• Senate, House Committees Plan to Increase Support for NSF and NASA but Differ on the Amount
• Russian Programmer Arrested for Violating U.S. Digital Copyright Law
• Academic Employment of Recent Science and Engineering Doctorate Holders
• "Trends in Federal Support of Research and Graduate Education"
• Lawmakers Visit Silicon Valley to Learn Information Technology Concerns
• NSF Announces New Head of Education and Human Resources
• "You Get What You Pay For"
• "Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks"
• "Recruitment and Retention of Women Graduate Students in CSE"
• "Balancing the Equation: Where are Women and Girls in Science, Engineering, and Technology?"

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Senate, House Committees Increase Support for NSF and NASA but Differ on the Amount

The Senate Committee on Appropriations has approved smaller budget increases for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA than what the House Committee on Appropriations passed earlier this week. The Senate version would give the NSF a 5.6% increase over its current budget, while the House had granted a 9.4% increase. Likewise, the Senate voted for a 2.2% increase in funding for NASA, while the House had approved a 4.5% increase. President Bush has proposed a 1.3% increase in NSF's budget and a 1.8% increase for NASA. The Senate figures were surprising since the Senate is often equally or more supportive of research agencies compared to the House. The full Senate has yet to vote on the committee recommendations and both houses will reconcile their figures before submitting them to President Bush. 

A detailed breakdown of the President's, Senate's, and House's proposals can be found at www.aau.edu/2002VA-HUDSumm.html

Russian Programmer Arrested for Violating U.S. Digital Copyright Law

The FBI has arrested a Russian computer programmer on criminal charges of violating the anti-circumvention section (section 1201) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The arrest of Dmitry Sklyarov is one of the first criminal cases since the DMCA was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1998. Sklyarov, a computer science Ph.D. candidate at Moscow State Technical University, was arrested on July 16 in Las Vegas after he made a presentation on the security of electronic books at the annual Def con convention.

Section 1201 of the DMCA has been criticized by members of the scientific community as an overly broad restriction on the freedom of computer scientists and others to engage in critical research, and to exchange ideas and information fundamental to the progress of innovation. To date, other legal actions under the DMCA have been civil suits. In one such civil suit, representatives of the motion picture industry are seeking the removal of a DVD descrambling program from the web site of 2600 Magazine. More recently, a team of computer scientists - led by Princeton University computer science professor Ed Felten - filed a lawsuit seeking to have the DMCA declared unconstitutional after representatives of the music recording industry successfully used the threat of civil action under the law to thwart their efforts to present a paper exposing weaknesses in certain copy protection plans at a recent workshop.

More information about the arrest of the Russian programmer can be found at www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45298,00.html?tw=wn20010717

Academic Employment of Recent Science and Engineering Doctorate Holders

NSF has released an Issue Brief on the careers of recent Science and Engineering (S&E) doctorate holders. Among its findings:

• 64% indicated that teaching was their career choice when they started graduate school. After completing their degrees only 47% of them were employed in the academic sector, whereas 49% were employed in a non-academic sector. Of those in the computer science and mathematical sciences category, 53% were working in the academic sector and 46% were in a non-academic sector. Engineering doctorate holders were least likely among the S&E graduates to be employed in academia (26%).
  
  
• Of those in the academic sector, computer and mathematical science doctorate holders have the highest concentration (86%) in four-year colleges and universities, with 6% at two-year colleges and 6% at a university-affiliated research institute. The average among all S&E graduates was 65% at four-year colleges and universities, 3.4% at two-year colleges, and 10% at research institutes.
  
  
• Among those in the academic sector, computer and mathematical science doctorate holders were most likely (62%) to be tenured or on a tenure track: 7.8% were tenured and 54.5% were on tenure track. The average among S&E doctorates was for 41% to be either tenured (5%) or on tenure track (36%).
  

The Issue Brief can be found at www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/issuebrf/nsf01332/start.htm

"Trends in Federal Support of Research and Graduate Education"

The Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy of the National Research Council has released a report on the substantial shift that has been occurring in the composition of the federal research portfolio. Among its findings:

• Federal dollars support 27% of America's total research expenditures and nearly half of spending on basic research. While support for research has increased in the last few years, most of the increases have gone to projects at the National Institutes of Health. 
  
  
• On the whole, 46% of federal funding for research went to the life sciences in 1999, up from 40% in 1993. In the same period, funding for the physical sciences and engineering dropped from 37% to 31%. 
  
  
• Funding levels for physics; geological sciences; and electrical, mechanical, and chemical engineering dropped by 20% or more between 1993 and 1999.
  
  
• Funding for the "computer sciences" was up in 1997 and has continued to increase, even though some of their largest funders were agencies with shrinking budgets. They did so by maintaining their level of funding from agencies with declining budgets and by picking up additional support from other agencies.
  
  
• In fields now receiving less federal support compared with 1993, both graduate-school enrollment and the numbers of students who have obtained doctorates generally have declined.
  
  
• Reductions primarily have been the product of decentralized decision-making by various officials focused on the missions of particular agencies. To address this problem, Congress, the White House' Office of Science and Technology Policy, and other relevant bodies should develop mechanisms to stay aware of the big picture when setting agencies' funding levels for research.
  

