A meeting is currently underway, including the researchers involved in establishing the moratorium, to work through a draft policy on reviewing studies on gain-of-function research in this area (gain-of-function meaning using gene engineering or other techniques to make naturally occurring viruses more lethal or able to jump to new hosts).  The working through also involves applying the draft policy to four hypothetical studies.

Any final policy will be binding on National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded studies.  But it strikes me as likely that other countries may find the policy instructive for their own regulatory interests.  At a minimum, NIH will be reviewing more H5N1 studies than it currently does under whatever final policy emerges.

As other viruses become the focus of gain-of-function studies, and synthetic biology becomes less and less novel, I think the kinds of review discussed now could become more common.  What’s happening now is worth noting for future reference.

That may change, due to a time-honored tactic – sticking the language into a vital piece of legislation.  In this case we are talking about the Defense Authorization bill, which has passed both houses and is now in the hands of a conference committee.  This committee was created to resolve differences in language between the House and Senate versions of the legislation.  It may go to the President’s desk within a week.

The American Institute of Physics has the details on language introduced by both houses on both issues.  For rare earth elements, there is language directing the Defense Department to prepare a report on dealing with how to recover fluorescent lighting waste.  If this happens, perhaps a next generation of home light bulbs can benefit from the outcome.  The Senate edition has an amendment directing the executive branch to better coordinate its efforts in finding new techniques and sources for such elements.  For medical isotopes, the Senate version of the bill directs the Secretary of Energy to evaluate and support efforts to establish domestic production capacity in medical isotopes.  The House version does not appear to have medical isotope legislation.

Once the bill is approved by the conference committee, and signed by the President, we can see what nudge for these materials survives to become law.

[China News Agency] The European Chamber of Commerce Taipei (ECCT) released a report Tuesday that provides analysis of the sources of Taiwan’s current greenhouse gas emissions and offers cost-effective carbon reduction options.

The ECCT suggested that Taiwan’s government force individuals or companies that cause greenhouse gas emissions to pay for them through the form of a carbon tax or a carbon capturing and trading system, causing such polluters to rethink their behavior.

The government should also identify promising technologies and ensure their funding and commercialization, as well as increase public awareness of carbon reduction through education to change consumer behavior, the chamber said…

Davis Lin, who works in the Taipei office of U.S.-based consulting firm McKinsey & Company Inc., told a media briefing organized by the ECCT that the government’s targets would be hard to achieve unless it invests more in new technologies.

He estimated that Taiwan’s government and private companies would need to invest US$6 billion per year from 2012 to 2030 in carbon reduction and renewable technologies, such as offshore wind power and solar energy.

These projected investments, however, would help Taiwan reduce its carbon emissions by as much as 50 percent to 2005 levels by 2030, falling short of meeting the government’s planned targets, he said.

The country still needs more efforts to be made by individuals and households, such as changing their power consumption behaviors, Lin said.

Michael Steigberger, director of the industry sector at German engineering conglomerate Siemens AG, said that over 25 percent of Taiwan’s carbon emissions are generated by the country’s industry, mostly in the steel, chemical and high-tech sectors.

Moreover, the power consumption of the industry accounts for more than 60 percent of the total electricity generated in Taiwan, Steigberger said…

[Deputy NIH Director for Extramural Research] “Rockey said NIH is planning to take the following steps:

• Launch a grants program for institutions to develop “innovative approaches” to complement traditional research training, for example, by preparing young scientists for careers in industry or science policy. NIH expects to fund up to 50 grants over the next 2 years in what Rockey called the “centerpiece” of NIH’s efforts.”

An excellent idea.  But while the Bureau of Labor Statistics has data that can suggest what the future job openings are going to be in industry for biomedical researchers, I don’t think it can provide similar information for science policy (at least at a comparable level of detail).

So, if the NIH is successful in shifting more of its graduates to careers in science policy, are there going to be enough openings for them?  There are a lot of pieces to that puzzle.  How much interest exists in those careers is one, and I think the part of this puzzle most conducive to being affected by whatever “innovative approaches” to training emerge from a grants program.  How many jobs exist in the field is another important piece, and given the spread of jobs across fields and disciplines, it’s likely a difficult number to track.

Does anyone have a line on the number of science policy jobs?  Is there an organization interested in supporting a couple of labor economists in figuring out what that number is?

Of course, the problem could be more fundamental than not knowing the number.  Not knowing what to count as a science policy job will make finding a number all the more difficult.  And it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s where we are.  But it allows for a possibly transformative opportunity.

For if we don’t know what to count as a science policy job, then we get a chance to define what we mean by a science policy job. (And yes, I do want to include technology policy jobs.)  The thinking should focus more on what jobs we need rather than on what jobs we have.  Describing the existing labor market is important, but by trying to figure out what we have we can – if we make the effort – ask what gaps might exist in the national science and technology policy enterprise and what jobs could help fill those gaps.

