[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.

[[Page S5455]]

  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.

[[Page S5457]]

       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.

                          ____________________