Emerging technologies

In the history of technology, emerging technologies are contemporary advances and innovation in various fields of technology. Various converging technologies have emerged in the technological convergence of different systems evolving towards similar goals. Convergence can refer to previously separate technologies such as voice (and telephony features), data (and productivity applications) and video that now share resources and interact with each other, creating new efficiencies.
Emerging technologies are those technical innovations which represent progressive developments within a field for competitive advantage;^[1] converging technologies represent previously distinct fields which are in some way moving towards stronger inter-connection and similar goals. However, the opinion on the degree of impact, status and economic viability of several emerging and converging technologies vary.

Technology and competitiveness

In 1983 a classified program was initiated in the US intelligence community to reverse the US declining economic and military competitiveness. The program, Project Socrates, used all source intelligence to review competitiveness worldwide for all forms of competition to determine the source of the US decline. What Project Socrates determined was that technology exploitation is the foundation of all competitive advantage and that the source of the US declining competitiveness was the fact that decision-making through the US both in the private and public sectors had switched from decision making that was based on technology exploitation (i.e., technology-based planning) to decision making that was based on money exploitation (i.e., economic-based planning) at the end of World War II.
Technology is properly defined as any application of science to accomplish a function. The science can be leading edge or well established and the function can have high visibility or be significantly more mundane but it is all technology, and its exploitation is the foundation of all competitive advantage.
Technology-based planning is what was used to build the US industrial giants before WWII (e.g., Dow, DuPont, GM) and it what was used to transform the US into a superpower. It was not economic-based planning.
Project Socrates determined that to rebuild US competitiveness, decision making throughout the US had to readopt technology-based planning. Project Socrates also determined that countries like China and India had continued executing technology-based (while the US took its detour into economic-based) planning, and as a result had considerable advanced the process and were using it to build themselves into superpowers. To rebuild US competitiveness the US decision-makers needed adopt a form of technology-based planning that was far more advanced than that used by China and India.
Project Socrates determined that technology-based planning makes an evolutionary leap forward every few hundred years and the next evolutionary leap, the Automated Innovation Revolution, was poised to occur. In the Automated Innovation Revolution the process for determining how to acquire and utilize technology for a competitive advantage (which includes R&D) is automated so that it can be executed with unprecedented speed, efficiency and agility.
Project Socrates developed the means for automated innovation so that the US could lead the Automated Innovation Revolution in order to rebuild and maintain the country's economic competitiveness for many generations

Skepticism and critics of technology

On the somewhat skeptical side are certain philosophers like Herbert Marcuse and John Zerzan, who believe that technological societies are inherently flawed. They suggest that the inevitable result of such a society is to become evermore technological at the cost of freedom and psychological health.
Many, such as the Luddites and prominent philosopher Martin Heidegger, hold serious, although not entirely deterministic reservations, about technology (see "The Question Concerning Technology^[45])". According to Heidegger scholars Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Spinosa, "Heidegger does not oppose technology. He hopes to reveal the essence of technology in a way that 'in no way confines us to a stultified compulsion to push on blindly with technology or, what comes to the same thing, to rebel helplessly against it.' Indeed, he promises that 'when we once open ourselves expressly to the essence of technology, we find ourselves unexpectedly taken into a freeing claim.'^[46]" What this entails is a more complex relationship to technology than either techno-optimists or techno-pessimists tend to allow.^[47]
Some of the most poignant criticisms of technology are found in what are now considered to be dystopian literary classics, for example Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and other writings, Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. And, in Faust by Goethe, Faust's selling his soul to the devil in return for power over the physical world, is also often interpreted as a metaphor for the adoption of industrial technology. More recently, modern works of science fiction, such as those by Philip K. Dick and William Gibson, and films (e.g. Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell) project highly ambivalent or cautionary attitudes toward technology's impact on human society and identity.
The late cultural critic Neil Postman distinguished tool-using societies from technological societies and, finally, what he called "technopolies," that is, societies that are dominated by the ideology of technological and scientific progress, to the exclusion or harm of other cultural practices, values and world-views.^[48]
Darin Barney has written about technology's impact on practices of citizenship and democratic culture, suggesting that technology can be construed as (1) an object of political debate, (2) a means or medium of discussion, and (3) a setting for democratic deliberation and citizenship. As a setting for democratic culture, Barney suggests that technology tends to make ethical questions, including the question of what a good life consists in, nearly impossible, because they already give an answer to the question: a good life is one that includes the use of more and more technology.^[49]
Nikolas Kompridis has also written about the dangers of new technology, such as genetic engineering, nanotechnology, synthetic biology and robotics. He warns that these technologies introduce unprecedented new challenges to human beings, including the possibility of the permanent alteration of our biological nature. These concerns are shared by other philosophers, scientists and public intellectuals who have written about similar issues (e.g. Francis Fukuyama, Jürgen Habermas, William Joy, and Michael Sandel).^[50]
Another prominent critic of technology is Hubert Dreyfus, who has published books On the Internet and What Computers Still Can't Do.
Another, more infamous anti-technological treatise is Industrial Society and Its Future, written by Theodore Kaczynski (aka The Unabomber) and printed in several major newspapers (and later books) as part of an effort to end his bombing campaign of the techno-industrial infrastructure.