In short, I don’t want to divert flow from one funky employment pipeline to another.

This latest ruling was appealed back to the Supreme Court, which earlier today agreed to hear the case (again) (H/T The New York Times).  The Court will only hear one aspect of the certiorari petition – the question of whether human genes are patentable.  The dispute centers, at least in part, on whether isolating the genes makes them sufficiently different from those in the body in order to be patentable.

The granting of certiorari does not include a date for oral arguments.  They could happen anytime during the current term, which runs until late June.  SCOTUSBlog, a reliable source for Supreme Court activities, suggests arguments will be heard in March.

Ellicott City, MD – How would you like to be allowed to use your smart phone in school? Do you think it could be useful to help you learn? Or just a distraction?

Recently, the Carroll County School System has considered changing its policy on electronics in schools, according to carrollcountytimes.com. The Carroll County Board of Education is reconsidering which phones and other electronics can be used for educational purposes. Smart phones are banned in most school systems, but teachers use increasing amounts of technology in instruction.

Teachers are using technology such as interactive whiteboards to teach their classes. Also, each teacher in the Carroll County School System is assigned a laptop and a projector for use during the year. Teachers at Centennial also have access to a laptop, a project, and document cameras that are becoming commonplace in the classroom.

Many teachers and staff enjoy using the new technology and believe that it helps them teach, grade, and communicate with other teachers, students, and parents quickly and efficiently.

“My favorite part of the technology is that I can do research for projects using the reliable sources and databases from the school website,” said Sophomore Jeffrey Tse.

Teachers in Howard County use a website, Aspen, to inform students and parents of grades as soon as the teacher finishes grading, and students no longer wait until the teacher hands back the work. However, the transition from the old, similar service TeacherEase was difficult, and technology can be difficult to manage.

Issues with the new uses of technology in the school system include the quick replacement cycle for computers, the high cost of maintaining and buying technology, and the potential for misuse that technology comes with. The schools technology does not always work correctly.

“Some of the school’s technology is not up to date, and the website we look at for grades is very buggy,” said Sophomore Ankur Holz.

Keeping in mind the advantages and drawbacks of using technology in the classroom, school systems across the state must make a decision about the amount of technology that students will be able to use. Current Howard County policy requires phones off and out of view during the day. This policy does not account for smart phones having qualities of computers and potential for education.

“You can use your phone as a dictionary or calculator for most classes, and you could even use it as a metronome or tuner for music classes,” said Sophomore Connor Lin.

Smart phones can be used as a substitute for many common classroom tools. They can be dictionaries, planners, calculators, sketchbooks, and search engines. Although phones can be misused in class, allowing students to use phones during class might cut down on “illegal” use. Schools must still be careful if they are to adopt a new technology policy.

Cyber-bullying and theft are issues that would have to be addressed in a new technology policy. Cyber-bullying has been covered in several assemblies throughout the past few years, but it is still an issue.

“As more social networking is established, there are more opportunities for people to take advantage of innocent lives susceptible to attacks,” said Holz.

Theft is a problem that would only grow if students could use their smart phones in class. Currently the Howard County School System is not responsible for stolen electronics during the day, as they are banned in school, but that could change if students could use phones in school.

“Yes, if phones were allowed for use in school the school [should be] partially responsible because they authorized the use,” said Holz.

Another reason to include technology in the curriculum is how it puts all students on an equal playing field. Technology improves disabled or shy students’ learning experience. A study conducted in schools in North Carolina, Texas, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota found that increased use in technology enhanced the learning experience of the majority of the students, according to carroltechcouncil.org.

With the increase of use of technology in many people’s daily lives, the Howard County Public School System may have to reaffirm or take a new stance on technology in the near future.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of Science and Technology Policy want to hear from you – and they pretty much mean everybody – about what you think the grand challenges are for the 21st century (H/T NextGov.com).  This request for information (RFI) is for

The President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) will meet on November 30 in public session at the National Academies C Street building in Washington.  Per the current agenda, the main emphasis is will be Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education at the undergraduate level.  One panel will focus on the relatively new phenomenon of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs), and the other is more general in orientation.  There will also be another update on the latest PCAST report on the Network and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program.  That report may be ready for release before the end of the year.

[Summary] Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs) and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)—both well-established investment structures—should be opened up to renewable energy investment. MLPs and, more recently, REITs have a proven track record for promoting oil, gas, and other traditional energy sources. When extended to renewable energy projects these tools will help promote growth, move renewables closer to subsidy independence, and vastly broaden the base of investors in America’s energy economy. The extension of MLPs and REITs to renewables enjoys significant support from the investment and clean energy communities. In addition, MLPs for renewables also enjoy bipartisan political backing in Congress.

