intending to get a stem degree, only 40% who enter do get a stem degree and the president's council on science and technology among many others have studied this question and we conclude there are two basic reasons for it, both of which we're working to fix. one is the math gap where the students enter college without sufficient math preparation to succeed with science, math and engineering courses and the other is a teaching effectiveness gap where the introductory courses in science, engineering and math are often so boring that they drive even very good students into other majors. we have a variety of programs addressed at both of those problems. >> thank you very much. my time has expired. >> the chair recognizes mr. palazzo. >> thank you, mr. chairman. dr. holdren, i kind of agree on the comments you've been saying on stem education in light of

less than 15% of americans actually pursued stem where other countries such as china, more than 50% of their youth are pursuing stem education. mississippi actually recognizes the global implication of this and through public and private contributions we recently opened a $30 million infinity science center to excite young people to consider studies in stem education in, and it ties in very well with the affiliation with nasa's stennis space center in the role of science, math and exploration across history. now my first question is as you're probably aware, in order to continue buying seats on the russian soyuz spacecraft, to ferry u.s. astronauts to the u.s. space station and to keep iss operational, the iran, north coria, syria, and the non-proliferation act must be extended beyond the current 2016

expiration date. late last year the house passed a bill enabling the reliance through 2020 and the prospects of its enactment would put forward the policy statement. do you anticipate the white house putting out a statement on it and if so, when, and would you agree it would be far, far better to address the issue now versus waiting until the last moment and giving house passage of the bill, i would think the white house would attempt to capitalize on this opportunity. i agree with the importance of getting modification to the iran, north korea, and syria nonproliferation for the purpose you indicate and it is clear that that's going to be required and it is clear that sooner is better than later. the administration has been studying the options for just how to modify it and we've

certainly been working closely with the congress to get that issue resolved. i expect that that will be some more specific statement forthcoming in the future, but we clearly recognize the need and we recognize that sooner is better than later. >> in the near future, can a possible timeline -- i don't want to put a timeline on it, but i know a lot of attention is going toward the administration. it's not mainly my domain, but i expect that there will be a close interaction with the congress on how to fix this and it will happen soon. >> you will carry back our concern? >> i and let me add, by the way to the comment of the science center in mississippi. i've been enormously impressed in my time with this job with the importance of science museum and science centers and the connectedness of science certains to some of our

science-rich agencies in the effectiveness that they have inspiring kids and i have my own grandchildren in a number of these centers in the country and i can tell you it works. >> they convinced me to buy brick. following up on chairman hall's question where we were discussing nasa's space act agreements and the commercial program. what course does the company have if these fail to perform or go out of business? >> there is also a risk in private or public enterprise when they fail to perform. what has happened so far in the commercial space exploration is extremely encouraging. the companies involved have met most or all of their milestones. as you know, the spaceex, falcon 9 rocket in docking with the

international space station carrying cargo up there and returning to earth, bringing cargo and garbage back down. the other comp thors are meeting their milestones and obviously, one can never rule out a failure, a shortfall, but so far we're doing well. >> and last, what, if anything, will nasa own after make these expenditures? >> the idea is not fors. >>a to own something. the idea is for the private sector to own something from which nasa can purchase services to carry crew and cargo to the international space station. >> this is basically an increasing privatization of this particular mission of carrying cargo and crew to low earth orbit. and we believe that the efficiencies obtainable from the private sector and from competition in the private sector are going to be a great, national benefit in which nasa's

investments in the early phases are basically a public investment in a long term, private enterprise which is going to be a great success and it is going to enable us to carry out these missions more efficiently and less expensively, but still very safely. >> we don't wish any business to go out of business and we want them to succeed, but just say if one does, does nasa obtain the intellectual property or the hardware created to date and we can wrap up our time. >> i would have to refer you on that to the legal council at nasa. i can't enter what details about the fate of intellectual property might be in the contracts. >> thank you. >> did that give you the answer? >> the chair recognizes miss edwards from maryland for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman and thank you, dr. holdren for your

testimony and your work today. >> i know -- i heard from the administration and from the president and really can see a commitment to even in tough fiscal times for the nation to invest in innovation. it seems very clear in the president's speech last week he talked rather extensively of the importance in investing in basic research in innovation and technology in advanced manufacturing. so i have a question as to how we decide what our priorities are. the national academies come out with the surveys and sometimes it seems to me particularly when it comes to the innovation agenda and especially at nasa that the recommendations of priorities that the academies put together an all of lot of time in exploring and don't match the budgets that we set in

the congress. i wonder if you could tell us how our science priorities are lined up in keeping with recommendations that come out of the surveys and then related to that, with respect to the mars program. it does, fears were expressed in a hearing of this committee about cuts to planetary science into mars missions and those were confirmed by the administration's budget mission in the 2013 budget request and especially the collaboration between nasa and the european space agency, the mars mission was terminated. as a result, we won't be participating. we won't participate in the development of the mars organic molecule analyzer instrument, and it leads me to wonder if the administration is placing the

priority on -- over the long term on this kind of science why our budget recommendations don't line with the priorities. >> thank you for that question. the mars program remains robust and not withstanding under serious budget constraints and not to proceed with 2016 and 2018 mars mission that had been under discussion with the european space agency. we concluded with respect to those particular missions that there was no way under foreseeable budgets for nasa that our participation in them and in the very expensive mission that would actually be necessary to return samples which was the ultimate idea. no way that that was going to be feasible under foreseeable nasa budgets. the surveys that we get from the

national academy are very valuable. we look at them very closely in the survey on planetary exploration and while they put high priority on the flagship set of mars mission and also specified what you should do in the events of budgets did not permit carrying through with adequate support for flagship mission and in the fallback position that we develop, we actually followed very closely what the survey said we ought to do if budgetary constraints prevented us doing plan a and that, in general is plan a and they represent a huge amount of work by the top level of the lighter science community in those domains, but we have not, by any means given up on our leadership in planetary exploration. as i mentioned we remained the world leader and we will remain

the world leader in plan tear exploration. we have the most complex, largest and the planetary rover on its way to mars expected to land there in august. we have the follow-on mission called maven investigating the upper martian atmosphere to develop knowledge that will be necessary when with ultimately we send humans to mars. we are investigating a number of small and medium-sized mars missions that could be afforded under the budgets that we have going forward and we have as i mentioned before a wide variety of probes heading out that are scheduled for launch. we couldn't afford these particular flagship missions. we very much intend to maintain our commitment to lead in the exploration of mars and the exploration of the solar system more widely. >> thank you. i'll just finish and just to leave you with this thought and for our committee, you do not do science and research by jumping

in and out, by not knowing from one year to the next year what your budgets are going to be and it seems to me that if the administration and this congress has a real commitment to science, to research, to advance manufacturing and to making sure that our students have some place to go if we're encouraging them to engage in stem, then we darn sure better figure out how to do this from year to year, letting our researchers know what the future looks like and it's very frustrating, and i know it's frustrating for all of the -- for all of the agencies as well to do science on a hit or miss, year to year basis and it really is unacceptable and frankly, at the end of the day it just makes us spend more money. thank you. >> i agree, and i would love it. >> the gentle lady's time has expired and she gives you good advice and i think she ought to

give that advice to the epa. the chair recognizes mr. holdren from illinois. >> i appreciate you being here. i was reading in "space news" an article about their statement that in the last four years they were arguing that we've gone from first place to probably third place as far as nations in the forefront of space exploration. i think that's a shame. i want to focus my comments mostly on something else. you were here back in february, and i appreciate you coming back today. following the hearing we had in february, i just submitted a couple of questions to you, the answers which i recently received from your office. one of the questions i asked you in february started by pointing out that particle physics has become a field that has entered an extremely exciting phase and i asked what you thought what role the united states should play in that. i asked if you thought the united states should be would abouting world class physics facilities to collaborate here as the european, japanese,

italians and chinese are doing in their own countries. their answer, and i quote, i think the u.s. should continue to play a leadership role in the field as the u.s. is doing even for experiments taking place for facilities abroad. i'm confidence that u.s. researchers can continue to be at the forefront of the scientific disciplines. you really didn't answer the question. not only did you not answer the question, you seemed to imply that wield be just fine without having world-class facilities in the united states. that is troubling to me and i want to ask for clarification if on that if i'm misunderstand. does president obama believe that we should build large-scale world leading physics facilities in the united states as we used to do or is he satisfied in spending the scarce research dollars in solar panels and wind turbines while the next generations of students are forced to study abroad for

