December 5, 2015

 

OBAMA SIGNS $300 BILLION HIGHWAY BILL

An explanatory statement on the final conference committee product spells out a number of R&D provisions, including reauthorization of the Department of Transportation research activities through 2020. Several provisions "promote innovation and the use and deployment of transportation technologies to address various surface transportation needs." There arre dedicated Highway Trust Fund authorizations for "research and
development, technology deployment, training and education, intelligent transportation systems activities," grants to University Transportation Centers, and "a competitive advanced transportation and congestion management technologies deployment grant program." The bill requires "technology neutral" Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and "policies that accelerate vehicle and transportation safety research, development and deployment by promoting innovation and competitive market-based outcomes." Agencies at all levels are encouraged to "examine additional ways that they can safely and expediently drive the adoption, deployment, and delivery of innovative technology and techniques that would enhance the safety and efficiency of the Nation’s roadways."
 

ENGINEERING NO LONGER LEFT BEHIND

Our colleague Mary Lord reports: K-12 STEM education could receive an early holiday present this week if, as expected, the Senate votes to replace the 14-year-old No Child Left Behind law. The new Every Student Succeeds Act, which cruised through the House on December 2 by a 359 to 64 margin, maintains the current annual-testing requirement in math and science. It also adds funding to help states integrate "engineering design skills and practices" into state science assessments – a boon for the roughly 1 in 3 states that have adopted the Next Generation Science Standards. While the bill no longer authorizes the $150 million Math Science Partnerships (MSP) grant program, advocates see expanded opportunities for states and districts to use federal funds for STEM education – including a dedicated funding stream for either a state-led STEM master teacher corps or STEM professional development. MSP “had perhaps 100 grantees every year," James Brown, executive director of the STEM Education Coalition advocacy group, told Education Week’s Curriculum Matters blog. If the measure passes “there will be literally thousands of districts spending federal funds on STEM education activities.”

OMNIBUS SPUTTERS: "The potential for another impasse is high given the mound of contentious issues that are unresolved," CQ reports. Current government funding is due to run out Dec. 11. If no agreement is reached on an omnibus appropriations measure running through the rest of FY 2016, Congress can always approve a stopgap shortterm measure and keep negotiating.  "Republicans have been insistent that they do not see a funding lapse as a possibility."

Graphic by Jennifer Pocock; source: National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NSF) Click here for a larger, more readable version.

NSF TOLD TO 'MULTITASK': The National Science Foundation's Office of Inspector General says: "A Massachusetts university agreed to pay $2.7 million to settle allegations that it violated federal regulations requiring universities to exercise oversight and control over NSF award funds. The university dispersed more than $35 million from 11 NSF awards" all under a single principal investigator. The OIG's latest report to Congress doesn't name the university, but a Department of Justice statement from August reports on a settlement  with Northeastern involving the same amount. The PI was engaged in high-energy particle physics at  the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN, shown at left). Without reference to this case, the OIG says elsewhere in the report: "The 'business' side of NSF faces a set of challenges aimed at improving the organizations’ management controls over payments, information security, recordkeeping, and reporting. . . .NSF will be challenged to 'multitask' and deliver both scientific and organizational excellence." The $6 billion a year spent on grants and cooperative agreements relies "almost completely on the recipients’ systems of internal control. . . ."

EVASIVE MANEUVER: In an example of academic misconduct cited in the report, the OIG sided with a PI who blamed a grad student for plagiarism in an annual report. "The university found that the PI checked the report prior
to submission with plagiarism software" and asked the grad student to rewrite portions that were flagged. But the grad student concealed the fact that the software had failed to flag "a large amount of copied text," which remained in the report. "The
institution found that the student committed plagiarism, for which the PI did not share culpability. We concurred . . . ."

FUMBLE OR TOUCHDOWN? Now that Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has left the Senate, successor James Paul Lankford has assumed the task of annually poking fun at government research agencies. His Federal Fumbles, laced with football analogies, takes aim at numerous allegedly wasteful NSF projects. As was the case with Coburn, Lankford's targets are frequently social scientists. But one engineering example he cites would seem to be easily defended as an advance in the field of cyber-human systems. A promising area of robotics aims to develop machines capable of reliably caring for elderly patients. A machine capable of choosing outfits for and dressing an incapacitated patient would, according to the abstract by Georgia Tech researchers, "make progress towards robots capable of giving millions of people greater independence and a higher quality of life." Lankford isn't  impressed. "American taxpayers do not want to see their hard-earned dollars funding projects that try to bring The Jetsons to life."