The report can be found at www.nap.edu/catalog/10162.html?onpi_newsdoc07112001b

Lawmakers Visit Silicon Valley to Learn Information Technology Concerns

Several U.S. lawmakers visited San Francisco and Silicon Valley from July 19-21 to meet with scientists and engineers and discuss a variety of information technology policy issues. The visit, sponsored by the New Democrat Network and the lobbying group TechNet, included presentations from John Gage, the Director of Sun Microsystems' Science Office; Stan Williams, Principal Laboratory Scientist and Director at Hewlett Packard Laboratories' Quantum Structures Research Initiative (QSRI); and Hal R. Varian, Dean of the University of California Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems. Lawmakers were told of the need to improve the quality of the U.S. education system, the importance of producing more scientists and engineers, and the economic benefits to the U.S. of increasing the federal investment in basic and applied research.

More information about the information technology policy meetings can be found at www.newdem.org/news/995636495.shtml

NSF Announces New Head of Education and Human Resources

The National Science Foundation has named Judith A. Ramaley as the Foundation's new Assistant Director for Education and Human Resources (EHR). Effective August 1, Dr. Ramaley will oversee EHR's $800 million annual portfolio. It supports programs including research into learning at all levels from kindergarten through graduate education, as well as numerous projects to improve educational performance within challenging school systems and geographic regions, and among America's historically underserved ethnic groups.

Since the 1960s, Dr. Ramaley has been a professor of biology at five universities, served as president of the University of Vermont and Portland State University in Oregon, and held senior administrative positions at the State University of New York at Albany, the University of Kansas, and the University of Nebraska.

The NSF press release can be found at www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/press/01/pa0101.htm

"You Get What You Pay For"

A recent article by Matt Viland in CIO magazine discusses the increasing threat to basic IT research. Although federal R&D support in the past few years had increased, "computer scientists...worry that the Bush administration and Congress won't put the same priority on long-term IT research-- projects taking five years or more-- as policymakers in both parties were advocating only a year ago." 

Viland points out that between 1986 and 1996, federal support for three- to five-year projects with clear commercial potential grew from $171 million to $757 million, outpacing support for basic research by a ration of nearly 3-to-1. The danger to basic research has been made worse by the economic slowdown, which has increased pressure on R&D projects to have marketable results. Drawing on MIT economics professor Lester Thurow, Viland suggests that increased ties between the R&D funding strategies of the federal government, state governments, and industry may provide a solution.

The July article can be found at www2.cio.com/archive/070101/pay_content.html

"Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks"

Two articles by Hank Chesbrough in Technology Review challenge the utility of "traditional", centralized R&D laboratories. He argues that "the central R&D-laboratory model was part of the deep, vertical integration throughout the company, with internal discovery, patenting, development and production followed by distribution through the firm's established sales channels." The problem with this model is that companies have a difficult time turning their research into products, losing out to those who can market the results quicker. 

Chesbrough points to IBM as an example of an organization that has reformed its R&D organization in order to better respond to the market. In the 1990s, IBM Research transformed itself by leveraging intellectual property, restructuring staff to dispel the "academic departmental boundaries" that had existed, changing funding to include money from IBM business units, connecting researchers to customers, opening up to the outside (such as by working on Java and Linux), and increasing the flow of ideas by making its labs less isolated from the rest of the organization.

"Recruitment and Retention of Women Graduate Students in CSE"

The Computing Research Association has released a new report, Recruitment and Retention of Women Graduate Students in Computer Science and Engineering. The report's goal is to provide departments with practical advice on recruitment and retention in the form of a set of specific recommendations. It argues that the significant underrepresentation of women in CSE translates into a loss of opportunity for individuals, a loss of talent to the workforce, and a loss of creativity in shaping the future of society. It urges departments to consider gender-based traits when dealing with recruitment, particularly to ensure that undergraduate women are encouraged to participate in research projects and to enter graduate school. Among other recommendations aimed at retaining graduate students, departments need to ensure that students are provided with mentors/role models, are integrated into the department's community, and encouraged to participate in research projects.

The report can be found at www.cra.org/reports/r&rwomen.pdf  (PDF)

"Balancing the Equation: Where are Women and Girls in Science, Engineering and Technology?"

On July 17, The National Council for Research on Women (NCRW) released a new report on women in technology and engineering. The report, Balancing the Equation Where Are Women and Girls in Science, Engineering and Technology?, analyzes strategies used to attract women and girls to science and retain them in technological fields. By examining programs that have successfully increase the classroom, laboratory and workplace participation of girls, women and minorities in the sciences, the report finds that women and girls excel in environments that encourage hands-on research, include mentoring and role models, and link science, technology and engineering to other disciplines and real world applications.

While NCRW found that efforts to open up scientific study and work have created new opportunities for women and minorities, it concludes that those efforts have been largely sporadic and disjointed. Consequently, the report calls for a national commitment to remove the persistent barriers and glass ceilings facing women and girls in the sciences.

NCRW is an alliance of research and policy centers seeking to enhance the connections among research, policy analysis, advocacy, and programming on behalf of women and girls. An executive summary and information on ordering the full report can be found at www.ncrw.org/research/iqsci.htm