Issues in Science and Technology articles from June 1998

Issues in Science and Technology archives from June 1998

Toward a global science.
June 22, 1998... By working together internationally, scientists can better use their knowledge to benefit humanity. In the early 1990s, the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government published a series of reports emphasizing the need for a...

Space station woes infuriate Congress.
June 22, 1998... Cost and schedule overruns for the international space station program are increasingly exasperating members of Congress, even those who have fought long and hard to support the program. At a March hearing before the House Committee on Science...

Congress takes a hard look at health research priority setting.
June 22, 1998... Science funding, particularly for biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is expected to increase significantly during the next few years. But a larger pie is still a limited pie, and research money for some diseases will...

"Compromise" bill on encryption introduced.
June 22, 1998... In the latest legislative attempt to deal with the controversial issue of encryption policy, Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced on May 12 what they call the E-PRIVACY Act (S. 2067). The bill would liberalize...

Government's role in research studied.
June 22, 1998... Most economists and science policy experts agree that the federal government's role in funding basic research is irreplaceable. However, as the R&D process has become more complex during the past half-century, the line between research that...

Making guns safer.
June 22, 1998... The technology now exists to make guns that only authorized users an operate. These safer guns could cut gun-related deaths and injuries. Children are killing children by gunfire. These deaths are occurring in homes, on the streets, and in...

Computers can accelerate productivity growth.
June 22, 1998... The evidence can be found by comparing computer-intensive industrial sectors with other sectors. Conventional wisdom argues that rapid change in information technology over the past 20 years represents a paradigm shift, one perhaps as...

No productivity boom for workers.
June 22, 1998... Information technology has yet to deliver on its promise of faster productivity growth. America's love affair with the new technologies of the Information Age has never been more intense, but nagging questions remain about whether this passion...

Resolving the paradox of environmental protection.
June 22, 1998... EPA's central challenge is to maintain rigorous national standards while providing the utmost flexibility to states, communities, and companies. The next big breakthrough in environmental management is likely to be a series of small...

Saving Medicare.
June 22, 1998... Before making any changes, we should look closely at how they will affect the neediest among the elderly. For the past generation, ensuring access to health care and financial security for older Americans and their families under the Medicare...

Shaping a smarter environmental policy for farming.
June 22, 1998... The use of compelling incentives not direct controls is the best way to reduce agricultural pollution. In the summer of 1997, Maryland Governor Parris Glendening suddenly closed two major rivers to fishing and swimming, after reports of people...

A Hazardous Inquiry: The Rashomon Effect at Love Canal.
June 22, 1998... by Allan Mazur. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1998, 218 pp. From August 1978 to May 1980, the nondescript industrial city of Niagara Falls, New York, named for one of the world's great scenic wonders, acquired a perverse new...

Am I My Brother's Keeper? The Ethical Frontiers of Biomedicine.
June 22, 1998... by Arthur L. Caplan. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1997, 241 pp. Arthur Caplan is the Babe Ruth of medical ethics. He looks like the Babe - a healthy, affable, stout man, who enjoys life, and is universally liked. Like the Babe,...