fizzecs. >> let me start, and the space formulation that the united states has fallen from first to third by any respectable sentiment. it issest hat number one in space and intends to stay that way. on high energy physics, it is not true that we are not content to lead the future of high-energy physics for doing that to the rest of the world. we support fundamental research broadly and we support research in high-energy physics and the president's 2013 budget has $800 million for research and facilities in the high energy, high energy and cosmic frontiers provides funds for new initiatives in all three of those and there is an ongoing planning exercise in the office of physics at the doe for the development of facilities in your state and i expect that there will be positive

developments coming out of that. we are not giving up on high-energy physics although again, we are constrained. everybody in this room knows the budget challenges under which the government is operating and within those challenges we intend to continue to invest in cutting edge, high energy physics in the united states as well as in the participation of our scientists in cutting edge facilities elsewhere when that's where they are. >> again. talk is very important, but action is very important. we've seen significant cuts under the president's budget to many of the laboratories, and the significant increase going to some applied science that obviously the president supports. dr. holdren, i know you were able to train at m.i.t. and stanford in the united states and you were able to teach at harvard and berkeley and you have a very distinguished career. if you didn't think there was an opportunity to have such an illustrious ask accomplished

career that you had to leave the united states to pursue that career? >> the short answer is probably yes. if that had been my impression of the state of play it's possible i would have done something else, but i don't think that's a correct impression of the state today. the united states remains that the cutting edge of physics and a great many fields you continue to see that in the awards of nobel prizes and other prizes including some that are often awarded for work in the more recent past rather than the distant past. this is the leadership role that i think we'll keep and we're determined to continue to inspire our young people to believe that there are exciting and rewarding careers in fundamental science in this country. we still have, by the way, enormous flows of talented students eager to study high-energy physics and other topics in our great universities and i think we are unmatched in

the world in terms of the attractiveness of our university system in general and the science focuses in our great research universities in terms of the attractiveness to students from around the world. >> my time is running out, but i think we all need to ask the question, are the president's policies offering today's student the same opportunities your generation of scientists had in terms of training, learning and working in world-class facilities here in the united states? i think that's a real question, and i would say no. the opportunities are not the same. they're not as good. it's declining. our space program is declining while others are advancing, ours is declining. i've heard firsthand from fizzisists in my district that they would think twice about starting in a field, but to fly to china, japan or europe all of the time to be an active participant and the attitude that the president seems to have and the attitude is a sure way

of being competitive and not to mention a deterrent which i think is a huge failure for our future. we talked about this ahead of time, and i know these are difficult times and that's where difficult and important leadership must step up, so i hope we can continue to do that through these difficult times, setting that type of vision for our young people that yes, not only can you study here, but you can apply it here because we will continue to grow and build new world-class facilities for basic, scientific research. again, my time is up and i yield back. thank you. >> you did a good job of answering it. the chair recognizes mr. miller, the gentleman from north carolina. >> thank you, mr. chairman. an issue that this committee has dealt with in the last year is rare earth and energy-critical elements. the investigations and oversight subcommittee held a hearing after articles appeared in the

press and i think principally "the new york times" about the topic and unusual for an oversight subcommittee we developed legislation to address the problem the problem that kathy introduced in the last congress and i introduced in this congress. there has been interest by republicans on this committee as well. rare earths, of course, are something most americans haven't heard of. maybe they heard of them and forgot from high school chemistry. they're used in sophisticated technologies, and we are at a distinct disadvantage to the chinese, who largely have a monopoly on many rare earths and energy-critical elements. they are using those, which in many of the sophisticated technologies are important to your national security, and they're leveraging their control of those elements to require that manufacturing using those

be done in china. to some extent i understand that. i understand they don't want to have an extractive economy anan acceptable we're closed out of that important manufacturing that would be a source of jobs, very highly skilled, well-paid jobs for american workers. the problem dealing with it is complex, as i'm sure you know. there's a variety of suggested programs, and it does sound certainly like it appears we need a strong role by our government in coordinating those efforts. doctor, what do you think are the appropriate activities for the government in this area, and what are the notable research gaps? >> thank you for that good question. we have been paying a lot of attention to this challenge, and the critical materials challenge and the challenge of rare earth

