Issues in Science and Technology articles from December 1997

Issues in Science and Technology archives from December 1997

Finally - a real defense debate. (defense programs)
December 22, 1997... Blue-ribbon defense commissions are often accused of treading on familiar ground in evaluating the Department of Defense's (DOD's) strategy and programs, offering up old wine in new bottles to the point where the Pentagon's brass can legitimately...

New prominence for science and technology.(From the Hill)
December 22, 1997... Although the balanced budget agreement topped the accomplishments of the first session of the 105th Congress, science and technology (S&T) research reached a new level of exposure on Capitol Hill in 1997 because of efforts by concerned policy...

Economic growth helps boost R&D budgets - at least for now.(From the Hill)
December 22, 1997... Because of the nation's rapid economic growth, Congress was able to spend more on discretionary activities, including R&D, this year. R&D agencies enjoyed increases in their FY98 budgets well above those of the previous year. The upward trend...

Stay the course on chemical weapons ban.
December 22, 1997... Leave it to Washington to toil for more than two decades to create a new arms control regime that abolishes poison gas and then, once it takes off, to begin foolishly undercutting its own achievement by trying to water down the treaty's...

Solar energy from the tropical oceans. (ocean thermal energy conversion)
December 22, 1997... The recent climate change conference in Kyoto underscored once again how profoundly the world needs new energy sources that do not produce carbon dioxide or create other environmental problems. Yet little attention is being paid to one completely...

An economic strategy to control arms proliferation.
December 22, 1997... For 45 of the past 50 years, defense budgets were largely decoupled from economics. Vast expenditures on defense during the Cold War were debated and decided in a compartmentalized fashion, separated intellectually and institutionally from...

Future perspectives on nuclear issues.
December 22, 1997... In the United States, we've traditionally optimized new advanced technologies to serve our nation's needs; this has helped us craft an impressive economy and quality of life. With nuclear technologies, we have not followed this pattern. With only...

Refocusing U.S. math and science education.
December 22, 1997... The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is the most ambitious cross-national educational research study ever conducted, comparing over half a million students' scores in mathematics and science across 5 continents and 41...

Welfare's new rules: a pox on children.
December 22, 1997... Six decades of guaranteed government aid for economically deprived children ended on August 22, 1996, when President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. The law eliminated the open-ended federal entitlement...

Preserving DOE's research parks.
December 22, 1997... When the federal government obtained land for the development of nuclear weapons technology during World War II, its acquisitions at many sites included large buffer areas for security. Protected from commercial disturbance and fragmentation over...

Bolstering military strength by downsizing the Pentagon.
December 22, 1997... Secretary of Defense William Cohen is caught between a rock and a hard place. Critics from both the right and the left contend that the U.S. military cannot continue to execute its missions within its current budget. The Joint Chiefs of Staff say...

The last frontier forests.
December 22, 1997... Most people know by now that deforestation, especially in the tropics, is a serious problem. We have lost almost half -- roughly 3 billion hectares -- of the forests that once blanketed Earth. Hidden behind such familiar statistics, however,...

Nature's Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems.
December 22, 1997... The contributors to Nature's Services, who include many of the nation's leading natural scientists, have taken on the enormous tasks of, first characterizing the ways in which Earth's natural ecosystems confer benefits on humanity and, second,...

Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century.
December 22, 1997... I should really like this book. After all, it amply fulfills its subtitle, telling us how science will revolutionize the 21st century. And it does so with bravura and competence. The bravura part is Michio Kaku's predictions of what science can...

Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century.
December 22, 1997... For the past fifty years the U.S. national science and technology enterprise has evolved under the heavy influence of the engineer Vannevar Bush. Most students of science and technology policy as well as many practicing scientists and engineers...