NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Another 550 employees set to leave the building The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is facing another round of layoffs, with 550 additional employees set to lose their jobs. ... what the US doesn't seem to wake up to is this having an effect upon science and technology in general ... An update posted on October 13 from JPL Director Dave Gallagher described a " …
The shortsighted economics is to save today, and neglect tomorrow. I just heard yesterday that in the UK, Cameron and Osborne's austerity resulted in 5 year old children born since 2010 being 7cm shorter than would otherwise have been expected. Of course the long term health effects of austerity will become evident as that cohort ages, Burt be bourn by other governments while the culprits have long since left office.
The same is true of the cuts to science in the USA, short term savings of money but long term damage to science programmes and the intellectual health of the nation and the planet, for 'someone else' to sort out.
Citation provided.1 There are multiple references within the item (admittedly, an OpEd, and not a news story) which seem to back up the assertion.
I have no opinion, I'm just relaying the citation.
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Hmm, the only reference to "7cm" in that article is a claim that UK 5yr olds are 7cm shorter than Dutch 5 yr olds. That's it.
The article starts by citing a UK Civil service survey that found that a person's height was correlated with their seniority. It mentions that a person's height is related via childhood nutrition to their poverty status (and many other factors too). The grauniad article then turns this around and claims that height is therefore an indicator of poverty, forming the basis of the whole piece.
"More likely, the social circumstances of early childhood, including good nutrition, are linked not only to height, but to educational and social success. Height, then, is both an outcome of conditions in childhood and an indicator"
It then goes on to say that heightwise, the UK has been falling behind other nations for some time, saying " average height of five year olds went down" which is a complete misinterpretation. It was simply that over time, UK 5 year olds were getting taller at a slower rate than in other nations. The study they link to looked only at ethnic differences and concluded:
"Compared to their White counterparts, Black boys and girls were taller at 3 years by 2.1 cm ... and 3.1 cm ... and subsequently grew at a faster rate on average by 0.24 cm/year ... and 0.31 cm/year ... respectively". The claim that government austerity is to blame is not backed up, nor even suggested in this study.
Even by grauniad standards, this is a pretty poor article and abuse of study gindings..
"Even by grauniad standards, this is a pretty poor article and abuse of study gindings.."
Indeed, I'd seen it and thought somebody would bring it up, and could be educated as per your comments. But it's disappointing that any Reg reader would lack the critical nous to see that the referenced article is (a) a load of bollocks and (b) doesn't show what the OP asserted.
Maybe British kids are 7cm shorter because of Brexit, eh, lads?
I fully agree with you and the other week NASA administrator Sean Duffy told the International Aeronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney that the USA was intent on putting a nuclear powered base on the Moon. That's all very well saying that but I cannot see how that can actually happen with all the NASA and related current swingeing budget cuts.
All Duffy and others are doing is helping the Chinese space programme and crippling American space innovation (and jobs).
A 7 cm change in average heights for 5 year olds over that period would be massive, so obviously dodgy data as that would be a sustained 7mm per year! Average heights of children do bounce up and down a bit. The numbers show a fairly consistent 1mm a year increase over that period till 2020 when there was a sharp 8mm surge apparently "linked" to obesity. Since that peak it's fallen quite a bit but still above what it was when Cameron became PM.
There are lots of potential reasons, but as heights increased during the days of "austerity" it's not credible to cite it as "the" reason for their decline.
TLDR; citation needed
Just looking at height at a spot age is likely to be misleading so I'd expect the study to look at relative growth rates. Journalists would then distill the study into a simple byline.
Like a lot of stories its colored by what people want to believe. I expect there are also wide differences among regions, ethnic groups, classes and so on. (A decent study would take this into account.) But just as the average height of the population increased noticeably in the last century or so, a phenomena widely attributed to vastly improved public health and nutrition, its not unreasonable to suppose that if standards fall then heights will as well. Its just an uncomfortable notion.
"Just looking at height at a spot age is likely to be misleading so I'd expect the study to look at relative growth rates."
That's exactly what happened.
"Journalists would then distill the study into a simple byline."
That's exactly what happened - but a byline that wasn't suggested, or even supported by the study cited.
And they want to stop any chance of doing that again?
Yes. The orange moron is quite happy to forgo the future benefits of space and high tech to not-so-rich people if it means tax cuts for billionaires now.
Now, if JPL were researching stuff like the market for golf courses and property investment in Gaza, or new technologies to make if feasible to have gold clothing, gold toilet paper, edible gold food, gold grass for golf courses, gold golf clubs, robot servants made of gold...that's the sort of research Krasnov would want to see continued.
