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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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One of the first orders of business for newly sworn-in President Barack Obama will be to push through a gigantic stimulus package to revive the U.S. economy from its coma. Debate swirls around how to spend that money; we would like to offer support for certain uses that seem both economically and scientifically worthy.
Obama has repeatedly emphasized, both on the campaign trail and in his postelection “fireside chats” on YouTube, that his economic recovery plan will steer massive funding toward America’s decaying and outmoded infrastructure. Multiple studies have documented how desperately U.S. bridges, highways, railways, dams, waterworks and other public resources need repair, modernization or replacement. In 2005 the American Society of Civil Engineers graded the state of U.S. infrastructure as “poor” and estimated that $1.6 trillion would be needed over five years to fix it.
So the nation’s infrastructure could surely absorb abundant stimulus spending. Moreover, the money would be well spent as an investment: according to economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s Economy.com, a dollar spent on infrastructure typically adds $1.59 to the gross domestic product.
Economic sustainability, however, is intertwined with energy and environmental sustainability, particularly the fight against global warming. Investments in our country’s transportation system should not merely repair it: where possible, they should strategically realign it to encourage more use of mass transportation instead of private automobiles to help the U.S. curb its energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.
To those ends, Obama has already pledged that his stimulus plan will make public buildings, including schools, more energy-efficient. Kudos on that good start, but don’t stop there, Mr. President. After decades of neglect as compared with heavily subsidized fossil fuels, every aspect of alternative energy development—from basic research to adoption and deployment—needs more investment, too. With the recent collapse of oil prices during the global recession, alternative energy technologies could use financial shelter while they develop.
The most widely beneficial stimulus investment, however, could be for the government to subsidize the improvement of the electrical infrastructure of the U.S. The grassroots adoption of solar, wind, geothermal and other clean power is stifled by the grid’s inefficiency at handling highly variable inputs and transmitting power over long distances. An investment in a 21st-century grid would encourage energy reform without particularly favoring any specific production technology.
Universal health care reform—essential for ensuring that the benefits of biomedical research reach everyone—was a high priority early in this past presidential campaign season that deserves to be addressed again now. Even putting aside humanitarian and public health concerns, the economic case for overhauling our fragmented, employer-based health care delivery system is compelling. The catastrophe for Detroit’s automakers, for example, was certainly accelerated by heavy employee health care costs that more sensibly should be a public responsibility. Projections by the Congressional Budget Office indicate that in the decades to come, Medicaid and Medicare will be the biggest drivers of federal spending—far larger than defense, Social Security or other entitlements; health care costs overall will double their share of the national economy by 2050. Only prompt, comprehensive, fundamental reform can stop health care from thwarting any attempt to retire the nation’s bailout-and-stimulus debt.
Obama and Congress may come under great pressure to try to offset these colossal outlays (if only symbolically) by slashing other parts of the budget. We can appreciate the discipline of austerity but still hope that no one will be tempted to take an ax to the general research budget. Scientific discovery remains the fuel for technological innovation, and ultimately innovation will be what helps the U.S. salvage the economy.
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19 Comments
Add CommentIt's much cheaper to perfect the flying car than it is to reinforce and repair all the roads, bridges, highways, etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissilly question because it is obvious, without investing in science that is the end of America, it must to keep its edge. But do not behave like Canadians where only whites are allowed to seem as if they think, that is dangerous, lucky for America that is not the case, Can't get published in Canada because black, latest paper proves Calculus, specifically differentiation not as powerful a tool as previously thought, forget publication in a place like Canada, how dare one, especially a black challanges Newton, unfortunately Newton was wrong, I f I was in America i am sure I would be given a chance to show why, in Canada as long as you are black, get a job as a labor no matter how much knowledge you have, invest in science as long as do not block knowledge, incidently that is the failure of France, UK, Holland, Sweden, Canada, pretend to be nice but really hard core racists now their science is deeply affected. what has a Canadian ever thought of, besides Graham Bell who stole from an American Meucci and Blackberry that stole patents from Americans, nothing, intensely racist leads to mediocre, be happy American, that is why you lead the world you try not to be so racist when it comes to knowledge, Canadians care who thought of the idea.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswe hope so
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInvesting in tech is great. But if you want to stimulate the economy, put your funds into education. Studies show that people with college degrees make quite a bit more money than high school graduates. The cost of education has been rising steadily and drastically EVERY YEAR. However, the amount of money the government gives students in the form of grants/loans has stayed the same for well over 20 YEARS! If we can encourage people to better themselves through education, we can encourage people to rise out of poverty. If the government payed 100% of the cost of an associates degree, for EVERYONE, regardless of need/race/gender/etc... then America would prosper.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe children are the future of this country. If we are investing in technology, that's great, but only the big guys will make money while the poor man is put out of a job by yet another task that is automated. However, if we put funding into education, these kids will grow up to be a strong foundation that the country can build on. That's the only way to do it. Anything else will just make money for the rich and leave the poor man out. That stimulates the pockets of those that "matter" while those that really matter, those that are really carrying this country are crushed the same as ever.
