Some government scientists say right now could be the only time in their careers to make some some key environmental advances. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
We’re hearing more and more about federal
stimulus money being used to help laid-off
workers or repair bridges or roads. Shawn
Allee reports the government wants
stimulus money to move through a wish list
of environmental science projects, too:
Transcript
We’re hearing more and more about federal
stimulus money being used to help laid-off
workers or repair bridges or roads. Shawn
Allee reports the government wants
stimulus money to move through a wish list
of environmental science projects, too:
Department of Energy labs say stimulus dollar figures are staggering compared to what the government has been spending on science.
Take a federal renewable energy lab in Colorado.
Jeffrey Baker is a lab director there.
Baker says they’re learning to make ethanol out of plants other than corn. That project’s getting ten million dollars in stimulus money.
“The Recovery Act is allowing us to expand a project we already have, going to, in effect, double the capacity the nation has to do that research and development.”
Other Department of Energy labs got stimulus money for work on high-tech car batteries, smart energy grids, and radar to model global warming.
Some government scientists say right now could be the only time in their careers to make some some key environmental advances.
Scientists have been using tiny particles of rust to draw arsenic out of water (Source: Roger McLassus at Wikimedia Commons)
You might be surprised to hear that a lot of drinking water has arsenic in it. It’s a problem all over the globe, especially when drinking water comes from deep under the ground. Julie Grant reports that some researchers are using tiny particles – at the nano-scale – and plain old rust, to remove arsenic from the water:
Transcript
You might be surprised to hear that a lot of drinking water has arsenic in it. It’s a problem all over the globe, especially when drinking water comes from deep under the ground. Julie Grant reports that some researchers are using tiny particles – at the nano-scale – and plain old rust, to remove arsenic from the water:
You can’t see, smell, or taste arsenic – but prolonged exposure to it can lead to skin discoloration and even cancer.
Vicki Colvin studies chemistry and nanotechnology at Rice University in Houston.
She says arsenic has a chemical bond with rust – and sticks to it. So they’ve been using tiny particles of rust to draw arsenic out of water in the lab.
Now Colvin says they’re working with a city in Mexico. They’re trying to make what they call nano-rust in the field, so the city can cheaply remove arsenic from its water.
“So, we’ve developed procedures and processes that help people make nano-rust not at a major university with a nanotechnology facilty. But you know literally in a restaurant setting, more maybe in a ceramics factory.”
Colvin says they will be experimenting in Mexico over the next two years.
JP Anderson, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore Park Ranger, at
the start of National Geographic and the National Park Service's 2009
BioBlitz at The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. (Photo by Enrique Pulido)
BioBlitz volunteers turned up two species of fungi that hadn't been
officially identified in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. (Photo courtesy of The Field Museum of Chicago)
The National Park Service has a slightly embarrassing problem. It manages some of the nation’s most
environmentally valuable land – but it doesn’t have a full account of plant and animal species that live in
the parks. One remedy is the BioBlitz. A BioBlitz is a kind of whirlwind count of all the species in a
specific place. The Park Service has been co-sponsoring BioBlitzes with National Geographic. We sent
Shawn Allee to their latest:
Transcript
The National Park Service has a slightly embarrassing problem. It manages some of the nation’s most
environmentally valuable land – but it doesn’t have a full account of plant and animal species that live in
the parks. One remedy is the BioBlitz. A BioBlitz is a kind of whirlwind count of all the species in a
specific place. The Park Service has been co-sponsoring BioBlitzes with National Geographic. We sent
Shawn Allee to their latest:
The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is spread along Lake Michigan’s southern shoreline.
During this BioBlitz, scientists and volunteers fan out in teams to search the sand dunes, woods, and
grassland around here.
At first, the mood’s high, but then it rains kinda hard.
We’re supposed to be counting species for 24 hours, but at first, we can’t even get out of our cars.
(ring of a phone)
“Hello? Yeah. We’re stuck in traffic, here. We came out here and I thought we were going
out in the wrong direction.”
