Issues in Science and Technology articles from June 2004

Issues in Science and Technology archives from June 2004

Preventing nuclear proliferation.(Stronger Measures Needed To Prevent Proliferation)
June 22, 2004... Michael May and Tom Isaacs' "Stronger Measures Needed To Prevent Proliferation" (Issues, Spring 2004) is a significant contribution to the ongoing discussion on how best to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Regime, the...

New roles for nuclear weapons.(Forum)
June 22, 2004... In "A 21st-Century Role for Nuclear Weapons" (Issues, Spring 2004), William Schneider, Jr. endorses the nuclear weapons policy of the current administration as promulgated in its Nuclear Posture Review and National Defense Strategy papers. He...

Deterring nuclear terrorists.(Forum)
June 22, 2004... The prospect of a nuclear weapon detonated by terrorists in a U.S. city is one that needs to be taken very seriously. Michael A. Levi's article on attribution as part of a strategy of deterrence deserves a careful reading ("Deterring Nuclear...

How soon for hydrogen?(Forum)
June 22, 2004... In "The Hype About Hydrogen" (Issues, Spring 2004), Joseph J. Romm devotes considerable energy to high-lighting the challenges that must be addressed in realizing a hydrogen-based economy. As his title implies, he concludes that the world's...

Federal R & D funding.(Forum)
June 22, 2004... "A Revitalized National S & T Policy" by Jeff Bingaman, Robert M. Simon, and Adam L. Rosenberg (Issues, Spring 2004) diagnoses a disease--the underfunding of long-term civilian R & D--and proposes some cures. The diagnosis is accurate and the...

Saving Earth's rivers.(Forum)
June 22, 2004... I thank Brian Richter and Sandra Postel for highlighting, in their book Rivers for Life and their article Saving Earth's Rivers (Issues, Spring 2004), a growing awareness of the true costs of water-related development. Globally, we have...

Energy futures.(Forum)
June 22, 2004... In "Improving Prediction of Energy Futures" (Issues, Spring 2004), Richard Munson explores how energy models might be improved and how their predictions might be better used in policymaking. Clearly, there are settings in which short-term...

Climate change caution.(Forum)
June 22, 2004... I am critical of some of the conclusions of Richard B. Stewart and Jonathan B. Wiener in "Practical Climate Change Policy" (Issues, Winter 2004). The climate regime they propose is not that simple when seen in an international perspective. ...

Can coal come clean?(Forum)
June 22, 2004... "Clean Air and the Politics of Coal" by DeWitt John and Lee Paddock (Issues, Winter 2004) contains a good history of the attempts of the federal government to regulate the adverse effect of coal burning on air quality since the passage of the...

Most R & D agencies prepare for budget cuts in fiscal year 2006.(From the Hill)
June 22, 2004... The Bush administration's plan to reduce the federal deficit in half over the next five years would mean cuts in funding for most R & D funding agencies, with the steepest cuts coming in fiscal year (FY) 2006 after this year's elections. Only...

Congress probes outside earnings of NIH employees.(From the Hill)
June 22, 2004... A Congressional committee has begun investigating possible problems stemming from the involvement of employees of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with outside organizations. The congressional interest was prompted by negative stories in...

White House, Congress promote efforts to boost supercomputing.(From the Hill)
June 22, 2004... A White House task force released a report in early May concluding that current federal efforts in supercomputing are inadequate. Meanwhile, several bills have been introduced in Congress to bolster U.S. R & D on supercomputing. In its...

Recoupment efforts threaten federal research: encouraged by Congress to patent inventions, academic researchers now face a drive by government to recover royalty income.(Perspectives)
June 22, 2004... In recent years, members of Congress and health advocates have proposed legislative "recoupment measures" that would inappropriately and unfairly place the onus for the pricing and affordability of therapeutic drugs and biologics on academic...

What is climate change? Incompatibility between the definitions used by science and policy organizations is an obstacle to effective action.
June 22, 2004... Believe it or not, the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), focused on international policy, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), focused on scientific assessments in support of the FCCC, use different definitions...

Flying blind on drug control policy: the axing of a key data collection program is a major setback for effective policymaking.
June 22, 2004... Not knowing about the actual patterns of illicit drug abuse and drug distribution cripples policymaking. As the subtitle of a National Academies report put it four years ago, "What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us." (Currently, we don't even know...

Is human spaceflight obsolete? Risk is high, cost is enormous, science is insignificant. Does anyone have a good rationale for sending humans into space?
June 22, 2004... During the past year, there has been a painstaking, and painful, investigation of the tragic loss of the space shuttle Columbia and its seven crew members on February 1, 2003. The investigation focused on technical and managerial failure modes...

Forests face new threat: global market changes; An overhaul of forest policy is needed to deal with the economic and environmental consequences of globalized production.
June 22, 2004... For the past 100 years, U.S. forest policy has been guided by the assumption that the United States faced an ever-increasing scarcity of timber. Indeed, at times during the 20th century, there were fears of an impending timber famine....

A patent system for the 21st Century: to meet the challenge of rapid technological and economic change, we must continue to study and refine the U.S. intellectual property regime.
June 22, 2004... The breakneck pace of innovation across many industries, the explosive developments in particular areas such as biotechnology and software, and the rapidly changing role of universities in the development and ownership of technology create...

Electrical blackouts: a systemic problem; Although human error can be the proximate cause of a blackout, the real causes are found much deeper in the power system.
June 22, 2004... About every four months, the United States experiences a blackout large enough to darken half a million homes. As long ago as 1965, a massive blackout in New York captured the nation's attention and started remedial action. But that was almost...

Completing the transformation of U.S. military forces: the updated military excelled in Afghanistan and Iraq, but further progress must be supported now to ensure long-term security.
June 22, 2004... On taking office in 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced his intention to transform the U.S. armed forces to meet today's threats of rogue states and transnational terrorism. The effectiveness of U.S. fighting forces in...

Plugging the leaks in the scientific workforce: much more needs to be done to reverse the high rate of attrition of both men and women early in their scientific careers.
June 22, 2004... In response to the dramatic decline in the number of U.S.-born men pursuing science and engineering degrees during the past 30 years, colleges and universities have accepted an unprecedented number of foreign students and have launched...

Asian countries strengthen their research.(Real Numbers)
June 22, 2004... The global scientific landscape is changing. During the past decade, many governments, convinced that their economic futures lay with knowledge-based economies, sought to strengthen national research and education. Increased foreign scientific...

Environmental weatherman.(Books)(Book Review)
June 22, 2004... Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment, by James Gustave Speth. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004, 299 pp. Over the past half century, the environmental jeremiad has emerged as a minor...

Out of the bottle.(Books)(Book Review)
June 22, 2004... Living With the Genie: Essays on Technology and the Quest for Human Mastery, edited by Alan Lightman, Daniel Sarewitz, and Christina Desser. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2003, 347 pp In 1995, Gartner Group analyst Jackie Fenn...

Energy futures.(Books)(Book Review)
June 22, 2004... Energy at the Crossroads: Global Perspectives and Uncertainties, by Vaclav Smil. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003, 448 pp. Vaclav Smil has done it again. He has written yet another important book on energy and has managed to make it...

Arnold O. Beckman.(Archives)
June 22, 2004... What began as an invention to measure the acidity of lemons ended up producing a revolution in scientific instruments--and a fortune for inventor and philanthropist Arnold O. Beckman (1900-2004). The invention in question is the glass-electrode...