ScienceInsider

Challenging the economic gloom that seems to hit the news everyday, Gordon Brown, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, today assured the scientific community that U.K. research will not be "a victim of the recession." The pledge came at Oxford University in a lecture addressing science and science education policy in which Brown further promised to keep science funding flowing despite an overstretched government budget. "Some say that now is not the time to invest, but the bottom line is that the downturn is no time to slow down our investment in science," he said.

The prime minister's speech, "Science and Our Economic Future," was this year’s Romanes Lecture, an event hosted annually by the University of Oxford since 1892. Previous speakers include notable scientists, authors, and politicians such as Arthur Eddington, W. H. Bragg, Winston Churchill, Karl Popper, Iris Murdoch, and Shirley Tilghman. (Here's a link to the speech delivered by the prime minister and also a link to an audio file of the speech.)

Brown’s address highlighted his vision for science as a driver of the U.K.'s economic future, a desire that has triggered much debate within the scientific community. "The time has come to build a society that seeks high-value engineering, not financial engineering," Brown remarked, saying that looking for the "the great scientists of tomorrow" should be a "national ambition."

Autism research will get a funding boost if U.S. President Barack Obama has his way. In his budget overview released yesterday, Obama requested $211 million as part of the Department of Health and Human Services budget for the disease

The money would go toward research into causes and new treatments, as well as additional screening, support services, and efforts to raise public awareness. Thanks in part to pressure from Congress, funding for autism work has risen from about $101 million in 2006 to $132 million in 2007 even in a time of tight National Institutes of Health budgets.

The president’s 2010 budget proposal urges boosting it further and more quickly than planned—an earlier goal was to hit $210 million in 2011.

—Jennifer Couzin

President Barack Obama has come through on a campaign promise to oppose plans to build a storage vault for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Yesterday's budget request scales back funding for the project to the bare minimum necessary to continue answering queries from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "Nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain is not an option, period," said Stephanie Mueller, press secretary for Energy Secretary Steven Chu. 

Mueller says the Administration will come up with a "new approach" for managing nuclear waste. The nuclear industry, meanwhile, says if the government isn't planning to build the repository, it should also cut back the amount that electricity consumers are required to pay into a fund for nuclear waste disposal. 

—Dan Charles

Chris Mooney makes an interesting point about the $15 billion the 2010 budget assumes a cap-and-trade system to battle greenhouse emissions will deliver to the Treasury next year:

So now, if you oppose the coming cap and trade bill, you're also messing with the president's attempt to cut the deficit, invest in renewable energy, and give money back to taxpayers. How's that for smart politics?

Moreover, if the cap-and-trade system is bringing in revenue, that means by definition that there has to be a significant initial auctioning off of the emissions permits. They can't be simply given away to industry. That, in itself, is also a big statement, because many companies who support cap and trade in theory also want many or most of the permits gratis.

—Eli Kintisch

The crash of a NASA mission this week to monitor the flows of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a big blow to climate scientists hoping to learn more about the fate of CO2 streams in the air. But in the 2010 budget, the Obama Administration takes a big step toward monitoring CO2 spewing directly from industrial facilities—an important step in preparing the United States for a cap-and-trade system.

With an emphasis on earth science, NASA gets a welcome boost in President Barack Obama's new budget released today. The Administration will request $18.7 billion for 2010, which is a $900 million increase over this year's figure. Add to that the $1 billion that Congress included in the stimulus package for the space agency. Although specifics are meager, acting NASA Administrator Christopher J. Scolese said that the new budget plan "ensures NASA maintains its global leadership in Earth and space research, and it advances global climate change studies, funds a robust program of human and robotic space exploration, allows us to realize the full potential of the International Space Station, advances development of new space transportation systems, and renews our commitment to aeronautics.”  Most importantly, the budget appears to keep the Bush Administration's plan to build a new launcher that could send humans to the moon. The document repeats Obama's pledge for a 2020 lunar landing, but whether that goal remains on the books will depend on a policy review by the White House during the coming year.

—Andrew Lawler

(Photo Credit: NASA)

 

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President Barack Obama today tapped Jeffrey Crowley to fill the top slot in the Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP).

In a decidedly old-school style for the digitally minded Obama Administration, this morning the Government Printing Office released a booklet on the 2010 budget. (The sparse document will be released online at 11 a.m.) Initial results, although sketchy, suggest more boosts for science in 2010, pending, of course, lawmakers' considerable input:

National Institutes of Health: No details, although Obama is requesting a boost of $7 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services over its $70.5 billion budget in 2008 and "over $6 billion within the National Institutes of Health to support cancer research." The 2009 budget for the National Cancer Institute, where the majority of cancer research is performed at NIH, was $5 billion.

National Science Foundation: If the president gets his way, NSF would receive an 8.5% increase, to $7.045 billion, over the amount contained in the fiscal year 2009 omnibus bill that the House approved yesterday. That number doesn't include its $3 billion boost in the stimulus package passed 2 weeks ago. The budget booklet also repeats an Obama campaign promise to triple the number of NSF graduate research fellowships over an unspecified time period.

Department of Energy: Few details on DOE's Office of Science, which funds most of the physical sciences in the United States, but the document promises "substantially increased support" for the $4.8 billion office "as part of the president's plan to double federal investment in the basic sciences." The total 2010 budget for the department as a whole would grow to $26.3 billion from $24 billion in 2008; the projection for 2009 is $33.9 billion, plus a whopping $39 billion for energy programs under the stimulus package recently passed and $1.6 billion for the Office of Science, which federal bureaucrats plan to spend primarily on building scientific facilities.

NASA: Obama requested $18.7 billion, which is a $700 million increase over this year's figure. Add to that the $1 billion that Congress included in the stimulus package for the space agency. Although specifics are meager, the new budget would bolster earth sciences, keep on track a new rocket to replace the space shuttle after 2010, and provide more funding for robotic probes to visit other planets. 

Today from the $1.2 billion International Polar Year (IPY) project is a report on results from the last 2 years. From the press release:

IPY has provided a critical boost to polar research during a time in which the global environment is changing faster than ever in human history. It now appears clear that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass contributing to sea level rise.  Warming in the Antarctic is much more widespread than it was thought prior to the IPY, and it now appears that the rate of ice loss from Greenland is increasing.

Researchers also found that in the Arctic, during the summers of 2007 and 2008, the minimum extent of year-round sea ice decreased to its lowest level since satellite records began 30 years ago. IPY expeditions recorded an unprecedented rate of sea-ice drift in the Arctic as well. Due to global warming, the types and extent of vegetation in the Arctic shifted, affecting grazing animals and hunting.

Noting the rapidly shifting climate and the changes seen recently in the poles, the report's authors say much more polar research is needed to address crucial questions regarding ice sheets, oceans circulation, and Arctic peoples. The next 10 years "could well be designated the International Polar Decade," they write.

—Eli Kintisch

The Daily Beast covers Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's attack on the U.S. Geological Survey's monitoring of volcanoes. The speech was the Republican Party's response to the president's address to Congress last night.

After Jindal used the monitoring as an example of excessive congressional spending, volcanologists erupted in outrage:

"Apparently the governor of Louisiana doesn't remember any of the major volcanic eruptions in recent history,” said a professor of geology at Yale University who has studied volcanoes around the world, Mark Brandon. “Volcanic monitoring right now is absolutely essential for protecting lives and property. The amount of money invested compared to the amount of money returned is trivial. It's not just some hobby—if the governor were in a volcanic eruption he'd realize that the people who do that work are very useful in protecting you from direct hazards.”

(Hat tip, Andrew Sullivan)

—Eli Kintisch

PHOTO: USGS