Issues in Science and Technology articles from September 1995

Issues in Science and Technology archives from September 1995

R&D budgets face big cuts.
September 22, 1995... When the 104th Congress, led by a new Republican majority, took office in January, a driving force behind its legislative agenda was the desire to balance the budget by the year 2002. Although a balanced budget amendment failed in the Senate, the...

Partisanship roils science committee.
September 22, 1995... Prior to leaving town for the summer recess, Rep. George Brown (D-Ca.), the Science Committee's ranking minority member, met with reporters to assesses the work of the committee to date. At a lengthy session on August 2, Brown said that he was...

Department of Science proposal floated (again).
September 22, 1995... At a June 28 hearing, four witnesses testified before the House Science Committee in support of the creation of a Department of Science, an idea that has arisen periodically since at least the 1880s. Although no legislation has been introduced,...

Commerce Department elimination debated.
September 22, 1995... The House Science Committee met on September 12 to discuss the effect of the Department of Commerce Dismantling Act of 1995 (H.R. 1756) on science and technology. The legislation, commonly referred to as the Chrysler bill after its sponsor Rep....

Future missions for the National Laboratories.
September 22, 1995... A lab-closing commission is a bad idea; instead, we need to more clearly define and preserve the labs' most vital missions. On July 16, 1945, in an event that would change the world, the United States conducted the first test of an atomic...

Encouraging long-range industrial research.
September 22, 1995... Tax credits will not stimulate industry to fund the high-risk R&D that is necessary for the long-term health of the economy. The debate over tax incentives vs. direct government funding of research and development (R&D) has once again arisen,...

Health care reform the international way.
September 22, 1995... Other countries have dealt with the vexing problems of access and cost; there's no reason why the U.S. can't do so as well. Two years ago, President Clinton led a charge in Washington to reform health care. One year ago, the big news was the...

An innovation-driven environmental policy.
September 22, 1995... U.S. environmental policy is receiving critical scrutiny from all sides. Congressional proponents of quick "fixes" such as regulatory moratoria and cost-benefit analysis have seized the limelight of publicity. But the reform impulse is also...

Stemming the lethal trade in small arms and light weapons.
September 22, 1995... The world must regulate trade in light mortars, machine guns, and other light munitions that are fueling the destructiveness of today's wars. Since the end of World War II, arms control negotiations have focused almost exclusively on major...

Light weapons defined.
September 22, 1995... There is no precise formal definition of light weapons. In general, they can be categorized as any conventional weapons that can be carried by an individual combatant or by a light vehicle operating on back-country roads. They range from pistols,...

Warfare in the information age.
September 22, 1995... New threats and new opportunities will require the Pentagon to develop a fundamentally new approach to planning and operations. Pentagon officials and defense analysts have a new topic to add to their list of post-Cold War concerns: information...

Forging a world-class future for the national laboratories.
September 22, 1995... Corporatizing the Department of Energy laboratories will give the nation the most science at the lowest cost. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) produces an incredible array of products and services vital to this country. It provides a secure...

Reconciling free trade with responsible regulation.
September 22, 1995... With strong leadership, liberalizing trade can go hand in hand with strengthening environmental and public safety standards. Does free trade threaten national initiatives to improve environmental quality and consumer safety? Does the growth of...

What does industry expect from university partnerships?
September 22, 1995... Expectations vary among companies, change over time, and cannot be reduced to financial terms. Policymakers have come to expect that federal programs intended to provide benefits to private industry should be evaluated according to...

Radical Surgery: What's Next for America's Health Care.
September 22, 1995... The publisher got the colors wrong for the dust jacket of this book by Joseph A. Califano, Jr. Instead of the obligatory red, white and blue, Times Books should have chosen bright red. For like Mao Tse Tung, whose little red book symbolized the...

The Last Harvest.
September 22, 1995... The Last Harvest is a valuable new addition to a long series of books and reports about the dangers of crop genetic uniformity. Author Paul Raeburn's message is simple and direct: Sooner or later, the world's food production system will collapse...

The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance.
September 22, 1995... To the surprise of many Americans, infectious diseases (even excluding AIDS) continue to constitute one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States. Five of the 10 leading causes of death last year were directly or...