STEM_Wonk

Carbon Dioxide as a Feedstock for Acrylic Acid Production

STEM_Wonk — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 04:59:39 +0000

One of the largest sources of carbon, CO2, is emitted as a pollutant and is attributing to the rising climate temperatures. So then why are we not using CO2 as a feedstock? Well, for one thing is it very very difficult. CO2 is incredibly stable as it is a thermodynamic sink. Therefore, It requires even more energy to convert it into something else, and where does all of energy come from? Fossil fuels. Thereby generating even more CO2 to convert CO2 into something useful. But if we can find a means for converting or reducing CO2 into a commodity through a less energy intensive pathway, then there is potential to generate revenue from “waste” and reduce emissions.

Currently, the US generates 5,500 million metric tons/yr of CO2. Industries are currently capturing and using CO2, approximately 200 million metric tons/yr in the food industry and oil and gas industry, but a majority of this is released back into the atmosphere. Only about 0.5% of the CO2 that is captured is sequestered and not released.

We can think about carbon/CO2 utilization in two categories, 1.) carbon sequestration (burying in deep geological formations) and 2.) carbon as a useful feedstock. I am focusing on the second categories because investigations into into using CO2 as a freely available and abundant feedstock to develop commercial chemicals, plastics, and building materials has the potential to be an economically viable industry. Additionally, carbon sequestration has its limitations, and although it is being heavily federally funded, it’s large scale deployment has estimates in the range of $30-70/ton attributed to the new CO2 transmission lines that will need to be built. There are instances where CO2 cannot be transported to sequestration sites.

One of my favorite examples being investigated for CO2 utilization to generate commercial chemicals is the oxidative coupling of CO2 with ethylene to generate acrylic acid with molybdenum catalysts. This is work done at Brown University in the lab of Dr. Bernskoetter.

Acrylic Acid

Acrylic acid is used heavily as the raw material for polymers, coatings and adhesives. Global production of acrylic acid is 3.4 million metric tons/yr and with 60% by weight CO2, that is over 2 million metric tons/yr of CO2 that could be resold and prevented from entering the atmosphere. The production of acrylic acid through a more economically viable method would be advantageous, so much so that Dow has begun similar efforts to generate acrylic acid through the generation of 3-hydroxypropionic acid with the use of a biocatalyst. They claim that their process is 25% cheaper and 75% less greenhouse gas intensive.

The current process for acrylic acid production is the oxidation of propene and is incredibly energy intensive because it not only requires reaction temperatures of 200 – 300 C but also multiple distillations to remove impurities. Dr. Bernskoetter’s catalysts can oxidatively add CO2 and ethylene slightly above, if not close to, room temperature. However, at the moment, the biggest challenge is the reductive elimination of the hydroxide to release acrylic acid from the metal. But once that can be done, unlike the use of catalytic microbes, organometallic catalysts can more easily (and usually cheaply) be modified to improve upon turnover rates and efficiency. I am especially excited and looking forward to Dr. Bernskoetter’s next publication on this catalyst.

Will the prospect of a clean energy future get our budget passed?

STEM_Wonk — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 22:35:08 +0000

In talking to many people, very few were as excited about the President’s budget rollout as I was. This is probably due to the dim prospects of it actually getting passed this year it being an election year. Well, without going into a debate about whether or not it will fly in Congress, I do want to write a post about it as I think that it clearly showcases the importance that President Obama places on a clean energy economy. And because of this, I also think that congress should at least consider (at least the R&D side) the budget because if some of the clean energy investments are passed, the benefits will trickle down to their substituents and create more jobs and industries in their own states. The rest of the world is on board with investing in clean energy, why are we not? Although, according to Bloomberg, in 2011, we finally surpassed China in our investments in clean energy with 55.9 billion dollars when China invested 47.4 billion dollars in clean energy. Lets increase this!

