from Earth, where the magnetodisk is absent.”

The Cassini space mission is a cooperative effort by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency. After nearly a voyage of nearly seven years, Cassini reached the gaseous, ringed planet in 2004, and it has been collecting information ever since. With data from the ongoing mission, along with recent ground-based observations and old data from the Voyager missions, researchers are learning more than ever about Saturn, its many moons, and its ornate ring system.

Cassini will continue transmitting data from the ringed, seventh planet from the Sun back to researchers on Earth for years to come–and scientists will undoubtedly unlock many more secrets of Saturn in the years to come.

Brandon Bryn

19 March 2010

Polls and Media Reports Exaggerate Climate Change Backlash, Says Stanford Polling Expert

The percentage of Americans who believe global warming is real dropped slightly from 80% in 2008 to 75% late last year, still a robust majority that reflects a continued agreement with the conclusions of climate science, a leading specialist on survey research told a Capitol Hill briefing co-sponsored by AAAS.

Jon A. Krosnick

Jon A. Krosnick, professor of communication, political science and psychology at Stanford University, said the dip was caused by the recognition that the earth’s average temperature was cooler in 2008 than in previous years rather than a backlash against scientists as a result of recent news stories questioning the credibility of the research effort on climate change.

Krosnick, who has been conducting national surveys on climate change for more than a decade, said his findings differ from other polls, including one by the Pew Research Center last fall, which suggest that there has been a sharp decline in the percentage of Americans who believe there is solid evidence for global warming.

While some analysts say that stolen e-mails, appearing to show some climate scientists trying to squelch their critics, and reports of several errors in a consensus report on climate change have affected public confidence in climate research, Krosnick said there is no evidence in his polling numbers to support that view.

The percentage of people who trust scientists “completely, a lot, or moderately” dipped only slightly from 72% in 2006 to 70% in late 2009, Krosnick said, citing results from his recent survey, sponsored by Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment and the Associated Press.

A substantial majority of Americans still support government tax breaks and other policies requiring or encouraging businesses to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build more efficient cars, buildings and appliances, Krosnick said. In 2006, 82% backed such policies, compared to 77% now, his research shows. Support has remained steady or increased for other measures, such as tax breaks for alternative energy sources and construction of nuclear power plants and increased gas and electricity taxes to reduce use, Krosnick said.

Michael Oppenheimer

Norman Ornstein

He presented his latest polling results at a 12 March briefing for congressional staff and others on “Climate Policy: Public Perception, Science and the Political Landscape” co-sponsored by the AAAS Center for Science, Technology and Congress, the American Meteorological Society, the American Statistical Society, and the American Geophysical Union. Krosnick was joined by Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University, who laid out the scientific evidence for global warming, and Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who discussed how the current political landscape affects prospects for combating climate change.

“There is a truism in survey measurement that you have to bear in mind: question wording matters,” Krosnick said. “Respondents respond to the words in the questions you ask. The brain can’t help but do so.” While he acknowledged that crafting questions is not easy, Krosnick said that too often, public opinion survey questions on climate change have been poorly worded, lacked balance, or delivered too much information for respondents to quickly process. The result can be polls which suggest a more substantial shift in attitudes toward climate change than is warranted, he said.

Regarding the five-point drop in his own numbers on the percentage of those who believe global warming has been happening, Krosnick said almost all of the change occurred among the minority of Americans who have little trust in scientists.

One instance of widespread misunderstanding, he said, has been caused by the successful efforts of climate change skeptics to convince the public that there is disagreement among scientists on the reality of global warming. Krosnick’s latest survey shows an eight-point drop–from 39% in 2008 to 31% in 2009–in the percentage of people who think most scientists agree that global warming has been happening. And, in fact, for many years, the number of Americans who recognize the extent of the scientific consensus has been smaller than scientists would like.

“Since 1997, only one-third or fewer of Americans have recognized a scientific consensus among natural science experts on this issue,” Krosnick said. He called it “the most striking misperception” in his polling on climate change, one that poses a significant and continuing public education challenge for scientists.

“Scientists are terrible at communicating with the public,” Oppenheimer said. “That’s not a surprise, but something needs to be done about it.” At the same time, he noted, the polling data suggest there is only a tenuous relationship between what scientists say and what the public believes. Many may form their opinions on factors other than the information presented.

Still, the Capitol Hill briefing gave Oppenheimer an opportunity to remind congressional staff and others that–despite the recent media debate on the integrity of climate change researchers–the scientific understanding of global warming is clear and convincing. The natural greenhouse effect, by which water vapor and other gases in the atmosphere trap some of the sun’s heat as it is re-emitted from the Earth’s surface, has been understood for about 200 years, Oppenheimer said.

