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January 9, 2015
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CONGRESS AND THE BUDGET
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TOUGHER JOB FOR APPROPRIATORS IN 2016
Line-by-line
spending bills will be harder to enact in the coming year, even though
Republicans control both House and Senate, CQ reports. The 2013 budget
accord, which paved the way for appropriations in FY 14 and 15, is no
longer in effect. Those measures allowed R&D spending for the most
part to remain stable, if not increase. Now, lawmakers face a return of
the stringent caps put in place by the Budget Control Act of 2011:
Defense can rise by only $1.7 billion to $523 billion; nondefense
spending will drop by $100 million to $492.4 billion. Unless these caps
are adhered to, "the meat axe known as sequestration" goes into effect.
"There is pressure from many Republicans to increase defense spending"
beyond the caps. Democrats, whose votes will be needed in the Senate,
"will insist on equal boosts for nondefense spending," according to CQ.
The publication also contrasts the "low-key, genteel" style of
Appropriations Chair Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), right, with the "raw
determination and brute political muscle" of predecessor Barbara
Mikulski (D-Md.).
 WIND CONTROL:Federal
research agencies could have up to $21 million to spend on "windstorm
impact reduction" under the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Act
Reauthorization (H.R. 23), one of the first bills to pass in the new
House session. The measure has not yet been posted on the 114th
Congress website, but the version
that passed in the last session (it was stalled in the Senate) would
also fund research by the National Science Foundation, National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration, and the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, including engineering and atmospheric research "to improve the
understanding of the behavior of windstorms and the impact on
buildings, structures, and lifelines, and research in the economic and
social factors influencing windstorm risk reduction measures."
'IT WON'T BE DULL': That's the outlook offered by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) for
the Senate Budget Committee. The panel will be led by chair Michael
Enzi (R-Wyo.), an accountant who fought off a primary challenge by Liz
Cheney last year, and Vermont socialist Bernard Sanders, the ranking
Democrat. CQ has dubbed them the Odd Couple. Despite their poles-apart
views, both are seen as serious legislators.
DEVICE SQUAD:Researchers
may have an interest in the GOP's determination to repeal the 2.3
percent excise tax on medical devices, a controversial revenue
component of the Affordable Care Act. It's among the first orders of
business of the Senate Finance Committee under Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).
The task is made easier by the steadily shrinking budget deficit and
the fact that the measure hasn't brought in its projected $30 billion a
year, CQ reports.
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DATA
POINTS
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THE ADMINISTRATION AND RESEARCH AGENCIES
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 Access to intellectual property data: Doug
Rand, left, assistant director for entrepreneurship at the Office of
Science and Technology Policy, contends that "every federal agency,
every university has a portfolio of intellectual property that's ready
for licensing right now," but information about it is hidden in "a lot
of different silos." That's now changing, as part of the White House
drive to move innovations more quickly from the lab to the marketplace.
The administration also wants to increase use of government labs by
outside entitites and streamline and simplify IP licensing. Appearing
before the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology
today, Rand gave a broad overview of entrepreneurship efforts,
including the National Science Foundation's I-Corps (see an article in
the December Prism) and others at National Institutes of Health and Department of Energy. A video of his presentation is -- or should soon be -- available here.
'FREE' COMMUNITy college: ABC News calls President Obama's proposal -- laid out in
Knoxville, Tenn. today, a "conversation starter," but says it's not a
political possibility "any time soon." The White estimates it would
cost $60 billion over 10 years but doesn't say where the money could be
found. Reported to be on hand at Obama's event was Sen. Lamar Alexander
(R-Tenn.), new chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Committee. But he wasn't necessarily cheering. Noting that Obama drew
inspiration from the Tennessee Promise, Alexander said in a statement:
"The right way to expand Tennessee Promise nationally is for other
states to do for themselves what Tennessee has done." Instead of a new
federal program, he says the feds should shrink the Pell Grant student
aid application form and "pay for the millions of new Pell grants that
will be awarded if other states emulate Tennessee Promise."
 REVOLUTIONARY MATERIALS: The
National Science foundation's main contribution to the Materials
Genome Initiative has an ambitious name: Designing Materials to
Revolutionize and Engineer our Future. It supports "activities that
accelerate materials discovery and development by building the
fundamental knowledge base needed to design and make materials with
specific and desired functions or properties from first principles." Learn more.
HELP WANTED: The
National Science Foundation's Division of Computing and Communication
Foundations is looking for program directors for Communication and
Information Foundations and Software (communications, information
theory, signal processing, and networking) and Hardware Foundations
(computer architecture, computer systems, and file and storage
systems). Learn more.
