Computer-Aided Materials Selection During Structural Design

The selection of the proper materials for a structural component is critical to engineering design. Existing design procedures may currently be sufficient, especially where experience exists, but fierce industrial competition is spurring the search for improved methods and tools. The main drivers are quality, life-cycle cost, and time-to-market. Improved design efficiency and accuracy may have …

Isotopes for Medicine and the Life Sciences

Both radioisotopes and enriched stable isotopes are essential to a wide variety of applications in medicine, where they are used in the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses. In addition, extensive application of isotopes in biomedical research finds wide parallel uses in research in chemistry, physics, biology, and geosciences, with additional needs existing in the commercial sector. Isotopes p…

Information Technology for Manufacturing

In a manufacturing environment that is perhaps changing more rapidly now than during the Industrial Revolution, competing successfully will require that U.S. manufacturers increasingly provide customers with shorter times between order and delivery and between product conceptualization and realization, greater product customization, and higher product quality and performance, while meet- ing mo…

Research Recommendations to Facilitate Distributed Work

The term ''distributed work" describes the practice of working without regard to location by using a combination of modern communications and computing technologies. It includes: • Working while truly mobile—in activities ranging from sales and on- site customer support or equipment repair to composing and submitting a product design while traveling; • Working as part of a geographic…

Major Award Decisionmaking at the National Science Foundation

During the past decade, NSF has established Engineering Research Centers, Supercomputer Centers, Science and Technology Centers, and other large research centers and facilities. A few awards were controversial, and called into question NSF policies and procedures for making large award decisions. Some of those involving the location of one-of-a-kind national facilities have generated the sharpe…

Information Technology in the Service Society: A Twenty-First Century Lever

The use of information technology (IT) has revolutionized the structure of management and the nature of competition in a variety of industries.1 IT is especially important in the service sector, which now accounts for about 74 percent of the value added in the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) and about 76 percent of national employment (Table S.1) and enjoys a healthy $52 billion trade surplus…

An Assessment of Space Shuttle Flight Software Development Processes

Review the entire flight software development process from the initial requirements definition phase to final implementation, including object code build and final machine loading. • Review and critique NASA's independent verification and validation process and mechanisms, including NASA's established software development and testing standards. • Determine the acceptability and adequacy…

National Collaboratories: Applying Information Technology for Scientific Rese…

The fusion of computers and electronic communications has the potential to dramatically enhance the output and productivity of U.S. researchers. A major step toward realizing that potential can come from combining the interests of the scientific community at large with those of the computer science and engineering community to create integrated, tool-oriented computing and communications system…

Computing Professionals

Ensuring economic competitiveness and satisfying societal needs will depend increasingly on what people do with computer-based technology. Changes in that technology are having profound effects: the shift from large, centralized computing systems to smaller and distributed systems is fueling the growth in demand for computing systems and enabling the spread of computer- based technology into ou…

Probability and Algorithms

The main purpose of this report is to give an understanding of the power that comes from applying probability in the theory of algorithms, but an equally essential aim is to point out the variety of ways in which probability plays a role. One useful step in understanding this variety comes from making a clear distinction between the subject of probabilistic algorithms and the subject of probabi…

Computing the Future: A Broader Agenda for Computer Science and Engineering

As an academic discipline, computer science and engineering (CS&E) has been remarkably successful in its first decades of existence. But both the intellectual focus of academic CS&E and the environment in which the field is embedded are today in the midst of significant change. Accordingly, a proactive look forward will better prepare the field to evolve into the 21st century. The Computer Scie…

STAR 21: Strategic Technologies for the Army of the Twenty-First Century

The Strategic Technologies for the Army Report (STAR) explores the implications of new or anticipated technologies to the ways in which the U.S. Army will be prepared to fight during the next 30 years. The STAR main report is in part a summation and culmination of findings made in 18 other STAR reports, each of which focused on a smaller area within the broad scope of the study as a whole. The …