I hitch a ride with Dr. Patrick Leacock. He’s a mycologist, a kind of mushroom expert.
I’m actually lucky to be on his BioBlitz team, because organizers from National Geographic and the National Park Service want people to count all the species
in the park.
And they mean everything – not just plants and animals that are a cinch to find.
Allee: “Are fungi something you feel that the average person doesn’t think about when it comes
to biodiversity?”
Leacock: “Yeah, there’s people, you tell them you study mushrooms, and they talk about their
athlete’s foot, or they think there’s only six different kinds or something like
that.”
Leacock says, in fact, the Indiana Dunes Lakeshore has at least 600 fungi species. He hopes the
BioBlitz team will add to that list.
Leacock: “Here we are.”
Allee: “I’m hunting mushrooms with three trained mycologists and there are six other volunteers on my team here. One of them is Zachary Benes – he’s just 9 years old. But, I gotta say, Dr. Leacock is pretty lucky
to have Zachary on the team – since he’s found the most mushrooms of anyone on the team.”
Benes: “Is it poisonous?”
Leacock: “Nope. A real mushroom.”
Tang: “Yeah.”
Allee: “Looks like you found another one, too. Where’d you find it?”
Benes: “Over there by the wood.”
Leacock: “This is collybia sub-sulphurea. Do you know what sulfur means?”
Benes: “No.”
Leacock: “It’s a kind of a yellow-orange color. So, this might be a new record for the dunes. So that’s a good one. Was it
just the one?”
Benes: “Yeah. Just the one.”
Leacock: “It’s in good shape.”
Along the trail, I chat with Yaya Tang. She’s one of the other mycologists on the team.
Tang says she’s glad to see BioBlitz volunteers search for elusive species of bats, bugs, and fungi.
“I feel like that’s an issue with biodiversity in general. Where people care about things that are cute or
that they see immediately. Like, there’s insects, too, that don’t get a lot of attention.”
Allee: “Dr. Leacock, we’re pretty much finished here. You got this container of many varieties
of fungi we’ve collected within an hour, would you have been able to get this many
yourself? If you had come out here on your own?”
Leacock: “No. The more people you have searching, that helps a lot. Different people will see
different things, too, I think. So we’ve 14 or 15 things right in my box. We have two that might be new
records for the dunes.”
The BioBlitz at The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore lasts another 20 hours.
A few days later, Dr. Leacock writes me.
He tells me volunteers turned up at least one fungi specimen no one had ever seen in the Dunes park.
It’s a small success – enough that National Geographic, the Park Service, and other groups are
planning more BioBlitzes across the country.
The National Geographic Channel is airing a documentary called “Waking the Baby Mammoth” this Sunday. The discovery of an intact baby mammoth carcass is also the cover story of the May edition of the National Geographic Magazine. Lester Graham has more on that:
Transcript
The National Geographic Channel is airing a documentary called “Waking the Baby Mammoth” this Sunday. The discovery of an intact baby mammoth carcass is also the cover story of the May edition of the National Geographic Magazine. Lester Graham has more on that:
(National Geographic) “This is the story of a nomadic reindeer herder, an extinct baby wooly mammoth, and a team of scientists on a quest to learn her secrets…”
One of the scientists on that quest is Dan Fisher. He’s a paleontologist at the University of Michigan.
This nearly 40,000 year carcass is the most complete baby mammoth ever discovered. The scientists named it Lyuba.
Fisher flew to Russia two years ago to get his first look at the mammoth, an animal that’s been extinct for thousands of years.
“It’s overwhelming really to feel the privilege of getting to be that close to something that does hold so many answers to questions many people have.”
Graham: “This was a fascinating find, but I wonder how much has it added to our knowledge of that period.”
“What it tells us about the period is that it was really a wonderful time to be a mammoth – to be a large mammal – on the open steppes of the high north.”
(National Geographic) “For paleontologists this is a time capsule from the Ice Age. When Lyuba lived, the mammoth steppe was at its peak. It was rich with vegetation that sustained millions of woolly mammoths for hundreds of thousands of years.”
