First 2014 Golden Goose Award to physicist Larry Smarr

Work at University of Illinois on black holes led to championing a US supercomputing revolution and to web browsers

2014-02-15

(Press-News.org) Larry Smarr, a physicist whose work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on calculating black hole collisions led him to champion a federal commitment to dramatically enhance U.S. computing power – which in turn led to the development of NCSA Mosaic, the precursor to web browsers – was named today as the first 2014 recipient of the Golden Goose Award.

The Golden Goose Award honors researchers whose federally funded research may not have seemed to have significant practical applications at the time it was conducted but has resulted in major economic or other benefits to society.

The announcement was made in Chicago today by Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-IL) during a symposium on the Golden Goose Award led by Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) and Rep. Hultgren at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. Smarr today is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2).

At Illinois in the 1980s, Dr. Smarr was conducting gravitational physics research focused on computing the dynamics of black holes in space. The work, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), required enormous computing power, which at the time was not readily available to academic researchers in the United States, although supercomputers were already being used in open European research labs. Realizing that the U.S. had fallen behind and that he and fellow researchers needed far greater computational power, Dr. Smarr led the first proposal to NSF arguing for the creation of a national supercomputing center housed in an academic setting. This set off a revolution in computational science in academia and industry that continues today.

Upon winning a peer-reviewed national competition he was named director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. At NCSA Dr. Smarr created a software development group to support the application needs of researchers. Two members of that NCSA team, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, created Mosaic, the world's first widely used graphical Web browser. The Web browsers computer users have used for two decades, such as Netscape, Internet Explorer, and Firefox, are descendants of Mosaic, and today virtually every consumer computing device that accesses information, from smartphones to televisions, from tablets to automobiles, contains a graphical web browser.

Representative Jim Cooper (D-TN) first proposed the Golden Goose Award when the late Senator William Proxmire (D-WI) was issuing the Golden Fleece Award to target wasteful federal spending and often targeted peer-reviewed science because it sounded odd. Rep. Cooper believed such an award was needed to counter the false impression that odd-sounding research was not useful.

In 2012, a coalition of business, university, and scientific organizations listed below created the Golden Goose Award. Like the bipartisan group of Members of Congress who support the Golden Goose Award, the founding organizations believe that federally funded basic scientific research is the cornerstone of American innovation and essential to our economic growth, health, global competitiveness, and national security. Award recipients are selected by a panel of respected scientists and university research leaders.

"The Golden Goose Award celebrates unexpected discoveries, and there's no better example than the World Wide Web," Rep. Cooper said. "The Web is one of humankind's greatest accomplishments and is transforming our planet. Without the unanticipated consequences from Dr. Smarr's research, we'd be trapped in an informational black hole. His success reminds us that we never know where science might lead."

"Dr. Smarr's work is a perfect example of why Congress must remain committed to basic scientific research," Rep. Hultgren said. "It has been a focus of mine on the Science Committee to showcase these kind of stories, and as the co-founder of the House Science and National Labs Caucus, it was an honor to announce this award for the work Dr. Smarr did in my home state. The idea for Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing Applications was inspired by Dr. Smarr's important questions about black holes, but has demonstrated its usefulness in tackling many other scientific puzzles. As scientists continue gaining a better understanding of the universe, the technology, and tools they use to get there are having broad and longstanding impacts throughout our society. Science that is 'strange' to Congress can lead to the next scientific breakthrough, and these scientific inquiries are vital for America to maintain its place as an innovative and exceptional nation."

Dr. Smarr will receive his award at the third annual Golden Goose Awards ceremony in Washington, DC, on September 18, along with other awardees to be announced later this year.

INFORMATION: Additional information about the Golden Goose Award, including videos and other information on Dr. Smarr and previous winners, can be found at http://www.goldengooseaward.org and on Twitter at @GoldGooseAward.

FOUNDING ORGANIZATIONS:

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Association of American Universities (AAU)
Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU)
Breakthrough Institute
Progressive Policy Institute (PPI)
Richard Lounsbery Foundation
The Science Coalition (TSC)
Task Force on American Innovation
United for Medical Research

Other organizations sponsoring the Golden Goose Award in 2013:

American Astronomical Society
American Educational Research Association
American Mathematical Society
American Psychological Association
American Society for Microbiology
American Sociological Association
APS Physics
Association for Psychological Science
Association of American Medical Colleges
The Biophysical Society
Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
IEEE-USA
Texas Instruments

[Attachments] See images for this press release:

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Repeal of Missouri's background check law associated with increase in state's murders

2014-02-15

Missouri's 2007 repeal of its permit-to-purchase (PTP) handgun law, which required all handgun purchasers to obtain a license verifying that they have passed a background check, contributed to a sixteen percent increase in Missouri's murder rate, according to a new study from researchers with the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. The study, to be published in a forthcoming issue of Journal of Urban Health, finds that the law's repeal was associated with an additional 55 to 63 murders per year in Missouri between 2008 and 2012. State-level murder data for ...

