A recent “sting operation” highlights important questions about the peer review system and how to publish, disseminate, and debate scientific findings.
Published October 03, 2013
By Diana Friedman
Science writer John Bohannon recently went undercover…for science! As Ocorrafoo Cobange, a made-up biologist at the also fictitious Wassee Institute of Medicine in Asmara, Bohannon wrote a terrible paper about the anti-cancer virtues of a molecule he claimed to have extracted from lichen.
“Any reviewer with more than a high-school knowledge of chemistry and the ability to understand a basic data plot should have spotted the paper’s short-comings immediately. Its experiments are so hopelessly flawed that the results are meaningless,” explains Bohannon in this Science article. Slightly differing versions of the “bait” paper were sent to 304 open access (OA) journals. Just over half, 157, accepted the paper, pointing out some serious flaws in the peer review system.
Balancing Quality, Economics, and Ethics
Balancing quality control with economics—and ethics—isn’t straightforward, nor is this a problem uniquely related to OA journals. In this Guardian article, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study Fellow Curt Rice argues that the practice of charging author fees is at the root of the issue.
“This is a model that invites corruption. Set up a journal, accept some articles, charge a high fee, and publish the article on your website. This corruption is fed, of course, by the fact that researchers feel incredible pressure to publish more and more. It’s also fed by a system that uses quantity as a proxy for quality. But it is a mistake to equate open access and author payment. There are traditional journals that require some payment, too, especially in connection with high typesetting costs,” he says.
In a blog post on physicsfocus.com, “Are flaws in peer review someone else’s problem?” nanoscientist Philip Moriarty invokes the genius of Douglas Adams to call attention to a related kink in the self-correcting mechanisms of scientific research: What happens when something gets through the process that turns out to have been wrong?
The idea is that it will be caught and rectified by subsequent experiments that yield different results, but there are some “buts.” Moriarty, via his colleague Mathias Brust, informally estimates that about 80% of scientists find potential flaws in papers that don’t immediately affect their work an insufficient reason to engage in disputes (the “Someone Else’s Problem” invisibility field, see above Douglas Adams link).
A Culture of Hoped-to-be-Reciprocated Politeness
Another 10% eschew “unfriendliness” between scientists. “After all, you never know who referees your next paper.” Such reluctance to rock the proverbial boat could leave the next researcher referring to shaky (or worse) preceding work, which may become canonical simply because it was published in a prestigious journal and never challenged due to an entrenched culture of hoped-to-be-reciprocated politeness.
Furthermore, it can be logistically onerous and disincentivizing to replicate an experiment with which you take issue. Neuropsychology professor Dorothy Bishop illustrates, “The expectation is that anyone who has doubts, such as me, should be responsible for checking the veracity of the findings…Indeed, I could try to get a research grant to do a further study. However…it might take a year or so to do, and would distract me from my other research. Given that I have reservations about the likelihood of a positive result [and, by extension, being able to publish], this is not an attractive option.”
One fairly recent alternative is post-publication peer review—basically, non-anonymously discussing (or criticizing) a published paper on a blog. It’s a controversial venue for debate, partly because it’s so counter to the norm of deferring to journals as the medium and safeguard of scientific record. It also rubs some people the wrong way. If someone has to go through a burdensome process to publish the fruits of his or her labor, why should someone else be able to publish criticism immediately and with no vetting or regulation?
Honest Debate vs. Malicious Vitriol
But Dr. Bishop asserts that online forums allow “for new research to be rapidly discussed and debated in a way that would be quite impossible via traditional journal publishing.” This can serve to more efficiently catch and cull errors. “In addition,” Bishop adds, “it brings the debate to the attention of a much wider readership.”
There’s a fine line on the internet, however, between debate and vitriol (to be clear, Dr. Bishop wasn’t engaged in the latter), and crossing it can also undermine good science, as well as science education. A recent study found that a rude tone in online comments responding to an article adversely affects how readers feel about the scientific content of the article, even when the readers are familiar with the subject and when the science is sound. This issue recently inspired Popular Science to do away with its comments section. Explaining the decision, PopSci online content director Suzanne LaBarre writes,
“If you carry out those results to their logical end—commenters shape public opinion; public opinion shapes public policy; public policy shapes how and whether and what research gets funded–you start to see why we feel compelled to hit the “off” switch. A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics…The cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.”
Awareness is the First Step
Presumably, post-publication peer review would maintain a professional tone. But might seeing scientists questioning each other’s conclusions, even politely, also undermine public trust in science? It’s important to teach the process of science (as opposed to just facts). Marie-Claire Shanahan, Research Chair in Science Education and Public Engagement at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, writes,
“The effects of ‘right answer’ science teaching [are] clear in the way students responded to disagreements among researchers…They wanted to know what the truth really was, and they became suspicious of the various scientists [with conflicting conclusions] for not knowing how to study the issue properly or for going in with biased preconceptions…Students need much more exposure to real inconclusive and controversial science.”
There isn’t one clear solution that addresses all of these issues, but increasing awareness is an important step. Encouraging replication studies (also see this article by Ed Yong) and reconsidering the “publish or perish” culture of academia are also important.
The subjects of quality control, questionable publication patterns, and science’s ability to be self-correcting overall are discussed in this podcast, featuring excerpted coverage of our event, Envy: The Cutthroat Side of Science.
Christiana Peppard, PhD, assistant professor of theology, science, and ethics at Fordham University, discusses the relation between science and ethics.
According to a study performed by Yale law professor Dan Kahan et al, just thinking about politics messes with one’s ability to be objective, even when it comes to something as seemingly apolitical as numeracy. Participants were asked to analyze two identical fake data sets, which they were told represented results from two studies. The subject of one was ideologically neutral (effectiveness of skin creams) and the other was more charged (concerned with gun control laws). People who performed the analysis of the neutral data correctly were more likely to err when it came to the more culturally controversial data set.
In a nearly diametric study, UC Santa Barbara psychology professors Jim Blascovich and Christine Ma-Kellams find, “Thinking about science leads individuals to endorse more stringent moral norms and exhibit more morally normative behavior.” The authors contend this may be due to “a lay image or notion of ‘science’ that is associated with concepts of rationality, impartiality, fairness, technological progress, and ultimately, the idea that we are to use these rational tools for the mutual benefit of all people in society.”
