Issues in Science and Technology articles from March 2009

Issues in Science and Technology archives from March 2009

Unburdening science.(FORUM)(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2009... I resonate fully with the spirit and content of Shawn Lawrence Otto and Sheril Kirshenbaum's "Science on the Campaign Trail" (Issues Winter 2009). Science Debate 2008 was an unprecedented event that garnered substantial public attention and...

Flood protection.(FORUM)(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2009... "Restoring and Protecting Coastal Louisiana" by Gerald E. Galloway, Donald F. Boesch, and Robert R. Twilley (Issues, Winter 2009) should be required reading for every member of Congress and every member of the newly appointed presidential...

Regional climate change.(FORUM)(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2009... In "Climate Change: Think Globally, Assess Regionally, Act Locally" (Issues, Winter 2009), Charles F. Kennel stresses the importance of empowering local leaders with better information about the climate at the regional level. He provides...

Military restructuring.(FORUM)(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2009... "Restructuring the Military," by Lawrence J. Korb and Max A. Bergmann (Issues, Fall 2008), makes many excellent points about the need to match our military forces to the current and potential future threat environments. There is, how ever, a...

Obama cabinet picks vow to strengthen role of science.(FROM THE HILL)(Barack Obama)
March 22, 2009... Key members of President Obama's new cabinet are stressing the importance of science in developing policy as well as the need for scientific integrity and transparency in decisionmaking. In one of his first speeches, Ken Salazar, the new...

Multifaceted ocean research bill advances.(FROM THE HILL)
March 22, 2009... The Senate on January 15, 2009, approved by a vote of 73 to 21 the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009, a package of five bills authorizing $794 million for expanded ocean research through FY 2015, including $104 million authorized for...

The challenge for the Obama administration science team.(PERSPECTIVES)(Barack Obama)(Essay)
March 22, 2009... President Obama's choices for top government science positions have made a strong statement about the importance of science and technology (S & T) in our society. In choosing Nobel prize-winning physicist Stephen Chu for Secretary of Energy,...

Global warming: the hard road ahead.(PERSPECTIVES)(Essay)
March 22, 2009... With a president committed to fighting climate change and a new Congress inclined to go along, the prospects for greenhouse gas emissions abatement legislation are bright. That's good news. The Bush and Clinton administrations' intransigence on...

In the zone: comprehensive ocean protection.
March 22, 2009... Comprehensive ecosystem-based zoning could address many of the critical problems with U.S. ocean policy by providing a mechanism for coordinated management of ocean uses that takes into account the cumulative effects of multiple human...

A Reverse Brain Drain: The United States, long the beneficiary of talented immigrants, needs to act quickly to keep these valuable workers from leaving to pursue expanding opportunities in their home countries.(Essay)
March 22, 2009... Although most of the national immigration debate originates with those who want to limit immigration, U.S. policymakers should be focusing on the more important task of attracting and keeping more highly skilled foreign-born scientists and...

U.S. workers in a global job market: government needs to collect and analyze data on the offshoring of science and technology jobs so that it can take action to nurture and encourage highly skilled U.S. workers.(Industry overview)
March 22, 2009... Among the many changes that are part of the emergence of a global economy is a radically different relationship between U.S. high-tech companies and their employees. As late as the 1990s, a degree in science, technology, engineering, or...

Closing the environmental data gap: information limitations are severely constraining our ability to identify and understand emerging environmental problems, devise interventions to address them, and evaluate whether our responses work.
March 22, 2009... The compelling evidence that the global climate is changing significantly and will continue to change for the foreseeable future means that we can expect to see similarly significant changes in a wide variety of other environmental conditions...

The bioterror threat: Bracing for Armageddon? The Science and Politics of Bioterrorism in America.
March 22, 2009... by William R. Clark, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008, 224 pp. Michael Moodie World at Risk, a new report by the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, concludes that "it is...