SSTI Digest

Supporters of NIST's Advanced Technology Program (ATP) have weathered years of attempts by members of the House and the Bush Administration to eliminate the program, but this may be the biggest hurdle yet: The Senate Appropriations Committee approved language calling for the program's termination as part of the Department of Commerce fiscal year 2007 appropriations. The first of only two ATP-related sentences included in the Senate Committee report 109-580 accompanying H.R. 5672 conveys the weariness of the battle as the Committee conveys their defeat: "The Committee will allow for the phase out of activities for ATP. No funds are provided in fiscal year 2007 for ATP, and the Committee believes that sufficient funds were provided as part of fiscal year 2006 under this title to cover all necessary close out costs associated with ATP."

In a report released last week, a Toronto group says that creative industries may soon overtake ICT and business services as the fastest growing sector in the region's economy. In order to preserve this momentum and ensure that other industries benefit from the presence of a strong creative sector, the authors recommend enlisting regional leaders to create programs that support creative people, creative enterprises, affordable spaces for creative work, and a shared community vision.



The report is the culmination of almost two years of work by Toronto's Creative Cities Leadership Team, with support from the University of Toronto, the Ontario Ministry of Culture, the City of Toronto, and the Ministry of Research and Innovation. Similar case studies by the Strategies for Creative Cities project are now being undertaken in New York, San Francisco, London, Barcelona and Berlin. A report on London was released earlier this year.

"More than one-third of the nation's loss of manufacturing jobs between 2000-2005 occurred in seven Great Lakes states: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin," write Howard Wial and Alec Friedhoff in a new paper from the Metropolitan Policy Program of the Brookings Institution. Bearing the Brunt: Manufacturing Job Loss in the Great Lakes Region: 2000-2005 reveals that, despite these statistics, manufacturing - with its 38 percent increase in productivity during the period - remains a major driver in six of the seven state's economies.



The change was dramatic in most of the studied states, in which more than one in five manufacturing jobs in 2000 did not exist by 2005. For five of the seven states, the percent change in manufacturing employment exceeded the national average of -17.6 percent: Michigan (-24.3 percent); New York (-22.7 percent); Pennsylvania (-20.9 percent); Illinois (-20.8 percent); and Ohio (-20.3 percent).

Also released this week, and related to the negative change of U.S. manufacturing employment, is a new working paper by members of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Outsourcing Jobs? Multinationals and US Employment, by Ann Harrison and Margaret McMillan, examines the labor market decisions of U.S. multinationals at home and abroad for the years 1977 to 1999. Using firm level data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the authors econometric model reveals changes in the employment and operations of U.S. multinationals is correlated to whether the affiliated country is a low-income or high-income nation.

The six position opportunities described below were posted on the SSTI Job Corner over the last week. For more information, including complete details on responsibilities, qualifications and application deadlines (when available), visit http://www.ssti.org/posting.htm.

Trisha Batra was named executive director of Absolutely! Aberdeen, an economic development group serving the Aberdeen, S.D., area.



Dr. Alan Brown was named executive director of the Pennsylvania NanoMaterials Commercialization Center, a newly formed economic development initiative.



Barbara Fleisner is the new vice president of economic development for the Green Bay Area Chamber of Commerce. She succeeds Paul Ehrfurth, who retired in June.



As part of plans to build a biotechnology campus in Kannapolis, N.C., Clyde Higgs has been hired to oversee a $100 million venture capital fund that will serve to attract biotech companies and other corporate tenants.

Trisha Batra was named executive director of Absolutely! Aberdeen, an economic development group serving the Aberdeen, S.D., area.