Peace Now

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Now

Peace Now

Founded	1978
Founders	Amos Oz Amir Peretz Yuli Tamir Tzaly Reshef Janet Aviad Gavri Bargil Galia Golan Avshalom Vilan
Type	Non-profit NGO
Focus	Two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Location	Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Israel
Area served	Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories
Method	"public campaigns, advertisements, petitions, distribution of educational materials, conferences, lectures, surveys, dialogue groups, street activities, vigils, and demonstrations."
Members	over 10,000
Key people	Shaqued Morag (Director) Yariv Oppenheimer (Secretary) Hagit Ofran (Settlement Watch Director)
Website	peacenow.org.il/eng

Peace Now (Hebrew: שלום עכשיו‎ Shalom Achshav, IPA: [ʃaˈlom (ʔ)aχˈʃav]) is a non-governmental organization, "liberal advocacy" and activist group in Israel with the aim of promoting a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Objectives/positions

• Two states for two nations – Israel and Palestine
• A Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel, based on the borders of June 1967 with land swaps agreed upon by both sides
• Jerusalem – In an official document from 1982 Peace Now advocated for an undivided Jerusalem as Israel's capital. It has since shifted its position to two capitals for two states – a solution based on demographic breakdowns with a special agreement for the Old City.
• Peace with Syria – A peace agreement based on secure and recognized borders, and the regulation of relations between the two countries is the primary strategic issue for the people of Israel and Syria.
• Beginning negotiations with Syria is a gateway to negotiations with Lebanon and will help create a new international mood in the region.
• Peace Now views the settlements as a threat to the existence of Israel as a democratic and Jewish state.
• Peace Now views the settlements as a main obstacle to any future peace agreement.
• Peace Now views the settlements as an element that harms the State of Israel on many fronts: security, economically, morally, and culturally.
• Peace Now views the settlements as harmful to Israel's standing in the international community.

Origins

The open Officers' Letter presented to the Prime Minister of Israel calling upon his government to normalise relations with Egypt.

Peace Now was formed during the 1978 Israeli-Egyptian peace talks between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat at a time when the talks looked close to collapse.

Three hundred forty-eight reserve officers and soldiers from Israeli army combat units published an open letter to the Prime Minister of Israel. They called for the Israeli government not to squander the historic opportunity for peace between the two nations. The officers realized that Israel could not retain its Jewish-democratic nature while perpetuating its rule over one million Arabs. They concluded that Israel's security needs could only be met by the attainment of peace between Israel and its neighbours via a negotiated agreement. Subsequently, tens of thousands of Israelis petitioned the Israeli government in support of the letter, and as a result the movement known as Peace Now was born.

Early activism

Peace Now again came to prominence following Israel's 1982 Invasion of Lebanon, and in particular the massacre of Palestinian refugees by Christian Lebanese Phalangists at the Israeli controlled Sabra and the Shatila refugee camp. On 25 September 1982 Peace Now held a mass protest in Tel Aviv in order to pressure the government to establish a national inquiry commission to investigate the massacres, as well as calling for the resignation of the Defence Minister Ariel Sharon. Peace Now's 1982 demonstration was attended by 400,000 people, approximately 10% of Israel's population at the time.

Subsequently, the Israeli government established the Kahan Commission on 28 September 1982. Four months later the commission found Israel to be indirectly responsible for the massacres, and recommended Ariel Sharon's resignation.

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at first refused to adopt the Kahan Commission's recommendations. Consequently, Peace Now decided to hold a demonstration on 10 February 1983 that marched from Zion Square towards the Prime Minister's residence in Jerusalem in order to pressure the government to do so.

Emil Grunzweig

In the wake of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, Peace Now led a march from Zion Square and moved towards the Prime Ministers' Office in Jerusalem on 10 February 1983. During the march Peace Now demonstrators encountered a group of right-wing activists. In the ensuing confrontation, Yona Avrushmi tossed a hand-grenade into the crowd, killing Emil Grunzweig, a prominent Peace Now activist, and injuring several others.

Yona Avrushmi was duly arrested, convicted of murder and given a mandatory life sentence, which was commuted to 27 years by President Ezer Weizman in 1995. Avrushmi was released on 26 January 2011.

As a result of mounting public pressure on Menachem Begin to adopt the Kahan Commission's recommendations Ariel Sharon agreed to step down as Defence Minister. However, he remained in the government as a minister without portfolio.

Peace Now and the First Intifada (1987–1993)

In 1988 Yasser Arafat (Chairman of the PLO) publicly accepted United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 at the PNC in Algiers. For the first time, Yasser Arafat accepted Israel's existence according to its borders set out in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, and rejected and condemned the use of terrorism in all its forms. In reaction Peace Now led a demonstration of more than 100,000 people, calling for immediate Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for the purposes of attaining peace between the two parties. Following this, Peace Now led the Hands Around Jerusalem event, in which 25,000 Israelis and Palestinians linked hands to encircle the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem in a chain of peace. 

In part due to the Israeli-Palestinian discourse engendered by Peace Now and its activists, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin and Yasser Arafat succeeded in signing the Declaration of Principles/Oslo Accords on the lawn of the White House on 13 September 1993. Peace Now was the first Israeli organisation to meet with the PLO, at a time when such an undertaking was deemed illegal by the Israeli government.

The signing of the Oslo accords marked a milestone in Israeli-Palestinian relations, as for the first time both peoples recognised their counterpart's right to exist. Furthermore, the Oslo Peace Process was initiated; this process was a framework for future negotiations which aimed to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict within a five-year period according to the logic of the 'two state solution', as set out in UN General Assembly Resolution 181.

Peace Now supported the Oslo Accords, and since then it has called upon all Israeli administrations to date to adhere to the terms of interim agreements which were agreed upon as part of the Oslo Peace Process.

Peace Now and the Second Intifada (2000–2005)

Since the outbreak of the violent Second Intifada in December 2000, Peace Now has arguably lost a certain degree of the Israeli public's support. While the First Intifada was largely a popular movement on the part of the Palestinian public, the Second Intifada consisted of far more violent confrontations between Palestinian militants and the IDF, Israeli settlers within the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and Israeli civilians. According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 132 Israeli individuals were killed by Palestinian militant bomb/suicide attacks within Israel proper between 2000 and 2004.

Despite the arguable decline in the Israeli public's support for the Oslo Peace Process, Peace Now succeeded in leading a demonstration of between 60,000 to 100,000 in May 2002, after Israeli military forces began on 29 March a large-scale military Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank and as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was mobilizing reserve forces for a possible military invasion of Gaza. The demonstration was held under the banner "Get Out of The Territories". According to "Peace Now" itself, shortly after the outbreak of the Second Intifada, it was instrumental in creating the Israeli Peace Coalition, which later evolved into the Israeli-Palestine Peace Coalition. Its main objective is to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, and to achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace based on a two-state solution.

