MUSIC: "Our World" theme
This week on "Our World" ... Some thoughts on science in the Obama administration ...the first pictures of planets around distant stars ... and more progress in finding out what lives in all the world's oceans ...
HICKOX: "By using new technologies, we're able to find more species and more diversity, more abundance, and learn more about the distribution of these animal forms around the world."
Those stories, using Google to search ... for influenza, and more. I'm Art Chimes. Welcome to VOA's science and technology magazine, "Our World."
It's more than nine weeks before Barack Obama takes office as America's next president, but his transition team is already working to lay the groundwork for the new administration.
Although the faltering economy and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are clearly top priorities, the new administration's crowded agenda includes a fair number of science-related items, from health care, climate change, and energy to education and space exploration.
You can expect some of President-Elect Obama's programs to be introduced as legislation when the new Congress convenes in January. But there are some things a president can do by himself, through a proclamation called an executive order.
For example, the head of the transition team, John Podesta, indicated this week that they are "looking at" possibly repealing the major restrictions on embryonic stem cell research that were imposed by President Bush through an executive order.
A lot of people who watch science policy are weighing in on what the Obama administration might do in that and other areas of health and science.
Al Teich of the American Association for the Advancement of Science ticked off a number of positions Obama staked out during the campaign.
TEICH: "Doubling the automobile fuel efficiency standards by 2025; an investment of $150 billion over the next 10 years in renewable energy [research and development]. He's advocated reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent. And then he talks also about supporting 'STEM' education - science, technology, engineering, and math education - and a balanced space program."
Speaking at a recent forum on the nation's science agenda under the Obama Administration, Teich said that Obama has also pledged to double research funding over the next decade for the National Institutes of Health and for programs in the physical sciences.
He also noted that the president-elect has promised to upgrade the position of presidential science advisor, and he has come down on the side of scientific integrity. In a letter to the National Academy of Sciences, the president-elect noted that an "increasing number of policy decisions must be guided by what he called "expert scientific evidence" and not "distorted by ideological biases."
As we said, the economy is perhaps the biggest issue right now, but possibly science could benefit from a government economic stimulus.
The Bush administration has focused on aiding banks and other major corporations. But an official at one major research university suggested that the Obama administration might consider an investment in science as its brand of economic stimulus.
Michael Waring of the University of Michigan said the money could be invested through government science agencies.
WARING: "Because they understand that we need to keep building that infrastructure, science infrastructure to not only get the technologies, but also the people. We need to have those people that come out of that. That's why the benefits of research are not just what we learn, but also creating the scientists of the future who will do the work. And that's really important."
In some respects, science is closely tied to national security. The Science and Technology Policy Institute is a government-run research and development center. The institute's Richard Van Atta says the United States is entering a period where, for the first time in a very, very long time, the United States will not be able to rely on its technological superiority as a basis for national security.
VAN ATTA: "And the reason for that, first of all, is the globalization and commercialization of science and technology, its dispersion around the world, and the dispersion of the technological talent and capabilities that have to be addressed."
Where science and technology meet national security and international competitiveness is one area where the Obama campaign fell short, according to public policy professor Christopher Hill, of George Mason University.