Politics, Science (The Scientist, Vol:10, #6, p. 3 & 5, March 18, 1996) SIDEBAR : PRESIDENT'S COMMITTEE OF ADVISERS ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY President Bill Clinton has expressed a strong interest in science and the environment. He has cited investments in these areas as critical if the United States is to remain the world's most advanced nation as a new millennium dawns. CONVENING WITH CLINTON: PCAST members have meet with President Bill Clinton only once, last July. At the meeting, from le

Strive To Improve The Health Of Impoverished Populations Author: Steve Sternberg The World Bank, once a stronghold of public-spirited but nonscientific economists, has over the past decade emerged as the major financier of research to improve the health of people in Third World countries. Banking on Health: Richard G.A. Feachem, World Bank senior adviser on human development, has put health at the top of the bank's agenda. Each year, the World Bank invests $2 billion for health programs in i

Prodded by savings-hungry Republicans in Congress, the colossus that is the Department of Energy (DOE) awakened in January to find itself under attack and its offspring-a cherished, $6 billion network of national laboratories-at risk of being orphaned. Alarmed, DOE embarked upon a campaign to save the department and reshape the laboratories, by shrinking and restructuring them. At the last moment, one day before the deadlock that led President Bill Clinton to shut down much of the federal gov

Sidebar:Projected Efforts of Congressional Budget Resolution on Nondefense R&D for the years 1995 to 2002. Analysts say funding cuts represent a shift in Congress away from traditionally 'reflexive' support for scientific initiatives Senate and House committees surprised many science-minded Americans last month when-after months of rumored cuts-they decided to sustain funding for nondefense medical and basic research through 1996. Few analysts were surprised, however, when the committees began

Resolutionon Nondefense R&D for the years 1995 to 2002 (millions of dollars budget authority) Constant Dollars R&D R&D R&D R&D R&D Change AGENCY fy 1995 fy 1996 fy 1997 fy 2002 fy 2002 95-02 est. est. est. est. Total Non- 34,164 29,911 29,261 28,487 22,939 -32.9% Defense R&D Total HHS R&D 11,589 11,342 11,125 11,125 8,958 -22.7% Total NASA R&D 9,875 8,747 8,523 7,863 6,331 -35.9% Total DOE 3,969 3,113 2,874 2,590 2,086 -47.4% Non-Defense R&D Total NSF R&D 2,544 2,320 2,381 2,588 2,084 -18.1% T

STRONG WORDS: OSTP's Skip Johns blasts Congress for its "shortsighted act". Only a presidential veto--or a last-minute change of heart--could have stopped the Republican-led Congress from abolishing its only in-house source of science-policy analysis, the 23-year-old Office of Technology Assessment. But a threatened veto is now unlikely to come, and Congress has voted and moved on to other matters. OTA is history. On July 27, House and Senate conferees sealed the agency's fate in H.R. 104-21

vote with bipartisan backing, but the true test is yet to come. ON SHAKY GROUND: Director Rodger Herman notes that the House plan to save OTA can still be undone in the Senate. Even as the United States House of Representatives moved toward what many viewed as inevitable - a vote to abolish the 23-year-old Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) - the agency's director, Roger Herdman, headed for the office of Sen. Arlen Specter (R- Pa.). Herdman hoped the presidential aspirant would help halt th