[BlazingArizona]

As a result only tenured professors can even attempt anything really innovative, and in high-cost fields like medicine or experimental physics only if they can come up with an alternative source of funding (much easier in medicine than in basic research).

Know one knows this more than Intel, which conducts a massive amount of not just development of the next chip, but research into the basic physics that lead to new generations of devices. My interest in this article is not just political, but comes from my own years of experience as a software contractor in Intel's Arizona facilities. Have you ever worked in a building with a water tower outside your office window? Only it's not water but liquid nitrogen, which is plumbed through to labs throughout the building.

[The_Reader_David]

Actually, I work in one now: the physics department my math department shares a building with has a huge liquid N_2 tank for cooling the particle accelerator in the basement.