Dear Imechanica friends: in connection to the www.engineeringchallenges.org and Roberto Ballarini post suggesting the presidential Candidates Obama, Clinton and McCain do not seem to respond to the Sciencedebate2008, and see the call for "Science White House" by Nobel prize winners David Baltimore and Ahmed Zewail, the USA seems to be in a big Science Crisis, which is called already in Scientific Literature the American PARADOX (see below). In very short, this is due to the fact that the ONLY real big thing for the American (and European) public is Sport and TV stars. There is "legs-drain" of David and Victoria Beckham ---- the public and politicians do not care of the "brain-drain" of best people like for example people who already running operations in both US and in Asia (see the A* program in Singapore). And not even of Nobel-prize-winner-drain!!!

We are planning to set a WEB portal to discuss

1) the example and the role of an Academy of Engineering to find the correct blend of credentials and consensus to set research needs

2) The final 14 NAE resulting "challenges", being set at international level, should be accepted worldwide. Is this really the case, are the European Agencies considering them, or do they think we need to duplicate the search for the "challenges" separately?