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always did, which was to give back and to dedicate a part of your 

 time to making the world a better place. 



Mr. Mahoney. You're very kind. 



Ms. McCarthy. I was very pleased with the fifth recommenda- 

 tion with regard to the United States pursuing international co- 

 operation and sharing costs, and Dr. Press touched on this in his 

 comments. 



I'm curious, in working with the other nations and the scientists, 

 how this should be incorporated into the process for setting prior- 

 ities for the federal science and technology budget. And did your 

 committee identify or consider particular fields where you felt that 

 we could actually achieve some savings through closer collaboration 

 with other nations? 



This is an idea that I think is a very, very good one. I'd just like 

 to hear a little bit more from any of you about this particular rec- 

 ommendation. 



Dr. Press. There are a number of areas where the intellectual 

 capital rests in other countries as much as it does in ours. And if 

 you add to that fields where the costs are very high, like the new 

 generation of accelerators or the fusion engineering test facility, 

 things like that, where the costs go into the billions of dollars, 

 where the fall-out afiects the whole of the world in terms of the re- 

 sults of the research, you can add some other criteria, it makes a 

 very good case for international collaboration. 



One way for the United States to operate at world levels is to be 

 part of a world consortium — for example, joining the CERN accel- 

 erator and contributing to it intellectually, as well as monetarily, 

 rather than building its own accelerator at this time. 



And so, if you put these all together — as we're doing in the space 

 station. The space station is a very good example of an inter- 

 national cooperative experiment or facility. Everybody shares in it. 

 It has the political advantage of global cooperation, of countries 

 working together. 



I think if you add all of these criteria together, you have a good 

 way of identifying those fields which would benefit fi-om inter- 

 national cost-sharing and collaboration. 



Dr. Fox. I would only add that the incentive for promoting inter- 

 national cooperation among the agencies has had a very beneficial 

 effect among the scientists, as they begin to design proposals that 

 would address the problems, oceanography being one of the exam- 

 ples, astronomy being another. 



But people cooperate internationally, as a function of improved 

 information technology, to devise means by which this collaboration 

 can be made more easy. 



Ms. McCarthy. Are there areas as we set our budget priorities 

 where savings could be realized as a result of this collaboration? 



Dr. Fox. For example, at the National Science Foundation, the 

 recent investments that have been made in new observatories have 

 a very strong component from other nations — from Canada, fi-om 

 the UK, from South America. 



So those operations are being funneled into the budget-making 

 processes that are done in the agencies for sure. 



Ms. McCarthy. Thank you. Mr. Mahoney? 



