As the location of the headquarters of OPEC and
the IAEA, Vienna's connection with the international energy industry
and with petroleum is well known. Anyone who has flown into Vienna and
driven by the massive complex of OMV refineries that separate Schwechat
from the city itself knows that Austria boasts its own refining
industry.
The National Science Foundation's Division of Chemistry, with the help of the chemical sciences community, has introduced a program called Undergraduate Research Collaboratives (URC) to integrate early research experiences into an undergraduate's career and attract students currently underrepresented in sciences. The URC program seeks new models and partnerships with the potential 1) to expand the reach of undergraduate research to include first- and second-year college students; 2) to broaden participation and increase diversity in the student talent pool from which the nation's future technical workforce will be drawn; and 3) to enhance the research capacity, infrastructure, and culture of participating institutions. To date, three research collaborations have been fully funded and numerous planning grants for collaborations have been awarded.
Europe: 30 years in Space
In
1975 the European Space Agency (ESA) was inaugurated. ESA started
small, with only a few countries, but within its three decades of
existence it has succeeded in federating 17 European countries,
including such heavyweights as France, Germany, Italy, and the United
Kingdom. Even though ESA resembles roughly one-fifth of NASA in terms
of annual budget (approximately €3 billion versus the $16.2 billion of
NASA), the European agency has managed to consequently grow in
importance to make a strong number two in the ranking of international
space agencies, even though it focuses only on pure civilian space
programs. Well, almost - even ESA cannot ignore the fact that today's
world has become a bit more unpredictable, making it necessary to rely
on one's own resources to proactively maintain safety and security for
one's citizens. As such, ESA - in cooperation with the European
Commission - has set up two programs to maintain and improve its
technological-strategic portfolio within the space domain: Galileo and
GMES.
The transatlantic space cooperation is often analyzed from specific angles. For example, it is looked at from an institutional angle, detailing cooperation mechanisms between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), or with a programmatic view, usually highlighting joint space science and human space flight activities. The objective of this article is to take a fresh horizontal look at the state of what is believed to be the most intense, active, and productive cooperative axis of the international space community. An update of the programmatic substance of these activities is presented together with some reflections on the cooperative models that have been retained by the parties for each activity. This is being done in order to facilitate the reader's ability to assess on his/her own the amplitude, significance, and future directions of these undertakings.
The content of the transatlantic space cooperation has expanded over the past few years, leading to an addition of major projects implemented in a bilateral or a multilateral context. This cooperation is now built around six programmatic pillars, namely: space science, human space flight, satellite navigation, meteorology, earth observation systems, and space exploration. Each of these programs is managed by different agencies and is being pursued on the basis of a well-identified balance between cooperation and competition.
In 1990, a committee charged by the White House with conducting a sweeping review of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) found that the agency's budget was inadequate for the slate of programs being executed. Known as the Augustine committee, after chairman Norman Augustine, their report stated that "NASA is currently overcommitted in terms of program obligations relative to resources available - in short, it is trying to do too much, and allowing too little margin for the unexpected." A similar finding was noted in 2003 by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which analyzed not only the specific technical causes, but also the underlying factors within the agency that contributed to the loss of the Shuttle earlier that year. In a section entitled "An Agency Trying To Do Too Much With Too Little," the report of the Board noted that NASA has been unable to obtain a budget allocation necessary for its continuing ambitions, saying that in the past decade "neither the White House nor Congress has been interested in a reinvigorated space program." In May of this year, the National Academies released a report which again claimed that "NASA is being asked to accomplish too much with too little." Citing the increasing demand for funding needed to continue the Shuttle program, as well as the higher-than-expected costs of science missions, the Academies' report concluded that "the resources are inadequate to accomplish NASA's broad missions of national importance." A December editorial in The New York Times called this situation "a surefire recipe for disaster."
"American
science must enlighten American statecraft," said then-Secretary of
State Colin Powell when introducing the first Jefferson Science Fellows
(JSF) to the State Department in May 2004. The JSF program's main goal
is to bring together senior scientists with policy makers at the US
State Department to formulate and implement US foreign policy issues.
Clean air and water, and enough food are the three things absolutely
crucial for sustaining the growing world population on this planet. All
three of these depend on access to sufficient energy. Today, the major
portion of this energy comes from fossil fuels. In the 1970s, when the
first true energy crisis hit, we first became painfully aware of how
precarious our energy supply was. In the years to follow, however, the
memory of waiting in long lines at gas stations quickly faded, as did
the sense of urgency to find alternative energy sources.
