Some recent news got me thinking about the National Science Foundation, and the great success that federal funding of research has enjoyed during the post-World War II period. The world we live in today would be very different if research funding had been left to private corporations over the past six decades. “Very different” does not mean better. Rather, we would likely be much less advanced in our science, health care, technology, innovation, wealth creation, and strength as a nation. To my mind, NSF research is one of our nation’s most powerful and effective investments. It’s really inexpensive on a cost-benefit basis. We underfund the NSF to our future peril.
 

How did the NSF come into being? It happened after World War II. Major advances in science and technology were made during World War II because the federal government actively sponsored a wide variety of research and technology development projects. There really was no alternative. After all, it was wartime. But the science and technology that were developed didn’t just help win the war; they transformed the peace that followed and catalyzed the age of science and technology that we live in today.
 

After the war, the National Science Foundation was set up to continue and expand government funding for research, and ensure that the projects supported would be awarded on the basis of merit and not politics. Advanced research funding has proven to be one of the smartest investments our country has made. If we were to get out of the business of funding research, or to dramatically decrease it, we would be making one of the dumbest choices this country could make. We would be surrendering our future economy and national strength to other countries.
 

Lest you have any doubt, much of the post-war explosion of medical advances, scientific understanding, and high-tech industry—and the jobs, wealth, and health they have generated—has grown out of research funded by the NSF and its sister federal agencies like the NIH, DARPA, and a variety of others. Even if the titles of individual grants are incomprehensible to many, they mean a lot to people who know the subjects and why they are important to the advancement of science. Federally funded research has built much of the world we enjoy today. If funding had been left to private sources, progress would have been much slower.
 

As just one example, think about Wall Street and the modern financial industry it represents. The financial industry is based on high-speed computers. Computers are based on electronics. Electronics is based on a fundamental understanding of the solid state. Understanding solid state conduction involves explanations like, “Extra holes in the band gap allow excitation of valence band electrons, leaving mobile holes in the valence band.” That’s gobbledy-gook to most people. To physicists and electrical engineers, however, it’s really important and as natural as saying that rain falls down and not up. I used to teach this material to sophomores at the University of Pennsylvania, and the phenomenon it describes lies at the heart of the Macintosh on which I am typing, my iPhone, the Internet, Google, Amazon, and Facebook. As Yul Brenner, that great King of Siam, said many times, “Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”
 

Fortunately, during the post-war period, successive U.S. administrations at the national and state levels have continued to make major government investments in education and advanced research. They have had the good sense to understand the utterly vital importance of education and science. One result has been the growth of our great universities, both public and private, along with dozens of major research laboratories, such as Lawrence Berkeley Lab, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Sandia Labs, and many more. These engines of education, innovation, and human liberation have produced the educated individuals and basic knowledge from which Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, and thousands of other wealth- and job-generating companies have sprung. American higher education also has been a beacon to the world, a magnet that has attracted some of the finest minds to become immigrants to our shores. As a result, the U.S. has led the world in education and research, and thus in job and wealth creation.
 

Success has come from the national community, the social fabric, the investment of governments, and the power of individual creativity, drive, and initiative. Success has not been simply the product of so-called rugged individuals living on real or virtual islands. If scientific research had been restricted to commercial laboratories, and the results had been kept secret, our technological and economic development would have been much slower. Scientists at different institutions would have had to “invent the wheel” over and over again, instead of learning what others had done from research—research that was funded by society and published openly for everyone’s benefit.
 

By the way, continued American leadership in the future is not guaranteed. It will depend on whether we remain competitive. We don’t have a world monopoly on education and research. Other countries know the secrets of success. Some are trying very hard to catch up with us. They are smart. Make no mistake. We have to compete harder and harder. Hello Red Queen.

 
Today is the new Academy’s fourth birthday.
 

Four years ago today, on a brilliantly sunny day, the new Academy opened. After the speeches, the doors swung open and we were in business. It was an amazing feeling.
 

Thank you to all who have visited us over the past four years. The new building inspires us to make what goes on in the building the very best.
 

Now…on to a great fifth birthday…
 

What do Jill Tarter, Bruce Conklin, John Hafernik, and Shannon Bennett have in common? They all do world-class research, and they’ve all shared their work with visitors at the Academy this past summer. The “Chat with an Academy Scientist” program is a live, daytime program at the Science in Action exhibit, available for all Academy visitors.
 

