Re: Non-Radiative Evanescent Waves are back in the news... (fwd)

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:39:43 -0700
From: Jim Lux <jimlux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Tesla list <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>, tesla@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Non-Radiative Evanescent Waves are back in the news...  (fwd)

At 01:03 PM 6/8/2007, Tesla list wrote:

>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:34:43 -0700
>From: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>         I sure hope the people who control the purse strings don't 
> waste a penny of my money on this foolishness. Unfortunately, 
> according to the news "The research was funded by the Army Research 
> Office, National Science Foundation and the Energy 
> department."!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  If any of these outfits 
> had bothered to check with any competent RF engineer they wouldn't 
> have provided any support at all.

My fond (and optimistic) hope is that the funding was highly 
indirect.  For instance, at JPL (and at other institutions) there's a 
variety of programs to fund small research tasks, say, for a few work 
months (a few tens of thousands of dollars, or less).  The 
application process is pretty straightforward.. maybe a 1 page 
application describing what you want to do, what benefits it might 
have, etc.  Most universities have similar things, often to provide 
work for grad students during the summer, for instance.  The standard 
of review for the research proposal is, by necessity (it's only a one 
page application), fairly rudimentary, since they're designed to 
address little ideas that pop up that wouldn't be appropriate for a 
substantial research proposal (which would involve more rigorous 
review).  In academia, you'll hear the term "mini-grants".

Yes, some of them wind up being truly lame (hopefully not the ones at 
JPL!), but, on the other hand, you don't want to spend $50K in effort 
evaluating a grant proposal for a $5K grant. (to put this in work 
scale terms, $5K will buy you about a week or two's labor).  The 
"quality" of the selection process gets reviewed more in an aggregate 
basis... they might look at what's been approved over the last year, 
perhaps a dozen or two $10-20K jobs, and say, well, we got decent 
results from 30% of them, so so from 50%, and 20% are definitely in 
the "don't fund it again" category.  Overall, you're looking at maybe 
$1M over the year, total, in the context of a $1B operation.  The 
lame ones are truly "down in the noise"

After all, it's no different than tinkering in the garage for 
us.  How many of us have spent some money or time on a piece of gear 
that now sits gathering cobwebs in the corner waiting for that 
special occasion?  Your selection criteria and evaluation are judged 
in a similar way.. your spouse says, "Don't buy any more HV junk on 
spec until you get rid of the old stuff" or "Gosh, wouldn't it be fun 
to have a spa in the backyard to cover that concrete slab where you 
do those experiments"..


The funds for these sorts of things come from a designated chunk of 
the contract funds for large jobs (e.g. we expect you to spend 3% of 
the contract value on investigating new and novel technologies, 3% on 
public outreach, etc.) or as a result of some other grant and bequest 
or the tax codes (e.g. The Getty Foundation has to spend 5% of the 
endowment value every year or lose their tax free status... ).

DoD, among other funding agencies, recognizes the value of throwing 
small amounts of money out there on speculative things, on the off 
chance that something will work. (high risk, high reward, as the 
DARPA phrase has it)

In such a case, there is usually a funding agency credit 
requirement.. That is, all these contracts and grants have a "nickel 
rule" causing 5% to go into some speculative resarch funding pot, 
which is then disbursed through a number of tiers to the eventual 
investigator.  Since the original money came from DoD or DoE or 
whoever, you have to say "this research supported by ...."

The key would be to look if the credit acknowledgement has a specific 
task number associated with it (e.g. this work was funded under 
contract AFRL-12-35/23505-B) which would indicate that, in general, 
it wasn't funded out of one of these general R&D pools.


And then, of course, the Outreach and Public Relations folks at 
research institutions LOVE to have little tasks with public appeal to 
talk about: See, our TOP MEN AND WOMEN are producing INNOVATIONS of 
REAL VALUE.  Even if the funding invested in the work was down in the 
thousandths of a percent of the overall budget.