Israel's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip

Peace Now was a key advocate of Israel's 2004 Disengagement Plan. Peace Now led the 'Mate ha-Rov' ("majority camp") demonstration on 14 May 2004 in Tel Aviv, in order to pressure the Israeli government to adopt the Disengagement Plan. However, support for the Disengagement Plan faced contention within the Peace Now camp over its unilateral nature. Peace Now decided it was most important for Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, regardless of how this withdrawal was to take place.

Settlement Watch

Settlement activity

One of the most important activities of Peace Now is its ongoing Settlement Watch project which monitors and protests against the building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Dror Aktes headed this committee until 2007 when he was replaced by Hagit Ofran. The project focuses on the following issues with regards to the settlements:-

• Physical development – Where and why are there construction and expansion activities connected to the settlements or their residents? And what are the short- and long-term implications of these activities?
• Economy – How much do the settlements cost and who is paying for them?
• Demography – How many settlers and how many Palestinians live in the territories? What are the demographic trends that can be pointed out today?
• Proper management – How are decisions regarding construction and development made? What elements are responsible for planning and for the enforcement of the construction laws and regulations in the territories?
• Environmental implications – What are the environmental implications of the settlements and the continued construction that is being undertaken there?

Peace Now's Settlement Watch project has resulted in the following developments:-

• Amona (2005) – Peace Now motioned to the Supreme Court demanding the evacuation of the settlement in Amona. Their motion was accepted and the settlement was evacuated by security forces several months later.
• A decision, never implemented, to remove of all illegal West Bank settlements (March 2011) – Following a petition submitted by Peace Now to the Israeli Supreme Court, Benyamin Netanyahu's government ordered that the state dismantle all illegal West Bank outposts built on private Palestinian land by the end of 2011.

• Migron (ongoing)- Following a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court by Peace Now, the state was ordered to dismantle Migron, the largest illegal settlement outpost in the West Bank, by April 2012. This was key as this was the first time the Supreme Court had ordered the Israeli state to dismantle an outpost in the West Bank.

Similarly, the movement continues activity on the ground in support of evacuation through demonstrations, vigils and other campaign activity. Activities include:

• Updates on settlement expansion by means of aerial photography/ground surveys
• Publication of figures to the public and decision makers in Israel as well as around the world (American government officials often rely on data presented by Peace Now to assess the nature of Israel's various settlement programs)
• Submission of cases to the court to evacuate outposts in the West Bank.
• Formulation and dissemination of maps/media reports (in English and Hebrew) on a tri-annual basis showing contemporaneous settlement activity in the West Bank

Wikileaks

According to leaked documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, Peace Now has regularly updated both the U.S. government and the Israeli Ministry of Defense on ongoing settlement construction in the West Bank. The documents indicate that the Defence Ministry used Peace Now's services to monitor West Bank settlement construction. In 2006, Peace Now director Yariv Oppenheimer reportedly urged the U.S. to pressure Israel into evacuating West Bank outposts, according to a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable. Oppenheimer was quoted as saying that Israel might "evacuate a few outposts to show the U.S. that it is doing something, but in exchange it is trying to co-opt the settlers by retroactively approving some outposts and giving them a freer hand in building in the West Bank."

2006 settlement report

In a report issued in November 2006, Peace Now wrote that 38.8 percent of the land set aside for Israeli settlements, outposts and industrial land in the West Bank was privately owned by Palestinians. This included 86.4 percent of the land set aside for Ma'ale Adumim and 35.1 percent of Ariel's land. After successfully appealing to a court for access to a government database operated by the Israeli Civil Administration, Peace Now reduced its overall estimate to 32.4 percent and the estimate for Ma'ale Adumim to 0.5 percent. A spokesman for the Civil Administration replied that the new report was still "inaccurate in many places".

Outreach

Israel Student Campus Project

Peace Now seeks to educate the Israeli youth on the nature of, and solution to, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In order to achieve this, the organisation

• leads a series of open debates and 6-week 'peace courses' on campuses throughout Israel
• distributes brochures, maps and other such literature to students on campuses
• conducts monthly tours for students across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem
• sponsors and directs annual 'Dialogue Workshops' with Palestinian students.

Internet campaigns

Peace Now seeks to promote its various causes via an active presence on such social networking sites as Facebook. Against the background of the 'Boycott Laws' which were being passed through the Knesset in July 2011, the popular Israeli internet site 'Horim B’reshet' made a survey of the most popular Israeli protest Facebook pages, of which Peace Now's page ranked 5th.

West Bank tours for opinion-makers

Peace Now aims to educate leading decision makers on the perceived counterproductive effects the settlements have on the attainment of the two-state solution.

One such tour was conducted by Peace Now in August 2009 and attended by such figures as MKs Ophir Pines-Paz (Labor), Daniel Ben-Simon (Labor) and Chaim Oron (Meretz Chairman).

Demonstrations/rallies

Peace Now at the Rabin memorial rally in Rabin Square, 1 November 2014

Peace Now organises demonstrations and rallies in support of peace and human rights:-

• Rally Against Racism (26 February 2011) – Peace Now joined 1,500 other activists at Zion Square, Jerusalem, to protest against the spate of government policies dealing with the nature of the citizenship of Arab-Israelis living within the Israeli state; especially those forwarded by Israel's outspoken Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beiteinu).
• In support of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (4 June 2011) – Peace Now joined 5000 other activists in a march in Tel Aviv, to support the Palestinian bid for United Nations membership as an independent state.
• Against the 'Boycott Law' (10 July 2011) – Peace Now held a protest in Jerusalem in response to proposed Knesset legislation stating that any boycott against Israel or any group located within its territory (including 'Judea and Samaria'/ the West Bank), would be labeled a civil offense. This law made boycotters subject to litigation and financial penalties. Following the passing of the boycott legislation into law, Peace Now led a campaign calling for the boycott of settlement produce.
• 'Glenn Beck go home' (24 August 2011) – In response to Glenn Beck's 'Restoring Courage' tour in Israel, Peace Now activists protested outside the Jerusalem rally held by the conservative American broadcaster, claiming that his ultra-conservative values inflamed the already tense situation with regards to the Israel and Palestine situation.
• Yitzchak Rabin Memorial Rally – Every year since former Israel Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin's assassination (4 November 1995), Peace Now activists take part in an annual rally in Rabin Square (Tel Aviv) to commemorate the statesman's life, and to issue calls in support for the re-invigoration of the Middle East Peace Process.
• In support of 'Freedom of Speech' (22 November 2011) – In response to a proposed government amendment to Israel's 'Defamation Law', which would increase the maximum compensation paid for libel violations sixfold to NIS 300,000 (roughly $80,500), regardless of proof of damages, Peace Now led a 2000-strong rally in Tel Aviv.

