So the ISS's value for science and even as a staging post for deep space travel is not clear-cut.
That view is shared by many of the scientists taking part in a project seen as having a value far beyond science.
In this case, there is an aspect of the mission to ensure not only the quality and value of current science but the nurturing of new ideas and a new cadre of investigators that will be critical to the future.
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But one has to wonder, at what point does the sacrifice cease to have any value for the advancement of science and simply become the pursuit of hardship for its own sake?
Data science can create value by getting tools such as R and Hadoop into common parlance, making coding something that subject matter experts desire to learn in order to communicate effectively with data scientist colleagues.
Officials at Columbia's medical school, however, seemed to value his "competence in two cultures, " science and literature, he says.
Now we have science saying it: management consultants add value.
For Victoria Fletcher (13), Rush Lyons (14), Thomas Shields (13) and their teammates, the experience of designing a product and marketing it to judges not only reinforced the value of teamwork, but demonstrated the applications that science and math can have on Earth and beyond.
"This is our first international partnership which we expect will create value for our members together with the important Welsh life science cluster, " she said.
In the extremely inexact science of deciding a soccer player's value, the one thing that most Premier League teams can agree is that they want players with Premier League experience.
The rise in the volume, variety, and velocity of data, the arrival of many new types of analytical tools all across the business intelligence value chain, and the emergence of new forms of computer science dedicated to data processing such as Hadoop, has created a vacuum.
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He rattles on about science and medicine without ever touching on any of its monetary value.
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These two lefty wishes--greater economic equality and value-free multiculturalism--may live together peacefully in college political science departments.
Unlike many other companies in the realm of data science, Pentaho is focused on what users do to get value from data and how to make it easier, and it shows in their product.
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They also employ algorithms to determine the fair value of each listed property, lending some rigor to a once-inexact science.
"You don't want to have excess cash tied up in the company that's not generating any value, " said Nick Fanandakis, chief financial officer of the manufacturing and science company.
John Buckingham was a 21-year-old senior at the University of Southern California, on his way to getting a bachelor's degree in computer science with a minor in business, when he started working with legendary value investor Al Frank .
And Adam McNichol - one of the few teaching this subject who has a computer science degree - told us the whole education system needed to change, so that the value of the subject was recognised.
Assessing the fair value of derivatives and thinly (if at all) traded mortgage securities holdings is far more art than science, with wiggle-room galore.
In most places, after all, the public administrators of science are themselves drawn from the ranks of university scientists, and share a belief in the value of curiosity-driven inquiry.
But Prof Reiss argues that there is an educational value in comparing creationist ideas with scientific theories like Darwin's theory of evolution because they demonstrate how science, unlike religious beliefs, can be tested.
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