Without that natural warming mechanism, the Earth’s temperature would be 60 degrees Fahrenheit colder than it is and humans never would have evolved as a species, he said. The problem is that human activity has been pumping up the level of greenhouse gases, primarily due to fossil fuel-burning and deforestation. Total greenhouse gas emissions grew from 28.7 billion tons per year in 1970 to 49 billion tons in 2004.

The accumulation of such gases in the atmosphere is robust and persistent, Oppenheimer said. “Some of the carbon dioxide that you take into your lungs when you breathe was emitted by the first Model T,” he said. It has been estimated that about 20% of the carbon dioxide we emit today by fossil fuel burning will still be in the atmosphere 1,000 years from now, Oppenheimer added.

The measured temperature increase at the Earth’s surface has gone up nearly 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years, Oppenheimer said. The climate-related changes already underway, he said, include an increase in global average sea level of about 7 inches over the past 150 years. For each foot of sea level rise on the Eastern Seaboard, scientists estimate a loss inland of 100 feet of shore area without adaptations such as sea walls or sand replenishment. Researchers also have documented a 25% seasonal loss of sea ice in the Arctic, greater than the land area of Texas, California and Maryland combined.

Oppenheimer cautioned that even when the overall global trend is toward warming, brief periods of cooling can occur. One computer model foresees just such a period of cooling in Atlantic sea surface temperatures over the next decade. “Don’t be fooled,” he said. The long-term temperature trend in that model and others is upward.

For the future, scientists predict regional changes in which killer heat waves–such as the one which caused an estimated 35,000 deaths in Europe in 2003–may become the norm. Unless steps are taken to mitigate climate change, Oppenheimer said, “By the end of the century, the nasty summer of 2003 becomes just the typical summer.”

The impact of melting ice at the poles and in Greenland on global sea levels, while difficult to predict, could bring disastrous results in some areas. A sea level rise of 1 meter could inundate low-lying areas in Bangladesh where 10 million people now live, Oppenheimer said.

Given the scientific consensus on climate change, what are the prospects for legislation that would begin to cap the amount of greenhouse gas emissions by the United States? Ornstein, who has been watching and analyzing Congress for four decades, said he has never seen a higher level of dysfunction in the legislative process. The partisanship and prolonged bickering over health care reform, he said, has made it harder for lawmakers to move on other issues.

It is remarkable that the House of Representatives, in a sharply polarized environment, was able to pass a climate change bill last year with cap-and-trade provisions, Ornstein said. The odds of passing similar legislation in the Senate were never high, he said. It will require “a very tough, uphill slog” to find regional and ideological coalitions in the Senate to pass a bill, he said.

“It is almost miraculous that we have debate, discussion and even negotiation over climate change,” Ornstein said. The process is “alive and reasonably well right now while moving to a very different plane.”

President Barack Obama is willing to consider expansion of nuclear power and offshore drilling as steps that could bring some Republican senators along. Ornstein said, while Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina) has been working with John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) and Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) to explore new avenues toward a bipartisan Senate climate bill. That the process remains alive in the current political climate, he said, “is more than I think many of us would have thought six months or a year ago.”

Earl Lane

22 March 2010

Obama 2011 Budget Proposal Details Range of New R&D Priorities, AAAS Analyst Says

President Barack Obama’s 2011 budget proposal includes significant new investment for research into energy, health, space, and basic sciences, with funding drawn away from long-time research and development priorities such as defense and homeland security, AAAS’s budget analyst said on Capitol Hill.

Patrick Clemins, director of the AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program, said at an hour-long briefing that the federal research and development budget would decline slightly from 2010 levels. Still, he said, by shifting funds between programs, the administration is seeking to renew the historic federal role in cutting-edge research that drives innovation and economic growth.

“The budget this year is pretty flat from last year,” Clemins said in an interview after the briefing. That is “not a big surprise, because of Obama’s pledge in the State of the Union address to keep discretionary spending flat over the next three years. But within that budget, there have been a number of shifts in priorities.”

Clemins identified several key elements of the White House vision for science and technology: Federal research on fossil fuels and nuclear energy would be reduced, as would investment in agricultural facilities. Much space travel would be turned over to the private sector in the next five to 10 years. But the federal government would increase funding for research on cancer and autism; science education and workforce development; elements of a new U.S. manufacturing strategy; and R&D in energy, defense, computing, and space science that could have far-reaching future applications.

Patrick Clemins

The briefing was requested by the Congressional Research & Development Caucus and organized by the AAAS Center for Science, Technology and Congress. The AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program is a leading authority on how the United States and other nations invest in science and technology; it annually provides an assessment of the U.S. president’s R&D budget proposal soon after it is submitted to Congress and tracks its evolution through the year.