EAGER TO GERMINATE: An NSF Dear Colleague letter sees some of the world's most pressing problems -- "demands for food, land, energy and water, urgent need for educating students from diverse backgrounds, requirement of security in an increasingly connected world, more effective and affordable healthcare, and sustainable economic growth" -- as "potentially large and fertile opportunities for science and engineering research for advancement of society." So the EAGER (EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research) program seeks "proposals with exploratory ideas to design learning frameworks, platforms and/or environments to enable participants to conceive research ideas and questions with potentially transformative outcomes." The project's name: Germination of Research Ideas for Large Opportunities and Critical Societal Needs.

EARLY STAGE SPACE PROJECTS: NASA has tapped 15 university-led efforts to study innovative technologies that address "unique, disruptive or transformational technologies, including: payload technologies for assistive free-flyers; robotic mobility technologies for the surfaces of icy moons; integrated photonics for space optical communication; computationally guided structural nanomaterials design; and atmospheric entry modeling development using flight data from the Orion’s first flight test." See the winning projects.

THE RICH RESEARCH CLUB: Examining government-funded research in Britain, a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences states: "We observed rising inequality in the distribution of funding and that its effect was most noticeable at the institutional level—the leading universities diversified their collaborations and increasingly became the knowledge brokers in the collaboration network. Furthermore, it emerged that these leading universities formed a rich club . . . with the elites in the core overattracting resources but also rewarding in terms of both research breadth and depth."

FACULTY DIVERSITY ACTION PLAN: Accompanying this effort by Johns Hopkins University is a template to get all divisions to set measurable three-year diversity goals. In an open letter,  Hopkins President Ronald Daniels said the initiative "will include components to strengthen both our recruitment and our retention of diverse faculty, ensuring that we find, hire, and keep the most talented minds from across this country and around the world, and that we regularly report on our progress." He noted that this year's orientation for engineering students, among others, "included, for the first time, a mandatory session on identity, privilege, and social justice, and related training for orientation mentors and resident assistants."

ACADEMIC RETREAT: Reporting on a book by Roberta Ness, vice president for innovation at the U. of Texas School of Public Health, the Chronicle of Higher Education says it depicts a scientific system where, "at almost every level — university hiring and promotion; publishing; the awarding of government grants — predictability is prized over boldness. Just as it’s become more difficult to express provocative or risky views on campuses, the research conducted there has grown more conservative."

CYBER SECURITY AND DISASTER FORECASTING were among topics of presentations at the National Academy of Engineering's Frontiers symposium.  Others looked at 3-D architected nanostructured metamaterials, and at a range of uses for refractory plasmonic materials. The illustration at left is from a presentation on Google Earth.

Participants gathered for a group photo at the conclusion of a Deans Summit in Baltimore hosted by the Hispanic Society of Professional Engineers. ASEE Executive Director Norman Fortenberry (seated, third from right) gave a State of Diversity in STEM keynote. The Society of Women Engineers and National Society of Black Engineers were also represented.

2016 ANNUAL CONFERENCE UPDATE

New Navigation Section - Papers Management:
The new section contains upcoming deadlines, guidelines, call for papers, and kits for authors, program chairs, reviewers, and moderators.

Author's Kits are Available:
• The 2016 Annual Conference Author's Kit -- available on the website -- contains extremely important information regarding the submission process as well as all relevant deadline dates.

THE ST. LAWRENCE SECTION CONFERENCE will be held at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.,  April 8-9, 2016. This year the conference will include several workshops. The calls for papers, presentations, posters and workshops as well as  information about the Conference Program, Registration, and Hotel information is available on http://stl.asee.org/conference_2016.html.

eGFI IS HERE: Help inspire the next generation of innovators with the all-new 6th edition of ASEE's prize-winning magazine for middle and high school students: eGFI (Engineering, Go For It). Filled with engaging features, gorgeous graphics, and useful information about engineering colleges and careers, eGFI aims to get teens fired up about learning - and doing - engineering. To purchase copies, go to http://store.asee.org/  For bulk purchases or other inquiries, contact eGFI@asee.org or call 202-331-3500.