'Price-Tag' attacks against Peace Now activists

Due to Peace Now's continued opposition to the development and construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank/East Jerusalem, the organisation and several of its leading activists have been subject to 'price-tag' attacks and death-threats.

A 'price-tag' attack is defined as a violent act committed against Palestinians, Israeli security forces and/or anti-settlement organizations by pro-settlement advocates in retaliation for terrorist attacks on Israeli targets, government demolition of structures in West Bank settlements or curbs on Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank.

In response to the demolition of three homes in the Migron settlement (as a result of a petition submitted to the Israeli Supreme Court by Peace Now in 2006), right-wing demonstrators spray-painted 'Price Tag Migron', 'Revenge' and 'Death to Traitors' on the entrance to the residence of Hagit Ofran, the head of Peace Now's 'Settlement Watch' project, in early October 2011. Following the incident, a police investigation was opened. Approximately two months later, another 'price tag' attack was carried out, again at Hagit Ofran's residence.

At the 2011 Rabin commemoration rally in Tel Aviv, Hagit Ofran stated in reference to the recent 'price tag attacks':

"The graffiti was sprayed in my home, but the taunts are in all of our stairwells. The tag may have marked me, but we all pay the price. We must not fear. We are here, and we are many. We have a voice and we must raise it. And today we say to Benjamin Netanyahu: We are not afraid."

On 6 November 2011, Peace Now's Jerusalem office received a bomb threat. Police were called to the scene and the building was evacuated. The threat was later found to be a hoax. Following a brief investigation, Jerusalem District Police arrested a 21-year-old male resident of a settlement near Jerusalem who was suspected of vandalizing Peace Now offices in Jerusalem. Police also tried to ascertain whether the suspect was involved in the 'price-tag' attacks on Hagit Ofran's residence. A gag order was initially placed on the publication of his name and picture due to the "ongoing investigation" into the attacks. Once the investigation was complete, the gag order remained in effect, despite the suspect not being a minor. The order also applied to details about the suspect's parents, due to the politically sensitive nature of their occupation.

Although the suspect had been arrested two months previously for issuing death threats against Peace Now's Director General Yariv Oppenhimer and a bomb hoax at the organisation's Jerusalem office, he was released shortly afterwards.

Following court proceedings against the suspect, he was released to house arrest and forced to wear an electronic bracelet, yet his 'price-tag' activities continued. On 27 November 2011, it was reported that the unnamed individual issued death-threats (via email) against all of Peace Now's core team from his Jerusalem house. The gag order remained.

Financing by foreign governments

Peace Now has received funding from foreign states and international organizations for such projects as those which measure the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. In 2008 Peace Now received ILS 935,622 from the Norwegian embassy, ILS 547,751 from the British Foreign Office, ILS 285,857 from Germany's Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, and ILS 76,267 from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to Im Tirtzu, Peace Now received ILS 844,000 from the embassy of Norway in 2009, as well as ILS 731,000 from the United Kingdom and ILS 555,000 from the Belgian government.

The Knesset passed a law in 2008 requiring Israeli organizations to publicize any foreign funding they receive. The law was aimed specifically at Peace Now. In 2011, the Knesset passed a law which required organizations to report each quarter on any foreign funding they receive. In November 2011, Benyamin Netanyahu's government began proceedings to introduce legislation which would place a ILS 20,000 (approx $5000) limit on what NGOs could receive from foreign governments, government-supported foundations and/or groups of governments (e.g. the European Union and the United Nations). Another bill, advanced by Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party, proposed a 45% tax on foreign government donations to organizations that do not receive Israeli state funding.

Individuals such as Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and MKs Tzipi Hotovely, Ofir Akunis and Fania Kirshenbaum have supported the proposed legislation. They argue that the legislation prevents foreign governments and organizations from unduly influencing Israel's domestic affairs. The legislation has encountered notable resistance from within Israel itself and abroad. The governments of the United Kingdom and the United States warned Benyamin Netanyahu that the adoption of such measures would harm Israel's standing in the West as a democratic country.

Certificate of Merit for Support to IDF Reservists

Peace Now received a certificate of merit from the Israeli government and IDF for support given to IDF reserve soldiers. The certificate was issued as part of a competition which honours organizations, businesses and companies whose workers serve as reservists and are supported by their workplace. The certificate was personally signed by Ehud Barak and Chief Reserve Officer Brigadier General Shuki Ben-Anat. It read:

'For your activity and care for employees serving in reserve duty. Your activity is commendable and greatly contributes to the IDF's fortitude and the State of Israel's security."

Notable supporters

Notable individuals such as American actor Leonard Nimoy, American authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, and Israeli authors David Grossman and Amos Oz support Peace Now's objectives. Author Mordechai Bar-On described Peace Now as a key instrument for peace. Actor Mandy Patinkin expressed his support for Peace Now during a visit to Israel in 2012.

Logo

Peace Now's logo was designed by Israeli graphic designer David Tartakover in 1978. The logo emerged from a poster created by Tartakover for a mass rally, held in what is now Rabin Square in Tel Aviv on 1 April 1978, titled "Peace Now." It became the name of the organization, and was used on the first political bumper sticker in Israel. It is still one of Israel's most popular stickers. Tartakover, commenting in 2006, said: "The movement activists liked the logo, but they thought there should also be a symbol. I told them it wasn't needed – this is the symbol. It took time until they understood that this was the first political sticker in Israel."

Affiliated organisations

• Americans for Peace Now
• Amigos Brasileiros do Paz Agora (Brazil)
• Argentinos Amigos de Paz Ahora (Argentina)
• Brits for Peace Now
• Canadian Friends of Peace Now
• La paix maintenant (France)
• Les Amis Belges de Shalom Archav (Belgium)

Science policy of the United States

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Federal funding of basic and applied research by year. The spike in 2009 is due to the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. Figures for 2014 are requested levels.

The science policy of the United States is the responsibility of many organizations throughout the federal government. Much of the large-scale policy is made through the legislative budget process of enacting the yearly federal budget, although there are other legislative issues that directly involve science, such as energy policy, climate change, and stem cell research. Further decisions are made by the various federal agencies which spend the funds allocated by Congress, either on in-house research or by granting funds to outside organizations and researchers.

