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Office of Science and Technology Policy Blog

  • NASA Launches Space-Based Saline Solution

    Posted by Jerry Miller on June 10, 2011 at 1:08 PM EDT

    This morning NASA launched Aquarius/SAC-D, a satellite designed to measure from space the one characteristic that most distinguishes the ocean from other bodies of water – its salt concentration or salinity. Salinity fundamentally affects the biology, chemistry, and physics of the ocean, yet remains largely unmeasured throughout much of the world’s waters. 

    Traditional salinity measurements require ship-based deployment of instruments lowered into the water, so historical data exist only where survey vessels have gone. Such ship-based work will still be necessary, but Aquarius will provide large-scale images of sea surface salinity worldwide and much more frequently than can be achieved by ships alone. While optimized for ocean salinity measurements, Aquarius can also measure soil moisture.

    Aquarius is the product of an international collaborative effort between NASA and the Argentine space agency, with contributions by Canada, France, Brazil, and Italy.  This new capability will enhance and complement  the European Space Agency’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite designed primarily to measure soil moisture.

    Aquarius will also bolster efforts related to our National Ocean Policy, which was created by Executive Order last July and has nine priority objectives, including ocean observing. The new capability that Aquarius promises will enhance our ability to deliver on many of the Policy’s other objectives such as on climate change, water quality, conditions in the Arctic, and improvement of our understanding of ocean processes. These in turn will support ecosystem management objectives.

    The first remotely sensed image of sea surface salinity was produced in 1998 using an airborne instrument, and this helped to pave the way for the decade-long effort that led to today’s launch. As the person who led that airborne effort, and as someone now closely involved in the Administration’s ocean policy activities, I am very pleased to congratulate the Aquarius team on a successful launch and I look forward to seeing the scientific results.

    Jerry Miller is Assistant Director for Ocean Sciences at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

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  • Responsible Realization of Nanotechnology's Full Potential

    Posted by Tom Kalil on June 9, 2011 at 12:56 PM EDT

    The ability to image, measure, model, and manipulate matter on the nanoscale—on the order of a billionth of a meter—is leading to new materials, technologies, and applications across many fields including medicine, information technology, aerospace, energy, and transportation. Advances in nanotechnology are already driving economic growth and addressing a broad range of national challenges.

    The realization of nanotechnology’s full potential will require continued research and flexible, science-based approaches to regulation that protect public health and the environment while promoting economic growth, innovation, competitiveness, exports, and job creation.   

    In furtherance of those goals, the White House Emerging Technologies Interagency Policy Coordination Committee (ETIPC) has developed a set of principles specific to the regulation and oversight of applications of nanotechnology, to guide the development and implementation of policies at the agency level. 

    These principles reinforce a set of overarching principles for the regulation and oversight of emerging technologies released on March 11, 2011. They also reflect recommendations from a report on nanotechnology by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. The report encourages Federal support for the commercialization of nanotech products and calls for the development of rational, science- and risk-based regulatory approaches that would be based on the full array of a material’s properties and their plausible risks and not simply on the basis of size alone.

    Among the goals of all of these documents is the achievement of consistent approaches across different emerging technologies and to ensure the protection of public health and the environment while avoiding unjustifiably inhibiting innovation, stigmatizing new technologies, or creating trade barriers.

    Tom Kalil is Deputy Director for Policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

    [Editor's Note:  Also today both the EPA and the FDA released documents inviting public comments on approaches those agencies are considering taking to oversee nanomaterials in certain products they regulate.]

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  • All in a Day's Work: Making Room For Billions More Internet Users and Their Devices

    Posted by Aneesh Chopra, Vivek Kundra, and Lawrence E. Strickling on June 8, 2011 at 1:26 PM EDT

    Today we are pushing the envelope in collaboration with Internet innovators to be sure that the Net can continue to grow and meet the needs of the billions of new users and even more devices we want to connect in the future.

    For 24 hours, a wide range of organizations worldwide, including Federal agencies and Internet companies, like AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, and Akamai, are providing their content and traffic over Internet protocol version six or IPv6.

    IPv6 is an Internet addressing system designed to expand the number of IP addresses available, allowing a big increase in the number of devices that can be attached to the Internet (smart-phones, tablets, cloud computing or smartgrid technologies)– and all the innovation and opportunity that comes with that new capacity.

    This expansion is necessary because the current number of addresses under Internet Protocol version four (IPv4), the current addressing system, is gradually being exhausted. Picture this: while IPv4 supports 4.3 billion addresses, IPv6 supports 340 trillion trillion trillion possible addresses.

    So what makes this day special?

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  • An Important Bipartisan Milestone for Spectrum Policy

    Posted by Aneesh Chopra on June 8, 2011 at 11:42 AM EDT

    Congratulations to Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Rockefeller and Ranking Member Hutchison for their leadership today in passing signature spectrum legislation through Committee that will serve as the foundation for the next chapter in America’s wireless broadband revolution.

    It advances a signature policy priority for President Obama who challenged us to out-innovate our global competitors through a National Wireless Initiative.

