While there has been some progress at reducing the prevalence and progression of age-related diseases such as heart disease and some forms of cancer in the United States, not even a single age-related disease can fully prevented or cured despite decades of research and enormous amounts of funding. As a result, 90% of United States citizens still suffer and die of age-related disease. What can be done to significantly accelerate progress toward desperately-needed cures?

The USA is one of only two countries in the world that allows direct marketing of pharmaceuticals to consumers. Since the FDA began allowing this practice, pharmaceutical companies have decided to forgo research into new drugs and massively increased their marketing budgets. This has made US companies less competitive internationally and European drugmakers have begun to dominate.

The House of Representatives recently voted to discontinue the American Community survey, some form of which has been collected since the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, as well as the 2012 Economic Census. Do you believe it is an appropriate role for the government to collect and make available to the public basic, factual information on the state of the country and the economy as a public good so that companies and citizens can use the information to make data-based decisions?

Nuclear power plants require lots of cooling water. Plans to build two in Georgia do not seem to account for the recent droughts. How can we justify building systems that require even more water when many parts of the country do not have enough to drink or farm?

Science can be controversial as it works its way through discovery, understanding and universal adoption. Quashing innovative research based on non-universal religious beliefs can put our nation at a disadvantage and put off life-saving and life-changing discoveries. How can you balance your personal beliefs with American's constitutional freedoms of liberty?

Advancing technology creates ever great demands on materials with highly specific properties. The rare earth elements are a case in point, where China currently controls 97% of the world's production. There are clear risks from such reliance on a single source for materials that are critical to particular technologies. What can and should the US government do to address this vulnerability?

America is at present muddling through; and a massive replacement of our energy infrastructure is not taking place, in part because private equity can not cost justify it. Similarly the DOE is not allocating the huge funding needed to catalyze such renewal because it is not yet a front-burner priority. How much serious money (in billions) will be in your 2014 budget to launch such a renewal? Where have you made available, to both press and public, the detailed reasoning behind this estimate?

One guesstimate is that a transition to a renewable future will cost each year for the next century 3% (give or take a factor of two) of the GDP. Who gets stuck with this bill, and where do you propose that he find the money?