Professor N. Rosenberg, one of the pioneers of technological innovation research, pointed out that industrial research laboratories (R&D), if not the most important institutional innovations in institutional innovation in the 20th century, are also one of the most important institutional innovations. Although not the first invention of the United States, this system has a wider spread and stronger influence in the US economy than in other countries.

The United States devoted 2.8% of GDP to research and development (R&D) in 2012. The private sector contributed two-thirds of the total. The Obama administration had fixed a target of a 3% ratio by the end of his presidency in 2016.

Legislating science policy

In the Executive Office of the President, the main body advising the president on science policy is the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Other advisory bodies exist within the Executive Office of the President, including the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and the National Science and Technology Council.

In the United States Congress, a number of congressional committees have jurisdiction over legislation on science policy, most notably the House Committee on Science and Technology and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and their subcommittees. These committees oversee the various federal research agencies that are involved in receiving funding for scientific research. Oversight of some agencies may fall under multiple committees, for example the Environmental Protection Agency.

The number of Congressional members and other politicians with backgrounds in science, engineering, and technology has grown in recent years, with the 116th Congress setting a record with 47 of 535 members with STEM backgrounds. Therefore, most U.S. politicians refer to various Congressional support agencies for analysis on science related issues, which do not solely focus on science, but provide insight for Congress to make decisions dealing with scientific issues. These agencies are nonpartisan and provide objective reports on topics requested by members of congress. They are the Congressional Research Service, Government Accountability Office, and Congressional Budget Office. In the past, the Office of Technology Assessment provided Congressional members and committees with objective analysis of scientific and technical issues, but this office was abolished as a result of the Republican Revolution of 1994.

Further advice is provided by extragovernmental organizations such as The National Academies, which was created and mostly funded by the federal government, and the RAND Corporation, as well as other non-profit organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Chemical Society among others.

Research and development in the federal budget

Only a small percentage of the overall federal budget is allocated to R&D. The FY2015 budget request includes $135.110B in R&D spending out of a total budget of $3969.069B, representing 3.4% of the budget. Research and development funding in the federal budget is not centrally enacted, but is spread across many appropriations bills which are enacted in the annual United States budget process. Of the twelve annual appropriations bills, the most important for R&D are those for Defense; Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (which includes NIH); Commerce, Justice, and Science (which includes NSF, NASA, NIST, and NOAA); and Energy and Water Development. Other appropriations bills include smaller amounts of R&D funding.

There are a number of federal agencies across the government which carry out science policy. Some of these primarily perform their own research "in-house", while others grant funds to external organizations or individual researchers. In addition, the federally funded research and development centers, which include most of the U.S. National Laboratories, are funded by the government but operated by universities, non-profit organizations, or for-profit consortia.

The FY2015 presidential budget request defines R&D as "the collection of efforts directed toward gaining greater knowledge or understanding and applying knowledge toward the production of useful materials, devices, and methods." R&D is divided into five subcategories. Basic research is directed toward understanding of the fundamental aspects of observable phenomena. It may be directed towards broad but not specific applications. Applied research is directed towards gaining knowledge to meet a recognized and specific need. Development is the application of knowledge or understanding for the production of useful materials, devices, and methods, including production of prototypes. R&D equipment includes acquisition or production of movable equipment, such as spectrometers, research satellites, or detectors. R&D facilities include the construction or major repairs to physical facilities including land, buildings, and fixed capital equipment such fixed facilities as reactors, wind tunnels, and particle accelerators.

Defense research and development

Defense R&D has the goal of "maintaining strategic technological advantages over potential foreign adversaries." As of 2009, just over half of the R&D budget was allocated to defense spending. Most Defense R&D falls under the Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RTD&E) budget, although some R&D funding is outside this budget, such as the Defense Health Program and the chemical weapons destruction program. The Department of Defense divides development further, giving each category a code: 6.1 is Basic Research, 6.2 is Applied Research, 6.3 is Advanced Technology Development, 6.4 is Advanced Component Development and Prototypes, 6.5 is System Development and Demonstration, 6.6 is RDT&E Management and Support, and 6.7 is Operational Systems Development.

Most of the Defense R&D budget is for weapon systems development, with nearly all activity in categories 6.4 and higher carried out by private defense contractors. About one sixth of it is allocated to the Science and Technology (S&T) program, which includes all of 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, and medical research. As of 2013, research funding (6.1 and 6.2) was disbursed 40% to industry, 33% to DoD laboratories, and 21% to academia. The Department of Defense was the third-largest supporter of R&D in academia in FY2012, with only NIH and NSF having larger investments, with DoD the largest federal funder for engineering research and a close second for computer science.

The Defense Research Enterprise (DRE) consists of S&T programs within each of the three military departments within DoD. The budget is prepared by each department's acquisition secretary, namely the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Acquisition), Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Research, Development and Acquisition), and Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology. Air Force and Space Force S&T is executed by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). Navy and Marine Corps S&T is executed by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), with medical research performed by the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. For the Army, 72% of the S&T budget is in Army Materiel Command's Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM), with the remainder in Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC), Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Army Space and Missile Defense Command (USASMDC) and the Deputy Chief of Staff (G1-Personnel) to the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Manpower and Reserve Affairs). Each agency supports both in-house intramural research as well as grants to outside academic or industrial organizations.

Intellectual property policy

Main article: United States patent law

Inventions "conceived or actually reduced to practice" in the performance of government-funded research may be subject to the Bayh-Dole Act.

The Federal Research Public Access Act (111th congress S.1373, introduced 25 June 2009 but still in a Senate committee) would require "free online public access to such final peer-reviewed manuscripts or published versions as soon as practicable, but not later than 6 months after publication in peer-reviewed journals".

The America Invents Act of 2011 moved the US from a 'first to invent' system to a 'first to file' model, the most significant patent reform since 1952. This act will limit or eliminate lengthy legal and bureaucratic challenges that used to accompany contested filings. However, the pressure to file early may limit the inventor's ability to exploit the period of exclusivity fully. It may also disadvantage very small entities, for which the legal costs of preparing an application are the main barrier to filing. This legislation has also fostered the rise of what are familiarly known as patent trolls.

Science in political discourse

Most of the leading political issues in the United States have a scientific component. For example, healthcare, renewable energy, climate change, and national security. Amongst U.S. public opinion, 60% of Americans believe scientific experts should play an active role in policy debates over relevant issues, although this view is divided amongst Democrats and Republicans. Broadly, a majority of Americans believe that scientists should be involved in shaping policies related to medical and health, energy, education, environmental, infrastructure, defense, and agriculture policies.