Energy and transport

Meanwhile, humans were learning to harness other forms of energy. The earliest known use of wind power is the sailboat.^[40] The earliest record of a ship under sail is shown on an Egyptian pot dating back to 3200 BC.^[41] From prehistoric times, Egyptians probably used the power of the Nile annual floods to irrigate their lands, gradually learning to regulate much of it through purposely built irrigation channels and 'catch' basins. Similarly, the early peoples of Mesopotamia, the Sumerians, learned to use the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for much the same purposes. But more extensive use of wind and water (and even human) power required another invention.
According to archaeologists, the wheel was invented around 4000 B.C. probably independently and nearly-simultaneously in Mesopotamia (in present-day Iraq), the Northern Caucasus (Maykop culture) and Central Europe. Estimates on when this may have occurred range from 5500 to 3000 B.C., with most experts putting it closer to 4000 B.C. The oldest artifacts with drawings that depict wheeled carts date from about 3000 B.C.; however, the wheel may have been in use for millennia before these drawings were made. There is also evidence from the same period of time that wheels were used for the production of pottery. (Note that the original potter's wheel was probably not a wheel, but rather an irregularly shaped slab of flat wood with a small hollowed or pierced area near the center and mounted on a peg driven into the earth. It would have been rotated by repeated tugs by the potter or his assistant.) More recently, the oldest-known wooden wheel in the world was found in the Ljubljana marshes of Slovenia.^[42]
The invention of the wheel revolutionized activities as disparate as transportation, war, and the production of pottery (for which it may have been first used). It didn't take long to discover that wheeled wagons could be used to carry heavy loads and fast (rotary) potters' wheels enabled early mass production of pottery. But it was the use of the wheel as a transformer of energy (through water wheels, windmills, and even treadmills) that revolutionized the application of nonhuman power sources.

Neolithic through classical antiquity (10,000BC – 300AD

Man's technological ascent began in earnest in what is known as the Neolithic period ("New stone age"). The invention of polished stone axes was a major advance because it allowed forest clearance on a large scale to create farms. The discovery of agriculture allowed for the feeding of larger populations, and the transition to a sedentist lifestyle increased the number of children that could be simultaneously raised, as young children no longer needed to be carried, as was the case with the nomadic lifestyle. Additionally, children could contribute labor to the raising of crops more readily than they could to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.^[34][35]
With this increase in population and availability of labor came an increase in labor specialization.^[36] What triggered the progression from early Neolithic villages to the first cities, such as Uruk, and the first civilizations, such as Sumer, is not specifically known; however, the emergence of increasingly hierarchical social structures, the specialization of labor, trade and war amongst adjacent cultures, and the need for collective action to overcome environmental challenges, such as the building of dikes and reservoirs, are all thought to have played a role.^[37]

Metal tools

Continuing improvements led to the furnace and bellows and provided the ability to smelt and forge native metals (naturally occurring in relatively pure form).^[38] Gold, copper, silver, and lead, were such early metals. The advantages of copper tools over stone, bone, and wooden tools were quickly apparent to early humans, and native copper was probably used from near the beginning of Neolithic times (about 8000 BC).^[39] Native copper does not naturally occur in large amounts, but copper ores are quite common and some of them produce metal easily when burned in wood or charcoal fires. Eventually, the working of metals led to the discovery of alloys such as bronze and brass (about 4000 BC). The first uses of iron alloys such as steel dates to around 1400 BC.

