SSS 2009-02-19

（单词翻译）

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Steve Mirsky . Got a minute ?

Time to bring back the Office of Technology Assessment¹. The OTA was created in 1972 to provide Congress with an objective analysis of complex scientific and technological² issues. But it was killed in ‘95. Rush Holt, one of three physicists³ in Congress, sent a statement to the AAAS meeting in Chicago last week that said, “When the OTA was disbanded, Congress gave itself a lobotomy.” At the meeting, Lewis Branscomb, from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, offered reasons to restore the OTA:

“First obviously technical understanding is much more critical to public policy now than it was in ’94. Consider energy independence, global climate change, nuclear weapons proliferation, and mutation⁴ of viruses into global disease threats—all major issues facing us today. Second, the American economy is more dependent than ever on innovation to give us a competitive advantage. Given the global competition we face, it will require the U.S. to improve more rapidly its own research and innovation capability⁵.”

Thanks for the minute for Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Steve Mirsky .