Word: programming
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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While nature's gifts keep California's agriculture in bloom, the state's aerospace industry has faced problems. California's contractors took more than a decade to recover fully from the industry's last depression when the Apollo space program wound down, and Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas are still facing stiff head winds in the commercial jet market. But the state has maintained its 20% share of all defense contracts. Aerospace firms have such a choking backlog of orders that even an immediate decision to speed up defense spending would not result in any surge...
Appreciating that breakthroughs very often come from individuals rather than from the labs of giant corporations, the Department of Energy has expanded its three-year-old program of small grants to spur research and support small-scale energy innovators. This year DOE will spend $12 million to finance about 800 different projects around the country, vs. $8 million and 584 projects in 1979. The department's local offices loudly promoted the program with radio and television pitches that urged anyone with an idea to write and ask for a grant before last month's deadline. Says Rex Williams...
...conservation. To get money, however, the applicants must first go through a rigorous winnowing process that is designed to eliminate technically unfeasible ideas and those that do not meet regional and state energy needs. The maximum available to any one scheme under the awkwardly named Appropriate Technology Small Grants Program is $50,000, but grants as small as $200 will be made. The 800 or so lucky applicants will be culled from 19,329 proposals received by the DOE, with two-thirds of the total funding being distributed among states on the basis of population. The other third...
...only one project has been judged worthy of nationwide promotion. As part of the 1977-78 pilot program that distributed $1.3 million in four Western states, Guam and the Pacific Islands trust territory, the DOE gave Stanley Mumma of Arizona State University $11,000 to develop a curriculum for teaching people to build solar hot-water systems for their homes. Using methods learned in the course, more than 1,500 residents of the Phoenix area have installed solar systems. The DOE will now spend $1 million to establish the same kind of workshop in every other state...
...unique aspects of this program is that the innovators can elect to retain all of their patent rights. Normally, federal programs specify that any scientist receiving Government money loses his patents. But the DOE is willing to waive this rule on the grounds that the producer of a new energy-saving device will only do the work if he is guaranteed a profit payoff...