Science, engineering and technology

The distinction between science, engineering and technology is not always clear. Science is the reasoned investigation or study of phenomena, aimed at discovering enduring principles among elements of the phenomenal world by employing formal techniques such as the scientific method.^[13] Technologies are not usually exclusively products of science, because they have to satisfy requirements such as utility, usability and safety.
Engineering is the goal-oriented process of designing and making tools and systems to exploit natural phenomena for practical human means, often (but not always) using results and techniques from science. The development of technology may draw upon many fields of knowledge, including scientific, engineering, mathematical, linguistic, and historical knowledge, to achieve some practical result.
Technology is often a consequence of science and engineering — although technology as a human activity precedes the two fields. For example, science might study the flow of electrons in electrical conductors, by using already-existing tools and knowledge. This new-found knowledge may then be used by engineers to create new tools and machines, such as semiconductors, computers, and other forms of advanced technology. In this sense, scientists and engineers may both be considered technologists; the three fields are often considered as one for the purposes of research and reference.^[14]

The exact relations between science and technology in particular have been debated by scientists, historians, and policymakers in the late 20th century, in part because the debate can inform the funding of basic and applied science. In the immediate wake of World War II, for example, in the United States it was widely considered that technology was simply "applied science" and that to fund basic science was to reap technological results in due time. An articulation of this philosophy could be found explicitly in Vannevar Bush's treatise on postwar science policy, Science—The Endless Frontier: "New products, new industries, and more jobs require continuous additions to knowledge of the laws of nature... This essential new knowledge can be obtained only through basic scientific research." In the late-1960s, however, this view came under direct attack, leading towards initiatives to fund science for specific tasks (initiatives resisted by the scientific community). The issue remains contentious—though most analysts resist the model that technology simply is a result of scientific research.

Technology

Technology is the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve a preexisting solution to a problem, achieve a goal or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, modifications, arrangements and procedures. Technologies significantly affect human as well as other animal species' ability to control and adapt to their natural environments. The word technology comes from Greek τεχνολογία (technología); from τέχνη (téchnē), meaning "art, skill, craft", and -λογία (-logía), meaning "study of-".^[1] The term can either be applied generally or to specific areas: examples include construction technology, medical technology, and information technology.
The human species' use of technology began with the conversion of natural resources into simple tools. The prehistorical discovery of the ability to control fire increased the available sources of food and the invention of the wheel helped humans in travelling in and controlling their environment. Recent technological developments, including the printing press, the telephone, and the Internet, have lessened physical barriers to communication and allowed humans to interact freely on a global scale. However, not all technology has been used for peaceful purposes; the development of weapons of ever-increasing destructive power has progressed throughout history, from clubs to nuclear weapons.
Technology has affected society and its surroundings in a number of ways. In many societies, technology has helped develop more advanced economies (including today's global economy) and has allowed the rise of a leisure class. Many technological processes produce unwanted by-products, known as pollution, and deplete natural resources, to the detriment of the Earth and its environment. Various implementations of technology influence the values of a society and new technology often raises new ethical questions. Examples include the rise of the notion of efficiency in terms of human productivity, a term originally applied only to machines, and the challenge of traditional norms.
Philosophical debates have arisen over the present and future use of technology in society, with disagreements over whether technology improves the human condition or worsens it. Neo-Luddism, anarcho-primitivism, and similar movements criticise the pervasiveness of technology in the modern world, opining that it harms the environment and alienates people; proponents of ideologies such as transhumanism and techno-progressivism view continued technological progress as beneficial to society and the human condition. Indeed, until recently, it was believed that the development of technology was restricted only to human beings, but recent scientific studies indicate that other primates and certain dolphin communities have developed simple tools and learned to pass their knowledge to other generations.

