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From time to time, it is necessary to alert the research and policy communities to opportunities for action in areas of mutual concern. One such area is the participation and utilization of women in science and engineering in the United States. This book explores the underparticipation of women in these fields and presents a strategic plan to bring qualified women into such careers as researchers, teachers, and practitioners of science and eng...

To maintain competitiveness in the emerging global economy, U.S. manufacturing must rise to new standards of product quality, responsiveness to customers, and process flexibility. This volume presents a concise and well-organized analysis of new research directions to achieve these goals. Five critical areas receive in-depth analysis of present practices, needed improvement, and research priorities: Advanced engineered materials that offer the...

How can high-growth areas such as Africa, Asia, and Latin America sustain agricultural production for current and future generations? Toward Sustainability explores research priorities to support sustainable agriculture. The book identifies six areas that could offer great rewards: addressing institutional constraints on resource conservation, enhancing soil biological processes, managing soil properties, improving water resource management, m...

The question of whether the earth's climate is changing in some significant human-induced way remains a matter of much debate. But the fact that climate is variable over time is well known. These two elements of climatic uncertainty affect water resources planning and management in the American West. Managing Water Resources in the West Under Conditions of Climate Uncertainty examines the scientific basis for predictions of climate change, the...

This nation has an enormous stake in reversing the alarming deterioration of the circumstances in which poor and otherwise disadvantaged children grow up. Many past efforts to reverse unfavorable trends in damaging outcomes (school failure, teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, and violent crime) have been relatively ineffective. Effective Services for Young Children describes the available options and steps that could be taken to improve the si...

This book assesses the current state of the field in a number of potential applications and discusses technologies for which concentrated solar energy might be utilized. It contains all the papers submitted by the speakers as well as summaries of the presentations and discussions that followed each session.

This book reviews current work and assesses the state of the art in potential applications of concentrated solar energy in nonelectric areas, such as water and waste treatment, photochemical processes, and materials processing. It identifies and recommends research needed for further development of promising applications.

Many nations conduct research and engage in other scientific activities on our frozen continent?Antarctica. Each year the U.S. National Committee for the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) compiles a book that includes these nations' reports of scientific pursuits undertaken by their citizens in Antarctica during the previous austral summer and of planned activities for the next season. This book details the activities that occu...

This book presents guidelines for the development and evaluation of statistical software designed to ensure minimum acceptable statistical functionality as well as ease of interpretation and use. It consists of the proceedings of a forum that focused on three qualities of statistical software: richness?the availability of layers of output sophistication, guidance?how the package helps a user do an analysis and do it well, and exactness?determi...

This volume contains technical papers and discussions covering ship motions, ship hydrodynamics, experimental techniques, free-surface aspects, wave/wake dynamics, propeller/hull/appendage interactions, and viscous effects.

The United States and the Soviet Union could drastically reduce their nuclear arsenals below the levels prescribed by the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). The end of the Cold War and the transformation of international security now under way present the United States with opportunities to develop new policies based on greater international cooperation with the Soviet Union and other major powers. This new book describes two lower l...

This volume looks at the administration of research and service programs in the U.S. Public Health Service to determine whether these programs fare better when administered jointly or through separate agencies. It uses case studies and analyses of programs and administrative processes, together with the results of more than a hundred interviews with top-ranking government officials and representatives of concerned organizations. The book also ...

At least 10.7 million American women use oral contraceptives (OCs). The potential connection with breast cancer has caused concern among these OC users and uncertainty among many of their physicians. This new volume offers the most up-to-date information available on this critical topic. While the best available knowledge does not support any fundamental change in clinical practice with respect to the use of OCs, this book offers specific reco...

Unified life-cycle engineering (ULCE), or concurrent engineering, is a design engineering environment in which computer-aided design technology is used to assess and improve the quality of a product?not only during the active design phases but throughout its entire life cycle. This is achieved by integrating and optimizing the design attributes for producibility and supportability as well as for performance, operability, cost, and schedule. Th...

Over the next decade, the mathematical community and the nation's colleges and unversities must restructure fundamentally the culture, content, and context of undergraduate mathematics. Acknowledging the weaknesses in the present college mathematics curriculum and the ways in which it is taught, this book cites exemplary programs that point the way toward achieving the same world-wide preeminence for mathematics education that the United State...

The Department of Veterans Affairs?the VA?operates the nation's largest and most diverse health care system. How many physicians does it need to carry out its principal mission-related responsibilities of patient care, education, and research? This book presents and demonstrates by concrete example a methodology to answer this basic, but extraordinarily complex, question. The heart of the methodology is a decision-making process in which both ...

The advent of highly precise space-based geodetic techniques has led to the application of these techniques to the solution of global earth and ocean problems. Now under consideration is a worldwide network of interconnected fiducial stations where geodetic as well as other scientific measurements can be made. This book discusses the science rationale behind the concept of an extensive global network of fiducial sites. It identifies geophysica...

The call for a "parallel track" for AIDS drug development?a proposal that would allow the early distribution of AIDS drugs to large numbers of patients in parallel with the conventional clinical trials that assess the drugs' safety and efficacy?has sparked controversy within the scientific community. Questions have arisen about the risks to patients of such a plan, about its potential effect on the successful completion of standard controlled ...

Initial priorities for U.S. participation in the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, declared by the United Nations, are contained in this volume. It focuses on seven issues: hazard and risk assessment, awareness and education, mitigation, preparedness for emergency response, recovery and reconstruction, prediction and warning, learning from disasters, and U.S. participation internationally. The committee presents its philosop...

Toward Sustainability recommends a design for a new Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP) for the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID). Currently, eight CRSPs operate under legislation that supports long-term agricultural research of benefit to developing countries and the United States. This book defines a process by which knowledge from all relevant AID-supported programs could be integrated and applied to advance profitab...