Science Cheerleader

Story Musgrave is a good friend and colleague. He’s also, hands-down, the smartest, straightest-talker I’ve ever met. We first worked together back when I ran the Discover Magazine Awards at Disney and Story was a (favorite) presenter. Since then, we’ve worked together in various capacities.

Earlier this year, the White House made several (at times contradictory) reports about the future of NASA. I needed clarity so I turned to Story who granted me this interview in late April. He’s a farm boy who went on to fix the Hubble Telescope and I knew he’d cut straight through the BS and deliver the facts framed by his years of experience and knowledge.

Story has 7 graduate degrees in math, computers, chemistry, medicine, physiology, literature and psychology. Story was an NASA astronaut for over 30 years, a portion of which he spent as a part-time trauma surgeon, and flew on six spaceflights. He performed the first shuttle spacewalk on Challenger’s first flight, was a pilot on an astronomy mission, conducted two classified DOD missions, was the lead spacewalker on the Hubble Telescope repair mission and on his last flight, he operated an electronic chip manufacturing satellite on Columbia.

He’s not shy about sharing his informed opinions when invited to do so. So I did so.
I asked him what he thought about President Obama’s space policies:

“We’re going nowhere, we’re going to launch nothing, we’re going to do nothing.
It takes us 15 years to do what we did in 5 years, 50 years ago.”

I pushed him to help explain why the public is no longer enthused about space. His response:

“Space holds a mirror up for what it means to be a human being. The public IS excited about space but we have to give them something. The Space Station was a massive strategic error. For the cost of that [...] the entire solar system would have been covered. Instead, we’re giving the public nothing.”

Here’s the full interview, the release of which coincides nicely with Story’s birthday on August 19th. Story’s willing to do a follow-up so let me know if you have additional questions you’d like me to ask him. (Special thanks to Mike Lucek for his technical assistance.)

Wrote this post calling for the White House, National Academy of Engineering, and others, to create an Emergency Response 2.0 system to pre-wire the nation so we can rapidly and effectively respond to the next natural disaster.

As of this evening, it’s been Tweeted out, Facebooked, and Dug over at Digg nearly 400 times already. Looks like we’re rattling some cages. Let’s hope this attention and excitement results in action. I’ll continue to keep you posted.

Read the post that got this party started.

Just wrote this for DiscoverMagazine.com

Who get the credit for the BP container cap? YOU do.

Do you have thoughts on how we can pre-wire our nation for a better–more rapid–response to the next catastrophe? Share them via the Discover “comments” section, following the post.

Nice feature in the May edition of the American Chemical Society’s magazine:

Momentum for technology assessment based on input from everyday citizens who are not experts in a particular topic, or participatory technology assessment, is just beginning to build in the U.S. To get the conversation started, a group of institutions, universities, and science museums, as well as a former Philadelphia 76ers cheerleader turned science policy enthusiast (C&EN, Jan. 12, 2009, page 56), have teamed up and proposed a network dedicated to the process.

Called Expert & Citizen Assessment of Science & Technology (ECAST), the project is envisioned to be a geographically distributed network of complementary institutions that are independent of government. Nonpartisan policy research organizations would help broadly disseminate information to decisionmakers. Universities would both help assess technology and develop new ways to assess it. And science museums would help educate the public and inform society in user-friendly ways.

Read the full article, here.

Check out the federal government’s new crop of smart phone applications!

Find alternative fuel locations, on the go with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fueling Station Locator. The locator works on any mobile Internet-ready device and allows drivers to find the five closest biodiesel, electricity, E85 (etha­nol), hydrogen, natural gas, and propane fueling sites. It uses familiar, easy-to-navigate Google technology to map fueling stations, list contact information and business hours, and provide detailed driving directions and an instant phone connection..

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Now you can SHOW and tell little Johnny why sunblock is needed on any given day with this app for real-time UV index rating. Use your mobile device to check the UV Index and air quality ratings wherever you are. .

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Before you reach for that cake, check your Body Mass Index with this app. One of the most popular tools on the NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Web site is the BMI (Body Mass Index) calculator. BMI is a reliable indicator of total body fat, which is related to the risk of disease and death. The NHLBI BMI calculator receives 1.6 million visitors a month and ranks #1 on Google. This mobile application provides results right on your phone along with links to healthy weight resources on the NHLBI Web site. .

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Be a virtual bounty hunter with you spare time this summer using the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted App. With information provided directly from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, this application includes: the Top Ten Most Wanted, Most Wanted Terrorists, and Missing Children. A picture and background information is provided for each individual. The application also provides a link to submit tip information directly to the FBI. This application allows you to quickly identify Most Wanted criminals or missing children. Additionally, it provides the means to submit a tip, conveniently from your iPhone or iTouch device while you are on the go.

More government apps can be found here. (Hat tip to Jeffrey Levy, EPA, @levyj413)

Join me on July 14th when Discover Magazine, the National Science Foundation, and two prominent professional engineering societies (ASME and IEEE) present: The Road to the New Energy Economy on Capitol Hill. (I head up these and other discussions on behalf of Discover Magazine where I’m a senior advisor and occasional writer.)

This second annual, four-part, lunchtime, Hill series “aims to garner Congressional support for innovation to allow us to shift to a more efficient, lower-carbon energy future.” View online video highlights and read about the inaugural series here.

First up this year: Natural Gas.  Email events@discovermagazine.com for more information.

In September, the topic will be Nuclear Energy. I’ll post the e-vite for that event here, sometime in August.

Why so few posts from me lately? Truth is, I’ve been swamped. All great stuff, including a summer-long  immersion in an incubator program; some very cool upcoming Capitol Hill briefings for Discover Magazine and the National Science Foundation;  the launch of ECAST (Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology);  exciting speaking engagements; plotting of a national Emergency Response process so people with great ideas for solutions to a crisis will have an immediate and reliable place to turn where ideas will be delivered to decision-makers (more on that later); and…baseball season. I have four young kids and all of them play ball. Fun stuff!

To keep things fresh, I’ve enlisted the help of some enthusiastic writers so we can continue to deliver opportunities for you to get involved in science and science policy discussions; learn about people who are shattering stereotypes; and enjoy all science has to offer. From the simplest pleasures (like when I recently found a fly trapped in a spider’s web…I’m sure he deserved it) to mind-boggling speculations about our future (e.g. Singularity), it’s impossible to escape the influence and wonders of science.

I’d like to share with you a brief summary of SciCheer’s goals and outcomes. Feel free to use the data as you see fit. It’s becoming clearer to me that a SciCheer 2.0 might be in order. If you have thoughts on what the next generation of SciCheer should include, let me know. –Cheers!

On Sunday, the same day the New York Times featured YOUR future–aka Singularity, read on–on the cover of its business section, I was listening to the head cheerleader of all-things-Singularity, Ray Kurzweil, as he presented the future of humanity at the H+ Summit at Harvard. You might recall that we interviewed Ray on SciCheer sometime last year.

Ray and I, along with several others, were speakers at the H+ Summit, the theme of which was The Rise of the Citizen Scientist. I spoke about “citizen scientists” as I know them. (A copy of my powerpoint presentation can be found, below. I’ll post a link to the video when I have it.) As it turns out, my definition of citizen science isn’t quite the same as the who follow the Transhumanist/Singularity philosophy. While they are very interested and enthusiastic about what “our” citizen scientists are doing–and quite a visionary and friendly group of people, I might add–they are more interested in how humans can, ultimately, harness the deepest powers of technology to  “seize control of the evolutionary process” and create immortality.

I’ll do my best to explain what this means by pulling excerpts from my past interview with Ray Kurzweil:

Ray’s “short version” definition of  Singularity:  “The Singularity is a future time when the pace of technological change will be so fast and transformative that you will not be able to follow it unless you merge with the intelligent technology we are creating.”

How this work will and when: “Accessing the web from inside our brains is one good example of what we will see in about twenty years. The machine extensions to our brains will grow exponentially both in hardware and software capability. By the late 2030s, it will be the nonbiological portion of our intelligence that predominates.”

No thanks, I like things just the way they are. “First of all, it is human to change who we are. We didn’t stay on the ground, we didn’t stay on the planet, and we have not stayed with the limitations of our biology. Human life expectancy was 23 a thousand years ago. We are the only species that changes who we are and extends our reach, both physical and mental, through our tools. So it is human to change who we are. There will always be early and late adopters, but people are not going to completely dismiss these changes. How many people today complete reject medical and health technologies? When there is a therapy based on blood cells devices that overcome a particular disease, very few if any people will reject it. People put computers in their brains today if they have Parkinson’s Disease. People do not reject this FDA approved therapy due to philosophical issues.”