Arizona State researcher explores responsible innovation

2014-02-15

CHICAGO – An engineer works in the lab on a promising research project. He follows all the rules, works with the materials available to him and produces quality work. He never lies, cheats or steals. His research eventually results in a new technological innovation. Everybody wins. But five or 10 years down the road, a byproduct of that new technology proves to be harmful to the environment. What if this unintended consequence could have been easily avoided had the engineer made a simple change in his research process? While it may be difficult to foresee, the work ...

Longer commutes disadvantage African-American workers

2014-02-15

African-Americans spend more time than any other group getting to work and in some cases spend about 15 minutes more a day than whites commuting, according to research by Virginia Parks, associate professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. That can be a 25 percent increase over an average urban two-way commute of about an hour, she found, based on a study of 2011 U.S. Census Bureau data. "Because of racial segregation, blacks spend more time getting to work. For low wage workers, the difference is seven minutes each way when compared ...

A new target for cancer and diabetes: A novel role for the adaptor protein p66shc in regulating glucose metabolism

2014-02-15

[TORONTO,Canada, Feb 18, 2014] – A protein that has been known until recently as part of a complex communication network within the cell also plays a direct role in regulating sugar metabolism, according to a new study published in the journal Science Signaling (February 18, 2014). Cell growth and metabolism are tightly controlled processes in our cells. When these functions are disturbed, diseases such as cancer and diabetes occur. Mohamed Soliman, a PhD candidate at the Lunenfeld Tanenbaum Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital, found a unique role for the p66Shc ...

AAAS panel considers pandemic emergency response

2014-02-15

When a pandemic spreads, health officials must quickly formulate a strategy to limit infections and deaths. That requires sifting through massive amounts of data in a short amount of time and organizing medical personnel who may have little information on the pandemic. To help coordinate a rapid response to pandemics, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta has designed software that combines biological data on the pandemic with demographic data of the at-risk population so that health officials can develop a game plan to limit the pandemic's spread. ...

Scientific racism's long history mandates caution

2014-02-15

Racism as a social and scientific concept is reshaped and reborn periodically through the ages and according to a Penn State anthropologist, both medical and scientific researchers need to be careful that the growth of genomics does not bring about another resurgence of scientific racism. "What we are facing is a time when genomic knowledge widens and gene engineering will be possible and widespread," said Nina Jablonski, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology. "We must constantly monitor how this information on human gene diversity is used and interpreted. Any belief ...

Communicating the way to the adoption of scientific technologies

2014-02-15

CHICAGO --- James N. Druckman has conducted extensive research on the effects of the politicization of science, which occurs when political interests shape the presentation of scientific facts to fit distinct models of "reality." A paper on this research will be presented during a symposium held from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 14, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Grand Ballroom A in the Hyatt Regency Chicago. Druckman, the Payson S. Wild Professor in the department of political science at the Weinberg College of ...

Study suggests sleep apnea may contribute to fatigue in multiple sclerosis

2014-02-15

DARIEN, IL – A new study provides evidence that obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is highly prevalent in people with multiple sclerosis (MS), and it suggests that OSA may be a contributor to the fatigue that is one of the most common and debilitating symptoms of MS. Results show that one-fifth of MS patients surveyed in a large tertiary MS practice carried a diagnosis of OSA, and more than half were found to have an elevated risk for OSA based on a validated screening tool. Further analysis showed that OSA risk was a significant predictor of fatigue severity, even after ...

Heinrich Jaeger to discuss physics of granular materials at AAAS meeting

2014-02-15

Pour sand from a bucket and it flows like a liquid, but stand on it and it supports weight like a solid. This unusual behavior is a property of granular materials, and it is one of the reasons Heinrich Jaeger, the William J. and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor in Physics at the University of Chicago, has chosen to focus on these types of materials in his research. Jaeger will present a lecture on "Granular Matter: From Basic Questions to New Concepts and Applications," at the 2014 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The talk ...

Growing number of chemicals linked with brain disorders in children

2014-02-15

Boston, MA – Toxic chemicals may be triggering the recent increases in neurodevelopmental disabilities among children—such as autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and dyslexia—according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The researchers say a new global prevention strategy to control the use of these substances is urgently needed. The report will be published online February 15, 2014 in Lancet Neurology. "The greatest concern is the large numbers of children who are affected by toxic damage ...

First 2014 Golden Goose Award to physicist Larry Smarr

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: