In the July 9, 2008 Issue:

Copyright State Science & Technology Institute 2008. Redistribution to all others interested in tech-based economic development is strongly encouraged. Please cite the State Science & Technology Institute whenever portions are reproduced or redirected.

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Pennsylvania Commits $650M for Alternative Energy Package
This afternoon, Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell signed a $650 million package of tax incentives, loans and grants to spur the development and use of clean energy technologies within the state. The governor believes that the bill will help the state leverage as much as $3.5 billion in private investment and help the state build a stronger clean energy industry. Highlights from the Alternative Energy Investment Act include:

Another $150 million will be used to establish a consumer energy program for individuals and small businesses to support energy efficiency projects. The program will cover 25 percent of the cost of purchasing and installing energy conservation tools, support a $5 million energy efficiency loan fund, and offer up to $1 million per year in tax credits for clean energy projects.

A separate bill commits the state to provide $5.3 million each year through 2011 to increase the production of cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel. In an economic development twist on traditional renewable fuel standards, the legislation will require gasoline sold in the state to be 10 percent Pennsylvania-produced cellulosic ethanol. This requirement will only become applicable once annual cellulosic ethanol production in the state hits 350 million gallons.

In a press release accompanying the announcements, Governor Rendell committed to working through the summer to reach an agreement with the legislature on other measures that will revamp the state’s energy policies. This would include several measures dropped in the final version of the bill pertaining to electricity conservation and rates.

Read the test of the Alternative Energy Investment Act (Special Session HB 1) at: http://www.legis.state.pa.us/CFDOCS/Legis/PN/Public/btCheck.cfm?txtType=PDF
&sessYr=2007&sessInd=1&billBody=H&billTyp=B&billNbr=0001&pn=0086

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Michigan Enacts $45M Centers of Energy Excellence Program
Gov. Jennifer Granholm today signed legislation creating Centers of Energy Excellence, a program designed to bring companies, academic institutions, and the state together to create jobs in alternative and advanced energy. The initiative, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, is part of an overall job creation and economic stimulus package proposed by the governor in her State of the State address earlier this year (see the Jan. 30, 2008 issue of the Digest).
 
To be administered through the Michigan Economic Development Corp., the Centers of Energy Excellence will support the development, growth and sustainability of alternative energy industry clusters in Michigan by identifying and/or locating a base company in a geographic region with the necessary business and supply-chain infrastructure. These centers will match the base company with universities, national labs and training centers to accelerate next-generation research, workforce development and commercialization.   
 
Under the new law, which is effective immediately, the Michigan Strategic Fund (MSF) is authorized to allocate up to $45 million from the 21st Century Jobs Trust Fund to establish and operate the program. Grants will be made available to for-profit companies that meet the following criteria:

The centers will be located in areas where the MSF determines that the state has competitive advantages in workforce, intellectual property and natural resources, but where technical and supply-chain hurdles could prevent the commercialization process.

More information will be available in the near future at: http://www.michiganadvantage.org

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Energy RoundUp
States, Governors and Feds Turn Attention to Need for Clean Energy

National Governors Association
Twelve states recently received grants of $50,000 from the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices to support clean energy initiatives and to overcome obstacles preventing the adoption of clean energy technologies in their region. The awards were made through NGA’s Clean Energy State Grant Program, a part of the association’s Securing a Clean Energy Future Initiative. Several companies and foundations, including American Electric Power, Dominion Resources, The Ford Motor Company and The Rockefeller Fund, have provided financial support for the grants, which are intended to fund state projects that support research, analysis, training or outreach to advance clean energy implementation.
Highlights from the list of awardees include:

Read the NGA press release at http://tinyurl.com/5all72.

Western Governors Association
Twenty-two U.S. governors announced a plan to draft a national energy policy that will fill the vacuum left by federal government inaction on the need for clean and renewable energy. At a recent meeting of the Western Governors’ Association (WGA), the group announced that over the next few months the governors would dedicate representatives from their offices to draft an energy policy that offers new economic opportunities for the region and will curtail the impact of climate change.

However, while the association expressed a commitment to renewable resources such as wind and solar energy, the policy resolution issued by the group emphasized the continuing need for traditional power sources, such as coal, oil and natural gas. One resolution expressed WGA’s belief in support for advanced coal technology that would reduce emissions from coal-based power production. The group also stressed the need to work with utility owners and industry to reduce the carbon footprint of power generation. Four utility companies plan to collaborate with WGA on a Western Renewable Energy Zones project that will help identify areas rich in renewable energy resources and associated transmission needs.

The meeting also marked the beginning of a new international partnership that will pursue clean energy initiatives in western North America. Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California have signed on to the Pacific Coast Collaborative initiative, along with British Columbia, to pursue cooperative efforts in the areas of clean energy, regional transportation, sustainable economies, and emergency management.

More information is available at: http://www.westgov.org/wga_press_releases.htm

Massachusetts
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has signed off on a comprehensive energy reform bill that would promote the development of clean and renewable energy technologies and increase adoption of clean technologies across the state. The Green Communities Act is being hailed by supporters as one of the most aggressive state clean energy initiatives and one that could provide an advantage to the state’s cleantech industry.

Highlights from the bill include:

Structurally, the legislation will make several changes to the state’s current energy activities by moving the Division of Energy Resources under the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EOEEA) and renaming it the Department of Energy Resources. The department will have three new divisions, including a Division of Green Communities that will provide technical and financial assistance to local government bodies to fund clean energy efforts.

Read a summary of the Green Communities Act at: http://www.mass.gov/legis/bills/senate/185/st02pdf/Energy_Conference_BILL_SUMMARY.pdf

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Useful Stats
SBIR Awards, Proposals by State, FY 2007
Compiling award and proposal statistics by state for fiscal year 2007, SSTI finds the 10 states with the most awards in FY 2007 were California (717), Massachusetts (466), Virginia (249), Maryland (194), Colorado (182), New York (163), Texas (160), Ohio (151), Pennsylvania (141) and Florida (106). Compared to the top states for FY06, Maryland moved into the fourth spot from sixth last year, pushing Texas to seventh place. New York climbed from eighth place to sixth place, and Florida moved into tenth place, edging out Washington, which fell to 13.
 
SSTI has prepared a table showing FY07 Phase I SBIR data for all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. Statistics include awards, proposals and award-to-proposal conversion rates for nine of the 12 participating agencies (the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declined to provide proposal statistics). The table is available at: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/070908t.htm
 
SSTI’s FY01-07 SBIR statistics provide seven years of data to evaluate award, proposal and conversion trends for most agencies and comparable states. Tables containing data for fiscal years 2001-2006 are available at:

FY 2006: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/120507t.htm
FY 2005: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/022607t.htm
FY 2004: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/042505t.htm
FY 2003: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/062705t.htm
FY 2002: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/090503t.htm
FY 2001: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/051002t.htm
FY 2000: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/030901t.htm (award data only)

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U.S. Completes $531M Contribution to Large Hadron Collider Project
The U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation recently announced that the U.S. had completed its contribution to the international Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Project on budget and ahead of schedule. By the end of the year, the LHC at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) laboratory near Geneva will generate its first particle collisions and research output. Total U.S. contribution to the project is about $531 million of the $5.89 billion cost of the project. Although the U.S. is not a CERN member state, U.S. scientists will comprise the largest contingent from any single nation.

LHC operations are expected to yield greater understanding of particle behavior under circumstances that cannot currently be observed. Accelerating and colliding particles with the energy concentrations generated within the LHC may reveal a great deal about the origin and nature of mass, dark matter, dark energy, and anti-matter, and could lead to the development of a unified theory of universal forces. The accelerator will be the largest collider on Earth and will tap a distributed computer network that will represent the world’s most powerful supercomputer. For the next 15 years, the anticipated lifetime of the project, LHC is expected to be the leading center for research in high-energy physics.

The LHC accelerator was originally conceived in the mid-1980s as a continuation of the work done at CERN’s Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP), though that installation had not even begun operations. The project would create new research opportunities not possible at LEP and other colliders by employing two beams of protons in order to produce the highest possible collision energies and intensities. CERN gave its first approval for the project in 1994. In the next few years, a number of non-CERN observer states, such as Japan, India, Russia and Canada, signed on to provide financial contributions in exchange for participation in research. The U.S. signed such an agreement in December 1997 and, in addition to financial support, agreed to provide a number of components for the accelerator.