Science and Ethics: Profoundly Related
This “might seem encouraging, particularly to fans of science. But one possible cost of assigning moral weight to science is the degree to which it distorts the way we respond to research conclusions,” points out psychology professor Dr. Piercarlo Valdesolo in this Scientific American piece. “When faced with a finding that contradicts a cherished belief (e.g. a new study suggesting that humans have, or have not, contributed to global warming), we are more likely to question the integrity of the practitioner. If science is fundamentally moral, then how could it have arrived at such an offensive conclusion? Blame the messenger.”
Another paper, regarding the ethics of data stewardship and sharing, further points out that the results and processes of science (in this case, data collection, use, and dissemination) have important social implications.
The juxtaposition of these conclusions powerfully illustrates the idea that science and ethics are profoundly related—in ways that warrant consideration by scientists and non-scientists alike.
The Ethical Intersection of Science and the Humanities
Regarding the ethical intersection of science and the humanities, ethicist and biologist Dr. Christiana Peppard says, “Pitting the humanities against science is a missed educational opportunity. There’s not a binary between total relativism on one hand and scientific realism and objectivity on the other hand.”
For science deniers, the issue of uncertainty in science is a real problem, which is why they make way too much of the concept: “If science is fallible, then all sources of authority are equally valid.” But, of course, uncertainty isn’t a problem. More information may be needed. Maybe our experiment was inappropriate. Maybe we need better methodology or equipment. But this doesn’t mean the process isn’t sound. On the other hand, for people who tend to be more triumphalistic, there tends to be a more totalizing approach, a sense of, “Hey we know so much and we have all this data! Now we can do anything!”
Having all this information is totally great and worthy of celebration, but it’s not a stopping point. Data isn’t actually useful without a framework for interpretation, and these interpretive frameworks warrant at least as much critical consideration as the data and methods of data collection. It’s really imperative in many areas of life now to be able to evaluate data and claims about what it means. Humanities critical thinking skills help to parse out what’s reasonable conjecture and what’s a stretch.”
What can science tell us about ethics? Piercarlo Valdesolo, PhD, Director of the Moral Emotions and Trust Lab at Claremont McKenna College, scientifically investigates our moral decision-making processes.
Scientists must often consider the importance of ethical and interpretive frameworks for thinking about data and the results and cultural contexts of scientific inquiry.Dr. Piercarlo Valdesolo, Director of the Moral Emotions and Trust Lab at Claremont McKenna College, studies the relation from the other direction. He asks what science can tell us about people’s moral decision-making processes.
“There are all these emotional states—compassion, awe, jealousy—that philosophers and scholars of religion have been interested in for a long time and have speculated about when it comes to moral judgments. I’m trying to look at these states and their effects on moral decisions more empirically in the lab,” explains Dr. Valdesolo.
In this Q&A, Dr. Valdesolo discusses the value and challenges of investigating morality through a scientific lens.
Why use science to ask these questions?
I think the value of looking at these questions through a scientific lens is to provide philosophers and people whose job it is to think about ethics with more fodder for philosophizing. Though, I don’t see it as my role to do that part. I agree with people who are wary of scientists who make normative claims. There’s value in what we’re doing because it can inform the perspectives of people who are in that business.
What are the challenges?
There are negative feelings that need to be evoked in the lab in order to study, say, aggression. The biggest challenge is to try to create these phenomena as they would exist in the real world, but to do so in a way that still respects participants.
Could understanding patterns or emotional influences over moral choices have a dark side? Could people be manipulated more effectively, for example?
That’s the case with so much of social psychology. If you’re someone who studies persuasion or attitude change, that information can be used for good or bad. You could try to get people to change their attitudes about charity in a positive way. Conversely, the information could be used by marketers to try to get you to buy a product that might not be good for your health, for example. The application of the knowledge of psychological principles can go either way, good or bad, and that’s true across all social science findings, I think.
What do you think is the value of studying moral psychology?
What I try to emphasize in my classes, when I teach social psychology, is that the point of trying to get at the processes by which people make these decisions is to gain a third party perspective on your own choices. It helps you to try to remove yourself from a given situation, to really understand—in as objective a way as you can—why you’re doing what you’re doing. Are your behaviors and decisions getting you towards your goals, whatever those goals may be? I think that’s the real value of learning about social psychology.
For more on this topic, including some of the methodologies by which Dr. Valdesolo studies moral decisions, check out the complete interview in the podcast, The Science of Moral Decisions.
There’s been a lot written lately debating scientism. There are various definitions of this concept but, basically, some fear that “Science” is appropriating questions that are supposed to be under the purview of “The Humanities,” while others contend that science is the only reasonable way to determine human values. While debate is a great way to vet and hone ideas, this particular one might be more constructively framed. There probably are individual exceptions to this, but I don’t think there’s really a conflict between scientists and humanists (I like to think you can be both). A more useful question is how can non-scientists better understand science and scientific perspectives, and how can scientists better engage the public.
“We both believe in the attainability of truth and progress, and we agree that science is our most powerful means of understanding and improving our world. By all means engage with science,’ says science writer John Horgan in this Scientific American blog. “But engage with it critically, because science…needs tough, informed criticism.” Science andthe humanities offer valuable frameworks for such critical thinking, and both perspectives are important.
The scientific method can be employed in the consideration of any type of question as a powerful tool for evidence-based decision-making, but it should be kept in mind that scientists are human. Denying the value of science doesn’t get anyone anywhere. Neither is it constructive for scientists to deny our own fallibility or involvement in cultural contexts.
Increasing Public Engagement and Trust in Science
There are a lot of ways to make mistakes. If an experiment turns out a false result, the best way to catch and correct it is to have more people paying attention, thinking critically, and employing the scientific method in replication studies and new experiments. Fostering these skills and an appreciation for experimentation and the challenges involved in non-scientists as well as scientists is vital for increased public engagement as well as trust in science. In this Boundary Vision blog, Marie-Claire Shanahan writes,
“The effects of ‘right answer’ science teaching [are] clear in the way students responded to disagreements among researchers…They wanted to know what the truth really was, and they became suspicious of the various scientists [with conflicting conclusions] for not knowing how to study the issue properly or for going in with biased preconceptions…Students need much more exposure to real inconclusive and controversial science.”
In this podcast, biology professor and author Dr. Stuart Firestein makes a similar point:
“How do you engage more people in the scientific project in a way they can engage in it? It begins with education and the way we teach science. We teach facts instead of teaching questions. Now we present it as a huge encyclopedic collection of facts that nobody could ever hope to master. You have to give people a taste for questions and have them understand that science is about puzzles and questions and a kind of uncertainty that’s very appealing the way that a sporting event should be…We’re all scientists in a way. We’re all out in the world trying to figure things out. We make predictions and we test them…I think being a scientist is being a human being.”