Science policy in the states

State government initiatives

There are also a number of state and local agencies which deal with state-specific science policy and provide additional funding, such as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

Overall research spending in the states

Contribution of each state to US research in 2010, in terms of funding (public and private sectors) and science and engineering occupations. Source: Figure 5.6 from the UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030, based on data from National Science Foundation

The level of research spending varies considerably from one state to another. Six states (New Mexico, Maryland, Massachusetts, Washington, California and Michigan) each devoted 3.9% or more of their GDP to R&D in 2010, together contributing 42% of national research expenditure. In 2010, more than one-quarter of R&D was concentrated in California (28.1%), ahead of Massachusetts (5.7%), New Jersey (5.6%), Washington State (5.5%), Michigan (5.4%), Texas (5.2%), Illinois (4.8%), New York (3.6%) and Pennsylvania (3.5%). Seven states (Arkansas, Nevada, Oklahoma, Louisiana, South Dakota and Wyoming) devoted less than 0.8% of GDP to R&D.

California is home to Silicon Valley, the name given to the area hosting the leading corporations and start-ups in information technology. This state also hosts dynamic biotechnology clusters in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego. The main biotechnology clusters outside California are the cities of Boston/Cambridge, Massachusetts, Maryland, suburban Washington DC, New York, Seattle, Philadelphia and Chicago. California supplies 13.7% of all jobs in science and engineering across the country, more than any other state. Some 5.7% of Californians are employed in these fields. This high share reflects a potent combination of academic excellence and a strong business focus on R&D: the prestigious Stanford University and University of California rub shoulders with Silicon Valley, for instance. In much the same way, Route 128 around Boston in the State of Massachusetts is not only home to numerous high-tech firms and corporations but also hosts the renowned Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

New Mexico's high research intensity can be explained by the fact that it hosts both Los Alamos National Laboratory and the primary campus of Sandia National Laboratories, the two major United States Department of Energy research and development national laboratories. Maryland's position may reflect the concentration of federally funded research institutions there. Washington State has a high concentration of high-tech firms like Microsoft, Amazon and Boeing and the engineering functions of most automobile manufacturers are located in the State of Michigan.

Microsoft, Intel and Google figured among the world's top 10 corporations for research spending in 2014. They shared this distinction with Johnson & Johnson, a multinational based in New Jersey which makes pharmaceutical and healthcare products, as well as medical devices, and were closely followed by automobile giant General Motors (11th), based in Detroit, and pharmaceutical companies Merck (12th) and Pfizer (15th). Merck is headquartered in New Jersey and Pfizer in New York. Intel's investment in R&D has more than doubled in the past 10 years, whereas Pfizer's investment has dropped since 2012. Several pharmaceutical companies figure among the top 15 corporations for research spending. The US carries out almost half (46%) of all research in the life sciences, making it the world leader. In 2013, US pharmaceutical companies spent US$40 billion on R&D inside the US and nearly another US$11 billion on R&D abroad. Some 7% of the companies on Thomson Reuters' Top 100 Global Innovators list for 2014 are active in biomedical research, equal to the number of businesses in consumer products and telecommunications.

History

The first President's Science and Technology Advisor was James R. Killian, appointed in 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower after Sputnik Shock created the urgency for the government to support science and education. President Eisenhower realized then that if Americans were going to continue to be the world leader in scientific, technological and military advances, the government would need to provide support. After World War II, the US government began to formally provide support for scientific research and to establish the general structure by which science is conducted in the US. The foundation for modern American science policy was laid way out in Vannevar Bush's Science – the Endless Frontier, submitted to President Truman in 1945. Vannevar Bush was President Roosevelt's science advisor and became one of the most influential science advisors as, in his essay, he pioneered how we decide on science policy today. He made recommendations to improve the following three areas: national security, health, and the economy—the same three focuses we have today.

Creation of the NSF

The creation of the National Science Foundation, although implemented in 1950, was a controversial issue that started as early as 1942, between engineer and science administrator Vannevar Bush and Senator Harley M. Kilgore (D-WV), who was interested in the organization of military research. Senator Kilgore presented a series of bills between 1942–1945 to Congress, the one that most resembles the establishment of the NSF, by name, was in 1944, outlining an independent agency whose main focus was to promote peacetime basic and applied research as well as scientific training and education. Some specifics outlined were that the director would be appointed and the board would be composed of scientists, technical experts and members of the public. The government would take ownership of intellectual property developed with federal funding and funding would be distributed based on geographical location, not merit. Although both Bush and Kilgore were in favor of government support of science, they disagreed philosophically on the details of how that support would be carried out. In particular, Bush sided with the board being composed of just scientists with no public insight. When Congress signed the legislation that created the NSF, many of Bush's ideals were removed. It illustrates that these questions about patent rights, social science expectations, the distribution of federal funding (geographical or merit), and who (scientists or policymakers) get to be the administrators are interesting questions that science policy grapples with.

Science and technology in the United States

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_the_United_States 

  

Science and technology in the United States has a long history, producing many important figures and developments in the field. The United States of America came into being around the Age of Enlightenment (1685 to 1815), an era in Western philosophy in which writers and thinkers, rejecting the perceived superstitions of the past, instead chose to emphasize the intellectual, scientific and cultural life, centered upon the 18th century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source for legitimacy and authority. Enlightenment philosophers envisioned a "republic of science," where ideas would be exchanged freely and useful knowledge would improve the lot of all citizens.

The United States Constitution itself reflects the desire to encourage scientific creativity. It gives the United States Congress the power "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." This clause formed the basis for the U.S. patent and copyright systems, whereby creators of original art and technology would get a government granted monopoly, which after a limited period would become free to all citizens, thereby enriching the public domain.

Early American science

Benjamin Franklin, one of the first early American scientists.

In the early decades of its history, the United States was relatively isolated from Europe and also rather poor. At this stage, America's scientific infrastructure was still quite primitive compared to the long-established societies, institutes, and universities in Europe.

Eight of America's founding fathers were scientists of some repute. Benjamin Franklin conducted a series of experiments that deepened human understanding of electricity. Among other things, he proved what had been suspected but never before shown: that lightning is a form of electricity. Franklin also invented such conveniences as bifocal eyeglasses. Franklin also conceived the mid-room furnace, the "Franklin Stove". However, Franklin's design was flawed, in that his furnace vented the smoke from its base: because the furnace lacked a chimney to "draw" fresh air up through the central chamber, the fire would soon go out. It took David R. Rittenhouse, another hero of early Philadelphia, to improve Franklin's design by adding an L-shaped exhaust pipe that drew air through the furnace and vented its smoke up and along the ceiling, then into an intramural chimney and out of the house.