(Regardless of how well the paper is received, I think this is an excellent sign of how well the CSPC and its organizers have done over the past few years to raise the profile of science and technology policy in Canada.)

The paper is titled Toward a National Science Policy, and sketches the NDP’s conception of federal science policy with an eye toward soliciting public input.  At the end of the paper, there are three questions that MP Stewart is looking for responses from the Canadian public:

Unlike the U.S. Congress, the U.K. Parliament retains an in-house organization for scientific and technical information.  Called the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (POST), it has prepared briefings, assisted Select Committees and organized events for MPs since 1989.  (This means that sometime soon, if not already, POST will have lasted longer than the Office of Technology Assessment in the U.S. Congress.)

But POST’s future is looking at a serious bump.  Having already taken a seven percent reduction in its budget, the office is facing a seventeen percent reduction for the budget cycle in 2014/2015.  The combined reduction means POST will have had its budget reduced by nearly one quarter quite quickly.  This will affect what assistance POST can provide Parliament.  I suspect this is another instance of science and technology policy budget myopia (S&T policy is really just research budget policy).  While the value science and technology bring to the economy matters much to many policymakers, the value of scientific and technical information to the operation of government is under-counted.  Like other infrastructure, it blends into the background until it’s taken away abruptly.  I don’t consider the proposed cuts to be punitive (unlike the recent Office of Science and Technology Policy budget whipsaw), but an example of neglect in the service of the austerity strategy very much embedded in the current U.K. governing coalition.

In other science advice news, the U.K. recently adjusted its processes for consulting with the public.  Amongst the changes were an emphasis on electronic-only advice taking, and an increased flexibility in the length of consultation period.  As a way to try an evaluate the changes, The Guardian is hosting an online discussion about the changes next Friday, from noon to 2 p.m. BST.  Current U.K. consultation procedures have not gotten high marks, and it appears that the changes have not really addressed concerns about the appearance that the government goes through the motions in soliciting outside input.

Finally, over in Ireland (true, not part of the U.K., but it does border part of it), the office of the Chief Science Adviser (CSA) has undergone significant changes.  It has been effectively shuttered, with the responsibilities of the CSA shifted to the head of the nation’s research funding agency, Science Funding Ireland.  While there are legitimate concerns over a conflict of interest in having the research funding head also be the chief science adviser to the government, I think the potential for conflicts of commitment – where time and resources make it difficult to fulfill both sets of job functions – are more immediate.  Like their colleagues in the U.K., the Irish government is undercutting its science and technology infrastructure for the long term in an effort to save a little bit of money for the near term.  No country is immune to these pressures, and it’s always disappointing to see.

Putting aside the drastically different means of achieving either innovation (I’d love to see a handful of college kids try and colonize another planet from their dorm rooms), the title is intended to frame a discussion around a supposed withdrawal of humans from the arena of big problem solving.  Thankfully the article is a bit more sophisticated than the simplistic tradeoffs suggested by the cover.

But I think this article, and the other items in the Big Solutions Issue, help feed an idealistic hope in (relatively) easy technological solutions.  If only we can put enough brains/money/resources on the problem, we can do X.  Even institutions that really should know better go for the easy (lazy) metaphor.

Arguably Apollo, the paradigmatic example for many of how we used to be able to do big things, was the easy way out.  Of the different options discussed for getting to the moon, the lunar-orbit rendezvous method used required the least amount of new technology and minimized the fuel necessary for the craft that landed on the moon.  Had we chosen earth-orbit rendezvous, where the lunar craft would have been put together in orbit, we may have been able to move much faster toward an orbital space station – decades earlier.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t try.  I just want to reinforce – as I think the article does, once you get past the lede – is that these problems are hard.  And it’s rare for them to be strictly technological (or scientific) in nature.  We should resist thinking that such problems are so simply solved.

…Innovations in green technology represent transformational approaches to these and others of the world’s thorniest development and environment challenges. Innovation for green growth has the potential to tackle three challenges simultaneously: encouraging widespread development and poverty reduction; creating new and more vibrant economies based on clean technologies; and securing an increasingly greener world. Importantly, this kind of transformational approach to addressing global development goals through green technologies will require support for innovation across all development contexts. Establishing a sufficiently large suite of technological options, suitable to all economies and at the urgent pace required, will involve unprecedented innovation activity not only from developed regions, but also from new clusters and enterprises in emerging economies and least developed countries. Encouragingly, widespread economic development has increased global capacity for research and development, and created a new tier of emerging innovators in developing countries—and through additional action, we argue that these gains might be bolstered, and additional innovation areas can be encouraged in new regions.