Scientific images occupy an interesting place at the intersection of art and science. Can artistic principles be used to more effectively communicate science to the public?
Published August 19, 2013
By Maryam Zaringhalam, Ivan Oransky, and Nina Samuel
“After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are always artists as well.” -Einstein
Scientific images are often beautiful as well as informative. Is science artistic? Are images evidence? Experts weigh in from scientific and artistic perspectives. For more on the intersection between art and science, check out this podcast.
Maryam Zaringhalam is a genetics and molecular biology PhD candidate at Rockefeller University and the author of the blog ArtLab.
I think scientists and artists have similar ways of thinking about the world. Science is based on observation and questions, and a lot of art is as well. Some of the most interesting questions come from artists. I happen to use a pipette instead of a paintbrush, but it’s all about trying to understand.
There’s a lot of emphasis in science on the image. The way I was taught to read scientific papers is figure by figure. Seeing is believing, at the end of the day. The power of images is that it’s right in front of you. Art is this really universal means of concept delivery. An image can act as a catalyst to create awareness around an issue or an area of research, and now you can send images out into the world immediately and reach huge numbers of people. It’s an amazing tool for science communication. It would be lovely if more scientists began to communicate their work to the public through images.
One of the Biggest Challenges of Teaching Science
People think of science as way up in an ivory tower because some of the concepts we deal with can seem really abstract, but you can show an image and all of a sudden it becomes more real. One of the biggest challenges of teaching science is that it’s hard to convince people that it’s more than what you learn in the classroom, where ideas can seem boring or intangible. The images can be so inspiring. You can see something and realize, “Wow! This is inside me—or all around me, or way, way off in the distant universe. It’s real and means something!” And sometimes, it’s crazy beautiful.
It’s also really interesting to think about the ethics of scientific images. A huge issue is knowing how to balance what you can manipulate. It’s so easy to edit images, and sometimes you might want to tweak something to make it clearer or more compelling. But it’s so important to make sure you’re not crossing any lines into falsification.
Ivan Oransky, MD, is the vice president and global editorial director of MedPage Today, a clinical assistant professor of medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, and co-founder and writer for the blog Retraction Watch.
Image manipulation is one of the most common reasons for retraction that we see on Retraction Watch. Sometimes, duplicated images are just unintentional or sloppy. When we see investigations uncovering images in papers from unrelated experiments that just happen to prove the main points of a paper, however, it’s hard to imagine the authors having done that for any reason other than making their results look better than they are. Fortunately for science—and unfortunately for fraudsters—the same tools that allow image manipulation allow its detection.
Nina Samuel, PhD, is a historian of science and art. She is the curator of the exhibits The Islands of Benoît Mandelbrot: Fractals, Chaos, and the Materiality of Thinking and My Brain Is in My Inkstand: Drawing as Thinking and Process, opening in November at the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
There is a famous quote of British mathematician G.H. Hardy who stated in his essay, A Mathematician’s Apology, “Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.” I dare to argue that most scientists have experienced a similar feeling—that a “beautiful” (or an especially simple and at the same time aesthetically compelling) theorem or equation seems to be more likely to be true (or to embody a “higher truth”) than an overly complicated or, for example, asymmetric or “ugly” one.
The aesthetic feeling that guides these choices or the design of scientific theories is no different from the aesthetic feeling that artists use to compose their works. This doesn’t mean that the result—an artwork or a scientific theory—should be confused or understood as the same. But I would not say that the feeling of beauty itself does differ in scientific or non-scientific contexts.
The Methods of Art and Science
I would say that images can make scientific ideas or theories emerge. Art and science are not the same, but the methods of art and science come very close in the moment of creation. One could maybe ask: How could science have emerged without image making at all? The observation of nature can be understood as one of the most important foundations of science. The attempt to depict, to describe, to record, to classify and to understand the observed through the production of pictorial representations is one of the most elementary operations of science.
For example, the analysis of shapes and forms, the classification of morphologies, is the most important method of sciences like biology or anatomy. Representations make it possible that things in nature can migrate to conceptual realms, that they can be written about, that they can be pointed at, and, most importantly, that they can start to exist as “scientific things.” And this doesn’t stop at the visible world surrounding us. Making the invisible visible is another basic operation in science (think for example of the micro- and the telescope, or of x-rays).
Producing evidence is one of the basic features of images in general. This becomes clear if one considers the etymology of the Latin term evidentia, which can be translated as “obviousness/vividness,” or the quality of being manifest. Based on that root, what becomes “evident” in the first place is that which comes before the eyes—what we see. The term “eye witnessing” is very telling in this sense. Also, for example, think of the history of photography. Photographs have been used as legal evidence since their invention.
A Complex Relationship
However, the relation between evidence and a proof in science is more complex. Often scientists that I met told me that the “feeling of evidence” was triggered through an image, but that the proof itself had to be done in an analytic way or based on equations. This is especially true for mathematics, where images are mostly not regarded as proofs, but they can surely lead to a proof.
With the digital revolution, the question of the image—in science but also in society—has become more urgent than ever. Our world is not only full of images, but also our decisions are based on them, e.g. whom we should admire, how we should behave, what we should desire to possess, and even whom we should start a war with—all these things are based on images used as evidences and strategies to make us believe. This is obviously dangerous if images are not understood in the right way, that is, as representations of reality and never as the reality itself.
The main challenge, I would say, isn’t the fact that we can use Photoshop or other digital tools to manipulate images (the history of the ‘manipulation’ of images is as long as the history of images themselves), but it is their overpowering presence everywhere, and their free migration and floatation. It is the fact that they can easily become economic or political weapons. Images can get out of control. Therefore, what we need today is an education that helps us to never lose the distance in front of the images. This distance will make us understand that the representation and the represented are never the same. We need an education of the eye that fosters critical thinking.
Though it has been more than seven decades in the making, researchers were finally able to “catch the viscous pitch, the unicorn of the scientific world, in the act of dropping.”
Last Thursday, something happened that has never happened before. After almost 70 thwarted years, a simple drip proved that basic scientific curiosity can still yield novel delights, as well as the viscosity of pitch. And, the moment was observed!
Pitch, made from wood, coal, or petroleum, is a viscoelastic polymer. Though apparently solid at room temperature—so much so that it can shatter—it’s actually flowing. Very, very slowly. Viscosity describes a fluid’s resistance to flow and is determined by the interactions of particles within a system. In liquids, viscosity usually decreases as temperature rises (so the liquid flows more quickly) because the speed of the constituent molecules increases, cutting down the amount of contact between molecules and resultant friction. In gases, this is reversed. At higher temperatures, gas molecules collide more frequently. For a more thorough explanation of the physics involved, click here. Superfluids, which have zero viscosity, seem to defy gravity.