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), was among the most influential leaders in early America; during the American Revolutionary War (1775–83), Jefferson served in the Virginia legislature, the Continental Congress, was governor of Virginia, later serving as U.S. minister to France, U.S. secretary of state, vice president under John Adams (1735–1826), writer of the Declaration of Independence and the third U.S. president. During Jefferson's two terms in office (1801–1809), the U.S. purchased the Louisiana Territory and Lewis and Clark explored the vast new acquisition. After leaving office, he retired to his Virginia plantation, Monticello, and helped spearhead the University of Virginia. Jefferson was also a student of agriculture who introduced various types of rice, olive trees, and grasses into the New World. He stressed the scientific aspect of the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804–06), which explored the Pacific Northwest, and detailed, systematic information on the region's plants and animals was one of that expedition's legacies.

Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone. Ft. Myers, Florida, February 11, 1929.

Like Franklin and Jefferson, most American scientists of the late 18th century were involved in the struggle to win American independence and forge a new nation. These scientists included the astronomer David Rittenhouse, the medical scientist Benjamin Rush, and the natural historian Charles Willson Peale.

During the American Revolution, Rittenhouse helped design the defenses of Philadelphia and built telescopes and navigation instruments for the United States' military services. After the war, Rittenhouse designed road and canal systems for the state of Pennsylvania. He later returned to studying the stars and planets and gained a worldwide reputation in that field.

As United States Surgeon General, Benjamin Rush saved countless lives of soldiers during the American Revolutionary War by promoting hygiene and public health practices. By introducing new medical treatments, he made the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia an example of medical enlightenment, and after his military service, Rush established the first free clinic in the United States.

Charles Willson Peale is best remembered as an artist, but he also was a natural historian, inventor, educator, and politician. He created the first major museum in the United States, the Peale Museum in Philadelphia, which housed the young nation's only collection of North American natural history specimens. Peale excavated the bones of an ancient mastodon near West Point, New York; he spent three months assembling the skeleton, and then displayed it in his museum. The Peale Museum started an American tradition of making the knowledge of science interesting and available to the general public.

Science immigration

American political leaders' enthusiasm for knowledge also helped ensure a warm welcome for scientists from other countries. A notable early immigrant was the British chemist Joseph Priestley, who was driven from his homeland because of his dissenting politics. Priestley, who went to the United States in 1794, was the first of thousands of talented scientists who emigrated in search of a free, creative environment.

Alexander Graham Bell placing the first New York to Chicago telephone call in 1892

Other scientists had come to the United States to take part in the nation's rapid growth. Alexander Graham Bell, who arrived from Scotland by way of Canada in 1872, developed and patented the telephone and related inventions. Charles Proteus Steinmetz, who came from Germany in 1889, developed new alternating-current electrical systems at General Electric Company, and Vladimir Zworykin, an immigrant from Russia in 1919 arrived in the States bringing his knowledge of x-rays and cathode ray tubes and later won his first patent on a television system he invented. The Serbian Nikola Tesla went to the United States in 1884, and would later adapt the principle of the rotating magnetic field in the development of an alternating current induction motor and polyphase system for the generation, transmission, distribution and use of electrical power.

Into the early 1900s, Europe remained the center of science research, notably in England and Germany. From the 1920s onwards, the tensions heralding the onset of World War II spurred sporadic but steady scientific emigration, or "brain drain", in Europe. Many of these emigrants were Jewish scientists, fearing the repercussions of anti-Semitism, especially in Germany and Italy, and sought sanctuary in the United States. One of the first to do so was Albert Einstein in 1933. At his urging, and often with his support, a good percentage of Germany's theoretical physics community, previously the best in the world, left for the United States. Enrico Fermi, came from Italy in 1938 and led the work that produced the world's first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. Many other scientists of note moved to the US during this same emigration wave, including Niels Bohr, Victor Weisskopf, Otto Stern, and Eugene Wigner.

Several scientific and technological breakthroughs during the Atomic Age were the handiwork of such immigrants, who recognized the potential threats and uses of new technology. For instance, it was the German professor Einstein and his Hungarian colleague, Leó Szilárd, who took the initiative and convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt to pursue the pivotal Manhattan Project. Many physicists instrumental to the project were also European immigrants, such as the Hungarian Edward Teller, "father of the hydrogen bomb," and German Nobel laureate Hans Bethe. Their scientific contributions, combined with Allied resources and facilities helped establish the United States during World War II as an unrivaled scientific juggernaut. In fact, the Manhattan Project's Operation Alsos and its components, while not designed to recruit European scientists, successfully collected and evaluated Axis military scientific research at the end of the war, especially that of the German nuclear energy project, only to conclude that it was years behind its American counterpart.

Theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, who emigrated to the United States to escape Nazi persecution, is an example of human capital flight as a result of political change.

When World War II ended, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union were all intent on capitalizing on Nazi research and competed for the spoils of war. While President Harry S. Truman refused to provide sanctuary to ideologically committed members of the Nazi party, the Office of Strategic Services introduced Operation Paperclip, conducted under the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency. This program covertly offered otherwise ineligible intellectuals and technicians white-washed dossiers, biographies, and employment. Ex-Nazi scientists overseen by the JIOA had been employed by the US military since the defeat of the Nazi regime in Project Overcast, but Operation Paperclip ventured to systematically allocate German nuclear and aerospace research and scientists to military and civilian posts, beginning in August 1945. Until the program's termination in 1990, Operation Paperclip was said to have recruited over 1,600 such employees in a variety of professions and disciplines.

Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla sitting in the Colorado Springs experimental station with his "Magnifying transmitter" generating millions of volts.

In the first phases of Operation Paperclip, these recruits mostly included aerospace engineers from the German V-2 combat rocket program, experts in aerospace medicine and synthetic fuels. Perhaps the most influential of these was Wernher Von Braun, who had worked on the Aggregate rockets (the first rocket program to reach outer space), and chief designer of the V-2 rocket program. Upon reaching American soil, Von Braun first worked on the United States Air Force ICBM program before his team was reassigned to NASA. Often credited as “The Father of Rocket Science,” his work on the Redstone rocket and the successful deployment of the Explorer 1 satellite as a response to Sputnik 1 marked the beginning of the American Space program, and therefore, of the Space Race. Von Braun's subsequent development of the Saturn V rocket for NASA in the mid-to late sixties resulted in the first crewed landing on the Moon, the Apollo 11 mission in 1969.