Tackling such challenges as climate change, energy access, environmental degradation, sanitation and water availability while achieving economic and development goals will require unusually creative approaches…

As I try to do, I leave most climate change discussions to Roger Pielke, Jr.  Even if I was in a position to focus full time on the matters I blog about, I couldn’t approach his breadth of knowledge and critical thinking.  I’d start here, but essentially any of Roger’s posts between October 31 and November 2 are Sandy-related.

The item I almost immediately noticed was absent from yesterday’s post concerns the impact of Sandy on a radar research network that tracks Atlantic currents.  As of the Fourth of November, only 11 of the 28 sites were broadcasting.  Not all of those silent stations may be disabled, but simply dormant as a means of riding out the storm.  More information is hopefully forthcoming.

One of the folks behind the AmericanScience blog has posted a series of essays from Hoboken, New Jersey on the effects of the storm, with an emphasis on how the storm calls to the forefront how technology mediates daily life and culture.  The stories are neither uniform nor obvious.

Finally, a follow-up on how the State of New Jersey is going to try and accommodate those voters who may have trouble participating in Tuesday’s election.  (Note, issues of electronic voting are part of my day job; no endorsement from the bosses or my employer is intended or implied.)

Ed Felten of Princeton, whose research has dealt with electronic voting machines, writes at Freedom to Tinker about the specifics of the New Jersey process.  They are effectively the same as procedures allowed for military and overseas voters by the state, so this is not quite the innovative expansion of voting that it may have seemed yesterday.  Ballots may be submitted electronically, but they must also have a corresponding hard copy mailed in for them to be counted.

If the situation in Princeton (Felten notes 63 percent of the city’s voting districts will be conducting elections in new, temporary polling locations) is typical for other parts of New Jersey (and presumably worse the closer one is to the coast), this is a serious logistical challenge for the state.  Arguably tweaking existing practices makes more sense than trying to create new methods.  Hopefully they can be as effective in communicating the situation as they have in other aspects of dealing with Sandy.

Hopefully everyone is keeping as safe and sound as possible as they continue to recover from the storm.

First, a general reminder of the value of infrastructure, and the challenges of replacing and/or repairing it.  Nothing demonstrates how vital infrastructure is to New York than the current challenges of getting basic supplies and simply getting around.  It seems trivial to cite the cancellation of events like the New York City Marathon, or the postponement of other sporting events, but it is the impact on things normally taken for granted that re-emphasize the value of infrastructure.  Would that it help emphasize the folly of neglecting same.

Here’s something that will matter and have impacts well into next week:

Wow. RT @NYTMetro: New Jersey Residents Will Be Allowed to Vote by E-mail nyti.ms/Tp37wr—
John Keefe (@jkeefe) November 04, 2012

If this is accurate, and if this is done on any significant scale, there could be a push to make this more common.  (Of course, those who may have the most need for this may also be the most challenged in getting access to reliable email.)

I would love to see how this process handles two important challenges of voting – keeping an individual vote secure (untampered with), and anonymous.  For all the times voting is compared with banking, the factor most often overlooked is that of anonymity.  I can certainly track my electronic banking transactions, but there is no expectation that those transactions are meant to be anonymous.  My vote damn well better be anonymous.

A lovely summary from the AmericanScience team blog on weather prediction and uncertainty.  It refers heavily to Nate Silver’s recent writings on weather predictions, which come primarily from his new book, The Signal and The Noise.  Silver is currently taking some heat for how he has been defending his predictive models for the upcoming Presidential election (let’s just say some people have a real hard time distinguishing between an electoral outcome and the odds of that outcome happening).  Me, I just like additional reminders that the nation had science and technology policy at least as early as the 19th century (the National Weather Service is a product of the Ulysses S. Grant administration), though I’ll argue it goes back to at least the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

I’ll close reprinting the same ‘Modelers’ Hippocratic Oath’ that AmericanScience does.  They credit Emanuel Derman and Paul Wilmott.

The Modelers’ Hippocratic Oath

~ I will remember that I didn’t make the world, and it doesn’t satisfy my equations.
~ Though I will use models boldly to estimate value, I will not be overly impressed by mathematics.
~ I will never sacrifice reality for elegance without explaining why I have done so.
~ Nor will I give the people who use my model false comfort about its accuracy. Instead, I will make explicit its assumptions and oversights.
~ I understand that my work may have enormous effects on society and the economy, many of them beyond my comprehension.

How the nation’s space efforts were organized was a topic of discussion since at least early 1958, and most likely since at least October 5, 1957, the day after Sputnik launched.  Madrigal reprints a memo from early 1958 that outlines four possible means for organizing the space program (one of which was chosen), and suggests how some alternate possibilities might have emerged if a different choice had been made.

