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US Can't Meet The "Grand Challenges" of Physics
BlueSky writes "A new report paints a troubling picture of the state of physics research in the US, which the authors believe has dire consequences for the competitiveness of the US. 'The report identifies six key questions that will represent the grand challenges that materials science will face over the coming decade, the ones most likely to produce the next revolution. But it also raises fears that those challenges will be met by researchers outside of the US. It highlights the fact that government funding has not kept up with the rising costs of research at the same time that the corporate-funded research lab system has collapsed. As a result, US scientific productivity has stagnated at a time when funding and output are booming overseas.'"
I could just see how bad it'd be for the US if in the next 10 years:
Belgium develops more efficient batteries allowing the electric car to be feasable.
Zimbabwe makes a working robotic car.
China manufacturing makes solar panels 1000% more cost effective.
Spain manufactures warp drive.
And finally Brazil comes up with a cure for cancer and AIDS that are in the same pill.
What would us poor American's do? Oh yeah, we'd buy or steal the technology like every other nation does which is especially easy now with the internet.
No, I'd say the biggest threat to America comes from it's looming economic crisis coming from transition from gas to alternative fuels. If gas hits $5 or $6 a gallon, inflation may be too high for low income people to buy food and gasoline. A similar threat is losing jobs to overseas.
God spoke to me.
Evolution is just the soft target for anti-intellectuals, the argument really doesn't have a lot to do with creation at all just about layfolk trying to show they are better than authority figures in a field of knowlege. They had it before with the layfolk versus educated clergy and now they are pushing it furthur. Intelligent Design is apparently also bad theology - the devil is in those details since there are critters that behave in very scary ways.
"You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today!"
--Arthur Jensen, played by Ned Beatty, Network, 1976
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
I don't think its that bleak for the US. With the amount the US spend on their defense budget, particularly aircraft/avionics and missile technology I have always though it likely that one day someone will come up with a cheap but effective defense such that a lot of striking power is instantly removed from the US and they have to adopt a less belligerent tone. Similar to what happened with Britain's navy. Once their expensive battleships ruled the seas until it became glaringly obvious how vulnerable they were to a few cheap aircraft. It wasn't the end of Britain but it did severely damage her ability to project global power. HMS IHaveBigGuns could no longer be confidently sent off to threaten some city unless it was accompanied by an even more expensive carrier group to protect it.
Maybe someone will come up with a foolproof radar and AA missile combo or a stealth missile platform that can be maneuvered close enough to a carrier group to sink most of it. Success in war is frequently about economics. Who ever can afford to fight longest will win. If I can sink your billion dollar battlegroup anchored off my coast using a few million dollars worth of missiles, negotiation becomes a much cheaper and more attractive proposition (I know the US still has a lot of nukes to fall back on but using them in anger for anything short of the US or a major ally actually being physically invaded is likely to cause so much backlash it will have been a self defeating exercise).
I don't see anyone developing new offensive technology in the short term such that the US is being threatened but I can see a day in the not so distant future when carrier groups can no longer be sent to a region for fear of being sunk or air campaigns are not a viable option because most the planes are likely to shot down. It's not going to be the end of the US, just means they can no longer wield the big stick with impunity.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Science research, as funded by the U.S. Gov't agencies, is always at a disadvantage because politics works on a shorter time space--the terms of the people who get elected. Science research always has a long look forward usually much beyond the scope of even a 6-year term. It takes years for results to appear that are useful for products and procedures that pay off in better ways of living for people. The funding for the Superconducting Super Collider that got cancelled was in my opinion the perfect example of a long-term science research project (expensive YES) that would have yielded decades of good science for U.S. scientists and those from other countries. I think the cancellation of that project was a huge mistake in terms of science in the U.S. Politicians want projects finished during their term of office so they have something to point to for their reelection campaign. Science research rarely fits those kind of time lines. As I see it, the ways we fund science at the federal level are fundamentally flawed because of this lack of appreciation of how long good science research actually takes. Funding needs to be continuing and stable. We also need to study our priorities and stop focusing on just the glamorous stuff. (Unglamorous science today may develop into glamourous science tomorrow.)
"..If you show the world that a super power can play nice, it will set an example for future super powers..."