A Catalyst for Curiosity
Pitch is well at the other end of the spectrum, with a viscosity 230 billion times that of water. If you heat it, put it into a funnel, and let it cool, it will drip at a rate of about once a decade. This very experiment was set up at the University of Queensland in 1927 and at Trinity College Dublin in 1944. Since then, nobody had managed to observe a single drop.
A Radiolab podcast with Professor John Mainstone, long-time custodian of the Queensland experiment, details the tragicomic series of missed drip sightings. At last, on July 18, 2013, scientists at Trinity College—and anyone felicitously watching the webcam at the right moment—participated in a human first and watched the pitch drop!
It’s not every day one gets to do something that’s never happened before. “It summed up why I like being a scientist,” says Trinity College School of Physics Professor Shane Bergin. “It acts as a catalyst for curiosity, and that’s, for me, what the driving force of science is.”
The Queensland pitch is looking ripe for the dripping as well. Test your luck catching the drop fall live here. “You, yourself,” writes Megan Garber for The Atlantic, “can do what nobody had done before: catch the viscous pitch, the unicorn of the scientific world, in the act of dropping.”
The NY tri-state area pulses with scientific progress and energy, changing the world far beyond its borders.
Published June 1, 2013
By Steven Barboza
The nursery rhyme about London Bridge falling down gives a fair assessment of the fate of bridges. Patch them up with wood and clay, and the wood and clay will wash away. Iron and steel would fare better, but eventually these bridges will bend and bow. But what about plastic?
Structural plastic—the stuff of recycled milk cartons, detergent bottles, and car bumpers—is actually a bridge-builder’s dream. It can be molded into T-beams then bolted into I-beams that are eight times stronger than steel at one-eighth the density. It can be drilled, screwed, sawed, pinned, and even sprayed with a fire-retardant coating.
Theoretically, a plastic George Washington Bridge is possible. “There’s no technical limit to how big a beam we can make out of plastic. All you need is bigger beams to make bigger bridges,” says Tom Nosker, professor of materials science and engineering, who developed structural plastic at Rutgers University’s Advanced Polymer Center in NJ.
A bridge made of recycled plastic lumber is built in Scotland.
The Material Advantages of Plastic
The engineering lesson is elementary. Even sturdy wooden or cement and steel bridges erode given enough time, traffic, and exposure to wind and weather. Plastic beams will not buckle; they’re impervious to rot; and they’re eco-friendly, providing a novel use for mountains of discarded milk containers.
But there’s a broader lesson here: the entire New York tri-state region is a kind of science and technology Grand Central, where researchers bustle to push back the boundaries of possibility. Structural plastic is only one of the region’s thousands of innovations bound to affect our lives in extraordinary ways in the not-so-distant future.
An incredible array of area research universities are bristling with a spirit of invention that extends New York’s science ecosystem into a much larger footprint—creating an entire region of unparalleled scientific excitement.
A New Frontier in Manufacturing
Connecticut is brewing a latter-day industrial revolution of its own, as it paves the way for digital manufacturing. The University of Connecticut (UConn) has built a sort of factory of the future—one of the most advanced additive manufacturing centers in the nation. Additive manufacturing is a breakthrough method of making things—from flight-proven rocket engines to individually tailored hearing aids. Instead of using lathes, drills, molding machines, and stamping presses, it uses software and digital 3D printers that build items layer by layer. There’s no waste, molds, or assembly of intricate parts
The new Pratt & Whitney Additive Manufacturing Innovation Center, a partnership of UConn and Pratt & Whitney, is the Northeast’s first such facility to work with metals. Techniques developed here might one day empower small and medium-sized firms and entrepreneurs to launch novel, incredibly complex products quickly, profitably, and more flexibly than ever, with minimal manual labor.
A 3D printer in UConn’s Pratt & Whitney Additive Manufacturing Innovation Center.
Imagine a new generation of intricate, lightweight, and durable custom products—printed in cost-efficient home factories.
At UConn’s center, which houses 3D manufacturing equipment and rapid prototyping technologies, two high-powered electron beam melting machines and lasers repeatedly melt layer upon layer of powdered material, such as titanium, into a single solid piece. The items are built to the exact specifications dictated by a 3D computer assisted design (CAD) model. Engineers are using the center to develop advanced fabrication techniques for production parts in aerospace, biomedical science, and other industries.
“The new center will allow us to push into new frontiers of manufacturing and materials science while training a new generation of engineers in some of the world’s most sophisticated manufacturing technology,” says UConn President Susan Herbst.
Bringing Cybernetics to Life
Scientists at Princeton University are also using 3D printing tools, not to crank out jet engines, but to print a fully functional organ—a bionic ear so sensitive it can tune into frequencies far beyond the limits of human hearing.
The bionic ear is a bold mixture of electronics and tissue. Researchers, led by Michael McAlpine, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, used an ordinary 3D printer purchased off the Internet to combine a matrix of hydrogel and bovine cells with silver nanoparticles. Using CAD software, the printer deposits layer upon layer of gel, silver, and cells, building the ear out of an array of thin slices. The nanoparticles form a working antenna, while the cells multiply and mature into cartilage.
The finished product is soft and squishy and looks remarkably like the real thing, except there’s a coil antenna in the center. Two wires wind around its electrical “cochlea,” where sound is sensed. The wires can be connected to electrodes.
The ear is a step toward a device that someday could be used to restore a person’s hearing, or improve it by connecting electrical signals to a human’s nerve endings, as is customary with cochlear implants. But additional research and testing is being done. “The design and implementation of bionic organs and devices that enhance human capabilities, known as cybernetics, has been an area of increasing scientific interest,” the researchers wrote in an article. “This field has the potential to generate customized replacement parts for the human body, or even create organs containing capabilities beyond what human biology ordinarily provides.”
Revolutionizing Computing Architecture
As Princeton scientists chart a new course in the brave new world of cybernetics, Yale University scientists are inventing a new cyber age. Three Yale physicists are laying the foundation for the warp-speed computers of the future—machines that will harness the power of atoms and molecules to store, process, and transfer colossal amounts of data at almost unimaginable speeds, and do it in spaces so miniscule they cannot be seen by the naked eye.
