Established Materials Technology: Front Page
Suggestions to President Obama from the Established Materials Technologies Community
Posted on:
01/06/2009...
On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama will take the oath of office as the 44th president of the United States. In the weeks prior to his inauguration, Obama has stated that science and technology will play a pivotal role in addressing many of the issues that he and the country will be facing. For instance, when announcing his science and technology team on December 20, he said:
“The truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources—it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient—especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us.”
In light of the new president’s focus on scientific solutions, Materials Technology @ TMS asked members of TM technical committees engaged in established materials technologies to respond to the following questions:
1) What policies and/or actions related to the Established Materials Technologies Community should be priorities for President Obama? Why should they take priority?
2) What special considerations must President Obama take into account as he develops these policies?
What follows are the comments that we received. (Please note that the opinions expressed here are solely those of the authors and not of their places of employment or TMS.)
Courtney Young
Past Chair, Hydrometallurgy and Electrometallurgy Committee
H
MOCA Consulting
 |
|
Courtney Young |
First and foremost, the President must recognize what drives our economy and what it will take to make it better. Of course, it's all tied to our high standard of living and ultimately comes down to natural resource consumption for producing energy and various commodities. With the population expanding, our collective demand for natural resources increases. With our desire to improve our standard of living, our individual demand for natural resources increases even more.
Health, safety, and environmental issues require that we extract and process our natural resources efficiently. Unfortunately, this is not practiced globally. In fact, not even all of the developed countries practice it consistently because the associated costs minimize or nullify profits. Companies have moved abroad to not only avoid these costs, but the associated high salaries as well. Consequently, we have become a nation of natural resource importers. Meanwhile, these three issues have been exported abroad and ignored. Soon enough, these developing countries will realize that our standard of living is coming at their expense. This national security issue will be worsened if the Mining Act of 1872 is modified.
The President must find a way to make us self-sufficient again or, at least, find a happy medium. This is currently the case regarding oil, is becoming the case for coal, and will become the case for all commodities such as copper and gold. We need to throw less away and recycle more. We need to develop alternative energy sources, including nuclear power, as well as renewable energy resources. And we need to get other countries to become conscientious about their health, safety, and environmental issues.
Lastly, the President must recognize that this will not happen overnight. It will take a plan that will need to be implemented quickly and acted on far beyond his term in office.
Sean R. Agnew
Vice Chair, Magnesium Committee
Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
University of Virginia
 |
|
Sean R. Agnew |
Policy makers should examine the dependence of the United States on Chinese, and to a lesser extent Russian, production of magnesium to support our need for this important material. President Obama should consider implementing policies to make it more attractive for U.S., or at least western, companies with responsible environmental practices to produce magnesium, as well as to provide incentives for manufacturers and end users to use magnesium that has been produced in an environmentally responsible manner.
Low-density materials like magnesium are a critical part of the solution for improving automobile fuel efficiency and reducing CO2 emissions. By using magnesium produced by the Chinese, we defeat this purpose because the production method that they use results in high emissions of CO2 and other pollutants.
Nikhilesh Chawla
Past Chair, Composite Materials Committee
Professor, School of Materials, Arizona State University
Director, Interdisciplinary Mechanical Behavior of Materials Facility, Arizona State
 |
|
Nikhilesh Chawla |
Composite materials are playing an important role in our day-to-day lives. Witness, for example, the large-scale usage of polymer matrix composites in the Boeing Dreamliner. With increasing demands on energy, lightweight materials for aircraft and transportation will become even more important. In this regard, composite materials should be at the forefront of the new administration’s research and development activities and priorities. In addition to a focus on energy, the new president should consider new initiatives for lightweight composites.
President Obama should also strongly consider an across-the-board increase in funding for basic research. We have pressing needs in our infrastructure, transportation, and aircraft industries. In order to be competitive in a global environment, the United States needs to invest more in fundamental research, particularly in areas such as composite materials.