An autopsy of the baby mammoth revealed a lot about where she died – 40,000 years ago a dry grassland. Today it’s a frozen tundra in Siberia.
Dan Fisher says the well-preserved carcass still had traces of what Lyuba ate.
“It’s remarkable that we can take evidence that’s with us today, that’s at our fingertips and generate from that new understanding that can give us perspective on big questions like extinction and climate change, issues that we certainly will have to continue to face as we deal with other endangered species and with the future of our own civilization and planet.”
Fisher says the mammoth remains help add to our understanding of a related animal still around today, the elephant. And they help us better understand our impacts on other endangered species.
And Fisher says learning more about the climate 40,000 years ago can help us understand one other thing.
“We want to, of course, understand the Earth’s climate system better and one of the ways we can test the computer models that help us to project patterns of climate change into the future is to essentially try them out on the past. The past is essentially the training wheels for learning to refine these models. So, information from Lyuba and other mammoths can help us to develop a better understanding of how the Earth’s climate system works.”
(National Geographic) “Dan Fisher and his colleagues will continue to unravel Lyuba’s secrets and to search for reasons why mammals went extinct at the end of the Ice Age.”
The National Geographic program indicates research continues to reveal a lot about Lyuba’s life, and her death, which the scientists begin to piece together in the documentary.
An EPA scientist testing online sensors for water distribution systems (Photo courtesy of the US Office of Management and Budget)
The recession is hitting more than banks and homes these days. State budget cuts and no increases from the federal government are straining research labs and scientists. Adam Allington reports the effects might not be as obvious or immediate as the house foreclosures and the credit crisis, the effect on science jobs and innovation might be just as bad:
Transcript
The recession is hitting more than banks and homes these days. State budget cuts and no increases from the federal government are straining research labs and scientists. Adam Allington reports the effects might not be as obvious or immediate as the house foreclosures and the credit crisis, the effect on science jobs and innovation might be just as bad:
At first glance there’s not much in Dale Dorsett’s lab beyond the usual – you know, grad students in white lab coats, centrifuges, test tubes.
Even though his lab is relatively small, his costs are not.
He takes me toward a locked room in the back of the lab containing a single microscope.
“It’s a laser scanning confocal microscope, which is essential for part of our work. That cost – $350,000 – now you know why we keep it locked.”
Dale is a molecular biologist at St. Louis University. He studies a genetic disorder that affects about one in ten-thousand humans.
Well, that is, when he can.
These days Dorsett says he spends more of his time filling out grant applications than he does on his research.
And he’s not the only one in this pickle. Winning grants for research is getting tough.
“The problem becomes when it gets so competitive that even really deserving projects, or very productive scientists who are doing really good work can’t get funded and that’s the situation we’re in right now.”
Funding from organizations like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation has been slipping for years. It’s a big problem.
It used to be about 30% of grant applications were successful. Now, that success rate has slipped into the teens.
And even those researchers who do get funded say grant preference is often given to projects that produce immediate results – which just isn’t the way most science works.
“I’m conservative because otherwise the lab would go under.”
Kristen Kroll runs a lab studying stem cells at Washington University.
“I would love to be more aggressive about what we go after, which connections we try to make to other models. I think I’ve curbed what we could be doing to a point where what we are doing is sustainable in the current funding climate.”
Kroll says there is such a back log of quality grant applications on file at the NIH and NSF, grant reviewers aren’t even separating wheat from chaff any more they’re separating wheat from wheat. So a lot of good research just doesn’t happen.
And in a world economy the U.S. isn’t the only player in the market for innovation. Other countries could gain an advantage in science.
James McCarter is the Chief Scientist for Divergence, a St. Louis-based biotech company.
“The emergence of India and China, in addition to Japan and Korea and Europe. There are sizeable countries out there now that are serious in these spaces and are making serious investments and have the talent.”