NIH, Companies Team Up to Give Researchers Access to Abandoned Drugs

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) today announced a new plan for boosting drug development: It has reached a deal with three major pharmaceutical companies to share abandoned experimental drugs with academic researchers so they can look for new uses. NIH is putting up $20 million for grants to study the drugs.
"The goal is simple: to see whether we can teach old drugs new tricks," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a press conference today that included officials from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Eli Lilly. These companies will give researchers access to two dozen compounds that passed through safety studies but didn't make it beyond mid-stage clinical trials. They shelved the drugs either because they didn't work well enough on the disease for which they were developed or because a business decision sidelined them.
Often tens of millions of dollars and years of research have gone into these compounds, so they are already well along the drug development pipeline. The government program will allow academics to "crowdsource" ways to use them, said NIH Director Francis Collins. The idea of refurbishing compounds is not new, he and others noted: the AIDS drug AZT, for example, started out as an unsuccessful cancer treatment.
NIH first began talking with companies about a drug rescuing effort at a workshop in April 2011. The resulting Discovering New Therapeutic Uses for Existing Molecules program is "the first signature initiative by" NIH's 4-month-old National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), Collins said. NCATS plans to put $20 million of its $575 million budget request for 2013 into the new program.
Researchers will be able to browse basic information on the drugs online. If they see one that interests them and successfully apply for a grant, they will receive access to the compounds and detailed data on safety, pharmacokinetics, and dosing. If the drug meets milestones in animal model tests, they may receive funding to take it through early clinical trials. NCATS Acting Deputy Director Kathy Hudson said NIH anticipates making perhaps eight to 10 cooperative agreements that will run for up to 3 years.

The pilot program also includes a "template" legal agreement with companies. The company retains ownership of the compound, but researchers will have rights to new intellectual property that they discover. The researchers are free to publish their results, although the company gets to review the manuscript to protect confidential information.

Tobacco Scientists' Prize Aspirations Go Up in Smoke

 After a huge uproar, a tobacco research project nominated for a prestigious Chinese science prize has been withdrawn from further consideration, according to a story today in Science and Technology Daily. The Chinese newspaper reports that during a 40-day public comment period, the office managing this year's National Science and Technology Progress Award competition received 58 objections to 19 candidate projects, or 2% of all those nominated. A whopping 33 objections were lodged against the tobacco project, which claims to have improved the quality and marketability and boosted sales of Chinese cigarettes. After the office forwarded the objections to the nominating agencies for their responses, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration withdrew its candidate.

CERN Physicist Gets 5 Years for Plotting Terror

PARIS—Franco-Algerian particle physicist Adlène Hicheur was condemned today to a 5-year prison sentence, including one year suspended, on terrorism charges. But Hicheur, 35, may be released before the end of June, says his lawyer, Patrick Baudouin, because of possible sentence reductions and the time he has already spent in custody. Hicheur, a former CERN researcher, has been held in "preventive detention" in a high-security jail near Paris since October 2009.
The prosecution in Hicheur's case had asked for a 6-year prison term. During his trial on 29 and 30 March, Hicheur acknowledged exchanging e-mails with Mustafa Debchi, an alleged member of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, and discussing future terrorist actions. Baudouin admitted that words used by Hicheur in the e-mails were "disturbing" but argued that his client never took any concrete steps toward a terrorist act. Hicheur himself testified that he had taken morphine because he was in pain at the time, and that he was in a "turbulent period." The court ruled that Hicheur was guilty of "participation in a criminal organization whose goal was to plan terrorist acts."

