An average week, as guests go. As of Monday morning, there are still two evenings’ lineups that have yet to be announced, so there may be a mid-week update.
One guest of note, on Thursday’s Colbert Report: Mark Moffett. He is an entomologist, earning his Ph.D. under Edward O. Wilson, and focuses on ants. This will mark his fourth appearance on the program.
A few nuggets from where science and technology poke their heads up in the sea of cultural offerings.
First, Washington, D.C. area theatre-goers will have the opportunity to check out Photograph 51, which played in the Ensemble Studio Theatre last fall in New York City. The play covers the role of Rosalind Franklin in the discovery of DNA. Its D.C. run will be at Theater J from March 23 through April 24.
Nothing really to say about tonight’s Academy Awards, aside from noting that the Technical Oscars will get mentioned round about the time many folks will be visiting the restroom.
A couple of recent comic strips with science and technology themes to close out. From The New Adventures of Queen Victoria and Frazz, respectively.
The New Adventures of Queen Victoria, February 19, 2011
Frazz, February 25, 2011
On February 28 and March 1 the Presidential Commission on the Study of Bioethical Issues will hold its first meeting since the release of its synthetic biology report. The meeting takes place in Washington, D.C., but will be webcast.
While the President has already asked the Commission to tackle concerns over human subjects research, the meeting will cover other topics. On Monday the Commission will focus on bioethics issues connected to neuroscience and genetics. This will include issues connected to diagnostic and predictive tools in genetics, which have prompted concerns about how to effectively allow those taking the tests to deal with the complicated answers that result.
As the Commission is in the preliminary stages of its work on human subjects research, the second day will have background on both the relevant research (including clinical trials) and the justice and ethical issues connected with the increasing conduct of human subjects research in other countries.
The Commission has additional meetings scheduled for the May, August, and November. More details will be available at the Commission website closer to those dates.
The New York Times recently chronicled the goings-on at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). While the office has been making strides to address the serious backlog of patent applications, there’s still a long way to go. There are still a bit fewer than six patents pending for every one issued. Even so, the number of patents issued reached an all-time high in 2010. So did the number of rejections. (This reflects the ability to provide sufficient scrutiny to applications rather than a decrease in quality of applications. Quality is not the only criteria for granting a patent.)
Like many services taken for granted in the government, the USPTO is asked to do a lot with a little. It’s relatively self-sufficient, with application fees handling the bulk, if not all, of its operating costs. However, a lot of that money has been diverted by Congress to other purposes, making it difficult for the office to invest in additional examiners and other expansion of its operations. The addition of new offices (like the one in Detroit) is a notable exception.
It’s no wonder the backlog has grown. Of course, a lot of the growth comes from the increasing ease of applying for a patent and the increasing complexity of those patents. For me, this raises a legitimate metrics question. If the USPTO is struggling to keep up with patent applications, what does this mean for the effectiveness of U.S. patents as a proxy measure for innovative activity? I think it weakens the value of this measure – which already has plenty of limitations. Either way, the USPTO still needs what it’s not likely to get – more staff and resources to flatten the mountain of 1.2 million applications currently pending.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Margaret Hamburg has an editorial in the latest (February 25) edition of Science. Titled “Advancing Regulatory Science” (free with registration), it gives a lot more specific detail of the kind of thing Hamburg has in mind when mentioning regulatory science, certainly compared to my paltry musings on the topic.
The piece is part explanation (or evangelicalism), but is mostly updating on what’s being done by the FDA in this area. As Hamburg characterizes regulatory science, its goal is to “develop new tools, standards, and approaches that efficiently and consistently assess the safety, efficacy, quality, and performance of products.” This is a much narrower slice of what might be generally considered regulatory science – science used to set regulations. It is relatively specific to the FDA, and while it may be rightly criticized as a new name for old research, I am persuaded that there isn’t enough attention paid to translating and/or applying research findings to particular policy objectives (like food and medical safety). This is in part because such work is not going on – at least an any meaningful level – in science and technology policy.
But let’s not skip over what the FDA has been doing in this area during Hamburg’s tenure. Besides the grant program I’ve mentioned before, the FDA has partnered with the European Medicines Agency to develop biomarkers to assist in identifying drug-induced toxicity. Future goals include exploring possible in silico and in vitro substitutes for animal research. This all seems promising, and I would hope that those involved in the Science of Science and Innovation Policy program – government wide – might be taking notes to see how they might foster translational research (something not covered in the NSF program solicitation, as best as I can tell).