Now,you might be thinking, won’t that big stimulus package send wave of cash into the coffers of government research agencies – problem solved right?
Not so much. While a billion dollar shot in arm might be welcome news for some labs, many advisors worry that the long-term effect might actually exacerbate the funding crisis.
John Russell is the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies at Washington University. He says, a big pile of cash all at once does nothing for ongoing research that can take years to complete.
“One of the concerns about a big bubble is that if it’s just a bubble is that it takes five years to train somebody so it needs to be more spread out I think to be effective.”
Russell warns universities considering a building and spending spree to plan carefully, so current projects don’t reach beyond future budget realities.
The stimulus money is a one-time thing, which concerns some researchers
(Photo courtesy of National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences)
The government’s stimulus package is pouring billions of dollars into research for health, energy, and basic science. Rebecca Williams reports the new money will be helpful, but it’s not clear whether it’ll last:
Transcript
The government’s stimulus package is pouring billions of dollars into research for health, energy, and basic science. Rebecca Williams reports the new money will be helpful, but it’s not clear whether it’ll last:
There’s 10 billion dollars for health care research, 3 billion for other science funding, and that’s just the beginning.
Sam Rankin says it’s a positive change. He chairs the Coalition for National Science Funding.
“This administration and the current Speaker of the House have been very adamant about how important science is and that they want to fund science because they realize it’s an economic driver.”
There’s a catch. The stimulus money is a one-time thing.
But this week, President Barack Obama indicated his budget will mean steady money for health care and energy technology.
“We will invest 15 billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power, advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.”
That makes scientists hopeful, but we won’t know the details of the budget until sometime in April.
(Photo courtesy of National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences)
It’s the best of times and the worst of times to start a science career in the
United States. Researchers today have access to tools and techniques that
have accelerated the pace of discovery to new highs. But as record numbers
of PhD’s graduate, many young scientists are finding a job market that is not
ready to absorb them. Adam Allington traces the supply and demand for
young scientists in a faltering economy:
Transcript
It’s the best of times and the worst of times to start a science career in the
United States. Researchers today have access to tools and techniques that
have accelerated the pace of discovery to new highs. But as record numbers
of PhD’s graduate, many young scientists are finding a job market that is not
ready to absorb them. Adam Allington traces the supply and demand for
young scientists in a faltering economy:
Briana Gross is in her second year of a post-doctoral fellowship at
Washington University, she’s studying genetic adaptations of wild rice.
She’s been applying for college faculty jobs for the past two years. This
year she says she’s gone all-out.
“I’ve applied for I think 36-38 jobs, 3-4 of those positions have been cancelled
completely due to hiring freezes. I’ve had two interviews.”
These days there’s a glut of qualified talent. Between too many doctoral
grads and cutbacks, it’s tough to find a position.
One recent job interview did little to bolster Gross’s confidence for the
future.
“While I was waiting to meet with the dean, one of the financial administrators came buy
and kind of joked about how I couldn’t possibly be interviewing for a position because
there was no money available to hire anyone at the university. So, if that’s happening
this year, next year is going to be really rough.”
So, how’d we end up with too many scientists for the jobs out there? Well,
the answer goes back to an event scientists simply call “the doubling.”
In 1998, President Clinton doubled budget for the National Institutes of
Health, which had the effect of drawing in all kinds of new talent and
investment for science and research.
The problem came later when that funding went flat – precisely at the same
time all those new PhD’s were entering the job market.
“You know, its like you push a bunch of people into the pipeline and then there’s been
chocking off of the U.S. pipeline.”
Kristen Kroll is a professor of developmental biology at Washington
University; she employs two post-docs in her lab.
“What we’ve done is we’ve convinced a whole generation of U.S. post-docs and graduate
students not to go into academic science.”
Young PhD’s see the uphill battle for jobs and scarce grant money and
wonder if its worth the struggle.
And it’s not just post-docs who are feeling the pressure these days—junior
faculty are spending more of their time in the lecture hall and less time in the
lab.
David Duvernell teaches biology at Southern Illinois University at
Edwardsville.
“We try to maintain an active research program at SIUE, at the same time we’re teaching
our 2 or 3 courses a semester.”
Duvernell says SIUE enrollment in freshman-level biology courses has
nearly doubled, but state support has not.
“And where the students are losing out is that then we have less time to spend in research
labs, where we train students individually and give them an experience that will
ultimately make them employable and competitive for graduate and professional
programs.”
University administrators point that historically only about 30% of all post-
docs land a faculty job, with the rest going into the private sector. Except
these the private sector is shedding jobs even faster than the universities.
Jared Strasburg is a 4th-year post-doc from Indiana University. He says if he
hasn’t found a faculty job by August, he’ll have to consider something else.
“Academia is long hours, it’s a lot of work, But, I never felt like if I put in those hours
and worked really hard that I wouldn’t be capable of getting a position and getting
funding necessary to do the work that I was interested in. Needless to say now that
proposition looks a lot more tenuous.”
In recent years some universities have taken steps to curb the number of
graduating PhD’s.
But as the number of unemployed post-graduates rises, some say the whole
system for training scientists needs to be updated to jive with the modern
economy.
As fewer and fewer scientists actually work in universities, some say more
focus needs to be placed on careers outside of academia.
European consumers have been quicker to adopt new technologies, like hybrids and efficient diesel cars. Energy Discovery -Innovation Institutes might change that. (Photo by Michael Pereckas, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Making the shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energy will be a long-term, expensive effort. But, there is the opportunity for jobs, energy independence and reducing the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. This week a report from the Brookings Institution proposes a way to help get us there: Energy Discovery-Innovation Institutes. These institutes would take a big picture view of the change and help researchers and businesses avoid pitfalls and false starts along the way. Lester Graham spoke with a supporter of the idea, Gary Was. He’s the Director the Phoenix Energy Institute at the University of Michigan:
Transcript
Making the shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energy will be a long-term, expensive effort. But, there is the opportunity for jobs, energy independence and reducing the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. This week a report from the Brookings Institution proposes a way to help get us there: Energy Discovery-Innovation Institutes. These institutes would take a big picture view of the change and help researchers and businesses avoid pitfalls and false starts along the way. Lester Graham spoke with a supporter of the idea, Gary Was. He’s the Director the Phoenix Energy Institute at the University of Michigan:
Gary Was: Energy is a very complex topic. It’s a social issue as much as it is a
technological issue. In addition to the technological challenges of coming up with
new energy sources and proving energy efficiency, we also have a lot of social issues
involved as well. The business sector is heavily involved. Economics is a big issue.
Social behavior and social preferences are big factors in our energy use patterns and
our habits.
Lester Graham: Give me an example of that.
Was: Well, one example is plug-in hybrid electrics. There’s a lot of questions to
how these plug-in hybrids are going to function, and whether they’ll be successful. A
lot of that depends upon people’s preferences. The idea of plugging in, when you
can plug in, how long you have to plug in, how complicated or how difficult it is –
can make a big difference. We’ve seen examples of that with diesel. In Europe, half
the cars are diesel powered. We have the same technology here. There are no diesel
powered cars here. It’s a social issue, not a technological issue.
Graham: Steven Chu, the new Energy Secretary, has spent a good deal of his career
in research. What do you expect his reaction will be to your suggestion of tying
together this energy research?
Was: I think it will be quite positive. Dr. Chu has a background both in the
academic setting as well as in the National Laboratories, and I think he appreciates
well the capabilities of each institution. The meat of this whole proposal, and of this
whole concept, is that the National Laboratories alone, or universities alone, or
industry alone – the three principal research institutions in the US – really aren’t
prepared to handle a challenge of this breadth, and depth, and complexity. And that
we need a new paradigm. We need a new way to be able to take basic science,
accelerate it into development, and push it through technology, transfer it to the
private sector. None of these institutions alone can do that really highly successfully.
Graham: What is this going to do require? Is this government money to get this
launched? Is this going to be another scientific layer of bureaucracy when we get
finished? How do you handle this to make sure it’s effective?
Was: One of the problems we have with energy in the country is that, overall,
regardless of these institutes, this institute concept, its terribly underfunded – in terms
of its comparison to the impact on the economy. The energy business is a 1.5 trillion
dollar business in the US. It’s comparable to healthcare. In healthcare, there is
approximately ten times the amount of federal funds going into research than there is
in energy. So in comparison to the impacts on our lives, it’s underfunded by almost
a factor of ten.
Graham: If we’re to invest in these kinds of institutes, and invest in more research
into energy and how we use it, what kind of return might we see on our tax dollars
that we shovel over to you guys?
Was: Well, that’s a very good question. These discovery institutes, these will be
regionally situated, and each one might be on the order of 200 million dollars a year
funding, and so the entire price tag would be maybe 5 billion dollars. So what do
you get for 5 billion dollars? We expect that the transformation will be much more
rapid, it will be with fewer false starts, and left turns, or dead ends, and it will be
much more efficient than we’re able to do right now. Right now, the system is such
that technology advancements tend to sort of diffuse through society in an uncharted
and undirected way. The objective here is to sharpen that diffusion so that we can
pull these technologies out, translate them into useful products much more quickly.
Graham: Gary Was is the director of the Phoenix Energy Institute at the University
of Michigan. Thanks for coming in.
Former US Vice President Al Gore will deliver a special address to the thousands of scientists gathered at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's meeting this week. (Photo courtesy of the US Department of State)
Thousands of scientists from around the world will be hob-knobbing in Chicago, starting today. They’re going to be celebrating the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and how he changed science forever. But they won’t be just celebrating – they’ll be thinking through one of the biggest environmental problems we all face:
Transcript
Thousands of scientists from around the world will be hob-knobbing in Chicago starting today. They’re going to be celebrating the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and how he changed science forever. But they won’t be just celebrating –- they’ll be thinking through one of the biggest environmental problems we all face:
The group’s called the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and they’re putting on their annual meeting – one of the biggest science meet-ups in the world.
This time around there’s plenty of attention on the science of climate change.
The group doesn’t mince words on the issue.
Here’s CEO – Dr. Alan Leschner.
“The last five or more years has been a period of, frankly, denial by the US government about the need to address the problem of global change and its consequences for the world. Now , we think there’s a big opportunity, particularly with the new science appointments made by President Obama to be able to address these kinds of issues in a focused and coherent way.
Scientists there will present work on whether biofuels really help cut carbon emissions, what kind of food crops are best for the climate, and whether we’re losing fish species because global warming.”
And to headline the whole thing – former Vice President Al Gore’s dropping in later this week.
Christie Todd Whitman, who was appointed to head the EPA under George W. Bush, says just because you're leading the EPA, that doesn't mean you get to
choose who staffs it. (Photo courtesy of the EPA)
The big environmental agencies of
the government will soon have new leadership.
Rebecca Williams reports those agency leaders
might not have as much control as you’d think:
Transcript
The big environmental agencies of
the government will soon have new leadership.
Rebecca Williams reports those agency leaders
might not have as much control as you’d think:
President-elect Barack Obama is putting together his Cabinet and appointing
agency leaders.
One former Cabinet-level official says it’s great working with the President,
but you don’t always have as much power as you’d like.
Christine Todd Whitman was appointed by George W. Bush to run the
Environmental Protection Agency.
She says just because you’re leading the EPA, that doesn’t mean you get to
choose who staffs it.
“You have recommendation ability. Obviously the Administration always
has those must-hires. People they want to put in, people they feel they owe
positions to, people they think have good backgrounds.”
She says when she was in charge there was tension between the EPA and the
White House.
Critics of the Bush White House say political appointees have interfered
with scientific findings. They’re hoping that changes with the Obama
Administration.
Some government scientists say right now could be the only time in their careers to make some some key environmental advances. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
