[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 67 (Thursday, May 13, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5454-S5457]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
COMPUTING AND SCIENCE
Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, yesterday Secretary Abraham of the
Department of Energy announced that Oak Ridge National Laboratory in my
home State of Tennessee was selected the winner of the Department of
Energy's competition to develop a leadership class computational
facility.
To put that in plain English, that means the Oak Ridge Laboratory,
being one of the most famous names in science in the world, will lead
an effort that includes many of the brightest minds in our country to
try to regain leadership in high-speed and advanced computing for the
United States of America.
Oak Ridge, because of this competition, will receive $25 million in
funding from the Department of Energy this year for developing this
leadership class facility, and the Department has requested an
additional $25 million for this activity for next year.
Secretary Abraham's decision will put the United States back in the
leadership position in high-performance computing by supporting the
development of a 50-teraflop high-end computing facility capable of
performing 50 trillion calculations per second.
Why is that important to us? It will permit us in this country to
address many scientific problems. For example, we have great debates in
this Chamber about global warming and climate change. We base a lot of
important policy decisions about clean air regulations--decisions that
cost us money--on what is happening in the Earth's climate. This high-
end, advanced computing will help us simulate the Earth's climate and
have better science upon which to make our policy decisions about
global warming.
High-performance computing is also required to model and simulate the
plasma phenomena to examine whether fusion power can become a reality.
We have enormous debates, and we have not resolved the energy picture.
If fusion were an option, we would have a completely different energy
picture in the world today because it would offer the promise of
virtually no-cost or low-cost energy for people all around the world.
Nanoscience has the possibility of revolutionizing chemistry and
materials sciences. Yet the full benefit of nanoscience may not be
achieved without detailed simulation of quantum interactions.
Advanced manufacturing: We have great debates in this Chamber about
how to keep our manufacturing jobs from moving overseas. One way to do
that is to lower manufacturing costs and advance our technology, and we
should be able to do that. Having advanced computing would help us do
it.
I was in Japan about a month ago. One of my purposes for going there
was to get a briefing on what Japan calls the Earth Simulator. The
Earth Simulator is Japan's high-speed, advanced computing technology.
It is currently 2.5 times more powerful than anything else in the
world. It has held this distinction for 2 years. The United States is
not No. 1 in advanced computing; Japan is. Two years is a very long
time to hold the top spot in the computing field.
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We are very fortunate Japan is one of the strongest allies we have on
this Earth. With our scientists working with Japan's scientists, we
will have an opportunity to learn more about climate together and more
about manufacturing together.
But the United States needs to be first in high-speed advanced
computing. It is one of the critical science fields in which we need to
be the world's leader. This is because high-performance computing
produces scientific discoveries which were once thought only possible
through experimentation.
In other words, instead of actually doing the scientific experiments,
we simulate those experiments with high-speed, advanced computers and
are able to do calculations scientists once thought never would be
possible.
The $25 million in funding that was announced yesterday will put the
Oak Ridge National Laboratory and all of its associates at laboratories
and universities around America working together on a path to deliver a
supercomputer with a sustained performance of 50 trillion calculations
per second.
With the Secretary's announcement, the Cray computer will be expanded
to exceed sustained performance of the Earth Simulator.
In other words, what is happening in Oak Ridge, if we stay on this
path, will put us ahead of Japan's Earth Simulator, and the performance
of this Cray architecture at Oak Ridge will be evaluated by the Oak
Ridge scientists on a host of problems, including climate science,
materials science, chemistry, astrophysics, and fusion. The decision by
the Secretary is very timely.
Recently, on May 3, the New York Times published a front-page article
stating the United States is losing its dominance in the sciences. This
article basically points out the foreign advances in basic science
rival or exceed those of U.S. scientists. Japan's Earth Simulator was
one of the best examples of our loss of scientific leadership.
The article stated impacts of the advances in other countries can be
seen by the increases in U.S. patents that are held by foreign
companies, and the dominance of foreign scientists in publishing
articles in the physical sciences and the reduction in the number of
U.S. recipients of Nobel Prizes. These changes need to be understood.
Since World War II, at least half our jobs in the United States of
America have come because of advances in science and technology. We are
entering an even more competitive era. We are entering it at a time--I
was thinking about this while I was in Japan--when our country and
Japan, those two countries, have 43 to 45 percent of all the gross
domestic product in the world. We are 5 percent of the people in the
world, and we have a third of the dollars. Add Japan to that, and we
are 43 to 45 percent; those two countries have 43 to 45 percent of the
dollars.