Wernher von Braun with the F-1 engines of the Saturn V first stage at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center

In the post-war era, the US was left in a position of unchallenged scientific leadership, being one of the few industrial countries not ravaged by war. Additionally, science and technology were seen to have greatly added to the Allied war victory, and were seen as absolutely crucial in the Cold War era. This enthusiasm simultaneously rejuvenated American industry, and celebrated Yankee ingenuity, instilling a zealous nationwide investment in "Big Science" and state-of-the-art government funded facilities and programs. This state patronage presented appealing careers to the intelligentsia, and further consolidated the scientific preeminence of the United States. As a result, the US government became, for the first time, the largest single supporter of basic and applied scientific research. By the mid-1950s the research facilities in the US were second to none, and scientists were drawn to the US for this reason alone. The changing pattern can be seen in the winners of the Nobel Prize in physics and chemistry. During the first half-century of Nobel Prizes – from 1901 to 1950 – American winners were in a distinct minority in the science categories. Since 1950, Americans have won approximately half of the Nobel Prizes awarded in the sciences. List of Nobel laureates by country.

The American Brain Gain continued throughout the Cold War, as tensions steadily escalated in the Eastern Bloc, resulting in a steady trickle of defectors, refugees and emigrants. The partition of Germany, for one, precipitated over three and a half million East Germans – the Republikflüchtling - to cross into West Berlin by 1961. Most of them were young, well-qualified, educated professionals or skilled workers - the intelligentsia - exacerbating human capital flight in the GDR to the benefit of Western countries, including the United States.

Technology inflows from abroad have played an important role in the development of the United States, especially in the late nineteenth century. A favorable U.S. security environment that allowed relatively low defense spending. High trade barriers encouraged the development of domestic manufacturing industries and the inflow of foreign technologies.

Further information: Human capital flight

 

American applied science

Men of Progress, representing 19 contemporary American inventors, 1857

During the 19th century, Britain, France, and Germany were at the forefront of new ideas in science and mathematics. But if the United States lagged behind in the formulation of theory, it excelled in using theory to solve problems: applied science. This tradition had been born of necessity. Because Americans lived so far from the well-springs of Western science and manufacturing, they often had to figure out their own ways of doing things. When Americans combined theoretical knowledge with "Yankee ingenuity", the result was a flow of important inventions. The great American inventors include Robert Fulton (the steamboat); Samuel Morse (the telegraph); Eli Whitney (the cotton gin); Cyrus McCormick (the reaper); and Thomas Alva Edison, the most fertile of them all, with more than a thousand inventions credited to his name.

First flight of the Wright Flyer I, December 17, 1903, Orville piloting, Wilbur running at wingtip.

Edison was not always the first to devise a scientific application, but he was frequently the one to bring an idea to a practical finish. For example, the British engineer Joseph Swan built an incandescent electric lamp in 1860, almost 20 years before Edison. But Edison's light bulbs lasted much longer than Swan's, and they could be turned on and off individually, while Swan's bulbs could be used only in a system where several lights were turned on or off at the same time. Edison followed up his improvement of the light bulb with the development of electrical generating systems. Within 30 years, his inventions had introduced electric lighting into millions of homes.

Howard Hughes with his Boeing 100 in the 1940s

Another landmark application of scientific ideas to practical uses was the innovation of the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright. In the 1890s they became fascinated with accounts of German glider experiments and began their own investigation into the principles of flight. Combining scientific knowledge and mechanical skills, the Wright brothers built and flew several gliders. Then, on December 17, 1903, they successfully flew the first heavier-than-air, mechanically propelled airplane.

An American invention that was barely noticed in 1947 went on to usher in the Information Age. In that year John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain of Bell Laboratories drew upon highly sophisticated principles of quantum physics to invent the transistor, a small substitute for the bulky vacuum tube. This, and a device invented 10 years later, the integrated circuit, made it possible to package enormous amounts of electronics into tiny containers. As a result, book-sized computers of today can outperform room-sized computers of the 1960s, and there has been a revolution in the way people live – in how they work, study, conduct business, and engage in research.

World War II had a profound impact on the development of science and technology in the United States. Before World War II, the federal government basically did not assume responsibility for supporting scientific development. During the war, the federal government and science formed a new cooperative relationship. After the war, the federal government became the main role in supporting science and technology. And in the following years, the federal government supported the establishment of a national modern science and technology system, making American a world leader in science and technology.

Part of America's past and current preeminence in applied science has been due to its vast research and development budget, which at $401.6bn in 2009 was more than double that of China's $154.1bn and over 25% greater than the European Union's $297.9bn.

The Atomic Age and "Big Science"

The mushroom cloud from the Mike shot, developed by United States Atomic Energy Commission

One of the most spectacular – and controversial – accomplishments of US technology has been the harnessing of nuclear energy. The concepts that led to the splitting of the atom were developed by the scientists of many countries, but the conversion of these ideas into the reality of nuclear fission was accomplished in the United States in the early 1940s, both by many Americans but also aided tremendously by the influx of European intellectuals fleeing the growing conflagration sparked by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Europe.

During these crucial years, a number of the most prominent European scientists, especially physicists, immigrated to the United States, where they would do much of their most important work; these included Hans Bethe, Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Leó Szilárd, Edward Teller, Felix Bloch, Emilio Segrè, John von Neumann, and Eugene Wigner, among many, many others. American academics worked hard to find positions at laboratories and universities for their European colleagues.

The Space Shuttle Columbia takes off on a crewed mission to space.

After German physicists split a uranium nucleus in 1938, a number of scientists concluded that a nuclear chain reaction was feasible and possible. The Einstein–Szilárd letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warned that this breakthrough would permit the construction of "extremely powerful bombs." This warning inspired an executive order towards the investigation of using uranium as a weapon, which later was superseded during World War II by the Manhattan Project the full Allied effort to be the first to build an atomic bomb. The project bore fruit when the first such bomb was exploded in New Mexico on July 16, 1945.

A visual example of a 24 satellite GPS constellation in motion with the earth rotating. Notice how the number of satellites in view from a given point on the earth's surface, in this example in Golden, Colorado, USA(39.7469° N, 105.2108° W), changes with time.

The development of the bomb and its use against Japan in August 1945 initiated the Atomic Age, a time of anxiety over weapons of mass destruction that has lasted through the Cold War and down to the anti-proliferation efforts of today. Even so, the Atomic Age has also been characterized by peaceful uses of nuclear power, as in the advances in nuclear power and nuclear medicine.

Along with the production of the atomic bomb, World War II also began an era known as "Big Science" with increased government patronage of scientific research. The advantage of a scientifically and technologically sophisticated country became all too apparent during wartime, and in the ideological Cold War to follow the importance of scientific strength in even peacetime applications became too much for the government to any more leave to philanthropy and private industry alone. This increased expenditure on scientific research and education propelled the United States to the forefront of the international scientific community—an amazing feat for a country which only a few decades before still had to send its most promising students to Europe for extensive scientific education.