Hicheur has not decided whether he will appeal, Baudouin told ScienceInsider. He has 10 days to decide, but "he does not have great confidence in the [French] justice system's impartiality towards him," Baudouin says.
The trial was "a complete fiasco," says Hicheur's younger brother Halim, a neuroscientist at the University of Grenoble in France. "The prosecution failed to prove that Adlène was planning terrorist attacks in France or had associated with criminals," he told ScienceInsider. "The questioning was oriented towards ideology and whether he was a salafist or a jihadist, and his answer was that he was neither."
Hicheur can't return to CERN, says Aurelio Bay, the head of the particle physics laboratory at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, who recruited Hicheur in 2005 to participate in CERN's Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment. Hicheur was on a 4-year, nonrenewable contract that ended a few months after his arrest, and EPFL does not have permanent posts available, says Bay, who's a member of an international committee supporting Hicheur that also includes 1988 physics Nobelist Jack Steinberger.
Bay describes Hicheur as an "excellent and extremely conscientious researcher, and a dedicated teacher."
The trial was held when France was still recovering from the slaughter earlier in March of seven children and soldiers in Toulouse and Montauban by an Islamic radical, Mohamed Merah. Baudouin had suggested asking for the trial to be postponed, but Hicheur had refused to do so.

 

First Spinoff of African Math Institute Takes Root in Senegal 

The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences Senegal is the little sister of AIMS South Africa—a similar institute founded in 2003 just outside Cape Town—and part of a story that has captivated mathematicians and triggered an outpouring of support in money, time, and brainpower. The institutes are the brainchild of Neil Turok, a South African-born mathematician who heads the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. At first the dream proved harder to realize than Turok hoped. But the past 2 years have brought a "transformation.

$35 Million Gift for Smithsonian Dinosaur Hall

 What began in 1910 as the Hall of Extinct Monsters at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History will now become a new dinosaur exhibit named after David H. Koch. The Smithsonian announced today that Koch, a wealthy businessman and philanthropist, has donated $35 million of the $45 million needed for the renovation of this exhibit.

Engineering Academy Looks for New President

The U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE) will have a new president next year in the wake of a decision by Charles Vest not to pursue a second, 6-year term.
A search committee has drawn up a short list of potential successors to Vest, a former president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Traditionally, the NAE governing board puts forward only one name for members to vote on. NAE bylaws prohibit anyone from serving more than two terms. Vest took office in July 2007.
Responding to a query from ScienceInsider, Vest explained that "I specifically asked that we not do a press release about 'leaving.' When I was asked [in 2006] to stand for election, I indicated that I would be pleased and honored to devote one 6-year term to the important work of the NAE, but I would not be open to a second term. Following 14 years as president of MIT and six years as president of the NAE, not to mention having crossed into my 70s, it is time to change gears."
NAE was formed in 1964 as a parallel organization to the National Academy of Sciences. In 1970, the Institute of Medicine became the third of three honorary societies that now make up the National Academies. The recent norm is for NAE presidents to serve two terms, although one, Harold Liebowitz, was ousted in 1996 after a tumultuous 1-year reign.

 

Death of California Researcher Spurs Investigation

 

Local and federal health agencies are investigating the death of Richard Din, a 25-year-old research associate at the Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center in San Francisco, California. Din died 28 April of meningococcal disease, which authorities believe he contracted from exposure to bacteria in the lab where he worked.
Din began complaining of headache and nausea last Friday evening, says Harry Lampiris, chief of infectious disease at the San Francisco VA. (Din worked in a lab run by Carl Grunfeld, the center's associate chief of staff for research and development.) By the next morning Din's symptoms had worsened, and friends took him to the hospital. His condition deteriorated quickly, and he died 17 hours after his symptoms first appeared.
Din had worked in a lab at the San Francisco VA that studies Neisseria meningitidis, a bacterium that causes roughly 1000 cases of meningococcal disease and 75 fatalities in the United States each year, Lampiris says. The first symptoms, such as fever, aches, and nausea, are similar to those of less serious illnesses, but they can escalate quickly and cause death if antibiotics aren't administered soon after they first appear. Vaccines have been available since the 1960s for several strains of N. meningitidis, but not against so-called serotype B strains, which Din was working with the week before his death. Developing a vaccine against these strains was a long-term goal of the lab where Din worked, Lampiris says.

