The US research enterprise too heavily centers on elite research institutions, and fails individual researchers with bold ideas, suggests the White House Office of Science and Technology in a new report. The office recommends sweeping changes to where federal funding is spent and how it should be awarded.

Released on July 21, the Science: A New Golden Age report seeks to update Vannevar Bush’s landmark 1945 report Science: The Endless Frontier for the modern era. In the report, OSTP Director Michael Kratsios argues that today’s scientific landscape — shaped by AI, global competition, and private-sector investment — requires a fundamental redesign of how the federal government funds research.

Also on July 21, Kratsios and White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought jointly published a memorandum on the Trump administration’s R&D budget priorities for fiscal year 2028. The memo instructs science agencies to incorporate the administration’s priorities into their forthcoming budget requests, as well as develop implementation plans within 90 days for a series of “R&D priority practices.” Those include:

Developing new research funding mechanisms; Identifying and supporting top tech talent through, for example, early career and STEM-learning opportunities; Boosting the “science of science-funding” to evaluate which programs have the greatest impact; And collaborating with industry to drive greater private investment in R&D.

The memo directs agencies to rebalance their portfolios toward foundational research, and prioritize physical science over life science. Many of the administration’s priorities, including AI and nuclear fission, are dependent on computer science, physical science, and engineering, but the report notes that the latter two fields’ share of the federal research portfolio has declined over time, even as their strategic importance has grown.

Data-driven innovation has recently changed the mindset in data sharing from centralized architectures and monolithic data exploitation by data providers (data platforms) to decentralized architectures and different data sharing options among all involved participants (data ecosystems).

Differences between the various data ecosystems are not clear, making it hard to choose the most suitable for each use case, negatively impacting their adoption. Since the domain is growing fast, a review of the state-of-the-art data ecosystem initiatives is needed to analyze what each initiative offers, identify collaboration prospects, and highlight features for improvement and open research topics. In this paper, we review the state-of-the-art data ecosystem initiatives, describe their innovative aspects, compare their technical and business features, and identify open research challenges. We aim to assist practitioners in choosing the most suitable data ecosystem for their use cases and scientists to explore emerging research opportunities.

Eventually I just gave up trying to widdle it down and tried to melt the glue stick directly. Fyi jic you ever find yourself in a similar arts and crafts related emergency, they will catch on fire if you over do it.