Practical Benefits from Fundamental Research. (December 3, 2012)

The US President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) at the end of last month released its report on Transformation and Opportunity: The Future of the U.S. Research Enterprise

John Holdren and Eric Lander, PCAST's Co-chairs introduce the report: ...The Nation once led the world in investments in research and development (R&D) as a share of gross domestic product (GDP), but more recently, the United States has been investing less in R&D than other leading and emerging nations invest. Moreover, U.S. industry has been shifting its investments toward applied R&D, narrowing the support for basic and early-stage applied research, which is crucial to transforming innovation... This report therefore addresses the two objectives of (1) enhancing long-range U.S. investment in basic and early-stage applied research and (2) reducing the barriers to the transformation of the results of that research into new products, industries, and jobs. In this report, PCAST describes a series of specific opportunities for the Federal Government, universities, and industry to strengthen the U.S. research enterprise.

   Among the actions that PCAST recommends, three stand out in scope and importance: (1) that you reaffirm your stated goal that U.S. total R&D expenditures (across the public and private sectors) should achieve and sustain a level of 3 percent of GDP; (2) that actions be taken, some achievable entirely by Executive decision, to increase the stability and predictability of Federal research funding; and (3) that Congress not only make the R&D tax credit permanent, but increase it to at least 17 percent, as you have already advocated.

Below is the introductory apologia for public support for fundamental research by the federal government of United States, and the report as a whole allows an interesting comparison with that of the recently released Australian Government's 2012 National Research Investment Plan.

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Practical results that are built on Federally supported fundamental research are virtually everywhere in use. Fundamental break-throughs can be ascribed to the support of many Federal agencies, including National Science Foundation (NSF),^a Department of Energy (DOE),^b National Institutes of Health (NIH),^c National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA),^d U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA),^e and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).^f While the following examples only scratch the surface, it is worth contemplating how different the world would be without each of these practical benefits of fundamental research. What would today’s world be like without the Internet, modern drugs, computers, wireless telecommunication, passenger jet aircraft, weather satellites, GPS, digital cameras, or the knowledge of the human genome? The question is fanciful because of the Nation’s consistent support of fundamental research over the last 60 years. Less fanciful, and subject to legislative and executive decisions, is the question, “What about the next 60 years?”

• The Internet world has grown out of fundamental research: The basic protocols of the Internet were developed by DARPA; the first web server was written for use by international collaborations of high-energy physicists; Google’s basic search algorithm came from co-founder Larry Page’s Stanford Ph.D. thesis.

• All modern medical imaging technologies rely on the mathematics of inverse problems. Additionally, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) uses properties of the atomic nucleus originally studied to understand quantum mechanics, an approach first exploited by radio astronomers, and superconducting magnets that are commercial versions of magnets originally built for particle physics accelerators.

• Weather satellites, ground-based Doppler radar, and computer modeling on supercomputers produce vastly more accurate weather forecasts than were possible a generation or two ago, benefitting public safety and agriculture and providing daily convenience.

• The Human Genome Project, whose benefits include new cancer therapies, personalized medicine, and DNA forensic identification, began as a fundamental research partnership between DOE and NIH.

• The wings of all airplanes designed since World War II owe their effectiveness to research by National Advisory Committee for Aero-nautics (the predecessor agency to NASA) and, more recently, to developments in computational fluid dynamics at U.S. National Laboratories.

• The development of database technologies that today underlie virtually all commerce depended on many exchanges between re-searchers in academia (notably the University of California, Berkeley, and the University Wisconsin) and industry (notably IBM and later Oracle).

• The laser and its predecessor the maser (the technology behind GPS) were invented in a fertile combination of cooperation and competition among universities (especially Columbia and Stanford) and corporate laboratories (Bell and Hughes).

• Nanotechnology research, on the heels of coordinated Federal investment, is leading to advances in areas such as new drug delivery systems, more resilient materials and fabrics, safer and more effective industrial catalysts, faster computer chips, and sustainable development in water and energy resources.

• Cortisone and other medical steroids became affordable in the 1950s only after USDA and NIH researchers discovered a chemical precursor in a wild Mexican yam. Subsequent research in the private sector led to the development of oral contraceptives and many other drugs.

• Lithium-ion batteries, ubiquitous in cellphones and computers, depend on basic discoveries at State University of New York (SUNY) Binghamton in the 1970s, Bell Labs in the 1980s, and MIT in the 2000s. Technology for the larger lithium batteries used in hybrid and electric cars was developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

• Charge-coupled devices (CCDs) that record the images in all of today’s digital cameras and cell phones were a product of fundamental research at Bell Labs in the 1960s.

• Bar codes, and more recently Quick Response (QR) codes recognizable by cell-phone cameras, grew out of basic research in computer vision and the pure mathematics of error-correcting codes.

• Basic research performed using synchrotron light sources at U.S. National Laboratories has resulted in at least three Nobel prizes for work in biomedical research.

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References:

c "NIH Technologies in the Development of Healthcare Products" at /www.ott.nih.gov/pdfs/techdev.pdf.