Two applied physics professors—Robert Schoelkopf and Michel Devoret—are building a quantum computer, one “artificial atom” at a time. The scientists are putting “microwave quantum optics” on a chip by squeezing microwave photons, or tiny packets of light energy, into ultra small cavities on a chip. They’re also squeezing in electrical circuit elements, which act as artificial atoms that can be used as quantum bits, units that process and store quantum information.
These small “atoms” interact with the packets of light energy from the microwaves at extremely high speeds. The small cavity acts as a quantum bus of sorts, transmitting quantum information to and from the atoms. The result: a radical new architecture that may usher in the end of computing as we know it. Scientists hope to one day use this approach to create a huge integrated circuit of quantum bits, resulting in a quantum computer.
Old Fuel, New Production Method
Lehigh University researchers are looking to forge a new path in fuel production—creating a solution to the world’s unsustainable levels of energy consumption. They’re turning to the simple but powerful process most kids learn about in grade school, photosynthesis, to harness sunlight and synthesize liquid fuel from dissolved carbon dioxide.
While the process is new and extremely efficient, the fuel has been around for decades: it’s methanol, which is a safe fuel that burns cleaner than gas and can reduce hydrocarbon emissions by as much as 80%. In fact, methanol actually consumes CO2.
Bryan Berger, assistant professor, chemical engineering; Steven McIntosh, associate professor, chemical engineering; and graduate student / research assistant Zhou Yang collaborate in the lab. Photo by Christa Neu/Lehigh University Communications + Public Affairs
Methanol is mainly produced using natural gas or coal. Nobody knew it was possible to photosynthesize it into existence—until now. In the 1990s, methanol was marketed as an alternative fuel for vehicles. It was never fully adopted because there was no economic incentive for continuing methanol production as petroleum fuel prices fell in the ‘90s.
Why turn to methanol again? Because it has a higher-octane level than gasoline, there are no technical hurdles for vehicle design and fuel distribution, and a methanol-based fuel economy would dramatically reduce energy dependence on dwindling fossil fuel sources.
Converting Sunlight into Methanol
By using a cross-disciplinary effort in catalysis, materials chemistry, and cellular engineering, Lehigh scientists have found a way to directly convert sunlight into methanol, bypassing the need to grow and process a plant.
The team replaced slow, natural photosynthesis with rapid, efficient, and selective artificial photosynthesis, using semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) as photocatalysts. QDs are nanocrystals that once promised to revolutionize display technologies, solar power, and biological imaging. A key barrier has been price; they cost up to $10,000 per gram, thus their use has been limited to special applications.
The Lehigh team discovered a novel way to produce QDs: by using an engineered bacterial strain to initiate and control their growth—essentially a batch fermentation process. “We are thus able to achieve a cost of less than $38 per gram for quantum dots,” says Bryan Berger, professor of chemical engineering and co-principal investigator.
The Lehigh team has projected production costs for their methanol to be 65% cheaper than current costs for producing biodiesel fuel. If they can develop a production method that can be scaled-up and is commercially feasible, photocatalytic methanol production could have a significant long-term impact on society and the economy.
“A low-cost, green fuel produced in large quantities from carbon dioxide, sunlight, and water could potentially meet our transportation needs. It would reduce oil imports without depleting our natural resources,” says Berger.
New Diagnostic Tools Target Tumors
The University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) technically sits outside the New York tri-state area and yet its extraordinary commitment to R&D (as exemplified by an annual budget of more than $800 million) and a legacy of discovery traced to Benjamin Franklin, the Founding Father with a knack for creating something out of nothing, makes it an important contributor to the region’s science ecosystem.
While UPenn created the first general-purpose electronic computer in the early 1940s, a 27-ton, 680-square-foot model that calculated ballistic trajectories during World War II, current UPenn scientists are leading explorers in the world of the infinitesimal. By developing nanotechnology as an effective diagnostic tool, researchers are hoping to revolutionize the prevention and treatment of disease.
While magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can produce topographical maps of tissue, scan clarity isn’t always sufficient for diagnosis. To mitigate patients’ health risks and to improve imaging, UPenn researchers are coating an iron-based contrast agent so it interacts with the acidic microenvironments of tumors, making tumors stand out clearly from healthy tissue. The approach is both safer and less costly than other methods.
The coating of glycol chitosan—a sugar-based polymer that reacts to acids—allows nanoparticles to remain neutral when near healthy tissue but to become ionized in low pH. In the vicinity of acidic tumors, a change in charge causes the nanoparticles to be attracted to and retained by the tumors.
Delivering Drugs to Tumor Sites
“Having a tool like ours would allow clinicians to better differentiate the benign and malignant tumors, especially since there has been shown to be a correlation between malignancy and pH,” says Andrew Tsourkas, associate professor of bioengineering. The coated nanoparticles are not limited to imaging, he added. “They can also be used to deliver drugs to tumor sites.”
Developing Infection-Resistant Medical Implants Scientists at Stevens Institute of Technology are developing next generation, bacteria-resistant biomaterials that could become an implant staple for millions of patients. And as the population ages, the market for orthopedic implants will experience exponential growth; by 2017, the global market will reach $46 billion. But 1% of hip implants, 4% of knee implants, and 15% of implants associated with orthopedic trauma fail—due to infection.
“Usually the only way to resolve a biomaterials-associated infection is to remove the device, treat the infected tissue, and later implant a second device,” says Matthew Libera, professor of materials science at Stevens. “Not only does this bring really significant cost to the healthcare system; it forces the patient to undergo a lengthy and challenging surgical and rehabilitation process. We would like to eliminate that risk.”
Stevens faculty from numerous disciplines, including materials science, chemical biology, and biomedical engineering, developed technology that actually repels bacteria and promotes the growth of healthy bone cells on uncemented implants. The surface of the implants is treated with hydrogel because most bacteria, particularly the staphylococci common to implant infection, do not adhere to most hydrogels. As a result, patients won’t have to take antibiotics orally; the medicine will go to work at the surface of the implant.
A Local Home for the World’s Biosamples
Many of the biospecimens used in research projects across the region, and around the world, are provided by Rutgers University, a national leader in genetics. RUCDR Infinite Biologics, founded in 1998 as the Rutgers University Cell and DNA Repository, is the world’s largest university-based biorepository. It provides DNA, RNA, and cell lines with clinical data to research laboratories worldwide, which use them to study a host of diseases and disorders.
RUCDR contains more than 12 million biosamples, logs 100 million database entries per year, operates one of the nation’s largest stem cell programs, and facilitates a slew of research initiatives.
“This sort of advanced-technology, automated facility was sorely needed on the national level, and we anticipate a continual increase in use by Rutgers faculty,” says RUCDR CEO Jay A. Tischfield, director of the Human Genetics Institute of New Jersey and professor of genetics.
