Issues in Science and Technology articles from December 1999

Issues in Science and Technology archives from December 1999

Marine havens.(Review)
December 22, 1999... In "Creating Havens for Marine Life" (Issues, Fall 1999), Tundi Agardy's call for a comprehensive national policy for the protection of marine resources is right on the mark and is exactly the need I have addressed in H.R.2425, the Oceans Act...

Technology and development.(Review)
December 22, 1999... F. M. Scherer's "Global Growth Through Third World Technological Progress" (Issues, Fall 1999) is a welcome sign of the recent long-overdue revival of interest in science, technology, and development. As he correctly points out, energy...

Space imaging.(Review)
December 22, 1999... Ann M. Florini and Yahya Dehqanzada provide a broad and thoughtful look at the role of commercial satellite imagery in increasing global transparency ("Commercial Satellite Imagery Comes of Age," Issues, Fall 1999). By transparency, they mean...

Curriculum reform.(Review)
December 22, 1999... As one of the architects of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and an author of several books reporting on the TIMSS findings, it is particularly pleasing to me to see the point of view expressed by Eamon M. Kelley,...

Fixing the Forest Service.
December 22, 1999... H. Michael Anderson's call to fund the U.S. Forest Service entirely through congressional appropriations is a blueprint for disaster ("Reshaping National Forest Policy," Issues, Fall 1999). As he says himself, funding that depends on annual...

Wider Education.(Brief Article)
December 22, 1999... December 10, 1999, the day I began to write this column, I came across two press reports that reinforced my belief that the time was right for Issues to publish this special issue on the future of higher education. That day's Washington Post...

Big increase for NIH boosts R&D spending in FY 2000 budget.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
December 22, 1999... Bolstered by the largest-ever dollar increase in R&D spending for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), total federal support for R&D as well as basic research will increase substantially in the fiscal year (FY) 2000 budget. President...

White House revamps export control policy on encryption products.(Brief Article)
December 22, 1999... Bowing to congressional pressure, the Clinton administration has drastically revamped its export control policy on encryption products. Despite the reversal in course, proponents of more liberalized export controls still are not completely...

Independent drug evaluation.(Brief Article)
December 22, 1999... Innovation in public policy requires patience. Five years have passed since Raymond L. Woosley, chairman of the Department of Pharmacology at Georgetown University, made the case for the need for independent evaluation of pharmaceuticals ("A...

Support Them and They Will Come.(minority engineers)
December 22, 1999... The nation needs more minority engineers, and we know what it takes to recruit and educate them. On May 6, 1973, the National Academy of Engineering convened an historic conference in Washington, D.C., to address a national issue of crisis...

Airline Deregulation: Time to Complete the Job.(Brief Article)
December 22, 1999... Deregulation of the airline industry, now more than two decades old, has been a resounding success for consumers. Since 1978, when legislation was passed ending the government's role in setting prices and capacity in the industry, average fares...

Confronting the Paradox in Plutonium Policies.(Brief Article)
December 22, 1999... A major threat of nuclear weapons proliferation is to be found in the plutonium from reprocessed commercial fuel. The world's huge stocks of separated, weapons-usable military and civil plutonium are at present the subject of profoundly...

New Roles for the 21st-Century University.(Brief Article)
December 22, 1999... Changing times demand a new social contract between society and the institutions of higher education. Perhaps the unique characteristic of higher education in the United States is the strong bond between the university and society....

The Future Arrives First in California.(higher education)
December 22, 1999... The University of California is already confronting many of the challenges that are on the horizon for all universities. Thirty years ago, Lord Ashby, a distinguished foreign observer of U.S. higher education, commented that much of the...

Remaking the Academy in the Age of Information.
December 22, 1999... Innovation at the for-profit University of Phoenix foreshadows change throughout higher education. Higher education around the world must undergo a dramatic makeover if it expects to educate a workforce in profound transformation. In 1950,...

Universities Change, Core Values Should Not.
December 22, 1999... Faculty cooperation, intellectual independence, and research quality must remain hallmarks of higher education. Half a dozen years ago, as I was looking at the research university landscape, the shape of the future looked so clear that only...

Building on Medicare's Strengths.(Statistical Data Included)
December 22, 1999... Reform is needed, but the program core principles and essential components must be preserved. The aging of the U.S. population will generate many challenges in the years ahead, but none more dramatic than the costs of providing health care...

Making the Internet Fit for Commerce.
December 22, 1999... Electronic commerce needs new policies to enforce tax laws, protect privacy, deter fraud, and prevent illegal sales. The laws of commerce, which were established in a marketplace where sellers and buyers met face to face, cannot be expected...

Changing paths, changing demographics for academics.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
December 22, 1999... The decade of the 1990s has seen considerable change in the career patterns for new doctorates in science and engineering. It was once common for new doctorates to move directly from their graduate studies into tenure track appointments in...

Medical assault.(Review)
December 22, 1999... Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans, by Jonathan D. Moreno. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1999, 347 pp. In Undue Risk, Jonathan Moreno, professor of medical ethics at the University of Virginia, tells the disturbing story...

Water scarcity.(Review)
December 22, 1999... Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last? By Sandra Postel. New York and London: Worldwatch/W.W. Norton, 1999, 313 pp. The most capital-heavy and, in a sense, fundamental technology behind the extraordinary productivity of modern...

Biological warfare.(Review)
December 22, 1999... The Biology of Doom: The History of America's Secret Germ Warfare Project, by Ed Regis. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1999, 259 pp. During the past five years, concern that outlaw states and terrorists could resort to biological...

Too much ado about testing.(scholastic aptitude test)(Review)
December 22, 1999... The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy, by Nicholas Lemann. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1999, 406 pp. Nicholas Lemann, a staff writer for the New Yorker and the author of the outstanding history The Promised...

Free the fish.(salmon)(Review)
December 22, 1999... Salmon Without Rivers: A History of the Pacific Salmon Crisis, by Jim Lichatowich. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1999, 352 pp. The coast-wide decline of Pacific salmon is in some respects a familiar story. The basic plot--the advance of...

David Locke Webster.(Obituary)
December 22, 1999... David Locke Webster (1888-1976) had an unusually long and varied career. After having obtained a Harvard Ph.D. on the basis of his investigation of the optical properties of chlorine gas, in 1915 he made the first, although unpublicized, x-ray...