January 25, 2020  

AMERICA'S PLACE IN HIGH TECH

The title of a hearing next week before the House Science Committee suggests gloomy tidings: Losing Ground: U.S. Competitiveness in Critical Technologies. Presumably, reference will be made to the latest National Science Foundation Science and Engineering Indicators. The three engineers testifying will likely note some bright spots as well. They are Diane Souvaine, the Tufts computer scientist who chairs the National Science Board; former Google chair Eric Schmidt (left), electrical engineer and computer scientist and founder of Schmidt Futures, who also sits on the Defense Innovation Board, and electrical engineer Chaouki Abdallah, Georgia Tech's executive vice president for research. 

MARS, YES; THE MOON? EH: Bipartisan House legislation to reauthorize NASA offers scant support for Vice President Pence's goal of sending U.S. astronauts back to the Moon in 2024. Space Policy Online reports that "Mars, not the Moon, is the priority.  The Moon is only a steppingstone and activities in or around the Moon are sharply limited to their application for Mars exploration." Prodded by Pence, NASA currently plans a lunar orbit that would serve as a staging area for expeditions to the Moon's surface, Space News reports. "The bill would instead call this facility the 'Gateway to Mars,' and allow it to be based elsewhere in cislunar space. The Gateway would also not be required to support lunar landings." The bill states: "The Moon to Mars program  shall  have  the  interim  goal  of  sending  a  crewed  mission to the lunar surface by 2028 and a goal of sending a crewed mission to orbit Mars by 2033.".A Science Committee press release says the bill "emphasizes the importance of balanced exploration, science, aeronautics, technology, and education portfolios." The bill conveys the "sense of Congress" that Earth science is vital for addressing climate change and contributes significantly to discovery and economic growth. 

PENTAGON BUDGET TO STRESS AI, HYPERSONICS: The fiscal 2021 blueprint will show the Departmenht of Defense “divesting from legacy systems and lower-priority activities,” Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said. CQ reports that the savings would be diverted to "artificial intelligence and hypersonic missile development programs." Investing in the cutting-edge technologies of tomorrow "will require the [Defense Department] to make some tough choices today,” Esper is quoted as saying at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. (see the video.) He said that "while the department continues to support cutting edge innovation through government funded research and development, we need to be fast followers of the commercial sector. it is the private sector that is leading on many fronts, such as cloud computing and machine learning." Dominance in space means "we must out-compete, out-innovate, and out-hustle everyone else." He also referred to a "Chinese effort to recruit researchers and professors at American colleges and universities." The United States needs to "rally the country behind our strategic competition with China and take a whole-of-nation approach to the problem." See coverage by Reuters

NOAA BACKS $4 MILLION GEOENGINEERING STUDY: E&E News reports: "David Fahey, director of the Chemical Sciences Division of [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's]  Earth System Research Laboratory, told his staff yesterday that the federal government is ready to examine the science behind 'geoengineering'—or what he dubbed a 'Plan B' for climate change." The agency supports two approaches: injecting sulfur dioxide or a similar aerosol into the stratosphere to help shade the Earth from more intense sunlight; and using an aerosol of sea salt particles to improve the ability of low-lying clouds over the ocean to act as shade.

CURBS ON FOREIGN RESEARCHER ACCESS: Up until December, the Department of Energy's undersecretary for science could exempt foreign academics receiving funding from Office of Science programs from a long list of requirements for access to DOE sites and information. The grantees had to be performing research at institutions of higher education "for which results will be published for access by the general public." A new order removes that exemption authority. The specific reason has not been publicly announced. (At the time the exemption went into effect, DOE had a single undersecretary for both science and energy. A change in late 2017 gave DOE three undersecretaries—for science, energy, and nuclear security.) The latest order roughly coincides with an inspector general's finding that "problems with the management of unclassified foreign visits and assignments continued to exist. While nothing came to our attention to indicate that there was unauthorized access at the sites we visited, the risk of potential unauthorized access increases in the future if the issues identified in this report are not addressed."

$300 MILLION FOR SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH: The projects will draw $133 million from the Department of Energy's Vehicles Technologies Office, covering  "advanced batteries and electrification; advanced engine and fuel technologies, including technologies for off-road applications; lightweight materials; new mobility technologies (energy efficient mobility systems), and alternative fuels technology demonstrations"; .$64 million from the Fuel Cells Technologies Office to support "innovative hydrogen concepts that will encourage market expansion and increase the scale of hydrogen production, storage, transport, and use, including heavy-duty trucks, data centers and steel production"; and $100 million from the Bioenergy Technologies Office to "support the U.S. bioeconomy by reducing the price of drop-in biofuels, lowering the cost of biopower, and enabling high-value products from biomass or waste resources."

Qs & As ON I-CORPS HUBS: Before signing up for the webinars, check out answers the National Science Foundation has already provided in a series of FAQs. See also a recent  I-Corps report.

FUTURE EARTHQUAKE RESEARCH: NSF plans a competition for "research center(s) to enable transformative research in earthquake science. The center(s) will meaningfully improve the national welfare through bold and creative activities to expand the impact of earthquake research to a wide range of stakeholders and broaden participation of underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)." One or more research centers are expected to be created following the end of the current cooperative agreement with the Southern California Earthquake Center. Learn more.

Source: National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.  Click here for an interactive version with more detail.

Source: NCSES. Click here for more detail.

Source: NCSES; click here for more detail.

WALKING THE WALK: An American Institute of Physics task force "calls for physical science societies to establish a $50 million endowment dedicated to supporting minority students with financial needs in physics and astronomy. Half of the endowment would directly support African American students and the remainder would support other financially marginalized groups as well as departments’ implementation of the task force’s recommendations." The task force, co-chaired by Mary James of Reed College and Edmund Bertschinger of MIT, "concludes that financial challenges are 'one of the greatest difficulties' that face African Americans seeking to study physics or astronomy. They observe that departments that have demonstrated the most success in supporting African American students also face financial challenges themselves.  Read the report. 

MARYLAND DROPS CONFUCIUS INSTITUTE: University of Maryland President Wallace Loh explained that the University of Maryland could no longer host the cultural program sponsored by the Chinese government "due to language in a federal funding bill that took effect last summer," according to WAMU, a Washington D.C. National Public Radio affiliate. The law "essentially made universities choose between continuing their Confucius Institutes or accepting money from the Department of Defense." Maryland's was "the oldest of roughly 90 such institutes in the U.S." The Global Times carries China's reaction. 

A PREDATOR'S SHADOW: A law firm that probed Jeffrey Epstein's relationship with MIT found that the convicted sex offender donated $525,000 to support the Media Lab--whose director Joi Ito has resigned--and $225,000 to Seth Lloyd, professor of mechanical engineering and engineering systems and physics, who has been placed on paid leave. "Professor Lloyd knew that donations from Epstein would be controversial and that MIT might reject them. . . . In his interview, Professor Lloyd acknowledged that he had been 'professionally remiss' in not alerting MIT to Epstein’s criminal record." Lloyd, writing on Medium, says, "The accusation that I accepted money from Epstein is true and I stand by my previous apology for this lapse of judgement, which will continue to weigh on my conscience for the rest of my life. The accusation that I hid Epstein’s identity from MIT . . . is completely false. . . ."

$1 BILLION PLEDGE: Financier and philanthropist George Soros is funding an international platform for teaching and research--the Open Society University Network--that "existing universities all over the world would be able to join," Forbes reports. The teaching and research platform is intended "to tackle the spread of nationalism."

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