Last year, the repository received a $10 million grant from the National Institute on Alcohol and Alcoholism Abuse to provide DNA extraction, basic genetic testing, and repository services for more than 46,000 saliva samples for a national research effort to determine the genetic and environmental factors leading to alcoholism. Formerly, large-scale studies on the causes of alcoholism used sociological, behavioral, and limited biological data.
Members of the Rutgers RUCDR Infinite Biologics group maintain biosamples.
Robust Epidemiological and Biological Information
“For the first time, researchers will have robust epidemiological and biological information from large numbers of individuals so that they may correlate genetics to alcohol abuse behavior,” Tischfield says. “The results are used to formulate national policy and improve healthcare services.”
In 2013, RUCDR received $44.5 million from the Cooperative Agreement award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which will allow RUCDR to support the NIMH Center for Collaborative Genomics Research on Mental Disorders by collecting, processing, and analyzing blood and tissue samples from NIMH-funded scientists nationwide.
“With the new funding, RUCDR Infinite Biologics will implement new meta-analytic approaches for combined analysis of clinical and genetic data in the NIMH Human Genetics Initiative,” says Tischfield.
Transforming Lives through Research
Research projects such as those detailed above represent just a fraction of the novel endeavors under way in labs across the tri-state region—probing mysteries that puzzle us, creating technologies that amaze us, and making discoveries that alter how we live and think. And in the process, Tri-State scientists are bringing robust new revenue streams to the local economy—creating both short- and long-term benefits.
While we may never see a plastic twin of the George Washington Bridge, plastic bridges are on the horizon, literally. Rutgers has partnered with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build plastic lumber bridges that can tolerate punishing loads: 70-ton tanks and 120-ton locomotives.
Chances are, structural plastic has already touched your life. If you’ve ever traveled by train, you have probably glided along rails held in place by plastic railroad ties. With 212,000 miles of track in the U.S., ties are big business; 20 million are replaced each year for maintenance, and composite ties are rapidly gaining notice for their corrosion-resistance.
Leave it to scientists in the tri-state region to come up with an ingenious idea for what to do with the world’s rubbish: create everlasting building blocks.
A recently proposed bill sparks controversy over NSF research funding criteria. How will this impact basic research and the broader realm of science?
Published May 9, 2013
By Diana Friedman
John Holdren, PhD
Last month, Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chairman of the Committee on Space, Science, and Technology, drafted what he calls the “High Quality Research Act.” The bill aims to harness the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) funding decisions to the national interest. “That would be alright with me if the national interest were defined to include expanding the frontiers of knowledge, but I don’t think that’s what the members of Congress had in mind,” said Dr. John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, at a Distinguished Lecture last week at Stevens Institute of Technology.
In fact, the bill defines appropriate science as research that hasn’t received any other federal funding; that advances “the national health, prosperity, or welfare” and secures “the national defense”; and that is “groundbreaking.”
Addressing the National Academy of Sciences for the organization’s 150th anniversary, President Obama emphasized the need to “make sure that our scientific research does not fall victim to political maneuvers or agendas that in some ways would impact the integrity of the scientific process.”
What exactly does all this mean?
Here’s What the Bill Says:
Prior to making an award of any contract or grant funding for a scientific research project, the Director of NSF shall publish a statement on the public website of the Foundation that certifies that the research project—
(1) is in the interests of the United States to advance the national health, prosperity, or welfare, and to secure the national defense by promoting the progress of science;
(2) is the finest quality, is ground breaking, and answers questions or solves problems that are of utmost importance to society at large; and
(3) is not duplicative of other research projects being funded by the Foundation or other Federal science agencies.
The Utility of Basic Research
As ScienceInsider reports, many scientists view Rep. Smith’s proposal as the next step in an effort to politicize research, following the success of the Coburn amendment in the 2013 spending bill, which yoked social and political science research to a national security and economic agenda. There have also been concerns about undermining the NSF’s peer review system with the scientifically inexpert reactions of Congress to superficial assumptions about the value of research projects.
In a statement, Smith denies any Congressional micromanagement of the NSF. “It is the responsibility of the professionals at the NSF to exercise their best judgment and ensure that only proposals that benefit the taxpayer get funded. It is Congress’ job to encourage accountability and make sure hard-earned taxpayers’ dollars are spent in ways that benefit the American people,” he says.
At the Stevens Institute of Technology lecture, Dr. Holdren countered: “This happens about every decade. Members of Congress page through large numbers of NSF grants looking for titles that seem frivolous, and then try to assert that NSF is wasting taxpayers’ money…If they succeed in requiring in advance that we specify what the desired outcome and the national interest are going to be, two things are going to happen. One, you’re throwing out the basic research baby with the bath water,” said Dr. Holdren.
“Basic research is precisely research where you don’t know where it’s going, but in fact, it contributes to the expansion of knowledge which is the basis of all future applied research and development and practical innovation and products. The second thing is, if you demand to know in advance [what will be the outcome of a study], you fund nothing but very low-risk, obvious research and path-breaking, transformative research will not get funded. This is a very bad idea.”
Playing the Long Game
In his statement, Rep. Smith also claims, “I support basic research.” However, the expectation that research be known in advance to serve any purpose, much less the simultaneously narrow and vague teleology delineated in the bill, is essentially contradictory to the concept of basic research, which by definition is undertaken without heed for potential applications.
Applications may arise and prove profoundly beneficial to taxpayers, but this can take a very long time to happen, often much longer than the election cycles of politicians who might appoint themselves accountability gatekeepers. Illustratively, at an address to AAAS on May 2, Dr. Holdren “questioned whether the NSF director should have known that a grant for a project on search algorithms awarded to Larry Page and Sergey Brin before they co-founded Google would lead to a revolution in how people find information.”
In fairness, subsection 3, on non-duplicative funding, merits real consideration. In this podcast, “Envy: the Cutthroat Side of Science,” Dr. Harold Garner discusses the prevalence of overlapping grant applications to different funding agencies for the same research. Since 1985, Dr. Garner estimates this phenomenon has cost the government 5.1 billion dollars—a serious concern if you’re trying to get as much and as efficient mileage from a limited budget as possible. While this amount constitutes a tiny percentage of the total research budget, it represents about 660 new grants a year that are not awarded while other projects are redundantly funded.
Just a Speed Bump? Or Completely Over the Cliff?
“There’s innovative science that will be missed because of that,” says Dr. Garner. His approach to tackling this problem employs a publicly available database of “highly similar” text in scientific articles and grant applications to expose “double dipping.” This is a lot more effective than mandating the NSF develop official prescience regarding the outcomes of the science it funds.