The program features casual conversations between a Public Programs presenter and a guest researcher in an intimate, un-intimidating space. This model offers a personal and accessible way for our curious visitors to meet the people who drive scientific research. We talk to a different researcher each week, and the ever-fresh subject matter has encouraged the growth of a member fan base, with some members returning for every program. The scientists share their stories of exploration or innovation and the excitement of discovery, and their curiosity and love of engagement with the natural world become contagious.
 

This fall will feature more researchers including Farallones explorer Rebecca Johnson (Oct. 6), shark scientist Dave Ebert (Oct. 13), ornithologist Jack Dumbacher (Oct. 20), and ocean filmmaker David McGuire (Oct. 27). The program takes place every Saturday at 12:30 pm.
 

The programs are filmed and streamed live online. You can view archived videos here:
www.ustream.tv/calacademy

Apparently, they led the way and not just at UC Santa Cruz.
 

Zeray Alemseged, our anthropology curator, sent me the following piece from the Calgary Herald earlier this summer. Walking upright is a key feature in the history of humans, but moving around—which we all take for granted—had to evolve among animals in the first place. Here is some fresh evidence, published in the journal Science, dating back to 585 million years ago. The new evidence is tantalizing and is a very good example of how fragmentary data can tell us a lot about how we became who we are: “Alberta researchers help find earliest evidence of mobile multi-cellular organisms”.

Read on for the story of the Academy’s thriving colony of violaceous euphonias, courtesy of our Rainforest biologists. The fledglings are really cute, as fledglings often are. And you thought we were just a bunch of penguins! Not so.
 

Violaceous euphonias (Euphonia violacea) have been a part of the Rainforest exhibit since opening. Breeding this species has been a goal for the Rainforest biologists, and we were able to confirm fertile eggs in our collection a few months ago. Just like the rest of the finches and tanagers in our exhibit, they feed on nectar, insects, and fruit. Only eight other institutions in the U.S. display this species. Among these eight institutions, only one chick has been hatched in the past 12 months.
 

In March, we acquired new male and female euphonias. After clearing quarantine and being released into the Rainforest exhibit, the pair began building a nest in a planted wall on the Costa Rica (top) level.
 

The female laid three eggs, and she incubated them for 15 days. During incubation the biologists candled the eggs, revealing that two of the three eggs were fertile. After the eggs hatched, the female juggled incubating the chicks, foraging for food, and feeding them.
 

A mere 18 days after hatching, the chicks were fully feathered and ready to leave the nest! At this time the male began encouraging them to leave the nest and also began feeding them.
 

Just a few days ago, the fledglings began attempting to eat solid food on their own. In about one week we expect the fledglings to be self-sufficient. The fledglings will be moved behind the scenes, then transferred to partner zoos/aquariums this fall, where they will eventually breed and start the circle of life over again.

Richard A. Muller is a professor of physics at UC Berkeley, and his story (from the New York Times of July 28, 2012) is a great example of science in action. Muller was a public skeptic about climate change who changed his mind because his research didn’t support his skepticism. As a scientist, when his results didn’t support his opinions, he had no alternative but to change his mind, and he did. Publicly. That’s science at its best. The core of the scientific method is that whatever an individual or an organization prefers to believe, truth is that which is demonstrated by repeated observation and measurement.
 

The global climatic system is dauntingly complex, and we have only begun to understand it. However, a clear consensus has emerged that climate change, whatever its details, truly is happening. By burning fossil fuel deposits and releasing enormous quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in a geological blink of time, we are doing a large-scale experiment in the one and only test tube that is our world. We are taunting Mother Nature, big time. Years will pass before we know the consequences, and they are unlikely all to be good. Trashing the neighborhood is risky. We have no other neighborhood to move to.
 

Then there are the ethical issues. No one reading this sentence will be alive in a short 100 years from now. We are only passing through, and we pass through very quickly. What world do we want to leave behind? As the Boy Scouts advocate, “Always leave your campsite cleaner than you found it.” Their advice applies to planets as well, particularly when there isn’t a spare one available for our grandchildren and their children. Do we want to be remembered as responsible stewards of our one and only comfy blue dot in the vast void of the Universe, or as the generation that heedlessly (greedily?) drilled, burned, fiddled, and danced…and left the check for the kids?

