Science has changed the world. It has created new products and ease of service. What the future will bring is, of course, always uncertain. "It’s not every day you have robots running through your house," Barack Obama quipped last week at the White House science fair, a showcase for student exhibitors that also gave the US president a chance to reiterate a favourite theme. Science and technology, he said, "is what’s going to make a difference in this country, over the long haul".
Science has changed the world. It has created new products and ease of service. What the future will bring is, of course, always uncertain. "It’s not every day you have robots running through your house," Barack Obama quipped last week at the White House science fair, a showcase for student exhibitors that also gave the US president a chance to reiterate a favourite theme. Science and technology, he said, "is what’s going to make a difference in this country, over the long haul".
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Obama would clearly like to see many more robots, as well as researchers and engineers, running around in the future, a wish reflected in his budget request for fiscal year 2013, released on 13 February.
A year ago, Obama proposed bold increases for science agencies, but a Congress intent on curbing government spending refused to back many of them. This time, the White House has scaled back in several areas but boosted overall funding for non-defence research and development by 5%, pushing it up to US$64.9 billion.
Meanwhile in Asia science spending on research is increasing. For example, Japan's ministry of education wants to boost overall science-related spending next year by 5.8%, to $14.7 billion. But amid increasing support for most programs there is one big loser: nuclear power. Spending on nuclear-related research will drop 9.8%, to $2.3 billion.
Ten Asian countries, including some developing countries in South-East Asia, have, as a bloc, caught up with the global leader in research and development (R&D) investment, the United States, according to a US report published in January 2012.
As in previous years, Congress is likely to delay action on the US budget. The specter of a severe across-the-board cut dangles over the government because of an act introduced last year that aims to chop $1.2 trillion from spending, starting in January 2013.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will have the same budget as before with no increase as had been planned.
The newly launched National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) in Bethesda will grow by 11%, to $639 million. Much of the rise goes to the Cures Acceleration Network, an effort to spur development of badly needed medicines through bold, multimillion-dollar grants.
Losers include the National Children’s Study, a long-term study of early influences on the health of more than a hundred thousand children, which received $194 million in 2012, but has been cut by $29 million; and the Institutional Development Award programme, aimed at developing research infrastructure in rural and underserved states, which loses nearly $48 million.
The flat-lined budget has drawn bleak appraisals from NIH advocates. "We are talking about a budget that is probably close to 20% smaller than it was a decade ago, adjusted for inflation," says David Moore, senior director for government relations at the Association of American Medical Colleges in Washington DC.
The outlook is even less favourable for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, which has had its budget cut by 12%, to make a total of 22% in cuts since 2010.
The White House continues to support a long-term doubling of budgets for physical-science agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Arlington, Virginia; the Department of Energy’s Office of Science in Washington DC; and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The doubling, relative to 2006, is a goal of the America COMPETES Act, introduced under former President George W. Bush that year, and signed into law in 2007.
The NSF emerges as a clear winner in Obama’s request, with a 5% boost to its bottom line.
The NIST also gets a large increase, much of which is aimed at advanced manufacturing, including both a robotics programme and a materials genome initiative that aims to speed up the development of new materials.
At NASA, the talk is of tough but sustainable choices for an agency that would receive $17.7 billion in 2013, $59 million less than in 2012. Its science budget drops by 3.2%, but planetary science bears the brunt of that, with a cut of 21%.
In Obama’s plan, spending on energy efficiency and renewable energy rises by $457 million, to $2.3 billion, with the largest increases targeting advanced manufacturing, and vehicle and building technologies.
Included in the package are increases for research in solar energy, bioenergy and fossil fuels, including $155 million for carbon capture and storage systems. But there are reductions and shifts as well: the budget for wind power remains unchanged but is allocated mainly to offshore technologies. Spending on nuclear energy continues an ongoing move toward small, modular reactors.
In what could be a third straight year of declining budgets for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington DC, the agency’s funding has been slashed by 1%, to $8.3 billion, almost $2 billion less than in 2010. Nonetheless, funding for initiatives that target climate change and the environment rises slightly, to $807 million, protecting core science and regulatory efforts.
With a 3% rise for its overall budget, the US Geological Survey (USGS) in Reston, Virginia, fares better than most mission-oriented science agencies. The agency’s research and development portfolio expands from $675.5 million to $726.5 million. Part of the increase includes an extra $13 million for research on the effects of hydraulic fracturing, the process used by the oil and gas industry to squeeze hydrocarbons out of non-porous rock.
So as US science spending goes down others in the world are catching up. Long term this means more science learning but not necessarily in the US.
For further information: http://www.nature.com/news/obama-shoots-for-science-increase-1.10019
Photo: OSTP