To end on a practical note, let’s look at what’s actually in the budget for some perspective. AAAS has charts representing the amounts allocated to basic and applied research by the agency from 1976 to 2012. The split is pretty close, and pretty consistent, and is scheduled to remain so for 2014.
The FY2014 budget has $33,162 million slotted for basic research across all agencies, and $34,963 million for applied research (see page 9 of The 2014 Budget: A World-Leading Commitment to Science and Research). While the mission-driven nature of some of the agencies makes the purity of basic research somewhat debatable, there doesn’t seem to be a looming crisis in basic research funding, so all the fuss might only amount to so much fist-waving.
On the other hand, the success of the Coburn amendment does give one pause. According to AAAS R&D Budget Analysis Program Director Matt Hourihan, “the big question” is the $91 billion “gap between the administration’s request and the current discretionary spending caps…Answering that question will then theoretically provide some additional insight into…whether science has hit a speed bump or has crossed over the fiscal cliff into this austerity valley with depressed R&D funding over the next many years.”
Dr. Meghan Groome was recently asked to provide City Council testimony on the success of the Academy’s Afterschool STEM Mentoring Program.
Published October 19, 2012
By Meghan Groome, PhD
Meghan Groome, PhD
On Tuesday, October 16, 2012, Meghan Groome, PhD, was asked to provide testimony for the New York City Council on the topic of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) opportunities in afterschool programs. Dr. Groome runs the Academy’s Afterschool STEM Mentoring Program, which aims to create a replicable, scalable program model that can be instituted in communities near and far. Below is a transcript of Dr. Groome’s testimony.
Testimony Transcript:
Good afternoon and thank you for inviting me to testify before the Committee on Youth Services. My name is Meghan Groome and I am the director of K12 Education and Science & the City at the New York Academy of Sciences. For nearly 200 years the New York Academy of Sciences (or the Academy) has brought together extraordinary people working at the frontiers of discovery and has promoted vital links between science and society. The Academy has a history of building new scientific communities, constructing innovative connections among an extensive scientific network, and driving path-breaking initiatives for scientific, social, and economic benefit.
Since the 1940s, the Academy has made investments in K-12 (Kindergarten through 12th grade) science education, with programs like the New York City Science & Engineering Fair, capacity-building programs to support outreach in other institutions, and mentoring programs for top performing students in New York City. As a result of these investments, the Academy has increased the City’s ability to nurture top scientific talent.
In recent years, the Academy has redoubled its efforts to bring New York’s wealth of scientific resources to bear on the needs of the City’s schools, with a focus on improving science education for all students, especially those traditionally underrepresented in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields. The New York City Science Education Initiative has a simple mission: to identify high-impact, scalable pathways for scientists to directly improve the number of children who are STEM-literate. Our theory of change relies heavily on the core competencies of the Academy – to serve as a connector between the well-resourced scientific community and the under-resourced education community (including high-need students and teachers).
The Academy’s Afterschool STEM Mentoring Program
In 2010, a group of Deans and Faculty affiliated with the City’s research and medical universities asked the Academy to create a program to provide their top young scientists with an opportunity to learn how to teach science/STEM. At the same time, The Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) approached the Academy to find a partnership opportunity to provide more STEM education in the OST and Beacon Programs.
Launched in Fall 2010, the Afterschool STEM Mentoring Program was designed to satisfy both requests by recruiting graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from the Academy’s Science Alliance[i] program to volunteer to teach in DYCD funded afterschool programs. When hired, I myself had a hard time understanding why a young scientist, mathematician, or engineer would take an afternoon a week to volunteer to teach 4th through 8th graders, but it becomes easier to understand when you learn that this generation of young people believe it is their obligation to serve as role models and mentors. They have grown up in a culture of service learning. They also face a tough job market where teaching, interpersonal, and mentoring skills are at a premium and can result in increased job opportunities.
Now, as we begin our 6th semester of mentors, we’ve worked with nearly 400 young scientists, 7,000 children, and delivered more than 80,000 hours of instruction in all 5 boroughs (Exhibit 1). In Fall 2011, we expanded to Newark, NJ, and recently received a $2.95 million grant from the National Science Foundation to scale this program through the State University of New York system which will serve close to 200 young scientists and 3,000 children.
The Misconceptions of What a Scientist Is
For the students in the programs, the benefits are obvious. As one of our mentors recently wrote, “Learning comes pretty easily when people enjoy what you’re asking them to learn!” Moreover, our mentors deliver high quality, inquiry-based math, science, and robotics courses while serving as role models and demonstrating to the students that scientists aren’t at all stereotypes.
For example, all of the mentors do the same activity on the first day: they ask the students to “draw a scientist”[ii]. It’s a research protocol that allows the mentors to understand that most kids hold the same misconception of a scientist; invariably the students almost all draw an older white man with crazy hair, a bowtie, and often an evil glint in his eye. It doesn’t take long after the students meet their mentors to understand that today’s scientists used to look just like them. This realization is the beginning of the development of a scientific identity. When students are again asked to draw a scientist on the last day of class, they often draw their mentors or themselves in a lab coat.
In addition to attitudinal changes, children in our program receive at least 12-15 hours of enrichment programming over the course of a semester. While this may not sound like a lot of time, consider that the average student receives 2.3 hours of science instruction a week[iii] and that many of our mentors report that they are the sole source of science in a child’s day.
Serving the Needs of Young Scientists
We are often asked why we don’t work directly with schools and the answer is that we do – we have nearly 1,400 public school teachers engaged in programming designed for them. However, through the STEM Mentoring Program we realized that we had a great opportunity to serve the need of our young scientists to learn in an environment where the children’s social, emotional, and educational well being were top priority while hewing to the hands-on, activity learning spirit of afterschool programs.
Afterschool programs typically offer smaller class sizes, freedom from state and local academic standards, reduced anxiety over tests and performance indicators, and more fluid uses of time free from the traditional school day structure. The Afterschool STEM Mentoring Program takes advantage of the existing infrastructure of OST programs, which include hundreds of community-based organizations charged with the safekeeping and, increasingly, the academic enrichment of the children in their care.
As science continues to be marginalized in formal classrooms, the role of afterschool programs is increasingly viewed as an important arena for academic enrichment[iv]. Expanding the school day through afterschool programs offers the opportunity to increase a student’s exposure to high-quality STEM education by providing three elements that lead to an individual’s persistence into a STEM career: engagement, continuity, and capacity[v].