A very good scientific investment will be buying and distributing copies of "The Quantum Theory of Gravitation" (2003) by Vasily Yanchilin. Last year I ordered this book at Amazone and paid for it to give it as a present to the Library of Congress. But I cannot trace it in the catalogue as if it is refused.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the Middle Ages books were burned if their content displeased vested interests. Wikipedia refuses to put anything of Yanchilin's work on its site.
That harms discussion whether he or Einstein is right. The latter maintained that near mass the seconds have longer duration. Yanchilin concludes from his new hypthesis (based on observations) that time goes faster there. Which is in harmony with the tempo of the big Bang. (In dutch language a short introduction can be found on www.janjitso.blogspot.com).
To illustrate the importance of the desired discussion: In geology zircons are used for determination of time sequences as they have radio-active inclusions. Yanchilin argumentates that in the past trans-uranium elements were stable because then the radii of atoms were smaller. If he is right time scales have to be revised.
This Russian proposes a certain experiment with atomic clocks placed at sea level and on a mountain respectively in order to find out which one will run faster. I would like to know more on the factor speed of radio-active decay then as this is important for getting results.
In short: spend, in cooperation, a little bit of money on Yanchilin's research too!
I am in complete agreement with support to education that was suggested above. The leading edge of our collective economic strength is our support for the primary, secondary and university education systems as well as science, engineering and technology (SET) research and development. However, as we've seen in Iraq and other places, even the most capable SET professionals will ultimately be overcome with infrastructure problems. I feel that refurbishment of our infrastructure has to have a very high priority. The good news is that spending here will provide a boost to our economy in the short term some what, but mostly in the moderate and long term timeframes. It is sort of like a 2 for 1 sale, direct support for our economy and refurbishment of a sick infrastructure.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs far as I can tell, I think Mr. Obama's initial package is fairly well balanced. We will see what actually comes out of Congress.
Don't need 'whatever new-fangled power transmission' Follow MIT, as an example, and build 'Distribute Power System' -- capacity factors 80 or more.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMassachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1985 began to consider generating its own electricity for a variety of reasons. With its students now using PCs, stereos, hair dryers, and toaster ovens, the university faced soaring electricity costs from the local utility, Cambridge Electric Company (CelCo). Many of MIT's world class research projects also could be ruined by power quality problem or service interruptions. Also, MIT's steam-powered heating and cooling system, which included 1950's-vintage boilers that burned fuel oil, was a major source of local air pollution.
The university selected a 22-megawatt (MW), combustion-turbine-based, natural gas-fired, CHP system. The system was to be 18 percent more efficient than generating electricity and steam independently. It was expected to meet 94 percent of MIT's power, heating, and cooling needs, and to cut its annual energy bills 40 percent. MIT expected to recoup its investment in less than seven years.
MIT's first major hurdle was in obtaining the environmental permit needed before construction could begin. Because it retired two 1950's-vintage boilers and relegated the remaining boilers to backup and winter peaking duty, the CHP system would reduce annual pollutant emissions by 45 percent, an amount equal to cutting auto traffic in Cambridge by 13,000 round trips per day. Despite this substantial emissions savings, plant designers had problems meeting the state's NOx (nitrogen oxides a smog precursor) standard. The state's approved technology for meeting that standard which was designed for power stations more than ten times larger than MIT's generator was expensive and posed a potential health risk because of the need to house large amounts of ammonia in the middle of the campus. MIT appealed and won by performing a sophisticated life-cycle assessment that showed its innovative system had lower net emissions than the state-approved tech nology that vented ammonia.
Although MIT overcame the environmental hurdle and completed construction in September 1995, the story wasn't over. MIT had the misfortune to leave the grid just when Massachusetts was restructuring its electric utility industry. The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU) approved CelCo's request for a "customer transition charge" of $3,500 a day ($1.3 million a year) for power MIT would not receive. MIT appealed the ruling in federal court arguing that it already was paying $1 million per year to CelCo for backup power, and that for ten years CelCo had been informed of the university's plans and could have taken actions to compensate for MIT's self generation, and that the utility's projected revenue loss was inflated but the judges ruled they did not have jurisdiction. MIT then appealed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which in September 1997 reversed DPU's approval of the customer transition charge, remanded the case for further proceedings, and stated that no other CelCo ratepayers contemplating self-generation should have to pay similar stranded costs.
In the meantime, the state's proposed restructuring legislation could have raised the amount that MIT would have had to pay for leaving the system to as much as $6.5 million. Fortunately for the university, the Massachusetts law exempted CHP generators from an "exit charge," or a non-bypassable transition charge paid by anyone who leaves the system.
Although MIT now has a CHP system which is saving money and reducing pollution the university's experience demonstrates the substantial efforts that have been needed to overcome regulatory barriers to CHP. MIT was a major research institution ready to fight, but most potential CHP users would have had neither the financial resources nor technical expertise to surmount these barriers.
Obama would do well to invest in research to eradicate pollution, climate change and to find alternatives to current ressources as they run out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is barely any choice...
I believe firmly that education needs to be a top priority. The nation's public school system needs direct and immediate help in many areas, but none more important than increased emphasis on science and high-tech education. I am mother of two 5th grade students, one having autism. At our public elementary school, located in a mid to upper class neighborhood, the computer lab is mostly vacant due to outdated or non working computers, along with the absense of full-time computer teacher or even an aide. When my husband and I attended our autistic son's recent parent/teacher meeting, the special education teacher was unable to provide us with certain of our son's testing scores and data due to an antiquated and malfunctioning laptop. My two grade schoolers are measurably behind in computer skills, as the regular education teachers must take turns, when possible, to teach in the computer lab.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmerica's future resides amongst our children, and we need to insist as parents and citizens and scientists on the priority of improved science education, beginning with our youngest students, and make available not only adequate and critical equipment and facilities for high-tech skills development and advancement within our public schools, but also guarantee well- qualified instructors to our nation's students who will, if led and motivated toward high performance and personal achievement, be the ultimate "change" which we, as citizens and governing agencies are now discussing, mapping out, and most of all - investing hope in. As financial options are measured now as well as in the future, or as heated debates arise concerning the investment in science as a means to strengthen the economy, place importance on the base foundations of public education as a powerful prerequisite and driving force for the rising generation to seek higher education and increased knowledge in preparation to forge the cutting edge necesary to strenghthen and sustain this nation and its people while establishing itself as a global contender whose keen 21st century capabilities are solid and its formerly targeted areas for "change" are realized.
Hi from Russia to all participants of this forum.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe education, road, science is important.
Constrains 2A Q this absence of due interest at the officials.
The official is afraid to do(make) mistakes, because for mistakes punish.
The mistakes no only then, when do not work!
The officials go by this way, therefore forbid new and not known.
In Russia, the President has let out the Decree 1102 from August 24, 2008 with which has forbidden to pass him the letters of the citizens.
It relieves it(him) of necessity to answer the letters and to accept the decisions.
Your President too does not have an opportunity to pass the message - it is thrown out in a basket by the fine officials.
Tried to inform your president that to him can be submitted the working breadboard model of the isothermal converter of a thermal energy of an environment in an electrical current.
The answer no. All presidents in all world have discharged of the information from places.
Whether it is possible from the presidents to wait for the decisions adequate I call of circumstances?