The buzz kill: real concerns that microscopic robots will pose a threat to the world: “Yes, that is called the grey goo scenario, and the narrative thread in the movie illustrates this danger. I do think we can manage that through a combination of ethical standards to build in safeguards into nanotechnology, as well as a rapid response system that detects threats and immediately deals with them, just like our biological immune system is designed to do. But this is not something we should be sanguine about. We need to be very diligent about it.”

So, there’s your future. Want to have a say? First step, head over to the beta website of ECAST (Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology) and sign up so we can keep you apprised of so-called “participatory” opportunities. We (see below) set up ECAST precisely so the public and scientists can inform each other on emerging technologies so smart, representative policies are initiated. And, as stated before: government policymakers, businesses, non-governmental organizations, and citizens need such analysis to capably navigate the technology-intensive world in which we now live.

“We”=Science Cheerleader, Arizona State University, Boston Museum of Science, the Loka Institute, and the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars.

Now, more than ever, we need to get in front of emerging technologies to help shape our future.

As promised, here’s a copy of my presentation.

Excerpted from a piece I just posted on DiscoverMagazine.com:

Prizes: This old idea is making a sweeping comeback and it is changing the way government, industry and foundations help revolutionize future discovery. It’s high time we offer prizes to motivate and galvanize the public to come up with creative, real-time solutions to major disasters, such as the BP oil spill.

Approximately one-and-a-half weeks ago, I received an email from Andrew Revkin (who writes the DotEarth blog at The New York Times) in which he challenged researchers and others to think creatively about substantive approaches to stanching the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“There’s a lot of talk about sweeping Grand Engineering Challenges this year. But one is unfolding in real-time in the Gulf. Waiting months for a relief well seems pretty in the box,” he wrote in the email (reprinted with Revkin’s permission), and reiterated in this blog post.

While it’s true that BP is accepting public suggestions about ideas to mitigate the oil spill, the process needs some tweaking. From the Deepwater Horizon Response website: “Once a formal suggestion has been filed, BP technical personnel will carefully evaluate each and every one for technical feasibility and proof of application. If the engineering group finds the suggestion feasible, the person submitting the suggestion will be contacted if and when their support is needed.”

BP technical personnel will evaluate the suggestions? Seems a little too cozy to me.

For the same reasons President Obama wants to divide the Minerals Management Service into two agencies–one charged with inspecting oil rigs, investigating oil companies and enforcing safety regulations, and another to oversee leases for drilling and collection of billions of dollars in royalties–perhaps we should consider a third-party administrator to solicit and evaluate proposed solutions from the public.

I suspect the White House would agree. Earlier this week, Beth Noveck, U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer and Director of the White House Open Government Initiative, summarized on the White House blog the highlights of a  recent Prize Summit organized by the Office of Science and Technology Policy and some of the major players in the world of big prizes. “Leaders from over thirty Federal agencies have come to learn about how to incorporate prizes and incentive-backed challenges into their work of addressing complex policy problems,” Noveck reported.  The summit helped agencies learn more about the benefits of prizes while setting forth guidelines, like this one from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB): “A prize should not be an end in itself, but one means within a broader strategy for spurring private innovation and change.”

Hold the phone. What if one IS looking for an end in itself, such as an immediate solution to the oil spill? Read full post.

Cool: Congress is busy taking note of the many ways citizen scientists can help protect the nation. Check out this:

In the United States, 1 in 4 people live with the risk of earthquakes. The U.S. Geological Survey and its partners are designing innovative tools to better detect earthquakes and share critical information.

The involvement of citizens is key, as decisions made before and immediately after an earthquake can save lives and protect property.
What:The USGS will host a congressional briefing on how innovative tools combined with citizen involvement can help save lives and minimize economic losses from earthquakes.
Who: Jack Hayes, Director, National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (emcee)
David Wald, U.S. Geological Survey; John Hooper, Director of Earthquake Engineering at Magnusson Klemencic Associates; Mark Benthien, Southern California Earthquake Center
Where: 1334 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C
When: Friday, May 21, 2010 10 a.m.
For more information about the briefing, visit www.usgs.gov/solutions.

(Thanks to David Westcott for the lead!)