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Published online 27 April 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.403
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Obama promises spending boost for science
Ambitious target for economically tough times.
President Barack Obama bolstered his lofty promises to US scientists on Monday, saying he would push through an historic increase in research and development funding.
Obama pledged to raise the country's R&D budget to 3% of the national gross domestic product from today's nearly 2.
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Last week, well-known Canadian ecologist (a lesser known as a geneticist, despite authoring a top-selling textbook on genetic analysis), David T. Suzuki came to our campus (Wayne State University) for Earth Day 2009. He spoke about many topics from ecological economics (valuation of a forest's contribution to the ecosystem beyond its value as lumber, etc) to Sputnik. For many years, Suzuki viewed his neighbor to the south with a degree of suspicion. His Earth Day 2009 talk was quite the opposite--mentioning the fact that Americans won all Nobel Prizes in science last year. He argued that like Kennedy's space program in the early 1960s as a response to Sputnik, the Obama Administration's re-elevation of basic science to a high position in national US strategic mission would in response to the Bush calamity--in the end, pay off big time. Let's hope so. The manufacturing of personal automobiles here in Detroit is an era just about over. Pfizer pulled its entire R&D operation out of nearby Ann Arbor (Michigan). But now we have a company in metro Detroit manufacturing wind turbines! For the bold, crisis means opportunity. Obama and Stephen Chu are bold. SPERAMUS MELIORA RESURGET CINERIBUS is the motto of Detroit selected in the wake of a massive 1805 fire here. The Latin means, "We hope for better things; it shall rise from the ashes."