It's worse than that. If you use your power to push other people around, they WILL eventually band together, get stronger, and push you around.
Our foreign policy up to 1941 was to ignore the rest of the world, and the world was happy with that. Our foreign policy since has been to be the school-yard bully. We fought the other bully (Russia) until he went away, and the other kids were thankful. Now we're showing that we're just as bad. How long do you give us until someone else, or some alliance, stands up to us?
And the university system in the US isn't all that great either. Sure, there's the top tier of research universities, e.g., MIT, Harvard, Cornell, Stanford, UofI, CalTech &c. But there are a lot of 2nd and 3rd tier ones which are pretty mediocre institutions.
People come to the US because it is one of the few systems in the business of selling an education. Many other countries run their universities for their own people and only sponsor a few foreigners. It's easier for a german guy to get into a US university than a US person to go to Germany. Plus English is the common language so many will do a stint in the US to get better exposure. So it's not always that the US school is so great - it's that you can get accepted into it.
Yoghurt
It's not just that. It's that 'no child left behind' crap and 'more money for less performing schools'. It boils down to the Department of education and their political agenda.
DC and the city of Atlanta spend something like over $10,000 per child, have the lowest test scores and they still ask for more money. Poor performing schools aren't berated but praised with more money, good teachers have their hands tied behind their back and are punished by having to step down their lesson plans to accomodate non-english speaking students (at least where I live).
Basically we're stuck with a government agency that is hell bent on making sure that our highest aptitude students get the best quality education that the lowest attitude students can handle.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
No surprise. It will take three generations to recover from the damage done by Bush. One generation to improve education, one generation to create new educators from the 1st generation, and then teaching the next generation. By that time, the US will be hurting massively. Or be a police state. If Bush nukes Iran next spring and invokes dictator powers to stop the next election, under NSD51. Hey, who needs science in a service economy, eh?
Faraday knew how to talk to these people. Asked by the Minister of the Exchequer why pure research should be funded, he responded, "Who knows, Sir, but that someday you may be able to tax it."
You're absolutely right about the SSC. I know a dozen physicists who lost not only that job but their research careers because of the closing of that project. One of them told me that the moment the funding was stopped, CERN put in a hiring freeze for several years so they wouldn't have to deal with the influx of applications. Perfectly good physicists ended up teaching at local community colleges. I was studying physics at the time, and it certainly ended my desire to pursue a physics career in the U.S.
$5B a year for the TSA is small change. We're spending that in roughly two weeks of operations in Iraq. I'm a US Marine so I'm not saying this from a peacenik's ignorance vacuum. If you want to find a place for much needed science funding (I also have a degree in Physics so I've seen the harm lack of funding has caused) start by supporting the Democrats in their fight to end this pointless war.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
I really don't think the religious nuts are the cause of the decline in technology in this country.
/profit/. Not many folks want to invest in "blue sky research" anymore, and even if they did, it's probably cheaper to invest in that kind of research overseas.
I think commercialism is far more easily the culprit.
We have rapidly entered an area where people want to invest heavily (401K, etc.). But everyone is after
Investment in research in this country is probably declining because we have become so heavily profit-motivated and no one sees any profit in research.
Further, I think most of the "low-hanging-fruit" of scientific learning was done between 1945 and 1980. But now perhaps we are reaching the time of diminishing returns, where it requires much heavier investment in the research to produce (profitable) results.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
http://energybulletin.net/23259.html
His point #6 is pure crap. He claims labor laws need to be non-existent for start-ups to form, yet a great many started up in the 70s and before, when the labor laws he reviles were as strong as they have ever been. Apple is here, HP is here, etc., etc.
And point #10 is irrelevant to the discussion. The problem with K-12 schools in the US has NOTHING to do with specialization. The problem is that grade inflation has made people who don't understand bare-minimum first-order algebra equations still straight-A students, even though they're woefully unprepared for entering the university system and will need 6-months or more of remedial courses. There are still the few exceptional K-12 schools that resist the trend, and there will always be a small percentage of students that will learn on their own, but by and large, K-12 is turning out, and could be shortened by perhaps 4-6 years turning out kids equally well educated.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
If science stayed in in it's own playground and stuck to science, that would be great. The problem is that recently scientists have had a tendency to unwittingly be used as pawns in politics, lending credibility to those politicians that say things like the "debate is over" or "there is a consensus".
