I'm sorry, but there are lots of bogus points in here. First of all, no one is arguing that the scope or impact of funded science should be anything less than great. The question is who should decide it. It seems the republicans want to take the awarding of scientific grants out of the hands of peer review, preferring that politicians micromanage the appropriation of research grants. Personally, I think that will lead to an end of basic science. Politicians are bound by their sponsors whom for the most part have an interest in public funding of applied rather than basic research.

This particular research is not about ecology or the environment, or some squishy bleeding heart first world problem. It's about the relative value of sexual and asexual reproduction. This particular snail can reproduce in either fashion, and it raises fundamental questions about when and why sexual reproduction would be preferred. It will likely lead to a deeper understanding of the genetic mechanisms that underlie sexual recombination, and how they relate to the success of progeny. Sounds like it's got some scope to me. The competition for grants is so stiff within science today that it's highly improbable that narrow research aims will be awarded. The fundamental question you need to ask yourself is "should basic science be funded, or should the only funding available be for applied science." My answer is an emphatic yes to basic science. It has proven its value beyond all doubt. Further, I personally feel that the applied work should be forced into the private sector as anything with a 5 year pay off will be funded naturally by the market anyway.

You also sing the praises of defense funding. I agree, many great discoveries have been funded by, say, DARPA. However, break it down by dollar spent. Because the money isn't allocated by peer review, but rather the whims of some brass, I personally don't feel it is efficiently allocated. Our impression when dealing with ONR (for example) is that they had absolutely no clue what they were interested in as a research aim, and had no clue what we were actually doing. They just thought we had some cool "high tech looking" stuff. Further, we as researchers didn't really care about their misguided scientific goals. It was sort of an unspoken understanding that we were doing cool stuff, and they had money to burn or else they wouldn't be getting anymore. All the while, the NIH is strapped with many of their institutes floating below a 10% award rate. Most of the reviewers would like to fund, say, 30-40% of the projects. Imagine if a quarter of that defense money was allocated by experts how much more efficiently it would be spent.

1.8 gigapixel ARGUS-IS. World's highest resolution video surviellience platform by DARPA.
1 million terabytes a day saved forever.

The ARGUS array is made up of several cameras and other types of imaging systems. The output of the imaging system is used to create extremely large, 1.8GP high-resolution mosaic images and video.

The U.S. Army, along with
Boeing, has developed and is preparing to deploy a new unmanned aircraft
called the “Hummingbird.” It’s is a VTOL-UAS (vertical take-off and
landing unmanned aerial system). Three of them are being deployed to
Afghanistan for a full year to survey and spy on Afghanistan from an
altitude of 20,000 feet with the ability to scan 25 square miles of
ground surface.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e95_1359267780

the equivalent of 100 predator drones looking at one place AT ONCE ... hahah they stole my idea

Tags for this video have been changed from 'highest resolution, video, surveillance, darpa, army, boeing' to 'highest resolution, video, surveillance, darpa, army, boeing, skynet' - edited by kulpims

The guys at Darpa on Halloween should put a hollowed-out cow carcass over one of these and throw a debauched design-team video party to chronicle the first Bovinator robot: "Necrotic tissue over make-shift,creepy-looking bag-o-parts endoskeleton!"

Shoot it and it says,
"Don't Dooooooooo dat!"

...grant from Darpa. Maybe they want a creepy mechanical snake for some army stuff?? This guy has a permenant stinky-look on his face.....maybe it's guilt for making prototypes for Terminator parts??

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by mintbbb. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

Sorry, a dupe

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/DARPAs-Pet-Proto-Robot-Navigates-Obstacles

Tags for this video have been changed from 'darpa, robot, boston dynamics, bee gees, disco' to 'darpa, robot, boston dynamics, bee gees, disco, beegees' - edited by Fusionaut

*DARPA does not make cool shit. They fund other people making cool shit.

*done
In reply to this comment by Phreezdryd:
*beg

Tags for this video have been changed from 'DARPA, Boston Dynamics, robot, stairs, treadmill, pushups' to 'DARPA, Boston Dynamics, robot, stairs, treadmill, pushups, skynet' - edited by kulpims

This entire speech is undermined by the fact we the taxpayers fund DARPA. Of course they're not afraid to fail, they never get fired or lose their money.

Irony is tax dollars paying for development of an IRS hummingbird drone

>> ^rychan:

"...her agency has created by not worrying that they might fail."
Well, that is completely contrary to what I know about defense research funding.


That is why DARPA exists.

I was most curious about the gecko-like sticky pad. Too bad I got no questions about that. I also liked the image of the internet. I would love to work there as I have some unique insights and stuff I'd like to try.

I thought it was worth mentioning that she will now be working at google!

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/03/dugan-darpa-google/

I really like this lady! "It may be a bit warm" lol!

Skrillex sounds so much like a modem connecting - i think they already have.>> ^notarobot:

@raverman,
If the robots win, we'll have to listen to techno.