This month’s announcement concludes the U.S. LHC Accelerator Construction Project (LACP), a $200 million portion of the U.S. contribution funded through the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. LACP engaged scientists from Brookhaven National Laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in constructing magnets, feed boxes and absorbers for the project. Although the LHC project itself will focus on advances in basic research that are several steps removed from commercializable applications, the construction effort has already led to advances in these technologies at the participating laboratories and at private U.S. companies, which supplied more than $88 million to the project. Other LHC construction efforts have involved 94 universities and laboratories in 30 U.S. states.

U.S. participation in LHC research is managed through the U.S. LHC Accelerator Research Program (LARP), which has been funded since 2004. That program currently includes scientists from the three LACP laboratories and the University of Texas at Austin. Although the accelerator itself is in Switzerland, the LHC distributed computer grid has been designed to allow access to LHC resources from other locations. Fermilab and Brookhaven will each have real-time round-the-clock access to LHC data. Other universities and labs have access to LHC data and collaborations through the Open Science Grid computing centers, which are funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.

For more information on the project, visit http://www.uslhc.us/.

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Summer Camps Aren’t Just for Kids; Programs Engage Science Teachers in Research
Summer camps focusing on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields are typically designed to spark youth interest and introduce students to career options in these critical areas. However, a vital component of these programs is exposure to scientific challenges that many classroom settings cannot provide. Recognizing this exposure as beneficial to both teachers and students, several programs are targeting educators with the goal of enhancing instructional methods in the classroom in order to increase student achievement in the STEM fields. The following are examples of professional development programs for science teachers from across the country offered over the summer months.
 
Kansas
Middle school science teachers in Kansas are moving out of the classrooms and into University of Kansas (KU) laboratories this summer to participate in university-level research with the goal of enhancing their content backgrounds and ability to apply research-based instruction. The Middle School Science Academy Research Experiences program is a three-year, multi-phase initiative funded by the Kansas Board of Regents that targets two school districts with students considered to be high-risk.
 
Because so few middle school teachers have had actual experience with university-level research, the initiative engages the teachers in hands-on practice with KU science and engineering faculty.
 
The first phase of the program wrapped up last month with participation from 20 teachers. During the four-week program, the research groups worked on projects involving high-end biotechnology and engineering concepts, including a field reserve study on endangered milkweed.
 
Next year, the same teachers will return for instruction on translation of research and how to teach fundamental science to middle school students. Teachers will again meet with faculty mentors to discuss project-based learning models to engage students in science. The final year focuses on implementing the model with students. Teachers will practice the new concepts with a group of volunteer students and will then be able to evaluate and modify the content for use in their own classroom.
 
Program administrators estimate that as a result of the initiative, approximately 3,000 middle school students will receive enhanced science instruction. For their part, the teachers are granted nine credit hours of university-level science. A press release detailing the program is available at: http://www.news.ku.edu/2008/june/16/science.shtml
 
Ohio
A collaborative partnership between three high-need school districts in northwest Ohio and Bowling Green State University, the Northwest Ohio Teachers Enhancing Achievement in Mathematics and Science is a summer institute program that provides enhanced science instruction and introduces teachers to community resources in order to make them leaders in science education.
 
Phase I of the program focuses on instruction, providing more than 100 hours of professional development training from university educators and scientists to approximately 100 teachers of grades 3-6. Participants are guided on how to teach specific areas of science and how to adopt teaching practices in their classrooms.
 
The second phase of the program exposes teachers to community resources, such as Fossil Park in northwest Ohio and the Toledo Zoo, and teaches educators how to best use these resources to enrich the content of their lesson plans. During the third phase, teachers return for a four-day follow-up and are guided through the execution of their instructional goals. 
 
Participating teachers receive stipends and are able to use science instructional kits in their classrooms for the following school year. Research findings from this program indicate statistically significant differences in fourth and sixth grade Ohio science proficiency scores for teachers who completed this program, according to the Ohio Department of Education.

Funding for the program is provided by the Ohio Department of Education’s Ohio Mathematics and Science Partnership Program. More information is available from the Ohio Department of Education at: http://www.ode.state.oh.us/
 
Iowa
Following participation in a national summer institute program last year, representatives from Iowa Central Community College announced last month plans to host a professional development program that teaches the R&D process of pharmaceuticals to area high school teachers. 
 