What we now know as NASA could have been:

• A completely new agency;
• A program in the Atomic Energy Commission (now transformed into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission); or
• A program in the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense

Now there were no doubt many other possibilities discussed.  One question at front of mind for many was who would control the nation’s space program – civilians or the military.  While the military does run space missions, and has since the 1950s (NASA’s Huntsville facility grew out of the Army’s rocket facility there), that’s a very different arrangement from having a military-run space program (for instance, civilian astronaut Neil Armstrong probably wouldn’t have been the first to land on the moon).

And it would likely have been different if the space program was hosted at ARPA, one of the agencies involved in creating the networks that led to the Internet.  If tasked with space exploration, its computer networking efforts may have gotten less attention.  As Madrigal notes provocatively, had this option been picked, it’s possible the 1990s could have been a space boom rather than the dot-com boom.  Or that dot-com boom might have originated from somewhere else besides the U.S.

And if the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) had been given the responsibility for sending people into space, the rockets our astronauts sat on may have looked differently and used very different propulsion.  While there are nuclear power plants on some of our satellites, nuclear rockets have never been developed for launch or moving massive amounts of payload into orbit.  Why would a former aeronautics agency have sufficient experience with nuclear propulsion to even try?  But coupling one relatively new technology (spaceflight) with another (nuclear propulsion) makes things more complicated.

Like Madrigal’s piece, this is a fun exercise in speculation.  But hopefully it’s made a point about organizing complex activity – context matters.  (Yes, I tried to make this point last month, but it bears repeating.)  Where in government science and technology policy is being performed matters as much as what is being performed.

[Abstract] One of the strong messages that came out of the recent United Nations Climate Change conference in Durban was that the private sector has to play an important role if we are to globally move toward a low carbon, climate resilient — or “climate compatible” — future. However, private investment will only flow at the scale and pace necessary if it is supported by clear, credible, and long-term policy frameworks that shift the risk-reward balance in favor of less carbon-intensive investment. The private sector also needs information on where to invest in clean energy in emerging markets, and it needs policy support to lower investment risk. Barriers to low carbon investments often include unclear and inconsistent energy policies, monopoly structures for existing producers, stronger incentives for conventional energy than clean energy, and a domestic financial sector not experienced in new technologies. With the long-term goal of promoting and accelerating the implementation of climate mitigation technologies, this study aims to facilitate development of a policy framework for promoting sustainable investment climates for clean energy investments in South Asia and elsewhere. A key aspect of the study is also the pilot construction of the Climate Investment Readiness Index for several countries. The index is a tool to objectively evaluate the enabling environment for supporting private sector investment in select climate mitigation or low carbon technologies.

The Sunday Times ran a piece last weekend stating that:

“Apple and Google are avoiding up to £800m a year in tax in Britain despite sales here worth billions of pounds”

Only a short time before, Facebook was criticised for apparently similar behaviour:

“Facebook pays only £238,000 in corporation tax on UK earnings of up to £175m”

These companies are not alone: many businesses choose to headquarter themselves wherever the tax impact is most beneficial. They would doubtless argue, with some justification, that their corporate and shareholder obligations require them to optimise tax management, and hence profitability, using whatever legal means is available to them.

Such tax “efficiencies” are not confined to consumer-oriented technology companies. Take a look at a list of the historic top IT suppliers to government for example – just how many of these adopt similar tax efficiencies?

(source: “Better for Less”, using figures supplied by Kable)

With such large sums involved, it would be useful to know, both for these and all major suppliers to the public sector. More up-to-date and comprehensive supplier data should become available in the future as a result of the government’s transparency agenda, making it easier to identify those companies who do and don’t declare their full UK revenues here. Ideal material, too, I think for a creative Rewired State mashup …

The whole taxation model is anachronistic and somewhat Alice in Wonderland – with company earnings not consistently taxed where income is earned. It’s all very Janus-like: with one face the companies involved claim that the revenues were not really earned here in the UK; but with the other, they bonus their UK staff on revenues driven here in the UK – something which requires them internally to keep accounts showing very clearly what was earned in the UK. I’m uncertain how EU legislation enables companies to declare earnings from one member state as if they were earned in another – input from specialists in this area would be most useful.

Whilst this taxation issue is not restricted solely to IT providers, the problem is compounded in the IT marketplace by the nature of the distorted model that has arisen in the UK public sector. Its historic concentration in the hands of a small number of mega-players was referred to by the House of Commons Parliamentary Administration Select Committee as an “oligopoly” in its report “Government and IT – “A Recipe For Rip-Offs”: Time For A New Approach“.