Scientists have a responsibility to stand up and object when idiots say things like this. When someone disagrees, then invite them to present evidence. Don't sneer, don't reject their evidence because they work for Exxon or GM.
And if you think "consider the source" is an adequate refutation of the evidence, then you are a moron and you betray science.
And most of all, don't be an "advocate", except to advocate the science. Deciding what to do with the science with regard to public policy is the job of politicians. If you want to be involved in that, run for congress.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Do you have any Idea on what you are talking about or are you just making shit up as you go because it is fun to bash bush?
The feds have increased the science and technology budget every year since Bush took office. The problem isn't the budget witch republicans have a relative good track record on. The problem is in how it is being spent, Most all of it is being assigned to global warming sciences because it has the current doom and gloom. Concoct your own convincing doom and gloom scenario and you will see a larger cut. Or better yea, Purpose a fix to the we're all gonna die scenarios and take their funding. God know they have been taking yours.
BS. Or mostly BS. Congress gives Bush whatever he asks for the Iraq War, but for the rest, he has less control over the Congress than Clinton did. The President's budget requests are used as an outline, but Congress makes frequent changes, diverting funding from things they don't like to things which the executive departments didn't ask for. This is what's called "pork" or "earmarks", and both the Republicans and Democrats have been guilty of it. Congress is running wild, and Bush has little control over them.
But that's not the worst of it. In 2006, Republicans and Democrats managed enough intransigence and sheer orneriness between them they didn't pass a proper FY 2007 budget. Only 2 out of the 11 necessary appropriations bills could be passed. In lieu of passing these parts of an actual FY07 budget, Congress gave up and passed a Continuing Resolution that simply repeated the 2006 budget less a 1% rescission. This severely impacts many parts of the government, including the DOE, which through its Office of Science is responsible for funding most government research into the physical sciences.
A Continuing Resolution wouldn't be so bad -- funding cuts in the physical sciences have been pretty much continuous since the Congressional Democrats killed the SSC in 1993 -- except that Congress insists on micro-managing the budget. So the specific funding allocations were carried over from 2006. This means large new projects that were supposed to ramp up in FY07 can't, because their money has blindly been allocated to projects that have ended in 2006.
Read about the initial effects of the FY07 Continuing Resolution here on the APS website.
If Slashdot or mainstream journalism cared about the sciences, they would have reported on this. But most people are totally unaware of the federal budget. The FY07 continuing resolution has not been reported on even once by Slashdot. It is a travesty for the US and should be a major embarrassment, but people remain blissful unaware. In substitute of actual, important news we have been fed five pseudo-news stories per week about the iPhone or about Paris Hilton.
Anyway, to make a long story short, the Bush Administration is not the main entity to blame here. Congress is. But don't let actual facts get in the way of the daily Bush-bushing orgy...
I totally agree. The problem is at least two-fold.
First - the plurality election system (as opposed to range voting) for federal and state elections. It is perfectly rational for someone who hates both major parties to vote for the one they hate the least, because expected utility from a major-party vote in the plurality system is many orders of magnitude greater than expected utility from a third-party vote. (That is an early -- and I doubt original -- result in the paper, but the presentation is good and the rest of the paper is gold.)
Second - candidate selection within major parties is done by cabal. Sure, there are state-by-state primaries, but the number of voters in those primaries is quite small, and the results of primaries are not binding.
Voter apathy and stupidity contributes to the second problem, but if the first problem were fixed, the major party nominations wouldn't matter quite so much. Money would still mean a lot in determining which candidates gain traction in the media, and thus gain popular support. However, without the game-theoretic nightmare of our current plurality voting system, people could vote their conscience. If nothing else, with people voting their conscience we'd all have a clear idea of the political spectrum in the U.S. Right now we can't tell how many people prefer Green to Democrat, or Libertarian to Republican, because people vote dishonestly in order (they hope) to suffer the least.
What am I saying? This isn't a peculiar set of circumstances; this is normalcy.