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Preise for DOE's Office of Science
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FYI
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Science
Policy News
Number 108: August 20, 2003
Praise, Support Expressed for DOE's Office of Science
"The nation must have a balanced investment to
maintain the overall
health of science and technology research.... Recent
funding
increases in NIH and NSF cannot compensate for the
declines in
funding at federal agencies such as the Department of
Energy." -
Senator Lamar Alexander
DOE's Office of Science received a publicity boost on
July 29.
Calling the office "arguably the brightest star in the
Department of
Energy," Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) chaired a
hearing of the
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on
Energy that
highlighted the past achievements and future promise
of research
funded by the office, while noting that it has been
overlooked in
congressional efforts to increase the federal
investment in
science. As Alexander pointed out, the Office of
Science is the
country's largest supporter of basic research in the
physical
sciences, funding about 70 percent of physics basic
research and a
significant portion of research in materials,
mathematics and
computing. Yet the office has experienced essentially
flat budgets
for the past decade. The FY 2004 budget request for
the office is
$3.3 billion. Alexander praised the Senate version of
the energy
policy bill (S. 14), saying it "corrects the recent
trend towards
flat-lining funding for the basic sciences." The bill
would
authorize $3.79 billion in FY 2004, as would the
companion bill in
the House. (Senate appropriators have recommended
$3.36 billion for
FY 2004, while appropriators in the House would
provide $3.48
billion.)
Alexander and his first witness, Energy Secretary
Spencer Abraham,
framed the issue as one of jobs, economic prosperity,
national
security, and quality of life. "I don't think there
is full
appreciation," Abraham said, for how achievements in
public health,
telecommunications, supercomputing, and many other
fields "are
dependent upon progress in the physical sciences." In
particular,
he cited the role of DOE in advances such as
artificial retinas, the
map of the human genome, microbes to absorb carbon
dioxide and
create hydrogen, and "virtually every aspect" of
energy resources,
production, waste and storage. He described how
investments today
in such fields as fusion, hydrogen, supercomputers and
nanomaterials
might lead to benefits several decades in the future.
The remaining witnesses added their voices to the
concern over
funding trends for the Office of Science. "I'm most
concerned...
about funding long-term, high-risk research - research
that we can,
on any one day, postpone," said Argonne National
Laboratory Director
Hermann Grunder. Commenting that "it's easy to spend
money [but]
harder to spend it well," Burton Richter, former
Director of the
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, declared that
Office of Science
funds "are being spent well." He cited "world-class
facilities"
that are used by more than 18,000 researchers from
universities,
industry, and the national labs, and the "prodigious"
scientific
output that has led to numerous papers and Nobel
prizes. He also
pointed out that, as the manufacture of current
technologies moves
offshore, U.S. industry relies on federal R&D in order
to develop
the next generation of cutting edge technologies.
Several witnesses said that Members of Congress may
think they are
"taking care of the physical sciences" by increasing
the NSF budget,
but as Richter noted, "they are not." Grunder stated
that the
adequacy of support can be assessed by whether "the
best and
brightest young people are choosing careers" in the
physical
sciences. Georgia Institute of Technology President G.
Wayne Clough,
who chaired a PCAST panel that called for increasing
federal funding
for the physical sciences, reported that the panel had
found "too
few U.S. students going into those fields" and
"declining interest"
among foreign students. Richter added that DOE can
only fund about
10 percent of the grant proposals it receives from
university
researchers, while NIH and NSF are able to fund about
30 percent.
The witnesses' testimony, Alexander said, would help
the committee
in "trying to correct the imbalance we have in
funding" for the
physical sciences. "Perhaps the most important thing
we can do," he
added, is to "present a compelling vision of where we
hope to be"
in the future, and "help the taxpayers and...Members
of Congress
understand" how advances in many fields are dependent
upon the
physical sciences. "Over the last 10 or 12 years," he
said, "we've
lost sight of that fact."
###############
Audrey T. Leath
Media and Government Relations Division
The American Institute of Physics
fyi@aip.org www.aip.org/gov
(301) 209-3094
##END##########
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=====
-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail: crispy_bird@yahoo.com
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