The Vatican is working with the Italian Space Agency (ASI) on a website focusing on cosmology and related issues. Titled the “Universal Portal of Cosmology” there aren’t a lot of details available (at least in English). Part of this has to do with the English version of the relevant ASI announcement being cut off.
From what I can tell, the scientific aspects of the site will be handled by an astrophysics professor from the University of Padua. The philosophical and theological components will be handled by the STOQ (Science, Theology and the Ontological Quest) Project at the Pontifical Lateran University. This is an offshoot of other collaborative efforts, including a joint lecture titled “The Origin of the Universe. What Modern Cosmology Tells Us about Our Place in the Universe” that was presented last December.
I have no idea what impact, if any, this website and the associated collaboration will have. It’s another reminder that the relationship between the Catholic Church and science is far from simple.
As I’m weary of Congress and the President accepting late (or no) budgets as the new normal, I’m not motivated to do much analysis of either the President’s fiscal year 2012 budget request, or the hash that is the attempt to pass something to cover the last half of funding for fiscal year 2011. So if you wish to peruse the numbers, I’d look at AAAS and the American Institute of Physics (seek entries prefaced with the proper fiscal year). I’d also recommend that you keep a close eye on the column headings. Not just to distinguish between this year and next, but in order to keep a better sense of the magnitude of increases and decreases. Between the stimulus spending and the differences between requests and actual spending over the last few years, trend numbers are likely to look lumpy and weird.
The current funding resolution (which keeps most everything at the spending levels of the previous year) is set to expire on March 4, and I don’t expect resolution to come in time. I also expect there won’t be a government shutdown. I make that expectation based on the general un-seriousness with which most everyone is tangling with budget cuts. With a focus on only one-sixth (approximately) of the federal budget, this strikes me as more posturing.
The nutshell is as follows – deep cuts in that one-sixth of the budget are proposed by the House for the rest of this fiscal year. This includes essentially derailing the doubling proposed for research investments in the physical sciences, a doubling set by President George W. Bush. The current President’s current budget request, while making cuts, seeks to preserve this doubling and pay for continued investments through cuts in other areas. This is consistent with the approach taken for his budget request for fiscal year 2011, where an overall cut in discretionary spending did not result in a cut to federal research and development funding.
But, if my budgetary skepticism has any predictive power, there won’t be a budget passed on time this year, either, so trying to keep straight the numbers for this year and next year resembles the work of Sisyphus. Those seeking to support federal funding of science and technology research will need to step up their game, something that’s been true for a while, but now they’ll need an additional step.
While I usually joke about a week’s offerings being thin gruel, I’m not kidding this week. The best I can find is the editor of Endgaget, a consumer technology blog. Josh Topolsky, a frequent guest of Jimmy Fallon, will visit his show on Wednesday. This is such a stretch I usually don’t list his appearances. Another in the category of rarely listed is the animal expert. In this case, it’s a repeat of last week’s appearance by Donald Schultz on Chelsea Lately. That bout of déjà vu is scheduled for Friday.
From The Great Beyond comes word of a reprieve in the looming shortage of Helium-3 in the U.S., something I’ve noticed a few times before. The specific response has come from a one time increase in the amount of helium the U.S. will make available during the coming year.
(I had neglected to document the U.S. response to shortages, which has included the creation of an Interagency Policy Committee at the White House in 2009. The Nature piece provides a brief timeline.)
Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to determine how to deal with supplies moving forward. Possible options include an expanded effort to encourage alternatives to the current technologies (often detectors) that rely on the He-3 isotope, deals with countries that have production facilities (heavy water reactors), and tightly managing current demand. While no one has made the link that I’ve seen, a continued reduction in nuclear weapons may provide additional supplies of the material, though that is not a sustainable solution for He-3 demand as weapon numbers dwindle.
Courtesy of some of my regular Internet stops are a couple of science-themed tunes. First, another Lady Gaga song gets a Weird Al treatment. This time it’s “Bad Romance” turned into “Bad Project” by a research team at Baylor College School of Medicine (H/T Frogheart). Ph.D. holders and current grad students will likely get the most out of this video.
Our other entry today is Only Won, an engineer who followed the Scott Adams path to his other pursuit – Hip-Hop Artist. What recently burned the YouTube charts (and Science Cheerleader’s Twitter feed) is his take on “I Wanna Be a Millionaire” – “I Wanna Be an Engineer”
Only Won is the nom de rap of Baldwin Chiu, a mechanical engineer who graduated from Sacramento State. The Lyrical Engineer is the title of the following track and Only Won’s album. (Note: Dawkins fans may not care for some of Only Won’s music, but I recommend the beatboxing you can find on his YouTube channel)
Pasco Phronesis 