Have you ever
seen the 2005 TV spot for Coke Classic, where a polar bear peers down a
snowy slope before being offered a bottle of Coke by a penguin? It will
hardly come as a surprise to anybody that this will never happen. The
main reason why polar bears and penguins will not be peacefully united
on an ice floe, however, is less well-known: polar bears live in the
Arctic, penguins in Antarctica. Maybe marketing people just don't care
that much about reality. Maybe the real cause for (and effect of)
illustrations of this kind, though, is that the general knowledge of
the polar regions is not at its peak.
Introduction
The connection between polar regions and societies
around the world is increasingly part of our mainstream culture.
Magazine articles, books, and movies have made common knowledge of
topics such as the epic annual migration of Emperor Penguins, or how
the accelerated melting of glaciers in Greenland and the Antarctic
Peninsula will result in rising sea levels that will eventually impact
the billions of people who live near coastlines. We are becoming more
aware of how the melting of summer sea ice in the Arctic is impacting
the lifestyle of native peoples and the habitats of the seals and polar
bears they hunt. There is increased understanding that pollution from
Europe and North America is entering the food chain in the Arctic. We
hear how melting of permafrost in Polar Regions not only causes roads
to buckle and foundations to collapse, but releases substantial amounts
of methane into the atmosphere, further fueling the greenhouse effect.
bridges vol. 10, June 2006 / Feature Articles
by Muriel Lederman
Integrating the social studies of science into science education would
make explicit the cultures of science, which have been revealed by
historians, philosophers, sociologists, and feminist science scholars.
These cultures include the institutions of science, the interaction of
science and the society in which it is practiced, and the internal
culture of science. This pedagogy may be a route to increasing equity
in science, by giving women and members of other underrepresented
groups an appreciation of the factors causing their alienation from the
enterprise and the tools to change science for social justice.
Music affects us in many ways. Whether conscious or unconscious, our brain and our body act and react to musical stimuli. For example, we may find we are suddenly humming a melody when we walk in the dark, or we may notice our foot tapping to a beat before we have even realized that there is music in the room. Since new research technologies have revealed how strongly the brain reacts to rhythms and melodies, music has become one of the prominent topics of European Neuroscience. An Austrian research team has now developed a method for measuring the influence of music outside of the laboratory, by monitoring the reactions of the autonomic nervous system.
From October 1st through 4th, an international conference on music impact research entitled "The Impact of Music - A Dialogue of the Sciences and the Arts about the Effects of Music in Art, Education, and Medicine" will take place in Baden, near Vienna, Austria.
In 1990, a committee charged by the White House with conducting a sweeping review of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) found that the agency's budget was inadequate for the slate of programs being executed. Known as the Augustine committee, after chairman Norman Augustine, their report stated that "NASA is currently overcommitted in terms of program obligations relative to resources available - in short, it is trying to do too much, and allowing too little margin for the unexpected." A similar finding was noted in 2003 by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which analyzed not only the specific technical causes, but also the underlying factors within the agency that contributed to the loss of the Shuttle earlier that year. In a section entitled "An Agency Trying To Do Too Much With Too Little," the report of the Board noted that NASA has been unable to obtain a budget allocation necessary for its continuing ambitions, saying that in the past decade "neither the White House nor Congress has been interested in a reinvigorated space program." In May of this year, the National Academies released a report which again claimed that "NASA is being asked to accomplish too much with too little." Citing the increasing demand for funding needed to continue the Shuttle program, as well as the higher-than-expected costs of science missions, the Academies' report concluded that "the resources are inadequate to accomplish NASA's broad missions of national importance." A December editorial in The New York Times called this situation "a surefire recipe for disaster."
Have you ever
seen the 2005 TV spot for Coke Classic, where a polar bear peers down a
snowy slope before being offered a bottle of Coke by a penguin? It will
hardly come as a surprise to anybody that this will never happen. The
main reason why polar bears and penguins will not be peacefully united
on an ice floe, however, is less well-known: polar bears live in the
Arctic, penguins in Antarctica. Maybe marketing people just don't care
that much about reality. Maybe the real cause for (and effect of)
illustrations of this kind, though, is that the general knowledge of
the polar regions is not at its peak.
The connection between polar regions and societies
around the world is increasingly part of our mainstream culture.
Magazine articles, books, and movies have made common knowledge of
topics such as the epic annual migration of Emperor Penguins, or how
the accelerated melting of glaciers in Greenland and the Antarctic
Peninsula will result in rising sea levels that will eventually impact
the billions of people who live near coastlines. We are becoming more
aware of how the melting of summer sea ice in the Arctic is impacting
the lifestyle of native peoples and the habitats of the seals and polar
bears they hunt. There is increased understanding that pollution from
Europe and North America is entering the food chain in the Arctic. We
hear how melting of permafrost in Polar Regions not only causes roads
to buckle and foundations to collapse, but releases substantial amounts
of methane into the atmosphere, further fueling the greenhouse effect.