Eric Nyberg
2009 TMS Magnesium Technology Symposium Chair
Chair, Magnesium Committee
These troubled and turbulent times are without precedent. Two very high priorities for President Obama are bringing the U.S. economy to a viable and sustainable state and reducing our dependence on foreign petroleum. One of the key pieces to accomplishing this is reviving the domestic automotive industry to be internationally competitive, while also including the infrastructure necessary to power alternative-fueled vehicles. Increased use of lighweight magnesium in many aspects of the power generation and transportation industry is one component of a successful transportation and energy strategy.
I believe that President Obama should work first on immediate and tangible energy savings. These include producing lightweight automobiles, while also developing long-range solutions, such as increased use of nuclear power and electric/hybrid vehicles.
It must also be recognized that no single solution, short of a scientific miracle, will solve the problems we face, but that many techniques and technologies must be employed. Further, it is necessary for each American to examine his or her world view and to take appropriate actions to mitigate the adverse effects that each of us cause to our economy and our environment, to the benefit of foreign entities selling many of the natural resources that we consume with little or no concern for the environmental impact of their production methods.
Michael L. Free
Vice Chair, Hydrometallurgy and Electrometallurgy Committee
H
Professor, Department of Metallurgical Engineering
University of Utah
 |
|
Michael L. Free |
The new administration needs to have policies that support sustainable development of domestic natural resources for raw metal production, as well as for improvements in metal recycling. These policies need priority because of the importance of metals in our country. We rely heavily on metals, such as steel, for transportation and infrastructure, copper for electrical wiring and electronics, and uranium for nuclear fuel. Reliance on foreign countries for the supply of critical metals increases our vulnerability to the effects of political instability in foreign countries. Utilizing our nation’s natural resources in a sustainable way increases our national security and provides employment opportunities that strengthen our economy. As a nation, we need to have policies that support sustainable development of needed raw materials. We also need to increase the efficiency of metal extraction, processing, and recycling by investing in research and development activities.
Although most of the metal we use in this country will eventually be economically recycled without government incentives, the new administration must also understand that government support will be needed to encourage more metal recycling in areas such as nuclear fuel reprocessing and computer scrap recycling, due to current economic and regulatory constraints.
Carl Boehlert
Secretary, Composite Materials Committee
Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Michigan State University
 |
|
Carl Boehlert |
I believe that President Obama should help establish initiatives which would assist structural materials research and development. This should be a priority because the United States is losing manufacturing jobs and needs to reestablish itself as a world leader in materials research and development. It would also enable continued progress of composites materials technology, which has made significant strides over the past few decades.
One special consideration that President Obama must take into account is that, over the past several years, the budget for the National Science Foundation has not increased significantly. This has had a detrimental effect on materials research and development.
For other recent spotlight stories, please visit the Archive tab.
|
|
|
|
These are the latest postings to the Digital Resource Centers of the Established Materials Community.
- BOOK: Magnesium Technology 2008
Posted: 2008-10-06; Views: 284
[READ]
- REPORT: Platinum-Modified Diffusion Aluminide Coatings on Nickel-base Superalloys
Posted: 2008-02-25; Views: 361
[READ]
- WEB RESOURCE: Platinum Plating of Gas Turbine Components
Posted: 2008-02-25; Views: 344
[READ]
- THESIS: An Investigation of the Hot Corrosion Protectivity Behavior of Platinum Modified Aluminide Coatings on Nickel-B
Posted: 2008-02-25; Views: 378
[READ]
- ARTICLE: A Platinum-Enriched G + G’ Two Phase Bond Coat on Ni-Based Superalloys
Posted: 2008-02-25; Views: 526
[READ]
- ARTICLE: Degradation of EBPVD YSZ Thermal Barrier Coatings on Platinum Aluminide and NiCoCrAlY Bond Coats During High T
Posted: 2008-02-25; Views: 380
[READ]
|
|
|
|