The National Science Foundation announced today 14 grand engineering challenges for the 21st century that, if met, would greatly improve how we live. But that's not all, it wants you to rank them.
The final choices fall into four themes that are essential for humanity to flourish, - sustainability, health, reducing vulnerability and joy of living, the group said. The committee did not attempt to include every important challenge, nor did it endorse particular approaches to meeting those selected. Rather than focusing on predictions or gee-whiz gadgets, the goal was to identify what needs to be done to help people and the planet thrive, the group said.
A diverse committee of engineers and scientists - including Larry Page, co-founder and president of products, Google, Robert Langer, Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Robert Socolow, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, Princeton University Environmental Institute - came up with the list but did not rank the challenges. Rather the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is offering the public an opportunity to vote on which one they think is most important. Vote here on the challenges below:
* Make solar energy affordable
* Provide energy from fusion
* Develop carbon sequestration methods
* Manage the nitrogen cycle
* Provide access to clean water
* Restore and improve urban infrastructure
* Advance health informatics
* Engineer better medicines
* Reverse-engineer the brain
* Prevent nuclear terror
* Enhance virtual reality
* Advance personalized learning
* Engineer the tools for scientific discovery
Perhaps not coincidentally, the NSF this month asked the federal government for a $6.85 billion budget for fiscal year 2009 - a 13% increase over its actual fiscal 2008 budget and a 6.5% jump over what it requested a year ago - in an effort to fund more research into cybersecurity, advanced processors, new energy technologies and more.
And just last week the NSF requested $20 million from the US government for fiscal 2009 to start the "Science and Engineering Beyond Moore's Law" effort, which would fund academic research on technologies, including carbon nanotubes, quantum computing and massively multicore computers, that could improve and replace current transistor technology. Moore's Law states that the number of transistors that can be placed on silicon, and its attendant computational capability, doubles every 18 months.
Layer 8 in a box
Check out these other hot stories:
Experimental software sniffs out insider threats
Photonic filter to clean up fiber optic communications
Prototype software sniffs out, disrupts botnets
Giant, flying casinos poised for take off
Department of Energy illuminates $21 million on advanced lighting research
NASA aircraft, technology poised to test deadly flying conditions
Layer 8 is Network World's daily home for the not-just-networking news.
Contact Layer 8
Layer 8 archive
|
|
I wish this were on the list
They probably don't consider it an engineering challenge, but perhaps if we thought of it as one, some progress could be made. We need to break the hold big money/corporations have over government policy.
No, I don't have any idea how to accomplish it, but it needs to be done, and is probably more important than a few of the things on their list.
Of course, there is little chance that any government funding would be found for such an effort. Call me Don Quixote.
One small step in this
One small step in this direction might be to help Lawrence Lessig get elected to Congress, as this is his new big issue to focus on. Of course, first we need to convince him to run.
www.draftlessig.org
We don't need to break
We don't need to break "large corporations" hold over politics. We need to get back to a republic. Voting only to what concerns, AND intrests you personally.
Ie. the electrical companies obviously need a big say in energy policy (if only to keep it sane),
We need to reduce the influence the random, idiotic public opinion has on policy. No vote can render the titanic unsinkeable, but perhaps the captain, whose life is at stake, can plot a better course.
More needs to be done to force people to take responsability for their actions. (e.g. not let the "next ice age coming !" people of the 90s claim global warming now)
The mob justice idiocy that is gripping the democratic party only brings death and disaster,
Open source is the
Open source is the anwser!
You can't hold people ransom with open source, and everybody benefits.
We don't need to break, good one.
Its hilarious that you use the captain of the Titanic as an example. He did have his life at stake. He could have plotted a better course. He was following his self interest to set a record over the well being of ignorant mass.
If the idiotic masses had their way we would have had an energy revolution in the 80s. After all the idiotic masses have nothing to loose and everything to gain.
Positions like yours allow for the wholesale manipulation of the country and one day the world through the belief that one person should force (with a gun in hand and jack boots on?) everyone to do what that one person thinks is right.
Nice try
Republic needed
> Its hilarious that you use the captain of the Titanic
> as an example.
> He did have his life at stake.
> He could have plotted a better course.
> He was following his self interest to set a record over
> the well being of ignorant mass.
A spin-doctored perception... IIRC, he was virtually
forced to pursue the record, and the duress simply
out-weighed his perception of the risk, which makes
your interpretation bunk.
> If the idiotic masses had their way we would have had
> an energy revolution in the 80s. After all the idiotic
> masses have nothing to loose and everything to gain.
Are you trying to prove that you're one of them ?
They will feel the majority of the brunt of whatever
economic misfortunes come to call.
> Positions like yours allow for the wholesale manipulation
> of the country and one day the world
Rediculous - the true Republic that we should have
minimizes control *period*.
> through the belief that one person should force (with
> a gun in hand and jack boots on?) everyone to do what
> that one person thinks is right.
That's more descriptive of the idiocracy, because its
merely someone's preferred opinion that is spin-doctored
into the garbage that the masses buy into. Its only the
meritocracy of a true republic that is smart enough to
preserve the boundaries minimizing government. We need
to get back to that, because liberalism and the mob-rule
it promotes have gradually grown government into the
monster that it is.
I wouldn't worry about it..
Pretty soon, the rest of the world with nuke the USA and the problem will have solved itself.
Think Nazi Germany with Cheeseburgers and movies.
Have a nice day :D
Should be "Renewable Energy", not "Solar Energy".
I wonder: do they see the other forms of renewable energy already as competitive? What is so special about solar energy, which makes it better than, say, wave or wind energy, or biomass?
Maybe I'm just irked because I work in wind energy... which still is not everywhere the most cost effective solution, and has some of the same grid integration challenges that solar has.
Greetings, GreGie
It's all Solar energy
Just depends how far removed it is from the source.... why pay the middle men when you can get it much more cheaply from the manufacturer and don't have to worry about supply chain breakdowns in distribution?
Should it be reduce depence on hydrocarbon fuels?
Rather than just focus on solar or even renewable energy, isn't the challenge really to reduce the world's dependence on polluting, hydrocarbon energy sources?
This really is a combination of energy efficiency, lifestyle changes AND renewables.