Tests have confirmed the presence of serotype B N. meningitidis in Din's blood, Lampiris says. The VA has sent additional samples to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta for genetic tests to determine if the specific strains Din handled in the lab match those in his blood. "It's presumed to be a lab exposure, but it's not 100%" unless those tests confirm it, Lampiris says.
What may have gone wrong is not yet clear. "An internal group investigated the lab and found no evidence of spills, or malfunctions, or problems with the biosafety hood," Lampiris says. The lab has more than 20 years of experience working with these pathogens, Lampiris says, and Din joined the group about 6 months ago. "People in the lab felt that he was a hard working and fastidious person and was following the appropriate precautions." Din made no mention of any accidents or anything out of the ordinary to his co-workers, Lampiris says.
N. meningitidis is classified as a biosafety level 2 (BSL-2) pathogen, which means that any lab procedures with viable organisms should be done under a hood fitted with air filters, and researchers should wear a face shield or mask and goggles during procedures that could release the bacteria into the air, says Leonard Mayer, chief of the CDC's meningitis lab. "People that work in the lab normally are vaccinated, although with serotype B that doesn't provide any protection," Mayer says. "There's been a lot of discussion about elevating it [serotype B] to BSL-3," Mayer says, but he doubts this one incident will have much impact on that decision. It should, however, cause other researchers who work with these pathogens to redouble their safety efforts, Mayer says. "We will definitely be discussing this at our weekly lab meeting and reminding people that this is a life-threatening disease."
Lampiris says the lab will remain closed pending investigations by VA, the Department of Public Health of San Francisco and California, and the federal and state Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Lab members, as well as Din's personal contacts and health workers who had contact with him, have been treated prophylactically with antibiotics. "Obviously our whole institution is devastated," Lampiris says.

Helping Students Turn Degrees Into Jobs

U.S. universities and employers currently do a poor job of helping scientific jobseekers connect with companies that are hiring, said researchers from the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) at a Washington, D.C., briefing last week. The briefing accompanied the release of a report, Pathways Through Graduate School and Into Careers, that surveyed graduate students, universities, and employers about each group's understandings and assumptions of the process of entering the workforce.
"We do a very good job in America in preparing people for the kinds of jobs that do exist and will exist in the future, but we do a pretty bad job at actually illuminating pathways from that great preparation to get into the careers that follow," said Debra W. Stewart, CGS president. "On the one hand, we have companies telling us, 'Where are these people? We need them, we need to hire them.' And on the other hand, we find students telling us, 'I can't find jobs.' Now, ultimately, most of these students do find jobs, but we make the match very difficult."
The survey in the Pathways report found that students typically receive most of their career advice from faculty advisers, who in turn are more likely to recommend academic careers than careers in industry, entrepreneurship, the nonprofit sector, or government. The survey also found that employers outside of academia commonly lament the lack of "soft skills" among new hires, including difficulties in communication, working with people outside one's field, teamwork, and project management, said Patrick Osmer, chair of the CGS board of directors and dean of the graduate school at Ohio State University in Columbus. Universities should do a better job instilling those soft skills into their students before they graduate, he said, and employers should make students aware of job opportunities beyond university walls.

Nan Wells, a self-employed government relations consultant who attended the briefing, said that such efforts could indeed help jobseekers and employers connect more easily, but she's concerned about another issue, too: Even if job-seeking scientists and employers find each other, will their salaries be high enough to let them pay off student loans?
"People think, 'We can educate to this point and they'll take care of the loans somehow,' " she said. "We need the faculty engaged in [questions such as], 'OK, what are we teaching them? How is this going to translate into a living?' "

Head of Science Teachers' Association Forced Out

in the midst of the biggest changes to U.S. science education in the past 2 decades, the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) has removed its executive director. The decision has caught science educators by surprise.

The governing board of the 55,000-member organization, based in Arlington, Virginia, last month decided to part company with Francis Eberle after 4 years. His last day was Monday. Gerald Wheeler, who retired in 2008 and returned to his beloved Montana after leading the association for 13 years, has agreed to serve as interim executive director until a replacement is on board.

"The board decided to make a change in the association's leadership," says Patricia Simmons, the current NSTA president and head of the department of math, science, and technology education at North Carolina State University. "We were fortunate to be able to coax Gerry out of retirement." Asked why the move was made, Simmons called the secret vote a "personnel decision," and said, "I would rather not discuss the reasons." A letter sent out to affiliate organizations thanks Eberle "for his service to the association … and for his efforts to improve science education." Eberle did not respond to several phone messages.