We are not going to keep our standard of living even in a world that
grows greatly in wealth unless we have some secret weapon. That secret
weapon has to be brainpower, computer power, and scientific power. Our
secret weapons are our national laboratories and our great research
universities. That has been true before and it is true for the future.
Some have suggested the current administration, the Bush
administration, has neglected basic research. I think we need to put
this in context. The Bush administration and this Congress have
followed through with the effort to double the funding for the National
Institutes of Health. The NIH budget increased nearly 44 percent from
2000 to 2003.
Furthermore, since coming into office, President Bush has
significantly increased funding for the National Science Foundation.
That science budget increased by a factor of nearly 27 percent in the
last 3 years. But despite these accomplishments by the Bush
administration and by this Congress and the previous Congress, the
physical sciences and engineering fields historically have been
neglected. This systemic neglect has occurred for more than a decade.
The Department of Energy's Office of Sciences is the largest
supporter of basic research in physical sciences and engineering.
While this office and its predecessor are responsible for many of our
scientific advances, including significant contributions to mapping the
human genome, the office has largely been neglected over the last 10
years. In fact, when adjusting for inflation, the Office of Science
received more funding in 1992 than it has in any other year over the
past 12 years. The most significant decline in funding for the Office
of Science occurred during the Clinton administration.
So let's spread the blame all around, and let's spread the credit,
too. We have done a good job in funding the health sciences. We have
done a good job at the National Science Foundation. We have done a poor
job on the physical sciences. Our future depends on the physical
sciences just as much, maybe more, than it does on the other sciences.
Our great research universities, our national laboratories, and our
industry leaders have urged the funding for the physical sciences and
that engineering be brought to parity with that of the life and medical
sciences. The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology
made the same recommendation last year.
Some argue we cannot expect to be the leader in every field. That is
correct, but we need to be among the world leaders in most fields and
need to lead in some fields. One of those critical fields is high-
performance computers. Computing is seen by many as the third pillar of
science--right after theory and experimentation. Secretary Abraham's
announcement is the first step in developing and sustaining our
Nation's leadership in high-performance computers.
I have sponsored the High-End Computing Revitalization Act of 2004
along with Senator Bingaman. This would authorize the Secretary to
carry out research and development to keep our Nation on the forefront
of high-performance computing. The act authorizes the Energy Secretary
to establish scientific computing facilities and would authorize a
minimum of $100 million per year for 5 years to establish these
facilities. It would authorize the Secretary to establish a high-end
software development center and would authorize a minimum of $10
million a year for 5 years for this activity. If we want to regain the
lead in high-speed computing, high-performance computing, this is what
we must do. We know exactly how to do it. We have the laboratories to
do it. We have the research universities to do it. Oak Ridge has now
been selected as the coordinator of that effort. If we fund it, we will
regain it. It is up to us to do it.
I have also sponsored the Energy and Scientific Research Investment
Act of 2003 with Senators Levin, Warner, and Bingaman. This would
essentially double funding for the Department of Energy Office of
Science to keep our Nation among the leaders of science. The
authorizations for this bill became part of the Energy bill.
We must act to put our Nation back at the forefront of science. We
have a lot of discussions in the Senate. Most of them have to do with
our high standard of living. They take for granted the fact that we
live in an increasingly well-educated world and that most of our
ability to maintain that standard of living has to do with whether we
have good schools, whether we have great universities, and whether we
have great energy laboratories.
We talk about outsourcing. In Europe, the outsourcing they talk about
is the outsourcing of brains being attracted by our universities and
our national laboratories. Mr. Schroeder in Germany and Mr. Blair in
Great Britain are challenging their higher education system because
they are falling behind our higher education system.
Our research universities and our national laboratories are our
secret weapons for our national defense, for our standard of living,
and for our improved health care. They have been for 50 years, and they
will be in the future.
I am delighted to see the Secretary of Energy has made his decision
to center an attempt to regain the lead for the United States in
advanced computing facilities by focusing that effort at Oak Ridge.
However, I hope this Congress on both sides of the aisle will now begin
to pay attention to proper funding of the physical science over the
next 5 years. We should double it, as we have doubled funding for the
health sciences. If we do so, it is the surest path to maintaining our
standard of living, our national defense and our health care.
[[Page S5456]]
I ask unanimous consent the article from the New York Times to which
I refer from Monday, May 3, be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
United States Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences
(By William J. Broad)
The United States has started to lose its worldwide
dominance in critical areas of science and innovation,
according to federal and private experts who point to strong
evidence like prizes awarded to Americans and the number of
papers in major professional journals.
