The US are afraid (again) to

[marlon]

LOOK AT THIS

marlon

 

[Norman]

Good link and it is the truth in my eyes.
Too bad so much of our national budget is tied up in Defense (a slight misnomer in mine own eyes). We will lose our dominance in science eventually. It looks like it is just happening faster than most people on the outside thought.

 

[J77]

We will lose our dominance in science eventually.

 

[Norman]

Nothing can last indefinately. Or do you think the US is not dominant currently in this field?

 

[Pengwuino]

From what i hear on this forum, ask any serious scientist and they'll probably say the US is still at the forefront in science. However, they'll also probably tell you we're going to lose that spot very quickly at this rate unfortunately

 

[scott1]

From what i hear on this forum, ask any serious scientist and they'll probably say the US is still at the forefront in science. However, they'll also probably tell you we're going to lose that spot very quickly at this rate unfortunately

It depends on how a person makes it's predication:
A historian: would try to compare historical records to this current event.
Problem: Is it possible to look at the past to predict the future?No no two events in history can be exactly the same thing.
A Scientist: Would base it off of scientific data to predict the future.
Problem: Is a scientist looking at the right data and is he using the right knowledge
An Engineer: Would use experience and knowledge to predict the future
Problem: How accurate is that experience and knowledge
An Mathematician: would make a fourmla to predict the futre...
Problem:...without taking have the varbiles

No one can predict the exact event in the future there just paranoid.

 

[Pengwuino]

A statistician: would look at a thousand variables and make a reasonable guess at what might happen.

 

[Astronuc]

I have to agree with Norman. At the moment there is a lot of competition for funding, and unfortunately, science and technology R&D is not a priority in the Bush administration. :grumpy:

 

[Gokul43201]

I really don't think the US is going to lose the top spot very soon - not for the next few decades in my opinion. There may be specific areas under science/technology, where it is not the leader, but I think it will take a lot to lose the overall edge.

One thing that US has going for it until it picks up its own science education at lower levels is the relatively high standard of living afforded to a scientist. The US is still able to attract some of the best scientific minds from Asia and Eastern Europe. Cuts in funding for research are affecting this some, and the effects will be seen in the long term if the policy doesn't change. But as administrations come and go, these things will change.

 

[Steve Miller]

Guys!

You forget here there might be no need for science at this extension at the moment. A strong military
is always in the forefront even of scientific advance.

And, we still have a theory up standing to be proved or to be disapproved. (However
a theory can come up that way?)

This is the time that we face. Not to forget that.

Steve

 

[Norman]

Guys!

You forget here there might be no need for science at this extension at the moment. A strong military
is always in the forefront even of scientific advance.

And, we still have a theory up standing to be proved or to be disapproved. (However
a theory can come up that way?)

This is the time that we face. Not to forget that.

Steve

Yeah all those military particle physicists really working hard looking for higgs...

 

[Paula]

"I have to agree with Norman. At the moment there is a lot of competition for funding, and unfortunately, science and technology R&D is not a priority in the Bush administration" Astronuc

The private sector and the military are excellent places for R&D to take place. The problem with the current system is that the government funding is supporting one single foundation with billions of dollars. The government is giving plenty of money to NSF. What the gov't should do is diversify, in order to maximize accountability and accuracy, not agendas. I hate monopolies!

 

[ZapperZ]

The private sector and the military are excellent places for R&D to take place. The problem with the current system is that the government funding is supporting one single foundation with billions of dollars. The government is giving plenty of money to NSF. What the gov't should do is diversify, in order to maximize accountability and accuracy, not agendas. I hate monopolies!

This is not entirely true. There are actually 3 major agencies that technically fund science: NSF, DOE, and NIH. Most of the major "facility" type projects are funded by the DOE rather than NSF (example: particle colliders, synchrotron centers). And we haven't even counted NASA yet in this mix.

So no, I do not believe there is a monopoly of any kind.

Zz.

 

[Paula]

Well, that is a great distinction, thanks. But the Energy and Health agencies are not going to be doing anything with a lot of areas that concern the Science Foundation. That is just so broad! That is a monopoly. And the advantage of the military and the private sector is that they provide a product or a service (especially NASA :) oops, not that that is private or military! ). The engines of the NSF are evolution and global warming.

An example of a product that the military provided is mapping the ocean floor, at least getting some decent equipment for that purpose. There was something "real" at stake, ie security from hostile subs, so it finally got done.

 

[ZapperZ]

Well, that is a great distinction, thanks. But the Energy and Health agencies are not going to be doing anything with a lot of areas that concern the Science Foundation. That is just so broad! That is a monopoly. And the advantage of the military and the private sector is that they provide a product or a service (especially NASA :) oops, not that that is private or military! ). The engines of the NSF are evolution and global warming.

An example of a product that the military provided is mapping the ocean floor, at least getting some decent equipment for that purpose. There was something "real" at stake, ie security from hostile subs, so it finally got done.

I do not know where you get your "data" from. But let me point out just ONE important thing: the DOE owns the US National Laboratories. This includes Fermilab, Argonne, Brookhaven, Los Alamos, Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, Oak Ridge, etc... etc... The DOE BES division funded practically ALL of the synchrotron centers all over the US. The DOE Nuclear Physics division funded RHIC and Jeff Lab accelerator. The DOE HEP division is responsible for practically the majority of the funding of accelerator physics in the US, and the majority of the funding for particle physics/collider experiments.

You are more than welcome to double-check what I have just said at the DOE website.

And what's with the "...engines of the NSF are evolution and global warming ..." thing? Can you give me a source that states that the majority of NSF funding are in these areas? Would you like to look at the last NSF budget or can you find that yourself?

Please cite exact sources to back up your claims here, because I do not see the same thing. And trust me, I follow these things very closely since part of my job is to secure research grants.

Zz.

 

[Moonbear]

The engines of the NSF are evolution and global warming.

Huh? Funding for biological research is pretty low from NSF. That lands in NIH's purview for the most part. For science funding, USDA also funds research that has agricultural applications (even in cases when it's essentially basic science research, but with a likely agricultural application).

 

[Mk]

Guys!

You forget here there might be no need for science at this extension at the moment. A strong military
is always in the forefront even of scientific advance.

And, we still have a theory up standing to be proved or to be disapproved. (However
a theory can come up that way?)

This is the time that we face. Not to forget that.

Steve

I'm with Steve here, many times I think we need to push medical more, instead of funding the military so freakin much. Although it comes to mind that we can't live longer if we're dead...

At the moment there is a lot of competition for funding, and unfortunately, science and technology R&D is not a priority in the Bush administration.

Yeah, uh huh, blame it on Bush why'don'tcha? Well, what president is interested in particle physics? Nuclear at some times, but only because we could have used in the military. All Switzerland's military funding goes to the LHC

 

[ZapperZ]

I'm with Steve here, many times I think we need to push medical more, instead of funding the military so freakin much. Although it comes to mind that we can't live longer if we're dead...

Again, I will insist that people CHECK the facts before they say something like this, even if this is in the GD forum. Why don't you look at the growth of the NIH budget since the beginning of the Clinton administration, and then compare that with the growth of basic science budget given to the DOE.

The difference is SO big, it's not even funny.

People seem to forget that what are being used in medical, biomedical, biochemistry research were pioneered out of basic physics work. Figure out how much of the progress made in medicine and human biochemistry came out of research work done at synchrotron centers. Did anyone think a synchrotron was pioneered out of medical research? Or was it done orginally to study... horrors... particle physics??! What about SEM and STM that are being used to image proteins? And before anyone forget, the LCLS that is being built at Stanford (where already a slew of medical-relatied studies are already being proposed) came out of the knowledge of free-electron lasers!

Moral of the story: Figure out which is the head and which is the tail.

Zz.

 

[Mk]

the growth of the NIH budget since the beginning of the Clinton administration, and then compare that with the growth of basic science budget given to the DOE.

Since the beginning of... forever!

We need more lobbyists... look how well the environmentalists are doing withe theirs.

 

[Mk]

Don't anybody forget the Superconducting Supercollider either...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider

 

[Mk]

What I forgot to say was that I think a lot of the science funding and discoveries & inventions recently came from the Cold War, and World War II. There came after the fall of the Soviet Union, the end of the need to prove the supremacy of American science over Soviet, and before that, American science over German. The space race and nuclear arms race comes to mind...

I'm still waiting for nuclear fusion funding in the United States or Europe somewhere.

 

[ZapperZ]

If you wish to counter what I have just said, I wish you'd make your stand clear to avoid confusion on what exactly is the point you're trying to make.

Again, all you need to do is LOOK at the NIH budget (total, not just growth rate), and then compare that to basic science budget of the DOE.

I'd also say that even the NIH budget leaders have clearly cited that their ability to do complex studies in their area is explicitly due to advancement in basic physics research. I've yet to see someone counter this. Can you? Are you able to point to something used in medical and biological research that did not come out of basic physics research first?

Zz.

 

[ZapperZ]

What I forgot to say was that I think a lot of the science funding and discoveries & inventions recently came from the Cold War, and World War II. There came after the fall of the Soviet Union, the end of the need to prove the supremacy of American science over Soviet, and before that, American science over German. The space race and nuclear arms race comes to mind...

Fine. Let's take one very crucial and important example. Can you show me the "funding link" between these events that you have cited an the invention of the transitor by Bardeen, Shockley, and Brittain?

I'm still waiting for nuclear fusion funding in the United States or Europe somewhere.

The consortium of countries have agreed to build ITER in France. You want more? How does this relate to the OP?

Zz.

 

[Mk]

If you wish to counter what I have just said, I wish you'd make your stand clear to avoid confusion on what exactly is the point you're trying to make.

I'm sorry, I'm not wishing to try and beat you in a debate, or trying to counter you, unless I think you are wrong. I'm not trying to make a point either, I'm just saying a few things. Read what I have written, and what you understand is what I mean.

I'd also say that even the NIH budget leaders have clearly cited that their ability to do complex studies in their area is explicitly due to advancement in basic physics research. I've yet to see someone counter this. Can you? Are you able to point to something used in medical and biological research that did not come out of basic physics research first?

No, you're right. Physics is important, well duh.. and it has been said already, I'm sure you know why.

My last three posts may have sounded a bit unconnected and random. Heh, story of my life.

 

[Mk]

The consortium of countries have agreed to build ITER in France. You want more?

Do you think it will really be built and be run? How soon? What about the United States? Yes, I would be interested in more, if you were serious about that part.

 

[ZapperZ]

Do you think it will really be built and be run? How soon? What about the United States? Yes, I would be interested in more, if you were serious about that part.

This is going off-topic.

Why won't it be built? The long history of it can be read in Nature and Science. The US is part of the consortium, and only when Japan agreed to let go of its bid did the US finally supported the France site.

Why are we discussing this in this thread? Where is the answer to my question?

Zz.

 

[ZapperZ]

No, you're right. Physics is important, well duh.. and it has been said already, I'm sure you know why.

Then maybe you may want to reread your first post in this thread when you insisted that we "push medical more". You can't "push medical more" while ignoring the fact that the technology that allows advancement in medicine and pharmaceutical came explicitly out of advancement in physics, even in particle physics that apparently have no practical applications. I can easily, very easily, point to the connection between the beam physics used in FEL to generate light for LCLS and the beam physics used in CERN's LEP.

Various areas in physics may not appear to have any direct practical applications. However, considering how one advancement of knowledge in one area of physics can affect another in a wildly different area (see where Peter Higgs got his idea of the Higgs field from, thankyou), we should never be so quick in dismissing one area of science in favor of another area. At some point, you'll realize that you can't make as rapid of a progress because you've been suffocating one part of science for so long.

Zz.

 

[siddharth]

Well, what president is interested in particle physics?

If I may interrupt, you might be interested to know one of them is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Kalam" , the president of India.

http://www.linearcollider.org/cms/?pid=1000235"

http://qd.typepad.com/24/2005/05/index.html"

 

[Mk]

Fine. Let's take one very crucial and important example. Can you show me the "funding link" between these events that you have cited an the invention of the transitor by Bardeen, Shockley, and Brittain?

The pressing need for numerous time-critical calculations for various projects like code-breaking and ballistics tables stimulated electronic computer development. The semi-secret ENIAC and the extremely secret Colossus demonstrated that devices using thousands of valves could be reliable enough to be useful, paving the way for the post-war development of stored program computers, and ones of course using.. the solid state transistor!

Elaborating a bit more on the process because I think it is a bit interesting:

Around the turn of the 20th century semiconductors were quite common as detectors in radios, used in a device called a "cat's whisker". These detectors were somewhat troublesome, however, requiring the operator to move a small tungsten filament (the whisker) around the surface of lead sulfide or silicon carbide crystal until it suddenly started working. Then, over a period of a few hours or days, the cat's whisker would slowly stop working and the process would have to be repeated. At the time their operation was completely mysterious. After the introduction of the more reliable and amplified vacuum tube based radios, the cat's whisker systems quickly disappeared. The "cat's whisker" is a primitive example of a special type of diode still popular today, called a Schottky diode.

World War II greatly stimulated radar research, which quickly pushed radar receivers to operate at ever higher frequencies and the traditional tube based radio receivers no longer worked well. The introduction of the cavity magnetron from Britain to the United States in 1940 during the Tizzard Mission resulted in a pressing need for a practical high-frequency amplifier. And of course we use magnetrons most today in microwave ovens.

Russell Ohl of Bell Laboratories decided to try a cat's whisker. After hunting one down at a used radio store in Manhattan, he found that it worked much better than tube-based systems.

Ohl investigated why the cat's whisker functioned so well. He spent most of 1939 trying to grow more pure versions of the crystals. He soon found that with higher quality crystals their finicky behavior went away, but so did their ability to operate as a radio detector. One day he found one of his purest crystals nevertheless worked well, and interestingly, it had a clearly visible crack near the middle. However as he moved about the room trying to test it, the detector would mysteriously work, and then stop again. After some study he found that the behaviour was controlled by the light in the room. More light caused more conductance in the crystal... like whoa. Ohl invited several other people to see this crystal, and Walter Brattain immediately realized there was some sort of junction at the crack.

Further research cleared up the remaining mystery. The crystal had cracked because either side contained very slightly different amounts of the impurities Ohl could not remove. It was about 0.2%. One side of the crystal had impurities that added extra electrons and made it a conductor. The other had impurities that wanted to bind to these electrons, making it (what he called) an "insulator." Because the two parts of the crystal were in contact with each other, the electrons could be pushed out of the conductive side which had extra electrons (soon to be known as the emitter) and replaced by new ones being provided (from a battery, for instance) where they would flow into the insulating portion and be collected by the whisker filament (named the collector). However, when the voltage was reversed the electrons being pushed into the collector would quickly fill up the electron holes (the electron-needy impurities), and conduction would stop almost instantly. This junction of the two crystals (or parts of one crystal) created a solid-state diode, and the concept soon became known as semiconduction. The mechanism of action when the diode is off has to do with the separation of charge carriers around the junction. This is called a "depletion region".

William Shockley decided to attempt the building of a triode-like semiconductor device. He secured funding and lab space, and went to work on the problem with Brattain and John Bardeen.

It was realized that if there was some way to control the flow of the electrons from the emitter to the collector of this newly discovered diode, one could build an amplifier. For instance, if you placed contacts on either side of a single type of crystal the current would not flow through it. However if a third contact could then "inject" electrons or holes into the material, the current would flow.

Ohl and Brattain met up, then Bardeen met Brattain, then they teamed up with Shockley, and came forth the point-contact transistor! Then they won the Nobel Prize in 1956!

Ok, that was mostly Wikipedia.

 

[Mk]

How does this relate to the OP?

This relates to the original post in the fact that we are talking about how well developed-nations fund physics. Right? Was that the question you meant? You sound like you're on your way to locking this thread.