A former secondary school science teacher, Eberle took the helm at NSTA in September 2008 after leading the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance for more than a decade. Eberle has kept NSTA in the thick of efforts to develop voluntary science standards for public school students in all 50 states. Such standards do not now exist, as the federal government has historically deferred to states in deciding what topics should be taught at each grade level, how they should be taught, and how to test students on what they have learned.

The so-called Next Generation Science Standards are being assembled by a coalition of private organizations led by Achieve, the National Academies, NSTA, and AAAS (which publishes ScienceInsider). A panel from the National Academies issued a report last summer setting out an instructional framework, and another panel is working on a second report on the best ways to assess what a student knows. A first draft of the standards could be out this month, with a final version by the end of the year.

Science educators and former NSTA officials contacted by ScienceInsider expressed surprise and shock at hearing that Eberle had been removed.

Page Keeley, a past NSTA president and long-time colleague of Eberle's at the Maine alliance, calls him a "wonderful science educator … who is very well-respected by the community." Keeley says Eberle took the time to listen "not just to the heavy hitters, but right down to the level of a first-year teacher. He also understood that NSTA couldn't go it alone, and that you need to build coalitions to get things done."

The next NSTA executive director faces a formidable set of challenges. The most immediate may be the need for continued fundraising for a new headquarters building, announced 4 years ago, that would include an interactive learning center named for former senator and astronaut John Glenn. Simmons said she hoped that the association would be able to raise enough money "in the next 1 to 2 years" to be able to move forward with its plans for the building.

Wheeler and Simmons also ticked off a slew of issues that are common to any scientific membership organization. They range from maintaining membership rolls and attendance at annual conferences to attracting the next generation of professionals. "Every day, 10,000 people retire in the United States, and our demographics are not any different," says Wheeler. "We also need to find a way to go beyond a 2.0 version of current education technology."

A search for a new executive director will be launched shortly, says Simmons. Asked about the timetable for filling the job, Simmons said "as soon as possible."

Even Presidential Science Advisers Can Give Boring Lectures

A senior Republican legislator unwittingly became a poster child yesterday for one of the Obama Administration's key initiatives to improve science education.
"In high school, I had won the Bausch & Lomb science award, and I aspired to be a physics major in college," Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) explained to attendees at the annual Forum on Science and Technology sponsored by AAAS (publisher of ScienceInsider). "Then, as a freshman, I took a physics class taught by the chairman of the department. … Looking to either side of me, I soon realized that I was sitting next to the future Einsteins of the world, and I wasn't one of them," said Smith. "That's a little how I feel today."
Smith's self-effacing story of why he had altered his career plans—he graduated from Yale in 1969 with a bachelor's degree in American studies and became a lawyer before entering politics—was clearly meant to disarm his audience. But it also served to reinforce a message delivered barely 1 hour earlier by John Holdren, President Barack Obama's science adviser.

In a conversation with AAAS CEO Alan Leshner about the Administration's efforts to improve science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education across the country, Holdren noted that just 40% of entering college students who declare a STEM major actually receive their degree in a STEM field. The high attrition rate, he explained, is often caused by introductory courses that are "rote, stultifying, and boring." For many students, Holdren added, their reaction is "to go off and [study] something more interesting."
Holdren didn't stay around for Smith's talk, and Smith hadn't been in the audience when Holdren spoke. But ScienceInsider caught up with Smith after his presentation to learn more about his formative academic experience. As it happened, Smith's physics class at Yale was taught by D. Allan Bromley, who 2 decades later would come to Washington to be science adviser to President George H. W. Bush. Bromley died in 2005.
"Dr. Bromley was a wonderful lecturer," Smith was quick to point out. "It wasn't anything that he did." But when asked if the course provided the type of hands-on, experiential learning that Holdren and today's educators believe is so important in retaining student interest, Smith shook his head.
"As I recall, it was all lectures. And I remember how much fun it was in high school, when we had a chance to do experiments. This course wasn't like that at all." He paused, then added, "That's very interesting."