The Academy’s Summer Systematics Institute (SSI) just concluded its 17th season. SSI provides hands-on research experiences for undergraduates from colleges across the country. This year’s cohort hailed from as far away as Duke and the University of Hawaii, to places next door like the College of San Mateo.
 

SSI interns engage in a curriculum of lectures and labs that inform about the type of science that is done in a collections-based setting. They also take part in a variety of community-building events and field trips. But most importantly, participants take ownership of and help design a research project in the lab, under the guidance of an Academy mentor. Each year, SSI interns demonstrate their special abilities to launch into a full trajectory from program design, through data-gathering, and then to analysis. The crowning event of the SSI is a presentation at the end of the program by each of the interns to a diverse audience of peers, scientists, and even friends and relatives. These are not just “what I did on my summer vacation,” but full-blown research talks, the likes of which one might see at an international conference of professionals already well-established in their fields. We are fond of saying that by the end of the program, the SSI interns are no longer students. They are colleagues. In fact, they are the world’s experts on their chosen topics of investigation, and their work is, without exception, fully publishable. Many will go on to do just that…publish their findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals, or present them at large meetings such as the annual gathering of the Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology (which just happens to be in San Francisco this coming January).
 

Every year, we are astonished how quickly these fantastic interns “get it” about the science we do here. We should all be so lucky to emulate that capacity. It’s what keeps us coming back to the program as advisors, lecturers, and administrators: to see the research lights come on in these fertile minds, and to know that the future of evolutionary biology will be safe in the hands of this next generation of scientists.

I have been thinking about Galileo recently, because the other day I saw a note in the paper saying that a very important document of his will go on display next year in Rome. Thinking about Galileo got me thinking once again about science, how it all got started, and how controversial it has been, century after century.
 

The core of the scientific method is its reliance on observation. Science establishes what is true through observing, measuring, constructing models, and testing them against reality. When there is a conflict between what we observe and what we might want to believe or others might prefer that we believed, reality wins.
 

Science is not dull and desiccated. The process by which science evolves is very human, even rowdy. It’s full of passion and emotion. Anyone who has ever gone to a scientific meeting has seen scientists get into loud and heated debates as they advocate their particular viewpoints. But in the end, measurement, observation, and repeatability are the referees that determine what is true and what is not.
 

Galileo was one of the true Greats of science. He also is a poster child for what can happen when science and human institutions come into conflict. Faced with death by slow burning for his scientific views of the cosmos, Galileo recanted. You really can’t blame him. He had more life to live and wanted to live it. Regardless, he knew that what he had published about the planets and the sun was true, and that eventually the truth would come out and be recognized by all. And so it was.
 

This summer’s news reported that the document in which Galileo recanted and to which he affixed his signature, “Galileo Galilei,” will go on display in Rome next year, from February to September, in the Capitoline Museums. It’s a major punctuation point in the history of science, human thought, and freedom.
 

Galileo is one of my personal heroes. So, as “Penguin One” of an institution that is devoted to doing and sharing and learning about science, I encourage us to pause and pay homage to Galileo Galilei. He deserves our admiration and our gratitude. He did a great deal to birth the modern world we live in.

Today (August 2) at 12:30 pm, Academy Fellow Jill Tarter will be speaking on the museum floor as part of our weekly “Chat with an Academy Scientist” program. She is the real-life inspiration for Jodie Foster’s character in the 1997 film Contact. If you can’t make it to the Academy today, don’t fret—watch the program live or after the fact on our Ustream channel.
 

Jill recently announced that she is stepping down as director of the Center for SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) at NASA Ames Research Center. Fortunately, she will remain active as a scientist in the center.
 

It’s a labor of patience and determination. She and her colleagues are searching for what many feel must be “out there,” which is life of some kind, extra-terrestrial life. Whether it is life like us is entirely a matter of speculation. After all, life on Earth was green slime long before it evolved to the point when it started chattering on cellphones. But, to me at least, it just seems intuitive that with all the planets in the Universe, surely more than one harbors life of some kind.
 

Earthlings tend to think that our spaceship is special. Earth IS special, of course. It’s home for all of us, and we don’t have anywhere else to go. If we trash our neighborhood, our pale blue dot, we will have big problems.
 