There are some good ideas that have been proposed, like upgrade the power grid (Step 1 - shut down the NIMBY's). But even more than a national broadband network, as some have proposed, I'd like to see national servers and electronic archives. These could supplement or replace the Wayback Machine. Have redundant archive sites, hardened. What goes on the archive? No restrictions. Period. But also, no anonymous storage. If you want it archived, you own responsibility for it. So if you post classified information or kiddie porn, your name is on it. We should also make it a condition of all copyrights that the material is stored in the archive and made available when the copyright expires. No archive, no copyright.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Editors Opinion, "A Scientific Stimulus for the U.S," (Sci. Am. Feb., '09) conspicuously omits increased spending for the intellectual infrastructure of science: math and science education. This would include metrication: the adoption by the U.S. the metric system, which is the language of scientific measurement and the common system of measurement in the rest of the world. For the advancement of science in America, we must learn the Think Metric!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavid W. Briggs, PhD
Marion, MA
The Editors Opinion, "A Scientific Stimulus for the U.S," (Sci. Am. Feb., '09) conspicuously omits increased spending for the intellectual infrastructure of science: math and science education. This would include metrication: the adoption by the U.S. the metric system, which is the language of scientific measurement and the common system of measurement in the rest of the world. For the advancement of science in America, we must learn the Think Metric!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavid W. Briggs, PhD
Marion, MA
I think we should give all the people who lost there job the opportunity to go to school for free, pick up a trade that has a high demand now and for the future. Instead of waisting money in the banks. A person can't take a loan without a job. We are working backwards.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScience funding will be cut dramatically. The way Obama is spending, non-essential activities are toast.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisObama's plan is balanced alright. Balanced with the earners on one side of the seesaw, and the layabouts on the other. After doubling everyone's taxes in 2010, science will take a back seat except for alternative energy science. Everything else is toast EVENTUALLY.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe public school system should be shut down. It is a complete and utter failure. Pouring any more money into this bottomless pit is useless. As long as the students run the schools, the result will be students who are barely literate, and completely lacking in technical skills. The HS grads I have met (from the public school system) will be democrats on the dole. They don't have any skills of any value except perhaps for a fast food restaurant.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems to me that the basic problem is that knowledge about the most essential subject in the national economy is lacking. Namely, how macroeconomics actually works. Few courses at university teach it properly because of the interest of the supporting concerns in hiding some of its essentials. This means that awareness of the cause of national economic crisies and what to do to stop them repeating, is not properly understood, nor is it wanted to be understood.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPolitics aside, this lack of knowledge is causing policy-makers to place the blame and the responsibility in places which are unlikely to be effective in stimulating the macroeconomy and helping the nation recover from the economic crisis. It should be mandatory for senators and congress-men/women to have a basic understanding of how our social system works and for just about every newly educated child who reaches grade 10 (say) to begin to receive this kind of information too. At last a few of them will then show sufficient interest in it to become more influential than our existing leaders, and unfortunately that includes our President. Yet the knowledge has not been properly determined, nor organized, nor has it been spread.
Unlike modern methods of teaching macroeconomics, the right way to start teaching this subject (in common with the scientific approach to many others) is by establishing a theory and not by showing current trends. The theory for macroeconomics must be simple to understand but because the subject appears to be complex, such a theory should be based on aggregate behavour (like the gas laws), with idealized properties that are sufficiently general to allow the scientist to see the big-picture as if from a distant point. This means that any personal feelings associated with the problem of "not seing the wood for the trees" are eliminated. Engineers know this well, so social engineering is the way that this subject should be better expressed.
Icould go on but space and patience are limited and the new theory which I have developed and which I have in mind is of this general nature. It is logical and scientific yet sufficiently simple (without it being too simple, Einstein) for analysis to be possible, even without the need for computers to be used at first. It is unbiased, because it leaves out nothing of significance and unlike the Keynesian Theory (as a poor example) looks at how every part of the whole system can interact with its various parts. The resulting model might be thought to be econometric, except statistics are unnecessary.
I think the most important subject for use of this money is in trying to understand in a scientific way how our money and our macroeconomy actually works! Mostly macroeconomics is not regarded as an exact science and the amout of contravercy about it suggests that the situation has yet to be properly resolved. As a researcher on this matter it soon becomes clear that one needs to build a model of the system in order to understand it and its ability to function. So the problem then becomes which model.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy research is centered in firstly choosing a model that satisfies the "Einstein Criterion" which rather like Ockam's Razor calls for as much simplicity as possible provided it is not over-simplified. By looking at the situation from sufficiently great a distance, many of the less important details can be avoided. The model I choose is not based on individuals in the society but rather on how blocks of the function, in all of the somewhat limited possible ways. Thus the personal and individual workings are avoided in the same manner as the gas laws, which are not directly concerned with separate molecular collisions. The irrefutable logic of taking this approach and the relatively simple model that follows is a more scientific and reasonable way of providing answers to what should be done to get back in the technical road leading toward national progress.
I should add that the amount of money needed to help in all scientific research is a very small proportion of what the Keynesian Theory claims is needed in the way of job creation and pump priming of the floundering national economy. Debatable as the Theory is, the need for scientific research should be enough of an inspiration by iteslf , without having the to need to do it merely so that there will be more jobs.