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Supplement 4 



Interactions Between Federal and Industrial 



Funding and the Relationship Between 



Basic and Applied Research 



Continuing innovation is the only way to foster long-term economic growth 

 without discovering entirely new resources. Advances in science and technology 

 are essential to innovation, although innovation also involves many additional fac- 

 tors. In the last half century, the federal government's role has almost always been 

 crucial, and often dominant. The nation has become more dependent on science 

 and technology, and sustaining a robust capacity for research and development is 

 more important than ever Astronauts have walked the face of the moon and re- 

 turned, and astrophysicists have probed the origins of the universe. The physical 

 sciences have also been the source of innimierable inventions — lasers, microelec- 

 tronic devices, and fiber-optic networks, to name just a few — that have in turn 

 enabled practical applications such as satellite communications, computers, and 

 gains in productivity throughout the economy. Past revolutionary advances in 

 biolog}' — unraveling the double helical structure of DNA in 1953, discovering re- 

 combinant DNA technology in the 1 970s — and today's exploding molecular genetics 

 and integrative biology have just begun to illuminate the immense complexity of 

 life. These fundamentally important discoveries also are linked to the capability to 

 design new drugs and diagnostic technologies in medicine, new approaches to 

 problems in agriculture, and technologies for environmental improvement. 



The dramatic increase in life expectancy during this century is one indicator 

 of scientific discovery and technical progress. Figure 11.11 shows that in 1900 life 

 expectancy at birth, even for the richest people, was only age 55, yet for all but the 

 world's poorest today it is over 70. Every year during this century, approximately 

 2 months have been added to life expectancy. The change has been gradual, almost 

 unnoticed in daily life, but fundamentally important. Sanitation, nutrition, transpor- 

 tation, commimication, and other technologies have combined with biomedical 

 research and medical technologies to produce this profound demographic shift. 



In the 5 decades following World 'War II, the U.S. federal government steadily 

 increased its support for science and technology. As a result, the United States 

 moved into a position of preeminence in virtually all areas. We became the leaders 

 in high-technology industries such as aircraft, chemicals, computers, software, 

 pharmaceuticals, and biotechnology. We developed the most effective system in the 

 world for creating new technology-based businesses. 



Our National System of Innovation Depends on Complicated Interactions 

 Between the Public and Private Sectors 



A complex set of institutions and actors contribute to the strength of the U.S. 

 science and technology' base. The examples of important discoveries in medicine 

 and in computing and communications technologies depicted in Figures 11.12 and 



70 