Then maybe you may want to reread your first post in this thread when you insisted that we "push medical more". You can't "push medical more" while ignoring the fact that the technology that allows advancement in medicine and pharmaceutical came explicitly out of advancement in physics, even in particle physics that apparently have no practical applications. I can easily, very easily, point to the connection between the beam physics used in FEL to generate light for LCLS and the beam physics used in CERN's LEP.

I didn't mean more-than-physics, I meant a little bit more than it already is, by taking a bit less out of military spending, and throwing it into medical development. I didn't mean to imply anything about physics. Simply relating to different areas the United States is funding.

we should never be so quick in dismissing one area of science in favor of another area. At some point, you'll realize that you can't make as rapid of a progress because you've been suffocating one part of science for so long

This may be where the heat is coming from, I didn't mean take money out of physics research and use it for medical research, I meant take money out of military research and put it into medical. Then I countered myself in saying that we're not very good scientists if we're dead.

 

[ZapperZ]

This relates to the original post in the fact that we are talking about how well developed-nations fund physics. Right? Was that the question you meant? You sound like you're on your way to locking this thread.

No, the link was specifically talking about funding of elementary particle/high energy physics, which has been so severely butchered during the Bush administration that Fermilab is in jeopardy of being shut down by the end of the Tevatron funding. And that is THE last high energy physics facility in the US (SLAC is already being retrofitted as a light source and its funding is going to be transferred to DOE BES division).

So I have no idea what you read in the OP.

Zz.

 

[Bystander]

No, the link was specifically talking about funding of elementary particle/high energy physics, which has been so severely butchered during the Bush administration

"Since the huge Superconducting Super Collider was axed in the early 1990s, the US programme has lacked focus, says the committee." --- OP

People doing the work have to provide the "focus;" politicians are generally inclined to underfund if PIs can make any sort of case for themselves --- no case, no funding.

that Fermilab is in jeopardy of being shut down by the end of the Tevatron funding. And that is THE last high energy physics facility in the US (SLAC is already being retrofitted as a light source and its funding is going to be transferred to DOE BES division).

So I have no idea what you read in the OP.

Zz.

 

[ZapperZ]

"Since the huge Superconducting Super Collider was axed in the early 1990s, the US programme has lacked focus, says the committee." --- OP

People doing the work have to provide the "focus;" politicians are generally inclined to underfund if PIs can make any sort of case for themselves --- no case, no funding.

The SSC did not suffer from lack of focus. Rather, it was bad politics from the very beginning when the location was selected. If you look closely, the same thing happened to Isabelle that was about to be built at Brookhaven in the early 80's. So this is nothing new.

But when the politics didn't get in the way, you get the SLAC upgrade and the building of the Tevatron, all after the cancellation of the SSC, during the period of the so-called 'lack of focus'.

Take note that as bad as funding for high energy physics was, the funding for nuclear physics was even more abysmal, especially during the past 5 years. It got so bad that (i) RHIC and JLab experiments were on the chopping block (ii) RHIC was about to be shut down this year during its prime and was only saved due to a "donation" by a private entity to keep it open. I don't think they were suffering from any "lack of focus" either.

Regardless, there is a very clear "focus" as it is now - ILC. So where are the support?

Zz.

 

[Mk]

Well, what president is interested in particle physics?

If I may interrupt, you might be interested to know one of them is Abdul Kalam, the president of India.

That guy looks kind of scary.

the link was specifically talking about funding of elementary particle/high energy physics, which has been so severely butchered during the Bush administration

The original post and poster said nothing, only implied that the United States was afraid to fund particle physics research. In the news article I read nothing about the Bush administration either.

America must boost its investment in particle physics if it is to stay at the forefront of the discipline.

That's all.
-Mk

 

[J77]

From what i hear on this forum, ask any serious scientist and they'll probably say the US is still at the forefront in science. However, they'll also probably tell you we're going to lose that spot very quickly at this rate unfortunately

That's a massive genralisation across all areas of science.

Name a specific field which the US are at the forefront of and I could probably find a dozen in which other countries lead.

I know good people in my field who come from the US, but I certainly wouldn't say they're at the forefront.