from Congress. DOE science and technology programs garnered significant increases despite the president’s desire to cut them. DOE’s Office of Science is funded for $6.2 billion, up slightly more than 16% over 2017. And DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy is getting $2.3 billion, an increase of 11%. DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which Trump wants to eliminate, is getting $353 million, a boost of more than 15% over 2017. “This was a complete repudiation of the president’s attempt to gut some of these programs and outright eliminate the nation’s early-stage clean energy innovation program,” says Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Regarding research funding, NIH’s $3 billion funding increase over 2017 is larger than many people expected even though NIH has always had bipartisan support in Congress. Most institutes will see increases of around 5% in 2018, with more money going to both Alzheimer’s research and opioid funding. The 21st Century Cures Act, a law enacted in 2016 that aims to bring new drugs and other therapeutics to market faster, had
BY THE NUMBERS
3,768 Number of computer accounts of professors at 144 U.S. universities allegedly compromised by people working for Iran’s government.
C R E D I T: JO N ATH A N E R N ST/R E UT E RS / N EWS CO M
$3.4 billion Estimated cost to U.S. universities “to procure and access” information stolen from compromised accounts. Other alleged targets included universities in other countries, private companies, government agencies, and the United Nations. Source: United States of America v. Gholamreza Rafatnejad et al., indictment filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
proposed funding for three specific NIH programs—the BRAIN Initiative, the Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot, and the Precision Medicine Initiative. They received a total of $496 million in the spending plan. After facing flat or declining budgets, the National Science Foundation will get a 3.9% increase to $7.8 billion in 2018 under the new plan. Its Research & Related Activities fund, which supports most grants, will get a 5% boost to $300 million. NIST had been slated for a large cut under Trump’s 2019 budget proposal, but instead it got a 26% increase. Although most of the money will go to research facilities construction, NIST’s core research labs programs get a 5% boost to $725 million. NIST’s Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership, which supports small business manufacturing, was also eliminated in Trump’s budget proposal but was saved in the omnibus law. The Department of Agriculture’s primary competitive research grants program, the Agriculture & Food Research Initiative, receives $400 million, a 6.7% increase compared with fiscal 2017. Additionally, the omnibus funding package gives FDA $60 million to implement
its part of the 21st Century Cures Act. FDA also receives $1.5 million to work with USDA on consumer outreach and education related to genetically modified foods. Lawmakers gave the Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board $11 million for the current fiscal year, keeping its funding flat, despite Trump’s request to eliminate the agency. And Congress allocated $7 million to the Pentagon for a nationwide study on the health effects from perfluorinated chemicals in drinking water. Championed by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the study, which the Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry will conduct, will focus on water contaminated with perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS). The Department of Defense for decades used fire-fighting foams that contained these chemicals or substances that can degrade to PFOA or PFOS. These synthetic compounds, which persist indefinitely in the environment and are associated with health problems, continue to be discovered in drinking water near military bases.—ANDREA WIDENER, BRITT
ERICKSON, and CHERYL HOGUE
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
U.S. files complaint over China’s patent policies The Trump administration entered a complaint at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on March 23 over China’s allegedly discriminatory patent licensing practices. The action is part of a package of trade measures announced by the White House to address China’s alleged theft of U.S. intellectual property (see page 13). The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is contesting a variety of Chinese regulations that allegedly put U.S. patent holders at a disadvantage in Chinese markets. Generally USTR claims that China imposes conditions that block U.S. firms from protecting their intellectual property, the complaint says. USTR says China “appears to be breaking WTO rules by denying foreign patent holders, including U.S. companies, basic patent rights to stop a Chinese entity from using the technology after a licensing contract ends.” “These Chinese policies hurt innovators in the United States and worldwide by interfering with the ability of foreign technology holders to set market-based terms in
licensing and other technology-related contracts,” USTR says. The first step in the WTO dispute settlement process is consultations President Trump between the parannounced on March ties. If the U.S. and 22 a set of trade China are not able measures intended to to reach a solution address alleged theft through consulof U.S. intellectual tations, the U.S. property by China. may request that WTO establish a dispute settlement panel to review the matter. President Donald J. Trump directed U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to file the complaint a day after he announced the U.S. would impose tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese imports for allegedly stealing American technology.—GLENN HESS, special to C&EN
APRIL 2, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN
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