This unusual market concentration is also aligned with atypically high public sector IT expenditure. The historic UK government spend on IT has seen some 1.93% of UK GDP spent on public sector IT, rising to 2.23% based on findings of the “Operational Efficiency Programme” undertaken by Dr Martin Read (a former chief executive of LogicaCMG, who led a 2009 Treasury review into the costs of IT and back-office administration).

This is much higher than the average for advanced industrial companies, whose governments typically spend between 1% and 1.5% of GDP on public sector IT (Dunleavy et al). The consequence of this is that a disproportionately large percentage of GDP is being spent on the IT supply base to government. If, as appears to be the case, that supply base contains a number of companies avoiding paying significant amounts of taxation on revenues earned from UK taxpayers, this represents a significant double cost to both the taxpayer and the wider economy.

Still, some of the companies involved at least acknowledge the problem:

“Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, has blamed the Government’s weak tax laws for the fact it has paid just £8m of corporation tax in Britain despite making more than £6bn in revenues in this country in the six years to 2010.”

I’m not sure how much this is a UK government issue and how much an EU one. If we accept that declaring revenues from one EU member state as if they were earned in another *is* permitted (as it seems to be), then perhaps the UK government should at least factor the additional total cost of ownership caused by such tax avoidance into its assessment of bids from any companies operating this model.

After all, the government would normally see some of its expenditure effectively returned to its coffers when companies pay their corporation tax and other business-related taxes here in the UK. For those claiming to have earned some or all of their UK revenues elsewhere however, this will not be true as it will be their nominated member state that collects any business taxes due – inflating the true costs of goods and services in the UK significantly. It also has much broader and significant macro-economic impacts, given the increased net outflow of money offshore and its investment in businesses abroad rather than those here in the UK.

This Wonderland taxation model also impacts other areas, such as the release of public data and its associated intellectual property rights. The government rightly wants to release as much public data as possible into the public domain – so that, for example, innovative companies can build exciting new businesses around the likes of Ordnance Survey maps, or real-time travel information. All good news in terms of generating economic growth. But if the companies that take the data and generate new, multi-million or multi-billion pound companies don’t pay their taxes here, it’s obviously a very different prospect for economic growth than if the companies do pay their taxes here. These things matter and it’s time the current business taxation model was properly reviewed and improved.

One problem in objectively assessing the true scale of the cost of the existing approach is the dearth of analyses of these complex macro-economic issues, despite how central they are to a whole host of debates – from the true total cost of ownership of government IT systems to the best licensing model for public data. According to the Sunday Times the Public Accounts Committee is about to examine the whole issue of corporations and where they pay taxes on their UK revenues, so perhaps some much needed progress is about to be made.

In the meantime, the government’s commitment to increasing transparency remains a strong card in protecting both government’s and taxpayers’ interests. This is one area where much greater transparency would enable us to understand more clearly the scale of the current taxation issues, their true costs to the UK economy and their impact on our potential for improved economic growth.

Sources

• “Apple avoids up to £570m in British Tax”. Simon Duke and Dipesh Gadher. Sunday Times, 14.10.2012.
• “Facebook pays only £238,000 in corporation tax on UK earnings of up to £175m“. Gideon Spanier and Jerome Taylor. Belfast Telegraph, 11.10.2012
• “French tax inspectors search Microsoft offices in dawn raid“. Peter Sayer. ComputerWorld, 04.07.2012
• “Google says it would pay more tax in UK“. Katherine Rushton. The Telegraph, 27.08.2011.
• “Operational Efficiency Programme: back office operations and IT“. May 2009. HMT.
• “UK Public Sector IT“. October 2009, Centre for Technology Policy Research
• “Better for Less: how to make government IT deliver savings“. Liam Maxwell.

In the eyes of the Commission, this is currently a period of transition, where a lot of genetic information is going to become commonplace in clinical settings and applications.  Many more people are going to have access, so the security and privacy afforded this information by the difficulty in accessing it is dissipating.  But the increased use of data requires an increase in the amount of data available.  The Commission recognizes this, at least implicitly, the need for greater public trust in the use of genetic information in order for the benefits of that information to be fully realized.  (Not to mention the increased possibility for abuses of that information; something roughly half of U.S. states have laws against.) To that end, the report makes several recommendations under the following themes:

• Strong Baseline Protections While Promoting Data Access and Sharing
• Data Security and Access to Databases
• Consent
• Facilitating Progress in Whole Genome Sequencing
• Public Benefit

One of the goals of these recommendations is to make sure that any person’s genetic information receives a minimum level of privacy and security – regardless of how it is collected or who does the collecting.  Another is to make it easier to exchange and share information across fields and sectors of activity.  A minimum floor of privacy and security guarantees is critical to this, and will need to be augmented by other common standards for information collection, use, and management.  There’s a lot of daylight between where various players in genetic testing are and where the Commission would like them to be.

It’s hard to tell how much teeth these recommendations will have.  The nature of the commission is such that their recommendations are at best suggestive.  They do not have the force of law or regulation, unless Congress or an executive branch agency opts to implement them.  Given the delicate balancing act required by these recommendations, I suspect some agency or agencies will need to champion these recommendations for them to take hold in the United States.

The initial license application in 2009 prompted a discussion about whether the NRC has done its job in assessing the proliferation risks of the plants and technologies that it licenses.  It prompted the American Physical Society to petition the NRC to make formal proliferation reviews part of its licensing process.  Nature has gone so far as to encourage the NRC to approve the petition.

Now, there is plenty to debate and discuss about whether the NRC has the authority to do this (rather than the Departments of State and Energy), but there is a more fundamental set of questions, one not limited to nuclear technologies.

How can you assess the proliferation risks of a technology?  It seems to be such a moving target.  It’s hard to keep new scientific and technical knowledge on lockdown, particularly in areas where weapons technologies have significant non-lethal applications.  Proliferation seems pretty contextual – the condition of the states and entities that might use this technology for weapons is highly variable.  Not that you can ever really sever value judgements from technical assessments, but it seems impossible to do so in this instance.  So even a ‘technical’ agency like the NRC could not help but avoid political and other value judgments in a proliferation review.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but there’s an unfortunate tendency to use science and technology to hide these judgements.

Regardless, you have a situation now where scientific institutions – one a society and one a journal, are calling for restrictions on science and technology work.  That rarely happens.

There are a number of facility tours and similar events scheduled for tomorrow.  The intent of the day is to raise awareness of what manufacturing does in the U.S., the need for more young people to go into manufacturing, and the kinds of jobs available.  While not obviously connected to the work Mike Rowe has been doing to raise awareness of the skilled trades, I think he’d consider it a good thing.

Personally, I think this event is a great means of demonstration the continued stovepipes that exist in the manufacturing sector and what might be considered the more traditional science, technology, engineering and mathematics jobs.  The federal agencies supporting these two areas are quite distinct, with skilled trades work support coming mostly from the ‘technology’ agencies and STEM support coming second nature to the ‘science’ agencies.  These stovepipes need to be destroyed.  Rowe’s advocacy work suggests he believes STEM education has crowded out support for skilled trades, and I think placing them in opposition is a mistake.

As I tried to argue last year, the skilled trades rely on STEM knowledge and skills and vice versa.  The sooner we can get that across to people in power and practice, the better we can prepare the next generation of makers.

Between the lack of climate change discussion from either campaign (arguably you heard more about it in the Republican primaries), and the boilerplate responses to ScienceDebate, science issues (not surprisingly) have not been a factor in this presidential campaign.

At least when you’re looking at the campaign from a national level.  Locally, things can be different.

The Romney campaign is engaging in some micro-targeting to try and grab as many voters as possible in two battleground states.  The conservative magazine The Weekly Standard posted a mildly cheeky blog item on a flyer the Romney/Ryan campaign is mailing in parts of Virginia. The topic?  Lyme Disease. (H/T The Week via Andrew Sullivan)  The Weekly Standard and other pundit outlets are skeptical of the utility of such a flyer, though micro-targeting has been successful for candidates in the past (like then-Senator Obama in 2008).

I found it interesting that a particular audience would be receptive to a science-oriented issue like fighting Lyme disease.  As The Weekly Standard notes, there are concerns over Lyme Disease in Virginia, but the incidence of the disease would not appear to qualify as the ‘epidemic’ described in the flyer.  However, it would appear that there is some conflict in Virginia over what the proper treatment for Lyme Disease should be.  The Virgina state task force on the disease has been criticized (H/T Roger Ebert) for accepting anecdotal evidence about using aggressive antibiotics (the Centers for Disease Control recommends a less aggressive treatment, and is skeptical of claims of ‘chronic’ forms of Lyme Disease).  The campaign flyer could be interpreted to support those who are resisting the scientific consensus on Lyme Disease and its treatment.

The Romney campaign may be engaged in some additional microstrategy with the release of its position paper on space and campaign criticism of President Obama’s ‘dismantling’ of the U.S. space program.  The Romney campaign appears to have learned (if it didn’t already know) the lesson of Newt Gingrich’s campaign and not promised a moon base.  Its position paper is a fair explanation of why space is worth exploring, but absent additional funding (or fencing off space from the pending budget cuts), the paper is more rhetoric than action.  But maybe, the campaign thinks, it could peel off some votes.

The pieces in the special report:

Representative Rush Holt, former head of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and the sole member of the Congressional Physics Caucus, argues for more rigorous analysis in the U.S. political process (£)

Lawrence Goldstein, a professor of neuroscience and medicine at the University of California, San Diego, encourages fellow scientists to engage with their elected representatives (£).

A lengthy, sprawling feature piece by Nature staff explores the science politics of the Obama Administration, something that could have been published post-election, and perhaps should have been.  More on that in a moment.

An editorial focusing on what Nature considers inaction on climate change policy by the Obama Administration.

Now, it’s possible that there will be similar pieces on Governor Romney in next week’s issue.  But the near-total absence of discussion of President Obama’s challenger in the upcoming election begs for claims of favoritism by Nature (that Representative Holt is a Democrat doesn’t help the appearance of bias).  Never mind that the magazine is somewhat critical of many of the administration’s actions, the volume of attention paid to the Administration suggests, without really saying so, that Nature thinks the President deserves a second term.  Or as @RogerPielkeJr put it:

Nature does special feature on US election, has 59 mentions of Obama and 2 mentions of Romney. journalism or cheer leading? @naturenews—
Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) September 26, 2012

It’s also worth noting that climate change is not an issue in this election (whether it ought to be is a separate question).  By focusing its election editorial on the issue, Nature not only appears to be favoring the President without saying so, but suggesting what the U.S. science policy agenda should be.  For the comprehensiveness of the feature piece on the Obama Administration’s record, the narrowness of the editorial is not consistent with a feature on the election.

For me this is a particular disappointment. As I wrote back in 2008, I thought that Nature did an admirable job with its editorial comparing the two candidates for President.  Two lessons that I highlighted then were completely ignored today.  I’ll close by quoting from that 2008 post (SEED is – or likely was – a science-oriented magazine that lives on in the ScienceBlogs network):

There is a lot in this endorsement that recognizes what SEED chooses to ignore or hide – that encouraging scientific thinking and science and technology advice in politics and policy is a value choice.  This is clear from the lede:

“The values of scientific enquiry, rather than any particular policy positions on science, suggest a preference for one US presidential candidate over the other.”

(The bold is Nature‘s)

SEED spoke of policy positions and scientific enquiry, suggesting that their preference was due to clear advantages on both points.  Nature disagrees, making an important point in the process.

“There is no open-and-shut case for preferring one man or the other on the basis of their views on these matters. This is as it should be: for science to be a narrow sectional interest bundled up in a single party would be a terrible thing. Both sides recognize science’s inspirational value and ability to help achieve national and global goals. That is common ground to be prized…”

(This time the bold is mine)

Frankly, I think that last sentence is equally applicable this year as it was in 2008.  The major difference would be in how that value and ability is expressed, and what national goals are served in doing so.

If anyone involved in writing this year’s special section read Nature‘s 2008 editorial, I don’t know if I’d be more surprised or disappointed.  They should know better.

“Oliver Twist” is directed against the “Poor Law”, against the workhouses, against the existing political economy concepts. Soothing public opinion promises happiness and prosperity for the majority. Achieves happiness only Oliver Twist, and then thanks to the romantic mood of the author’s belief that whiteness, purity of the soul of Oliver, his strength in life’s challenges require compensation. But it would be a mistake to assume that the novel – is the fulfillment of the author of its public mission. “Oliver Twist” was also a kind of civil answer to Dickens’s dominance at the time the so-called Newgate novels, in which the story of thieves and criminals was conducted exclusively in the melodramatic and romantic colors, and themselves violators of the law was a type of Superman, is very attractive to readers. Byronic hero turned into a criminal environment.

Dickens spoke against idealization of the crime and those who commit it. Dickens is studying the mechanism of evil, its impact on human rights; good as he realized the images of Mr. Brownlow and Oliver Twist himself, Rose Meili. The most prominent were the images of the Feigin, Sykes, Nancy. However, Nancy has some attractive traits, and even showing affection to Oliver, but she also severely pay for it.

In the preface to the book Dickens clearly outlined the essence of his idea: “I thought that depict actual members of criminal gangs, to draw them in all their ugliness, with all their wickedness, to show the squalid, impoverished their lives, show them as what they actually – ever stolen, they covered anxiety, on the dirtiest paths of life, and wherever they look, everywhere is looming in front of them black scary gallows – I felt that to portray it – then try to do what is necessary and that will serve service society. And I played the best of my ability. True, the realistic portrayal of London’s floor and its inhabitants in this novel is often romanticized and sometimes melodramatic tones. Oliver Twist, going to school life Feigin, who taught him the art thieves, is virtuous and pure child. He feels his unsuitability for the craft to which he pushes an old rascal, but easy, and feels free in a cozy bedroom, Mr. Brownlow, which immediately draws attention to the portrait of a young woman who subsequently proved to be his mother.

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