Clemins provided his first comprehensive look at the Obama administration’s 2011 R&D plan to an audience of about 100 people–including one member of Congress, educators, reporters, and staffers from Congress, the White House, and foreign embassies–who convened 16 March in the ornate Caucus Room of the Cannon House Office Building.

“Nobody tells us better what the current situation is than AAAS,” U.S. Representative Rush Holt (D-New Jersey) said in introducing Clemins. “Their annual look at research and development, particularly in the federal budget, is second to none.”

The Obama administrations research and development budget proposal for 2011 was unveiled at AAAS last month by John P. Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. His presentation came just days after Obama, in his State of the Union address, called for a freeze on non-defense discretionary spending as part of an effort to control the federal budget deficit.

Clemins, at his briefing, said the budget numbers appear to reflect the administration’s goal of using R&D investment to help achieve several top priorities: new industries and jobs; clean energy; health; and national security.

In all, the federal R&D budget proposed by Obama is $148.1 billion, a decrease of 0.3% the current year. But the deeper story of the budget is told by the shifts, Clemins said.

• Overall funding would increase for basic research by 4.4% and for applied research by 3.9%. But funding would decline by 3.5% for development and by 1.1% for equipment and facilities.

• Funding for defense R&D would fall by 4.8%; for non-defense R&D, it would increase by 5.8%. (The Department of Defense would continue to get a little over half of all federal funding for research and development.)

  Within the Department of Defense, the administration would cut development by 5%, or $71 billion. But funds would be shifted toward cutting-edge research: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an established center of military innovation, would get an increase of $3.1 billion, or 3.7%. And investment in basic defense research would rise 6.7% to $2 billion.

• At the Department of Energy (DoE), R&D spending would fall by 10.4% for fossil fuels and by 19.2% for nuclear energy. But Obama would provide $300 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which received its first funding in 2009 to pursue potential paradigm-shifting energy research. The administration also would increase R&D funding for energy efficiency and renewable energy; the nation’s electricity distribution grid; and the DoE Office of Science.

  Overall, energy would move past NASA to become the No. 3 recipient of federal R&D funding, behind defense and health.

One of the most controversial elements in Obama’s budget was the proposal to end NASA’s Constellation program, which would have developed spacecraft that could replace the Space Shuttle and support human missions to the moon and possibly Mars.

But there, too, the administration is signaling a shift in priorities and funds, Clemins said. Though it would save $3.1 billion by ending the return-to-the-moon mission and retiring the space shuttle, the proposed budget would increase overall NASA R&D funding by $1.7 billion, or 18.3%.

Obama would invest $6.1 billion over five years to transition regular near-Earth orbit missions to private industry. It would raise funding for the International Space Station by 35.1%, to $812 million, over three years. And it would invest $559 million in “heavy-lift” and propulsion systems, including research into new engines, new propellants, and advanced combustion processes.

“The cancellation of the Constellation program–and especially the Space Shuttle retirement–allows NASA to re-energize and… become more of a research and development agency and less of an operations agency,” Clemins said in his briefing.

Three other key science and technology agencies–the National Science Foundation (NSF), the DoE Office of Science; and the National Institute of Standards and Technology–would receive significant increases. The America COMPETES Act of 2007 established the goal of doubling the agencies’ budgets to support the basic science research essential for the nation’s long-term innovation efforts.

Under the White House budget proposal, the overall NSF budget would rise 8% to $7.4 billion, with a 9.4% increase pushing R&D to $5.5 billion, Clemins said. The funds would be used to support the National Innovation Strategy through next-generation information and communication technology, workforce development, and other initiatives.

The DoE Office of Science budget would rise 4.4% to $5.1 billion, with R&D funding rising 3.8% to $4.6 billion. Among the initiatives supported by that funding: Energy Frontier Research Centers; a new Energy Innovation Hub dealing with batteries and energy storage; advanced computing; and workforce development.

At NIST, the total budget would rise 7.3% to $919 million, with the R&D budget rising 21.7% to $706 million. An initiative called Competitive Manufacturing and Construction in a Clean-Energy Economy would get $34.6 million in new funding.

The National Institutes for Health (NIH) R&D budget would rise 2.8% to $31.4 billion. Among initiatives to receive funding in 2011 would be: cancer and autism spectrum disorders; AIDS research; and health applications of nanotechnology. The NIH Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases program, mandated by Congress to drive the discovery of new drugs, would nearly double to a total of $50 million.

Clemins reported that the administration would provide an increase of less than 1% in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education, with the budget up $32 million to $3.7 billion. Most of the new funds would go toward undergraduate diversity programs and graduate-level fellowships at NSF, NIH, DoD, and DoE.

Total homeland security spending, across more than 10 federal departments and agencies, would rise by 2.7 percent, Clemins’ research shows. But Department of Homeland Security R&D would fall 4.4%, he said.

Edward W. Lempinen

18 March 2010