    It also moves forward on the recently released House Republican Technology Working Group’s agenda which pledged to "expand availability of spectrum for both consumers and public safety;" and important hearings by the House Energy and Commerce Committee where Members of the Committee, on a bipartisan basis, offered to work together towards legislation that meets the Nation's wireless broadband needs.

    This action couldn’t come soon enough. Cisco recently projected that the "[t]raffic from wireless devices will exceed traffic from wired devices by 2015."

    Better yet, the Senate legislation makes good on a promise our Nation made to first responders following 9/11 that they would have the tools they need to keep our families safe, including a nationwide interoperable public safety broadband network; it strengthens our competitiveness through investments in wireless R&D so the next generation of mobile broadband is invented here; and equips the Federal government with tools to utilize spectrum more effectively. And did I mention that it reduces the deficit?

    Throughout my visits this year on behalf of Startup America – from Austin to Omaha, I’ve heard consistently that mobile broadband is critical to economic growth and quality jobs.

    As we approach the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, I’m hopeful the President will have the opportunity to sign historic spectrum legislation, as it would deliver on one of the most important policies to “win the future” noted in his Strategy for American Innovation and would constitute a long overdue commitment to our first responders.

    Aneesh Chopra is US Chief Technology Officer

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  • Collaborating on Public Safety Broadband

    Posted by Aneesh Chopra on June 7, 2011 at 7:40 AM EDT

    Recently I had the pleasure of hosting a roundtable in Los Angeles to discuss opportunities for innovation in our proposed nationwide interoperable wireless public safety broadband network, an important component of the President’s Wireless Innovation and Infrastructure Initiative.

    Held at the headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department, our roundtable fostered a lively dialogue among some of the top academic, public safety, and communications industry leaders. Together we surfaced opportunities in areas where innovation might deliver greater value at lower cost such as network sharing, network (and security) operations centers, and wireless applications.

    The discussion provided helpful input for the proposed R&D portion of the public safety investment, as called for in the President’s proposal, with emphasis on opportunities for pre-competitive R&D collaboration to accelerate the pace of innovation in delivering a cost-effective, secure, reliable network that meets public safety-specific requirements. Just as important, we identified potential pitfalls to avoid.

    Topics ranged from new approaches to network and infrastructure sharing, cloud computing, and operations management.

    I would like to personally thank the talented academic, public safety, and communications industry professionals who took the time out of their busy schedules to ensure we build a nationwide network that is as technically and operationally efficient and effective as possible.

    Stay tuned for more opportunities to engage in this important topic.

    Innovation Day Roundtable Attendees:

    • Bob Azzi, Sprint
    • Chris Barnes, Informed Publishing
    • Vanu Bose, Vanu, Inc.
    • Keith Bryars, Department of Justice
    • Ronald Buschur, Powerwave
    • R. Chandramouli, Stevens Institute of Technology
    • Milton Chen, vsee.com
    • Michael Coffin, Informed Publishing
    • Kelley Dunne, One Economy
    • Chris Essid, Department of Homeland Security
    • Barry Fraser, San Francisco Department of Emergency Management
    • Michelle Geddes, City and County of San Francisco
    • Anna Gomez, Department of Commerce
    • Joe Heaps, Department of Justice
    • Fred Jarrett, King County, WA
    • Lance Johnson, Department of Commerce
    • Walt Magnussen, Internet2 US UCAN, Texas A&M University
    • Yannis Macheres, American Tower
    • Jeanette Manfra, Department of Homeland Security
    • Victa McClelland, Ericsson Inc
    • Kevin McGinnis, SAFECOM Executive Committee
    • Nick McKeown, Stanford University
    • Chris Moore, San Jose Police Department
    • Carolyn Nguyen, Microsoft
    • Dereck Orr, Department of Commerce
    • Scott Poster, Los Angeles County Fire Department
    • Ramesh Rao, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology
    • Kris Rinne, AT&T
    • Chuck Robinson, City of Charlotte
    • Tony Sabatino, One Economy
    • Greg Schaffer, Department of Homeland Security
    • Bill Schrier, City of Seattle
    • Richard Schwartz, Macheen, Inc.
    • Brian Shepherd, Adams County, Colorado Communications Center
    • Doug Smith, Lightsquared
    • Paul Steinberg, Motorola Solutions
    • Jenny Toigo, Department of Justice
    • Morgan Wright, Alcatel-Lucent

    Aneesh Chopra is US Chief Technology Officer

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  • Building a Model (Rocket) Workforce

    Posted by Chirag Parikh and Phil Larson on May 31, 2011 at 3:19 PM EDT

    Earlier this month, we were honored to be invited to the Team America Rocketry Challenge held about 50 miles outside Washington, DC.  There, hundreds of middle- and high-school students were participating in a model rocketry competition sponsored by the Aerospace Industries Association.

    As two guys with aerospace in our blood, we know firsthand the excitement and adrenaline rush of launching model rockets.  For many youngsters—us among them—model rocketry is a rite of passage that springboards early dreamers to become the engineers and aerospace professionals of tomorrow.  They will be the ones designing, building, and operating the next-generation rockets that launch astronauts into space, probes into the farthest reaches of our solar system, and Earth-orbiting satellites that touch every facet of our daily lives.

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