Foreign advances in basic science now often rival or even
exceed America's, apparently with little public awareness of
the trend or its implications for jobs, industry, national
security or the vigor of the nation's intellectual and
cultural life.
``The rest of the world is catching up,'' said John E.
Jankowski, a senior analyst at the National Science
Foundation, the federal agency that tracks science trends.
``Science excellence is no longer the domain of just the
U.S.''
Even analysts worried by the trend concede that an
expansion of the world's brain trust, with new approaches,
could invigorate the fight against disease, develop new
sources of energy and wrestle with knotty environmental
problems. But profits from the breakthroughs are likely to
stay overseas, and this country will face competition for
things like hiring scientific talent and getting space to
showcase its work in top journals.
One area of international competition involves patents.
Americans still win large numbers of them, but the percentage
is falling as foreigners, especially Asians, have become more
active and in some fields have seized the innovation lead.
The United States' share of its own industrial patents has
fallen steadily over the decades and now stands at 52
percent.
A more concrete decline can be seen in published research.
Physical Review, a series of top physics journals, recently
tracked a reversal in which American papers, in two decades,
fell from the most to a minority. Last year the total was
just 29 percent, down from 61 percent in 1983.
China, said Martin Blume, the journals' editor, has surged
ahead by submitting more than 1,000 papers a year. ``Other
scientific publishers are seeing the same kind of thing,'' he
added.
Another downturn centers on the Nobel Prizes, an icon of
scientific excellence. Traditionally, the United States,
powered by heavy federal investments in basic research, the
kind that pursues fundamental questions of nature, dominated
the awards.
But the American share, after peaking from the 1960's
through the 1990's, has fallen in the 2000's to about half,
51 percent. The rest went to Britain, Japan, Russia, Germany,
Sweden, Switzerland and New Zealand.
``We are in a new world, and it's increasingly going to be
dominated by countries other than the United States,'' Denis
Simon, dean of management and technology at the Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, recently said at a scientific meeting
in Washington.
Europe and Asia are ascendant, analysts say, even if their
achievements go unnoticed in the United States. In March, for
example, European scientists announced that one of their
planetary probes had detected methane in the atmosphere of
Mars--a possible sign that alien microbes live beneath the
planet's surface. The finding made headlines from Paris to
Melbourne. But most Americans, bombarded with images from
American's own rovers successfully exploring the red planet,
missed the foreign news.
More aggressively, Europe is seeking to dominate particle
physics by building the world's most powerful atom smasher,
set for its debut in 2007. Its circular tunnel is 17 miles
around.
Sciene analysts say Asia's push for excellence promises to
be even more challenging.
``It's unbelievable,'' Diana Hicks, chairwoman of the
school of public policy at the Georgia Institute of
Technology, said of Asia's growth in science and technical
innovation. ``It's amazing to see these output numbers of
papers and patents going up so fast.''
Analysts say comparative American declines are an
inevitable result of rising standards of living around the
globe.
``It's all in the ebb and flow of globalization,'' said
Jack Fritz, a senior officer at the National Academy of
Engineering, an advisory body to the federal government. He
called the declines ``the next big thing we will have to
adjust to.''
The rapidly changing American status has not gone unnoticed
by politicians, with Democrats on the attack and the White
House on the defensive.
``We stand at a pivotal moment,'' Tom Daschle, the Senate
Democratic leader, recently said at a policy forum in
Washington at the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, the nation's top general science group. ``For all
our past successes, there are disturbing signs that America's
dominant position in the scientific world is being shaken.''
Mr. Daschle accused the Bush administration of weakening
the nation's science base by failing to provide enough money
for cutting-edge research.
The president's science adviser, John H. Marburger III, who
attended the forum, strongly denied that charge, saying in an
interview that overall research budgets during the Bush
administration have soared to record highs and that the
science establishment is strong.
``The sky is not falling on science,'' Dr. Marburger said.
``Maybe there are some clouds--no, things that need
attention.'' Any problems, he added, are within the power of
the United States to deal with in a way that maintains the
vitality of the research enterprise.
Analysts say Mr. Daschle and Dr. Marburger can both supply
data that supports their positions.
A major question, they add, is whether big spending
automatically translates into big rewards, as it did in the
past. During the cold war, the government pumped more than $1
trillion into research, with a wealth of benefits including
lasers, longer life expectancies, men on the Moon and the
prestige of many Nobel Prizes.
Today, federal research budgets are still at record highs;
this year more than $126 billion has been allocated to
research. Moreover American industry makes extensive use of
federal research in producing its innovations and adds its
own vast sums of money, the combination dwarfing that of any
other nation or bloc.