SPUR TO MANUFACTURING: The
National Science Foundation is offering small supplemental grants for
planning conferences that will enable Industry/University
Cooperative Research Centers to form partnerships. They can then apply
for money to create a research cluster. Industry presence is critical.
NSF is particularly interested in advanced sensing, controls, and
platforms for manufacturing; visualization, informatics, and digital
manufacturing, and advanced materials manufacturing. Learn more.
SIGN UP . . . for a Jan. 15 webinar explaining updates to NSF's Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide.
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NATIONAL ACADEMIES
L.E.D. INVENTOR TO SHARE DRAPER PRIZE: The
Nobel Committee bypassed Nick Holonyak, a retired University of
Illinois professor, in awarding the 2014 prize in physics to Isamu
Akasaki and Shuji Nakamura, who created the first blue light-emitting
diode. Holonyak had invented the red LED, which his supporters say
"laid the groundwork for everything that came afterward," according to
the Associated Press. This week, the National Academy of Engineering
announced that Holonyak would share the Charles Stark Draper Prize, sometimes called the Engineering Nobel, with Akasaki and Nakamura, along with M. George Craford and Russell Dupuis.
The gordon pRIZE was awarded to
Simon Pitts and Michael Silevitch of Northeastern University "for
development of an innovative method to provide graduate engineers with
the necessary personal skills to become effective engineering leaders." The Russ Prize went to Graeme M. Clark, Erwin Hochmair, Ingeborg Hochmair-Desoyer, Michael M. Merzenich, and Blake S. Wilson for engineering cochlear implants.
e4u2 is the second Engineering for You video contest sponsored
by the NAE. The grand prize is $25,000 and the deadline is March 2.
It's intended to highlight "how engineering will create a more
sustainable, healthy, secure and-or joyous world by addressing the NAE
Grand Challenges for Engineering."
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PUBLIC
POLICY
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TOO MUCH, TOO FAST: The consequences of a national crash program to expand STEM education are illustrated in a paper
by Stanford researcher Nicola Bianchi, who explores Italy's dramatic
move in 1961 to increase university STEM enrollment by 200 percent.
Those who graduated ended up earning "no more than students in earlier
cohorts who were denied access to university."
'A COLLEGE DEGREE IS NO GUARANTEE': That's the title of a paper put
out by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington think
tank described as left-leaning. CERP provided the top two data points
above. Researchers assert that black college graduates of all ages
"consistently have higher unemployment rates, higher underemployment
rates, and lower wages than their white counterparts, even when black
students complete STEM majors."
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ASEE
& COMMUNITY NEWS
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REGISTER NOW FOR THE PUBLIC POLICY COLLOQUIUM
The annual event of
the Engineering Deans Council brings deans together in Washington D.C.
with policymakers, members of Congress and their staffs, and leaders of
research agencies.
ATTENTION, DEANS AND DEPARTMENT CHAIRS Please
help ASEE provide high-quality professional development to engineering
and engineering technology faculty by answering a few questions about how much you would be
willing to pay for faculty professional development and what areas of
professional development you are most interested in for your faculty.
Click the link below to access the survey.
ALL FOR NOMINATIONS - ASEE MID-ATLANTIC SECTION: The
section annually recognizes an outstanding engineering or engineering
technology educator from the section with a Distinguished Teaching
Award. This individual is then nominated by the section for ASEE's
National Outstanding Teaching Medal. The section award, presented at
the spring meeting, consists of a $500 honorarium and a certificate of
recognition. The awards chair is Paul Butler (PButler_OCC@hotmail.com).
ETLI 2014 VIDEOS: A playlist of videos
from the Engineering Technology Leadership Institute includes a short
testimonial video, two panels, and Greg Pearson of the National Acadmy
of Engineering.
VIDEO INTERVIEWS:
Leaders at NSF and the Navy Discuss the Future of
Engineering
Watch interviews with NSF Assistant Director for
Engineering Pramod Khargonekar, who talks
about exciting
NSF projects and opportunities for ASEE members, and Rear Admiral David Johnson, who discusses
the
importance of technology to the U.S. Navy and where naval research is
headed. The videos are part of
ASEE’s Advanced
Research Monitor Interview Series.
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EDITOR:
Mark Matthews;
CONTRIBUTORS:
Nathan Kahl; MASTHEAD DESIGN by Francis Igot.
To read previous issues of Capitol Shorts, click here.
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