minerals in particular. let me say in the start that china does not have a monopoly on resources of rare earth minerals, but they currently have a practical monopoly on the whole production system because they were able to undercut everybody else and so everybody else got out of the business. this is something obviously we need to fix. osdp has been leading an interagency process on how to address the rare earth minerals and related raw materials issued that involve the department of energy, the department of commerce, the u.s. trade representative, the department of defense has created several working groups to address different parts of the problem including focusing on those resources that are particularly important either to our national security or our economic future. we have hosted roundtables with industry on this subject and looked into what we can do to encourage industry to rebuild some of these supply chains in

the united states where we actually have the raw resources but have let the supply chains a atrophy. doe has been reviewing research and development that looks at processing and reducing the intensity of use of these materials in different applications so that we can make the materials that we do have go further. in the 2012 appropriation d.o.e. received $20 million for an noin vags had you beub on critical m. the funding for that hub. both d.o.e. and e.p.a. have announced small business innovation research, sbir grants to address processing of these critical material. we also have an r and d program at d.o.e. that reduce and

eliminate the dependence on minerals not in a position to produce in this country. we have a lot going on in this domain. we understand its importance and agree with you about that. we're putting money and resources into remedying the problem. >> i yield back. >> gentleman yields back. the chairman recognizing the gentlelady from illinois. >> that you are for holding this hearing. doctor, the administration's big data research and development initiative announced earlier this year focused on improving our ability to derive new insights and knowledge from large and complex collections of scientific and other data. the growth of the big data and data-intensive computing is going to require comparable advances in high end or high performan performance computing platforms.

the power demanding the limit the gomt of larger and faster supercomputing systems and their ability to process the data. while the administration is proposed new financial commitments to big data on the strategy for achieving computing. it's my understanding aa report was due out in february of this year outlining the research and development and again that was due in february so when can we expect to see it? >> let me start by agreeing with your point that the future of

computing is going to involve big iron and big data. and you're asking about the big iron part, the hardware development and the energy requirements. i will have to look into where in the process that scale of computing report is and how soon you expect i'll get back to you on that. i know that we are paying a lot of attention to the needs in that domain and particularly the need that you mentioned to reduce the energy requirements of our fastest computers. there have been important developments in that domain which promise to substantially reduce the otherwise soaring requirements for power of computers and more. >> i really -- i worry about, you know, what's happening in the world and we're just on hold because of a report. i was pleased to see that the

ibm supercomputer ascended to number three in my district is one of the fastest in the world, and third behind the fastest computer is at lawrence livermore and behind that is the japanese supercomputer. i think that all of the group of argan should be prad of their hard work. clearly the u.s. leadership is challenged in this area, and as one article put it, the latest list marks the return of the european systems in force with the addition of two german systems and one italian system. the u.s.-based supercomputer that got the top billing in this latest report is ranked at number six, and i've certainly been looking at this for a long time. we are facing stiff competition. the value of supercomputing seems to be globally understood. we can't let us fall behind.

we have to have that plan for achieving nexus scale. i would urge you see it's completed and submitted to the congress as soon as possible. >> i agree, and i will get back to you on the report. we intend to stay number one. we can expect challenges from around the world in this domain and others in high technology, but we intend to stay number one. we recognize the importance of this one. >> now in the 2013 budget there's been a submission for 21 million for new data-intensive science efforts. but the scale remains on hold, so we've got to get those two to be balanced. thank you. i yield back. >> chair recognizes mr. lofgren, the gentlelady from california. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you, doctor, for being

here and your good work. recently the national academy of sciences issued a report titled "managing for high quality science and engineering at the nnsa national security laboratories." i'd ask mr. chairman unanimous consent to submit this report into the record. the report highlights and it's a long report but basically it highlights the broken relationship between the national nuclear security agency and the scientists at our research labs. one senior scientist at los alamos was quoted in the report as saying this. when i started as a young post-doc and later in my career as a university professor and also here at the lab, there was a social contract which basically said, you'll never get rich in science, but we treat you as adults, respect you for your commitment, and in turn you can pursue science and have fun. today this contract is badly broken, an atmosphere of