But the edifice is less formidable than it seems in part
because of the nation's costly and unique military role. This
year, financing for military research hit $66 billion, higher
in fixed dollars than in the cold war and far higher than in
any other country.
For all the spending, the United States began to experience
a number of scientific declines in the 1990's, boom years for
the nation's overall economy.
For instance, scientific papers by Americans peaked in 1992
and then fell roughly 10 percent, the National Science
Foundation reports. Why? Many analysts point to rising
foreign competition, as does the European Commission, which
also monitors global science trends. In a study last year,
the commission said Europe surpassed the United States in the
mid-1990's as the world's largest producer of scientific
literature.
Dr. Hicks of Georgia Tech said that American scientists,
when top journals reject their papers, usually have no idea
that rising foreign competition may be to blame.
On another front, the numbers of new doctorates in the
sciences peaked in 1998 and then fell 5 percent the next
year, a loss of more than 1,300 new scientists, according to
the foundation.
A minor exodus also hit one of the hidden strengths of
American science: vast ranks of bright foreigners. In a
significant shift of demographics, they began to leave in
what experts call a reverse brain drain. After peaking in the
mid-1990's, the number of doctoral students from China, India
and Taiwan with plans to stay in the United States began to
fall by the hundreds, according to the foundation.
These declines are important, analysts say, because new
scientific knowledge is an engine of the American economy and
technical innovation, its influence evident in everything
from potent drugs to fast computer chips.
Patents are a main way that companies and inventors reap
commercial rewards from their ideas and stay competitive in
the marketplace while improving the lives of millions.
Foreigners outside the United States are playing an
increasingly important role in these expressions of
industrial creativity. In a recent study, CHI Research, a
consulting firm in Haddon Heights, NJ., found that
researchers in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea now account for
more than a quarter of all United States industrial patents
awarded each year, generating revenue for their own countries
and limiting it in the United States.
Moreover, their growth rates are rapid. Between 1980 and
2003, South Korea went from 0 to 2 percent of the total,
Taiwan from 0 to 3 percent and Japan from 12 to 21 percent.
``It's not just lots of patents,'' Francis Narin, CHI's
president, said of the Asian rise. ``It's lots of good
patents that have a high impact,'' as measured by how often
subsequent patents cite them.
Recently, Dr. Narin added, both Taiwan and Singapore surged
ahead of the United States in the overall number of
citations. Singapore's patents include ones in chemicals,
semi-conductors, electronics and industrial tools.
China represents the next wave, experts agree, its
scientific rise still too fresh to show up in most statistics
but already apparent. Dr. Simon of Rensselaer said that about
400 foreign companies had recently set up research centers in
China, with General Electric, for instance, doing important
work there on medical scanners, which means fewer skilled
jobs in America.
Ross Armbrecht, president of the Industrial Research
Institute, a non-profit group in Washington that represents
large American companies, said businesses were going to China
not just because of low costs but to take advantage of
China's growing scientific excellence.
``It's frightening,'' Dr. Armbrecht said. ``But you've got
to go where the horses are.'' An eventual danger, he added,
is the slow loss of intellectual property as local
professionals start their own businesses with what they have
learned from American companies.
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For the United States, future trends look challenging, many
analysts say.
In a report last month, the American Association for the
Advancement of Science said the Bush administration, to live
up to its pledge to halve the nation's budget deficit in the
next five years, would cut research financing at 21 of 24
federal agencies--all those that do or finance science except
those involved in space and national and domestic security.
More troubling to some experts is the likelihood of an
accelerating loss of quality scientists. Applications from
foreign graduate students to research universities are down
by a quarter, experts say, partly because of the federal
government's tightening of visas after the 2001 terrorist
attacks.
Shirley Ann Jackson, president of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, told the recent forum
audience that the drop in foreign students, the apparently
declining interest of young Americans in science careers and
the aging of the technical work force were, taken together, a
perilous combination of developments.
``Who,'' she asked, ``will do the science of this
millennium?''
Several private groups, including the Council on
Competitiveness, an organization in Washington that seeks
policies to promote industrial vigor, have begun to agitate
for wide debate and action.
``Many other countries have realized that science and
technology are key to economic growth and prosperity,'' said
Jennifer Bond, the council's vice president for international
affairs. ``They're catching up to us,'' she said, warning
Americans not to ``rest on our laurels.''
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent I be allowed
to extend my remarks of 20 minutes as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Alexander). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
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