The Importance of Engagement
While continuity and capacity are important factors, there is evidence that engagement is potentially more important than achievement or course enrollment[vi]. By infusing STEM into existing community-based afterschool programs with strong curriculum partners, the proposed program can bypass the constraints of the formal classroom structure by providing relevant, hands-on curriculum; opportunities to interact with young, diverse scientific role models; and additional content knowledge and resources[vii]. Afterschool programs reach large swaths of urban students and provide safe and structured informal learning environments that allow for creative and enriching STEM programming[viii].
As a result of the success we’ve had with the current Afterschool STEM Mentoring Program, the Academy will pilot this program with the State University of New York (SUNY) in six communities, including an expanded partnership with SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn. Additionally, we have a partnership with the Girl Scouts of the USA to scale this program through their council system.
With the generous and sustained support of our funders and the Department of Youth and Community Development, we aim to deepen our commitment to the students of New York and create a model by which any region with an abundance of scientists and students with an enthusiasm for STEM can adopt this new model for delivering high quality STEM education via afterschool programs.
[vi] Maltese, A. V. and Tai, R. H. (2011), Pipeline persistence: Examining the association of educational experiences with earned degrees in STEM among U.S. students. Science Education, 95: 877-907. doi: 10.1002/sce.20441
[viii] Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education. (2010). Out of school time STEM: Building experiences, building bridges. B. Bevan, V. Michalchik, R. Bhanot, N. Rauch, J. Remold, R. Semper, & P. Shields (Eds.). San Francisco, CA: Exploratorium.
The state of Yucatán uses local policies to promote science and technology.
Published August 1, 2012
By Raul Godoy-Montañez and Alfonso Larqué-Saavedra
Mayan Observatory at the ruins in Chichén-Itzá.
The state of Yucatán in Mexico is widely known as the land of the classic Mayan ruins of Uxmal and Chichén Itzá. While Yucatán is characterized by age-old cultural traditions, the past does not define this area that is home to 2 million people. Yucatecan society has long recognized the importance of technology in creating a better future for its residents.
In 1852, the Yucatán governor requested 2,000 pesos from the President for the development of a machine that could extract fiber from the leaves of the henequen plant (Agave fourcroydes Lem.). This mechanization enabled the extension of the henequen industry through the establishment of large plantations and a processing industry within the hacienda system—all of which had a tremendous impact on the economic development of Yucatán.
Today, Yucatán boasts more than 1,000 science researchers, including members of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. It has several institutions dedicated to the development of scientific research, including the state university, a technological institute, centers belonging to the National Council of Science and Technology, and campuses of out-of-state institutions, such as the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the Center of Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute. The best-known features of scientific interest in the state are the Chicxulub Crater, the Mayan culture, the peninsular aquifer, and the area’s biodiversity.
While such natural resources bring a wealth of potential development opportunities to Yucatán, researchers and government leaders realized that the impact of nearby technological and scientific institutions could be bolstered if the institutions’ goals and resources were better aligned.
Creating a Hub for S&T
To this end, in May 2008, the System of Research, Innovation and Technological Development of Yucatán (SIIDETEY) was created, integrating the ten most important federal and local public institutions in the state. The aim of SIIDETEY is to make Yucatán a “pole” for the development of science and technology in the Mexican Southeast, the Caribbean, and Central American countries, thereby attracting students and the establishment of technology-based companies.
SIIDETEY is a governance model with no cost to the State. It is an agreement between the Rectors and Directors of institutions belonging to the System with the aim of bringing together the capacities of its members in favor of science and technology. It is coordinated by the Secretary of Local Education, who acts as a promoter of the model.
The two main objectives of this System are to facilitate the development of joint research projects dealing with topics of interest for Yucatán and to serve as a liaison with the State and other national and international agencies in order to obtain the necessary funding to boost the development of science and technology.
Initially, SIIDETEY defined the most important research fields for the State as the development of the Mayan people, coastal development, water, health, food, education, energy, and habitat. The focal points for each of the fields were also identified. For example, in the field of water, the conservation of the peninsular aquifer was of prime interest. SIIDETEY is now establishing joint academic institutional programs to tackle these priorities, such as a program promoting renewable energy sources.
Financial Successes
Yucatan State Governor Ivonne Ortega (right) and Minister of Education Raul Godoy-Montanéz attend a ground-breaking ceremony for the Science and Technology Park of Yucatán.
Within the SIIDETEY model, the State has agreed to finance the Science and Technology Park of Yucatán and the construction of various laboratories. The SIIDETEY laboratories were conceived to serve both students and researchers in fields such as biomaterials, nanotechnology, biotechnology, coastal engineering, food processing, and renewable energy. A seed bank will also be financed.
One hundred and two hectares were ceded for the establishment of the Science and Technology Park of Yucatán, within which the SIIDETEY laboratories and the facilities required for the programs of member institutions will be built, along with other technology-based companies. For its second stage, the Park has been offered a further 100 hectares to promote, preferably, the establishment of additional companies.
SIIDETEY has made significant progress in obtaining financial resources. The resources gathered for the funding of research projects since the establishment of SIIDETEY four years ago are approaching $25 million. Construction has also begun on the Science and Technology Park and the laboratories with an initial investment of $40 million. It is estimated that, by the year 2018, the Park will be providing services to at least 300 researchers and 1,000 postgraduate students.
The financial resources obtained for science and technology in Yucatán over the last four years are unprecedented, and also very welcome, since it is in the Mexican Southeast where a significant portion of the country’s natural and cultural wealth (oil fields, water features, and biological and cultural diversity) is located.
Scientific and Political Support
Since its creation, SIIDETEY has received the permanent support of the National Council of Science and Technology, whose members have also established programs to provide the industrial sector with seed capital, and to coordinate—through technological development projects—with the academic sector. The constant improvement of the business sector and the establishment of new technology-based companies will in turn generate new jobs, thanks to the achievements of the SIIDETEY model.
Due to the vision proposed and the progress achieved, the model has recently received the unanimous approval of representatives from the different political parties comprising the local Congress, who have provided legal justification for the existence of SIIDETEY and the Science and Technology Park of Yucatán.
Although there is still an urgent need for the decentralization of science in Mexico in order to multiply the current capacity of the country, efforts to align the work of various scientific institutions have begun to gain momentum. The initiative taken by the small state of Yucatán has allowed a new plan to emerge in Mexico, facilitating the transition to a knowledge-based economy. The promotion of science by the local government and institutions will surely stimulate and strengthen the regional economy and generate more opportunities for the next generation.
