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slash UK slash AI for people. Welcome to Science Talk, the weekly podcast of Scientific American

for the seven days starting March 12th, 2008.

I'm Steve Murski.

This week on the podcast, we're going to talk about the current state and possible future

of American science with the director of the Argonne National Laboratory, Robert Rosner.

Plus, we'll test your knowledge about some recent science in the news.

Astrophysicist Robert Rosner chaired the University of Chicago Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

He later became chief scientist of the Argonne National Laboratory, and in 2005 he was named the lab's director.

I spoke to him at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in February.

First, some edited comments he made over breakfast to an audience of journalists.

The issue really is, from my perspective, whether or not there is, in fact, a connection between consistently supported research, especially basic research, and national prosperity, and the extent to which that's understood and not understood

but the general public, the folks that actually paid the taxes, that make us actually do

the work, that allow us to do the work. And if one has a question about whether or not that

connection in fact exists or not, whether it's understood, one only needs to look as far as the omnibus bill of 2007, the one that was passed late in December, that to everyone's surprise, seemed to have contained lots of cuts to the basic science programs,

especially the physical science programs in the United States.

So I'd like to talk a bit about what are the issues,

certainly from the point of view of a scientist and a lab director,

...