"The Apollo program generated $5-$7 return on each $1 invested through technological innovation, job creation, and the development of new industries and products. It laid the foundations for the current tech sector."
Pure research has the habit of doing that, but not to any definable schedule which MBA's, Attorneys and bean counters can't deal with.
If there are fewer and fewer high tech jobs in the US, fewer people will get STEM degrees. I looked at doing a graduate degree in nuclear physics and given my age at the time, the number and pay of jobs outside of the military and what the cost would be, it made no sense. I still enjoy learning about the subject, but only on my own time and without the huge college tuitions.
NASA and other government labs provide mountains of fundamental research every year that funnels into all sorts of new and improved products that companies aren't going to develop themselves. For something such as LFTR reactors, it can take a government as it's not something investors will take an interest in. Sure, it could have a massive payoff down the road, but 6 other shorter term investments could match the return with far less risk. The government could license the technology out at a reasonable cost with revenue being applied to funding more research. The fees could be waived while a company has something in development so they aren't spending money needlessly or if the end product might be something where the government would be the customer.
There are a lot of really clever people in the USA (snark aside). Most other nations are going to be drooling over this talent pool suddenly coming onto the market. It's fucking JPL - I'd get that tattooed on my private parts if I was smart enough to work there. Self imposed Dark Ages by a country that prided themselves on innovation?
It's fucking JPL - I'd get that tattooed on my private parts if I was smart enough to work there
JPL tattooed on your private parts would read "Just Pull the Lever" and, although being fully functional in the fucking context you just happen to mention, would be of no significant benefit in the job market, I'm afraid.
The writing has been on the wall since return-to-flight (STS-26). Following the soul-searching and critical review after the 51-L Challenger explosion, the corporate consolidations and name-change game began in earnest. Rockwell (corporate and RSOC), McDonnell Douglas, Martin Marietta Lockheed and Ford Aerospace, were the traditional engineering contractors when Nasa Rd. 1 was still a 2-lane blacktop running between I-45 and Kemah.
Beginning in the early 90's the consolidation and reorganization hit full swing with Loral (previously Ford Aero), Unisys and the like coming onto the scene, station was grabbing more and more of the shuttle budget and DOD flights were waning, ending with STS-53. The "design it, cut-metal, build it and let's go fly" mentality was replaced by "let's have a meeting to determine the agenda for the next meeting"... Deming's TQM got its nose under the tent and the culture it created resulted in the blaze in the sky Columbia cut across Texas.
Through it all, JPL retained the "design it, cut metal, build it and let's go fly" mentality. Sad to see the ax falling there. There is no faster way to destroy young engineering talent than to tell them, in not so many words, their struggles through mind-bending physics and mathematics are no longer valued by your country. The reality, then and now, is there is a very very small market for aerospace talent. It's either space, defense or a very few in aviation.
Shrinking that pool is a loss for the country, which ever country it is. While no government program is perfect, there are very few, that push technical boundaries the same way aerospace does. Producing competent engineers to design to a factor-of-safety of 0.1 or less doesn't happen overnight, and there isn't another engineering discipline that does it.
to dumb down the USA so that it is full of idiots who will vote GOP forever.
Only the top 0.1% and the bottom 30% of idiots vote GOP.
If you get educated then you are more likely to vote against the GOP.
That's why they are dead set on eliminating the Department for Education. Can't have the plebs being able to read now can we.
Trump branded, of course. Admittedly a quick look at the Donald Trump online store (it claims to "INFUSE THE ELEGANCE OF TRUMP IN YOUR NEXT EVENT" when you visit) doesn't show any guns for sale yet, but given you can effectively buy them in Walmart over there I guess it's only a matter of time.
Wow, the Trump Online Store! Thanks for the heads-up, that is a veritable trove of ghastly, over-priced, poor taste tat. I'm almost tempted to buy some for people I'm less fond of. How about the Mar-a-lago corkscrew for $28, finished in a lovely fake gold finish? or the Mar-a-lago scene belt for $220, or a MAGA "kitchen upgrade" discounted to $96?
I’ve mentioned it before here but when Trump first ran for presidential candidate, he was on record for saying (and I paraphrase but this is basically what he said):-
“I’m not running as a Democrat because I would never win. Instead, I’m running as a Republican because Republicans are stupid enough that I’m more likely to win” (and yes, he really did put it like that!)
To put this in context, up to this point, he had donated quite a bit to the Democrats
And he had a point. Even after pointing out in plain language that the people who’s votes he was relying on are stupid, they STILL voted for him!!!! You really couldn’t make this shit up
Presumably he was in New York politics for business reasons. There's no point in being a Republican if you want to get political power in NY
Then it occurred to him that there was a more profitable job than just being on the NY zoning board
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