I was excited to read that the Department of Energy’s proposed R&D budget for FY 2013 is 11.9 billion, an $884 million increase (8% of 2012 enacted). Within this budget request, specifically for R&D, there is (nearly a) 30% increase ($2.3 million) in the budget for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Programs, as well as (almost a) 30% increase ($350 million) in the budget for Advance Research Projects Agency in Energy (ARPA-e). I am proud of these increases because energy efficiency programs and efforts are some of the most important things that we can do now to reduce our emissions and save on energy. It it amazing how much economic sense improvements in efficiency can have and yet we consistently under invest in these types of efforts. But, there is a great piece by psychologist Brandon Hofmeister, that perhaps describes the cognitive barrier between knowing that something that makes economic sense and actually doing what makes economic sense. Nonetheless, more efforts to encourage consumers to be energy efficient and for utilities to reward their consumers when they are energy efficient is a very good thing.

Science Outlook – If Newt won the White House

STEM_Wonk — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:30:51 +0000

What would science look like if Republicans won the White House in 2012? (Part 1 of 2)After hearing Former Speaker Gingrich’s promise that there will be colonies on the moon by 2020, and then the subsequent parodies by various comedians and Romney, I want to ask: what did you find yourself thinking?

Although I don’t believe that we should go back to the moon to settle colonies, Former Speaker Gingrich’s pandering to the space coast got me thinking about the foundation I had for the stress that with a republican in the White House we would lose all of the momentum in R&D we worked so hard to gain these last 3-4 years. Where did I get this feeling? Because public debates rarely go into how candidates think about science and research and development.

Now a disclaimer: this post is all speculation based on limited research. I have merely looked into the past decisions, votes, and bills introduced by Gringrich (during the 104th Congress) and cherry picked the legislation that might hint at a passion and interest in science. This post is in no way guaranteeing that this will be the agenda that he will take. I am only looking for patterns to help guide thinking about the candidates that are bombarding the news cycles.

And of course, the candidate will not be the only one who makes decisions on science, as if he does win the White House, it will also depend on who he will appoint to his cabinet positions and other key science positions. But again, this is just a small list to begin to think about the candidates from the viewpoint of what they can do for science, because R&D is not often talked about in national debates.

Space:
Gingrich perhaps was not just pandering to the space coast, but has always found an interest in space policy, since growing up during the space race. In an interview with The Space Review in 2006, he sees a lot of potential in large monetary prizes and tax incentives to encourage businesses and the private sector to be involved. Although many of these partnerships with the private sector are already happening and have been the efforts of the current (Obama) administration.

Energy and the Environment:
This is a bit difficult to tease out as there are instances where Newt has been a proponent of climate change going as far as doing a commercial with Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi in support of Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection and even authoring A Contract with the Earth, a book on green conservatism. However in recent months in during his campaign for the presidency he is on the same side of nearly every other republican candidate, expressing that the commercial was the “dumbest single thing I’ve done in the last few years”.

In addition, his quote about changing the EPA to the Environmental Solutions Agency (ESA) is a bit convoluted as he expresses the need for this agency to work with industry to build incentives rather than punishments. One specific example to keep an eye on is his proposal to incentivize “flex-fuel” vehicles. However, these types of vehicles would need to broaden beyond just ethanol to not be seen as choosing ethanol as the “winner”.

Education:
Former Speaker Gingrich has a very strong commitment to education. He knows that prosperity and national security are tied into education. Although he does rely heavily on the charter school system, but as does Secretary Duncan (interview with Meet the Press).

As an additional disclaimer, this post in no way endorses Newt Gingrich. I just wanted to have a discussion about the speculations on the consequence of science if republicans were to win the White House. Did you catch any other articles I should take a look at? Tomorrow: Mitt Romney, what is the outlook for science if he wins the White House?