The program, RxeSEARCH, involves instruction on 11 lessons, spanning disease and early-stage clinical development to commercialization and marketing, leading participants through the pharmaceutical process. Last month, 30 Iowa high school teachers took part in the three-day summer session that aims to prepare students with a solid understanding of the sciences, the R&D process, and the industry as a whole.
 
Teachers will roll out the curriculum to their students in the upcoming school year, according to Iowa Central Community College. During the sessions, participants explore a fictional account of an epidemic for which they must seek a medicinal treatment or cure. The goal for students is to allow them to explore realistic problems in science using an inquiry-based approach.
 
Educators from New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania also have taken part in the program. Officials say the curriculum promotes workforce development by exposing students to career paths in the medicinal and scientific industries. While the program was initially developed by Bristol-Myers Squibb, later involvement came from the National Science Resource Center, an affiliate science education center of excellence of the Smithsonian Institution, the National Academy of Sciences, and a team of working high school teachers.

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A Role for Science in State, Federal Policymaking
Cynics will tell you politicians rarely let facts get in the way of their policy positions and one doesn’t have to look terribly hard to find anecdotal evidence to support that conclusion. One hopes – expects, even – in most cases, however, that elected officials have people more grounded in reality working for them in the trenches of the state or federal executive branch. Some will be civil servants who have dedicated their careers toward addressing specific public policy issues; others will be politically appointed individuals serving for a portion or all of the term of office for the elected leader. How well facts influence these two groups of public employees varies greatly across individuals and office.
 
The role science can serve to influence or guide the development of policy at the federal level also has varied greatly by administration and economic times. The current economic climate – with the increased importance given to innovation and competitiveness – has many calling for sound science and technology advice being given greater attention through key appointments in the federal and state levels of government.
 
One of these appointed positions - the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, who also heads the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) - could be influential in setting the direction of the nation’s science and competitiveness initiatives in the next administration, regardless of which candidate succeeds in November.
 
The future effectiveness of OSTP is the central topic of the recently released OSTP 2.0 Critical Upgrade - Enhanced Capacity for White House Science and Technology Policymaking: Recommendations for the Next President. Released by the Woodrow Wilson International Center of Scholars in mid-June, the report synthesizes recommendations based on interviews of more than 60 leading science policymakers, including all of the living former presidential science advisors.
 
The resulting advice stemming from those interviews is grouped into 10 major areas such as budgetary concerns, international activities, and partnerships with other federal agencies. Key recommendations include:

In an important nod toward the important role states play in designing and executing national science, technology and innovation goals, the authors recommend creating a new Federal-State Science and Technology Council that would be established and chaired by OSTP. The council would meet semiannually to share concerns and best practices across levels of government.
 
The federal government is not alone in needing stronger science-based advice according to non-governmental organizations inside the Beltway. The National Academies recently turned its attention toward how states would benefit from utilizing science and technology to drive more public policy and investment decisions.
 
State Science and Technology Policy Advice: Issues, Opportunities, and Challenges, presents a synthesis of conversations that took place at a National Academies convocation held in October 2007 on the roles of science and technology in state-level policymaking. The report presents an overview of the partnerships that can assist the development of state policy for various issues.
 
More than 40 states have state academies of science, the report points out, academies which convocation participants felt could serve as potential sources of knowledge to assist decision-making and to build partnerships with the scientific community, in particular. In addition, the report showcases examples of how selected states have utilized sources such as state technology councils, state science advisors, colleges and universities, and state agencies to provide science-based policy advice and determine how state governments should react to federal S&T priorities.
 
Importantly for the tech-based economic development community, economic and innovation related policies at the state level received scant attention at the event. Most of the discussion at the convocation was centered around roles for science-based decisions on important policy decisions affecting natural resource management, energy issues and environmental protection. Despite this strong imbalance, the brief, generalized discussion of recommendations for states to collaborate more with external science and technology organizations and “to establish systems to measure the results of initiatives involving science and technology” was tailored more to TBED issues than other areas of public policy.
 
OSTP 2.0 Critical Upgrade - Enhanced Capacity for White House Science and Technology Policymaking: Recommendations for the Next President can be found at: http://wilsoncenter.org/news/docs/OSTP%20Paper1.pdf
 
State Science and Technology Policy Advice: Issues, Opportunities, and Challenges is available through: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12160

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