All these thoughts remind me of the famous line from Casablanca, said by Rick (Bogie) of Ilse (Ingrid Bergman): “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”
 

Maybe life is like that, and we just happen to live in the right joint. Then again, maybe “they” have been watching already but decided to go visit someplace else.
 

Science is all about wondering, exploring, and (in time) understanding. Searching for extra-terrestrial life is wondering of the most profound sort. Personally, I take particular delight that one of OUR Academy family has helped to lead the search.
 

I admire Jill for it, given what may be the odds. Join me in hoping that a really regular and distinctive signal will be heard sometime soon. It will be the most significant beep ever heard in human history. Nothing, nothing at all, will be the same after it is detected. What fun it will be. What good fortune it would be to live at the time of such a discovery. Even more fun to make the discovery. Go Jill and colleagues. Please keep listening.

 
The Academy recently launched a new citizen science initiative, which seeks to advance our understanding of California biodiversity and address conservation, restoration, and protection needs. Leveraging the enthusiasm and power of a volunteer corps, the Academy is participating in two pilot projects: 1) partnering with the Marin Municipal Water District to survey the biodiversity of Mt. Tamalpais to inform management practices, and 2) partnering with the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary to document the marine ecosystem at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. Learn more on our Citizen Science page.
 

I’ve included below an op-ed piece from the Marin Independent Journal published a few months ago celebrating citizen science—which was, in fact, the first science.
 
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Citizen Science Brings Passion about the Natural World Back into Our Lives
By Jaimie Baxter
 

Where would the scientific world be today without the contributions of Galileo or Charles Darwin?
 

Locally speaking, how much of Marin’s natural history would be known were it not for Alice Eastwood? According to contemporary thought, these prominent contributors to our knowledge of natural processes and scientific theory were not scientists by training, but ordinary members of society with an inexorable curiosity in solving riddles of the natural world.
 

Charles Darwin’s early fascination with the natural world distracted him from his medical education. In spite of this, Darwin followed his passion to publish Origin of Species, a creation that is considered one of the most influential works to scientific and evolutionary theory in all of history.
 

Alice Eastwood, a teacher and self-taught botanist, contributed invaluable botanical knowledge of Marin flora to Marin County and its scientific community. Her countless collections are housed at the California Academy of Sciences to this day.
 

These examples showcase the pursuit of scientific study by lay citizens who kept journals, collected specimens and wrote papers about their discoveries. This type of observation-based inquiry and contribution to our collective scientific knowledge waned in the mid-20th century as science became the domain of professional researchers who were employed by governmental institutions and universities.
 

Alas, the dominant academic discourse of the 21st century remains entrenched in the idea that the collection of scientific data is only valid if performed by professionally trained experts.
 

But recently, a movement that emphasizes uniting public involvement with scientifically sound practices is beginning to blossom. This movement is called citizen science and it has the many benefits of modern technology. Indeed, technology may well be the main driving force of recent explosions of citizen science activity. It provides access to expansive populations of people, and these large volunteer networks allow scientists to accomplish tasks that would be too expensive or time consuming to accomplish through other means.
 

Many of us are merely one step away from becoming citizen scientists. By taking advantage of mobile applications, we have the ability to record data while hiking on our favorite trail, gardening in our backyards, or wandering a portion of the Pacific coast.
 

Not all “apps” record data, but questions can be posted to the web with answers provided in a matter of minutes. Some examples of these mobile applications and data recorders are Nature’s Notebook, Project Budburst, Calflora’s Observer, SciSpy, eBird, iNaturalist, LeafSnap, NestWatch, WildLab, Project Squirrel and the Great Sunflower Project.
 

Local forms of citizen science exist in Marin as well. For example, this year the Marin Municipal Water District, in celebration of the district’s 100th anniversary, has teamed up with the California Academy of Sciences to carry out multiple bioblitzes to capture a snapshot of the flora of Mt. Tamalpais. Another local land management agency, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, is piloting the California Phenology Project which tracks seasonal changes of designated plant species in the Presidio and Marin Headlands.
 

In addition, the Point Reyes Bird Observatory recruits citizen scientists for their annual
Christmas Bird Count from mid-December to early January.
 

Jaimie Baxter is an Americorps member with the Conservation Corps North Bay and a restoration and ecosystem management intern with the Marin Municipal Water District.