Directing you to “Just Like Cooking” blog

STEM_Wonk — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:07:27 +0000

During the State of the Union tonight, I began to notice that I was not getting as excited as I had been the year before, and for a while I could not quite put my finger on why. But then I realized that there was there was a significant decrease in the urgency to support science and innovation. Last year I remember agreeing with the President on many issues seemingly every other sentence about rallying up the nation like we did in the race to the moon, but in this decade it would be a race to be the top in science, in energy. But this year there was none or very little of that.

Which makes me incredibly sad, as I had written in my last post my anticipation for the 2013 budget and a question for what is in store for science in 2013? We did well in 2012…but can still do better, and we need to do better!

If feels like pushing science is not a good campaigning strategy.

Please take a look at a fellow chemistry blogger’s post here. She does a great and quick “by the numbers” of Winning the Future and America Built to Last. Although true that the two speeches need to be unique and memorable. But what is missing is that there was very few mentions of the success in energy that we made in 2011 to show that those investments made a difference! (yes, research takes time and in a year it is hard to list the successes only the failures – Solyndra – are at the forfront.) But still, I think to really show that we should be working on Winning the Future through innovation, and that we never should stop, there should not have been such a drastic drop off to support science.

FY 2012 Appropriations

STEM_Wonk — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 03:09:48 +0000

True, wrong year, but a perfect picture listed under CC-BY-SA

It is definitely time, or well past the time, to do a (science) budget blog post. As you might have heard, just before the holiday break, Congress passed the Appropriations for 2012, and it is important to take a look at how science funding panned out.

Although, through this analysis and excitement as to how much Congress believes in basic research, I am keeping the following in the back of my mind: the deficit reduction talks will be fervent as ever for the 2013 budget. And perhaps fuel for those that are asking for the evidence that science is an economic investment is the new publication by Georgia State University economist Paula Stephan, How Economics Shapes Science. I can not say much about the book at the moment as I need to wait a few weeks for my library to get its hands on the publication. But this science career’s perspective on the publication was incredibly intriguing.

Most of what the public hears about the arrangements that govern research comes from reports by … top administrators at leading universities, eminent faculty members in major science and engineering departments, and high executives of large corporations — “not,” Stephan pointedly notes, “students and postdocs who could not find jobs.”

Are the funds that are appropriated by Congress to the funding agencies, that are then granted to universities and medical schools to carry out basic research and development giving us the results we want? I cannot answer that, but Stephan’s book perhaps attempts to and there will definitely be a discussion of that publication shortly.

But for now, lets not be dour and actually celebrate that at least for 2012, deficit reduction was only a platform for discussion and did not result in any actual significant budget cutting (at least in NIH and NSF’s budget). Overall, many agencies remained at or slightly above 2011 levels. However, these final appropriations were quite the loss for the Administration as they are are far below the original requests made last Feburary. Specifically, NIH’s budget remained at $30.2 billion, DOE received 4.9% increase ($209 million) from FY 2011 in the Office of Science and a 10.5% increase ($198 million) for energy programs and NSF gained a 2.5% increase for $7.0 billion.

Although the real question is, with the 2013 budget requests to be unvailed in the next month, in an election year, on the coat-tails of a year-long “deficit reduction or it’ll be Armageddon” fest, how will science R&D do?

First, Congress and the Administration seem to acknowledge that discretionary spending was neither the basic cause of the country’s deficit problem nor the principle source of savings to solve it. Second, science, especially basic science investments, remain popular with both parties, both branches of Congress and with the Obama Administration — and even more importantly with the American people. Just how popular remains to be seen.

The above is from a recent live chat attempting to shed light on the questions: “Can Science Spending Survive Partisan Politics?” The panelists outline some good points for scientists to push so that both sides of Congress can agree with. For example to present translatable research or to show that long term investments lead to information like monitoring weather systems can make the difference in evacuation efforts.

But overall the conversation was just speculation. Without knowing (yet) the Administration’s budget requests or (ever knowing) the motives of Congress, we cannot know for sure how science will do in 2013.

The answer to the concluding question is very poignant:

As long as the Federal Govt is going to spend in excess of $130 billion on research and development annually, and taxpayers will be the ultimate source of that money, politics will be an inherent part of the science funding enterprise.

Science will always be a part of politics. The goal is to find a system where both are able to most efficiently benefit each other.

Not just superMAN, but superMEN and superWOMEN

STEM_Wonk — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 07:10:28 +0000

it’s EVERYONE.

A good education is luck?

I am slightly behind the times in that I finally had the chance to watch Waiting for Superman. But seeing that our education system has not drastically improved in the last year since this movie came out, I believe that I have seen it well within what would be considered “in time” to take action. If you have not seen this movie, you need to put this in your Netflix queue; but as a warning: it is an incredibly difficult movie to sit through. It is perhaps one of the most depressing documentaries I have seen. I do not recall what type of reviews this movie got when it came out, and if or if not what I have just mentioned was the consensus about the movie. But the movie does dramatically illustrates the fact that the American school system is not adequately preparing a majority of the children that go through it for sustained employment in their future.

Specifically what I wanted to investigate more was the brief introduction of Michelle Rhee’s summer 2008 radical proposal of offering a choice to teachers to be able to earn up to twice as much if he/she gave up tenure. It was just a brief feature of the proposal, showcasing the potential for reform if it worked, and in the director’s opinion, the devastating event that the proposal was deemed so threaten that it was not even put to a vote. This proposal was incredibly intriguing for me because earlier in the movie it mentioned some interesting statistics on the number of teachers who have lost their teaching credentials to doctors and lawyers who lose their licenses. The numbers were 1 in 57 doctors, 1 in 97 lawyers and 1 in 2500 teachers who have lost their credentials for malpractice. So with these numbers, why not have a proposal to take another look at teacher contracts? But let me poke some holes in the proposal.

1. I do not know how the worst teachers (who probably know that they are the “lemons”, and probably would choose tenure) get eliminated by this system/proposal?

2. The extra funding is provided by private sources which is not sustainable.

3. There does not seem to be a solid assessment process for those who choose to give up tenure for their “merit-based” raises.

Perhaps a better proposal is to change how K-12 teachers get tenure. What if K-12 teachers went through the rigorous process of academics for tenure? Should K-12 work like the ivory tower? hm, imagine for a moment what that would look like. just briefly: pros – incredible innovation not just out of universities but also high schools? cons – Only a small percentage are deemed “qualified”. In 2006, only 15% of PhDs hold tenure track positions. But like Rhee’s proposal, it does not eliminate current poorly performing teachers. It is quite interesting and fascinating that even the potential to earn six figures as a teacher was no where close to being competitive to having tenure. Ms. Slyvia, “Don’t as me to give up tenure, not even for a moment.”

* I do have to note that I believe that every single one of the kids that are featured in the movie have the chance to be successful. **spoiler: just because a few of them do not get into their charter school of choice, it is not the end for them as the movie might imply. But it is a movie and directors do have cinematic freedom to captivate an audience. But I also do not think that the drama dilutes the take home message: there needs to be a be a better way of educating children in the US so that we can be as competitive and innovative as we can be as a nation.

Josh Eidelson’s blog post (from back in Feb 2011) that also asks a lot of very good questions about the movie.

Be CURIOUS

STEM_Wonk — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 03:35:31 +0000

Over Thanksgiving weekend I had the opportunity to participate in the NASA Tweetup for the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity. And I am definitely thankful for this opportunity. Those of you who do not know what a NASA Tweetupis and you tweet, I would highly recommend you check out the website I have linked. It is definitely a very creative and amazing way for an agency to get the word out about their programs. It is beyond the agency just having a twitter account, but it is actively using the masses or your followers who have twitter account to also help with outreach.This was my first NASA Tweetup and participants ranged from K-12 educators, artists, hobby astronomers, entrepreneurs, computer programmers and of course a few engineers. Everyone was a (space) nerd in one way or another, but very few (at least of the people I ran into) were engineers which was a bit surprising to me. But that really goes to show how approachable this program is, scientists are not the only ones who are drawn to this opportunity.

NASA has a range of tweetups from meeting former astronauts to rocket launches that place participants as close as the press gets to be.The most popular of the tweetups were probably those that surrounded the Space Shuttle launches, and sadly STS-135 (the final launch) was is when I first heard about the opportunity. Naturally, as a child who launched 2L bottle rockets and created PVC pipe model rockets stuffed with those single use cardboard rocket motors, I desperately wanted to be picked in order to have an excuse to go down to Cape Canaveral to see the launch of a NASA rocket. But additionally, I specifically choose this tweetup because it was the launch of the Atlas V rocket that would carry the Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity on it’s 9 month trip to Mars.

Curiosity will be the largest rover we have sent to Mars and will have an extraordinary suite of analytical chemistry instruments. Instruments tasked to further explore the minerals on Mars for signs of prior or present life forms. The rover has 80 kg of instrumentation and one specific instrument, the CheMinwill analyze the chemical composition of the planet’s soil and rocks for signs of a past Martian environment that could had supported life. CheMin is a powder X-ray diffraction instrument also capable of X-ray Fluorescence. ChemMin is using x-rays because minerals have characteristic diffraction patterns and enables us to identify of the crystalline structure of the materials the rover will see. CheMin is about the size of a shoebox, which is amazing as our lab PXRD is the size of a large armoire. Therefore, I had to ask our guests the question: how did you make it so small?! Here’s how: the samples are vibrated (by a tuning fork) on a platform and are therefore suspended to allow all incident angles to be scanned. Rather than sweeping the incidence angle as we do in our lab PXRD, the sweep comes essentially from the rotation of the sample. Dr. Conrad said that this miniaturization of the instrument was actually very difficult, but it now has been commercialized and a PXRD the size of a suitcase can be purchased!

The highlight of this experience is seeing a rocket launch, but also a wonderful part of the program of a NASATweetup is the opportunity to hear scientists talk about their involvement with the project and to ask questions about being a scientist at NASA. The speakers for the science instrumentation on Curiosity were Pan Conrad (deputy principal investigator, SAM instrument, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center) and Ashwin Vasavada (MSL deputy project scientist at JPL). They did a great job presenting the excitement surrounding instrumentation being sent to Mars and the important implications for future Martian explorations in the discoveries. In addition to the amazing PXRD, the cameras and SAM instrumentation are actually able to inhale the martian atmosphere, providing real time, and year-round insight on the thermal, chemical, radiation and solar composition of the environment for future manned spaceflight to Mars. A key point that Dr. Conrad made was to not take the data that we will get back from Curiosity and compare it to what we see on Earth, but to think about how it fits with the data they have on Mars from other missions.

The Altas V successfully launched the Mars Science Laboratory, Curiosity on November 26, 2011 at 10:02 am. Seeing a rocket launch for the first time was absolutely an amazing experience. What I was thinking at the moment: it is moving a lot slower than I thought nearly 900,000 lbs of thrust would be able to move a rocket. But my favorite was the complete silence until about the time the Atlas V was to hit the clouds. Ah, how slow sound travels. Seeing a launch really is something that you cannot tell someone about, there are not quite words, except, to tell that person: you need to go see one yourself. And if you sign up for a NASA Tweetup, you will be as close as the press.

But most importantly, a NASA tweetup is how you can be involved, it is how you can see what type of science your taxes are going to and then you go out to tell your friends and followers what you saw. As much as I wish I could bring people to my lab to tell them one of the ways that NSF funding is being used, it is not as exciting as space exploration, but the basic science is the same. The software to navigate Curiosity to avoid sand dunes (Spirit’s demise) was not build from scratch but perhaps was based on a graduate student’s thesis. The instrumentation I use in my lab will have a cousin, Curiosity, on Mars, that is built with the same underlying theories for analysis. Support in science leads to new markets, and an example is the suitcase PXRD. Government science does support industry* and will pave way for a successful future. On the second day of the tweetup, Lori Garver (NASA Deputy Administrator) gave the advice: talk to your congressmen. get more congressmen to believe in the investment of science, that missions like this provide data that will better our lives, bring new technologies that will open new markets and help us to prosper.

All images from: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/

Interesting Links:Sign up for upcoming NASA Tweetups http://www.nasa.gov/connect/tweetup/index.html

#MSL #NASATweetup on NASATelevision http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/18736965

Youtube video of Will.i.am, Leland Melvin, Bill Nye the Science Guy and Lori Garver presentation on Why Support Science? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHaYKkxvyns
* at the start of the Q/A (about 11:30 min mark) someone asks Lori Garver if NASA supports commercial space flight: basically, yes! NASA does support commercial space flight, and has always.

Official NASA video of the MSL Launch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEXoMpmfJcM

Another piece of extraordinary instrumentation I did not talk about, the ChemCam:
http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/instruments/spectrometers/chemcam/

Animation of Curiosity’s cruise state, entry, descent, landing, and surface operations: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/videos/index.cfm?v=23

Another Idea for Empowering Women

STEM_Wonk — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 06:21:37 +0000

Ok, I know, I know I was going to take a hiatus, but I couldn’t resist. I decided to use my Friday evening to do a bit of catching up on Twitter/Blogs. And the uproar about Womanspace caught my attention. As I do have the desire to encourage more women into STEM fields, it might be good to join the conversation and to means in which we think about empowering women. I perhaps have another vantage point than the blogsphere, but I want to propose another way of considering the feature.

Personally, I thought the story was somewhat of clever yet approachable way of complementing women. The men were portrayed as lazy and not capable of completing anything. (guys? are you offended?) “…these otherwise unemployed elderly men…not having to listen to us blather on about just where to pitch the book, and what to put in it.” These men were not the ones bringing home the bacon! There is no indication that the wife wasn’t a scientist! The exact opposite: “which smacked of desperate snatching at straws to excuse incompetence, to the astrophysics-qualified wife.”

Basically, I thought it was a cute tongue-and-cheek way of including us women into the sci-fi sphere where we are most often left out. And as a sci-fi nerd, I was happy to be included and thought of highly as to be given the ability to travel through parallel universes as our male counterparts had absolutely no ability to. not even to get a pair of knickers.

But what I wanted to address in the blog post more specifically is whether it is helpful to point out that this essay/futures is something to be angry about or to complain about. Yes, I agree, it does have some domestic stereotyping, but I see this “stereotyping” as a means of bringing an obscure concept of “crossing parallel universes” into the realm of “believable”. or as a means of a story arc, setting up that our female powers of crossing parallel universes and being qualified astrophysicists are the norm. Why not bring out the strength of the wife being the lead. She tells and instructs the men with a task. and not hone in on the fact that she’s doing something “domestic”.

I am not sure how or at what point the lack of females around me strengthened me, but whenever I realize that I am the only woman in the room, that is exactly what encourages me to find a way to be better than all those men. Not cower away. Yes, I do believe the data on inferiority stereotyping but why not find a way to counter inferiority stereotyping? Find a way to tell girls “hey, so you are one of the few girls in this room, go you!” how did it get into their heads in the first place that this is a problem? A part of me just thinks that attacking a story as being too “stereotyping in that it has a woman in a domesticated role” when it includes women as the dominating role in a sphere normally not open to women (scifi) is not a way to counter the problem of lack of women in government, business and science.

Perhaps broadly this is the stance of “why tell me that I am hitting a glass celling?”. “I would rather not know where the glass celling currently stands.”

I personally don’t want to go against NPG for this reason. Futures is the one feature I actually look forward to reading every month.

PS: this summer I saw an EXCELLENT image that would go great with this post. It was a cartoon vintage poster? that was of a little girl in a bubble helmet climbing into a spaceship and a little boy following her lead. The blogger had mentioned that this type of poster was rare for the time period because 1.) there was even a girl in the picture 2.) she was the lead. If a reader has seen this, please please bring this to my attention! I cannot for the life of me find this image. In which this dilemma actually makes me sad that in real life I do not have parallel universe jumping capabilities to be able to find the image I am searching for.

Listen to Rep Price and Rep Holt!

STEM_Wonk — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:45:22 +0000

It is exciting to read the efforts of many who are trying to make sure that the super committee is wise in what they cut and are aware that science is an important investment.

Here are a few important links to take a look at:

The two best Congressmen leading the effort to continue to fund science

You can take action here, solidarity with other Grad Students

But, basically I wanted to write a note here saying that I will now be buckling down to work on the data mtg. I will be back briefly for my very first NASATweetup and the MSL launch. Hopefully I will also write a post about that amazing experience of being present at the Atlas V launch of the next Mars Rover. (I am especially excited to learn how NASA can get ordinary people so excited and involved in their program. Their outreach is truly and example for all science fields. I ask this same question all the time: why is chemistry not more popular?! Great post by SeeArrOh.)

What would convince you that funding science is worthwhile?

STEM_Wonk — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 03:41:19 +0000

Now that we are seeing some of the final FY 2012 appropriations being passed in both the House and Senate, I thought that it would be good to do a budget post. There were many Calls For Action last week to scientists, encouraging them to call/write to their Representative in the Senate to support the FY 2012 NSF budget at a level of little over $6.8 billion. I believe that the Senate did pass a series of appropriations that included the FY 2012 NSF budget, by a vote of 69 to 30.This year, perhaps more than any other year, there has been an incredible amount of discussion surrounding the Federal Budget. But I do not want to go into rehashing those events.Federal Funding for scientific agencies fill a significant detriment in the country as more and more companies are cutting their R&D departments. The Federal Government has the ability to encourage more R&D by creating aspiring mandates, such as the Fuel Efficiency Standards announced in July in which current technology will not reach those goals, requiring companies to be innovative in order to comply with the mandates. The funding appropriated to agencies in turn provide the Federal Government with the knowledge and research for feasible and high-achieving mandates that can in turn develop new markets and encourage innovation. Larger R&D departments = more jobs, better economy.A part of me wonders, why it is not an easy decision to continue to fund agencies like the NSF? $6.8 billion sounds like a lot of money, but it only comes out to, on average, $22/year/person. Is it the need to know what scientists are using the funds for? Does the tax-payer not want to support appropriations to these agencies because there is no accountability? I realize that this past spring, when the Senate report, The National Science Foundation: Under the Microscopecame out, much of the media focused on the “absurdity” of robots folding laundry. But in that anecdote they failed to recognize the importance of studying computer simulated unordered tasks. The report fails to understand the process of science and its outcomes. The reason that I bring this report up is that although the report claims that a lack of accountability justifies cutting the agency’s budget, it is not clear to me that more accountability would fix the problem. Thus, I want to ask: would the public like access to publications as a means of accountability?Currently, a majority of peer-reviewed research is published in journals that require a license for access. These licenses are very expensive and institutions pay a significant amount of money for access to these publications. Currently, the Office of Science and Technology Policy has put out a call for input on allowing public-access to publications and it will be very interesting to see the responses.

In case you haven’t seen this yet: Jon Stewart parody, what are we scientists up to?!

What are some other means to better illustrate that funds towards scientific research is worthwhile?

Excellent post in Science Progress: In defense of the NSF

*edit 11.09.11: New initiative unveiled by NSF that will allow some proposals that will not go through the traditional review process. This new initiative is perhaps a means to address Congress’ criticism of NSF not funding “transformative research”? CREATIV