The first US commercial nuclear power plant started operation in Illinois in 1956. At the time, the future for nuclear energy in the United States looked bright. But opponents criticized the safety of power plants and questioned whether safe disposal of nuclear waste could be assured. A 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania turned many Americans against nuclear power. The cost of building a nuclear power plant escalated, and other, more economical sources of power began to look more appealing. During the 1970s and 1980s, plans for several nuclear plants were cancelled, and the future of nuclear power remains in a state of uncertainty in the United States.

Meanwhile, American scientists have been experimenting with other renewable energy, including solar power. Although solar power generation is still not economical in much of the United States, recent developments might make it more affordable.

Telecom and technology

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs at the fifth D: All Things Digital conference (D5) in 2007

For the past 80 years, the United States has been integral in fundamental advances in telecommunications and technology. For example, AT&T's Bell Laboratories spearheaded the American technological revolution with a series of inventions including the first practical light emitted diode (LED), the transistor, the C programming language, and the Unix computer operating system. SRI International and Xerox PARC in Silicon Valley helped give birth to the personal computer industry, while ARPA and NASA funded the development of the ARPANET and the Internet.

Silicon Valley

Herman Hollerith was just a twenty-year-old engineer when he realized the need for a better way for the U.S. government to conduct their Census and then proceeded to develop electromechanical tabulators for that purpose. The net effect of the many changes from the 1880 census: the larger population, the data items to be collected, the Census Bureau headcount, the scheduled publications, and the use of Hollerith's electromechanical tabulators, was to reduce the time required to process the census from eight years for the 1880 census to six years for the 1890 census. That kick started The Tabulating Machine Company. By the 1960s, the company name had been changed to International Business Machines, and IBM dominated business computing. IBM revolutionized the industry by bringing out the first comprehensive family of computers (the System/360). It caused many of their competitors to either merge or go bankrupt, leaving IBM in an even more dominant position. IBM is known for its many inventions like the floppy disk, introduced in 1971, supermarket checkout products, and introduced in 1973, the IBM 3614 Consumer Transaction Facility, an early form of today's Automatic Teller Machines.

The Space Age

Two Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers stand with three vehicles, providing a size comparison of three generations of Mars rovers. Front and center is the flight spare for the first Mars rover, Sojourner, which landed on Mars in 1997 as part of the Mars Pathfinder Project. On the left is a Mars Exploration Rover (MER) test vehicle that is a working sibling to Spirit and Opportunity, which landed on Mars in 2004. On the right is a test rover for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), which landed Curiosity on Mars in 2012. Sojourner is 65 cm (2.13 ft) long. The MERs are 1.6 m (5.2 ft) long. Curiosity on the right is 3 m (9.8 ft) long.

 

The Hubble Space Telescope as seen from Space Shuttle Discovery during its second servicing mission

 

Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment

Running almost in tandem with the Atomic Age has been the Space Age. American Robert Goddard was one of the first scientists to experiment with rocket propulsion systems. In his small laboratory in Worcester, Massachusetts, Goddard worked with liquid oxygen and gasoline to propel rockets into the atmosphere, and in 1926 successfully fired the world's first liquid-fuel rocket which reached a height of 12.5 meters. Over the next 10 years, Goddard's rockets achieved modest altitudes of nearly two kilometers, and interest in rocketry increased in the United States, Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union.

As Allied forces advanced during World War II, both the American and Russian forces searched for top German scientists who could be claimed as spoils for their country. The American effort to bring home German rocket technology in Operation Paperclip, and the bringing of German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (who would later sit at the head of a NASA center) stand out in particular.

Expendable rockets provided the means for launching artificial satellites, as well as crewed spacecraft. In 1957 the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik 1, and the United States followed with Explorer 1 in 1958. The first human spaceflights were made in early 1961, first by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and then by American astronaut Alan Shepard.

From those first tentative steps, to the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon and the partially reusable Space Shuttle, the American space program brought forth a breathtaking display of applied science. Communications satellites transmit computer data, telephone calls, and radio and television broadcasts. Weather satellites furnish the data necessary to provide early warnings of severe storms. Global positioning satellites were first developed in the US starting around 1972, and became fully operational by 1994. Interplanetary probes and space telescopes began a golden age of planetary science and advanced a wide variety of astronomical work.

On April 20, 2021, MOXIE produced oxygen from Martian atmospheric carbon dioxide using solid oxide electrolysis, the first experimental extraction of a natural resource from another planet for human use. The United States was ranked 3rd in the Global Innovation Index in 2019 and 2020.

Medicine and health care

Thomas Hunt Morgan won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 for discoveries elucidating the role that the chromosome plays in heredity.

 

Gene therapy using an adenovirus vector. In some cases, the adenovirus will insert the new gene into a cell. If the treatment is successful, the new gene will make a functional protein to treat a disease.

 

Edward Witten

As in physics and chemistry, Americans have dominated the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine since World War II. The private sector has been the focal point for biomedical research in the United States, and has played a key role in this achievement.

As of 2000, for-profit industry funded 57%, non-profit private organizations such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute funded 7%, and the tax-funded National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded 36% of medical research in the United States. However, by 2003, the NIH funded only 28% of medical research funding; funding by private industry increased 102% from 1994 to 2003.

The NIH consists of 24 separate institutes in Bethesda, Maryland. The goal of NIH research is knowledge that helps prevent, detect, diagnose, and treat disease and disability. At any given time, grants from the NIH support the research of about 35,000 principal investigators. Five Nobel Prize-winners have made their prize-winning discoveries in NIH laboratories.

NIH research has helped make possible numerous medical achievements. For example, mortality from heart disease, the number-one killer in the United States, dropped 41 percent between 1971 and 1991. The death rate for strokes decreased by 59 percent during the same period. Between 1991 and 1995, the cancer death rate fell by nearly 3 percent, the first sustained decline since national record-keeping began in the 1930s. And today more than 70 percent of children who get cancer are cured.

With the help of the NIH, molecular genetics and genomics research have revolutionized biomedical science. In the 1980s and 1990s, researchers performed the first trial of gene therapy in humans and are now able to locate, identify, and describe the function of many genes in the human genome.

Research conducted by universities, hospitals, and corporations also contributes to improvement in diagnosis and treatment of disease. NIH funded the basic research on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), for example, but many of the drugs used to treat the disease have emerged from the laboratories of the American pharmaceutical industry; those drugs are being tested in research centers across the country.