Mapping the Brain and Its Functions: Integrating Enabling Technologies into N…

The human brain is a fascinating, complex system whose mysteries are becoming increasingly accessible to the tools of modern science. Neuroscientists have amassed a sizable body of knowledge about the structure of the brain and its specific functions, which has improved our ability to treat a variety of mental and neurological diseases. Many other diseases are less tractable, however, and effec…

Advances in Photoreception: Proceedings of a Symposium on Frontiers of Visual…

The visual interface between human visual perception and patterns of light in the world is the photoreceptor layer of the retina. All our experience of the appearance of objects and spatial or temporal patterns of illumination is filtered through the receptor array. All visual function thus depends on the characteristics of photoreceptors—for example, their responsiveness to different wavelen…

Reshaping School Mathematics: A Philosophy and Framework for Curriculum

The basic premise of this report is that the United States must restructure the mathematics curriculum— both what is taught and the way it is taught—if our children are to develop the mathematical knowledge (and the confidence to use that knowledge) that they will need to be personally and professionally competent in the twenty-first century. This restructuring involves more than producing …

Everybody Counts: A Report to the Nation on the Future of Mathematics Education

Mathematics is the key to opportunity. No longer just the language of science, mathematics now contributes in direct and fundamental ways to business, finance, health, and defense. For students, it opens doors to careers. For citizens, it enables informed decisions. For nations, it provides knowledge to compete in a technological economy. To participate fully in the world of the future, America…

State and Local Government Statistics at a Crossroads

This evolving program of compilations of information on governments is the responsibility of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Governments Division. The division conducts the Census of Governments and related annual and quarterly surveys and maintains and updates a comprehensive directory of state and local governments. The division provides data on major aspects of the finances of the federal governm…

Deconstructing the Computer

Believing that increased productivity in the semiconductor and computer component industries plays a key role in sustaining the New Economy, the Com- mittee on Measuring and Sustaining the New Economy, under the auspices of the STEP Board, convened a symposium on Deconstructing the Computer on Febru- ary 28, 2003, at the National Academies in Washington, D.C. The symposium focused on metrics cu…

Analyzing Information on Women-Owned Small Businesses in Federal Contracting

Fostering the development of small businesses has been a concern of the federal government since World War II. The charter of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), established in 1953, provides that it will ensure small businesses a “fair proportion” of federal govern- ment contracts and sales. Repeatedly, legislation has charged the SBA to oversee efforts by federal contracting age…

Learning to Change: Opportunities to Improve the Performance of Smaller Manuf…

Manufacturing firms—large and small—face massive change and adjustments as they move from a stable, fault-tolerant environment of long production runs to a volatile world in which production runs are short, product characteristics are constantly changing, and defect-free on-time production at decreasing prices is a condition for survival. The necessary changes in the organization of product…

SBIR at the Department of Defense

Adopting several recommendations from a National Research Council (NRC) study of the SBIR program, Congress reauthorized the program in December 2011 for a further 6 years. In addition, Congress called for further studies by the NRC. In turn, the Department of Defense (DoD) Office of Small Business requested the NRC to provide a subsequent round of analysis, focused on operational questions wi…

Preparing Future and Current Business Leaders

Since its establishment in September 2009, the Climate Change Edu- cation Roundtable (CCER) at the National Research Council (NRC) has provided a coordinated national network devoted to advancing a dialog about effective, high-quality education addressing the science of climate change and the impacts of climate change on natural, social, and economic systems. The CCER’s unique composition bri…

Review of Specialized Degree-Granting Graduate Programs of the Department of …

Recent National Research Council (NRC) reports on science, technology, en- gineering, and mathematics (STEM) and the Department of Defense (DoD) have focused on the quality of the DoD STEM workforce and the importance of ensur- ing an adequate number of people with the right STEM skill sets in the future.1,2 This report is unique in that it addresses the need for relevant graduate STEM and mana…

Professionalizing the Nation's Cybersecurity Workforce?: Criteria for Decisi…

This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council’s Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its pub- lished report as sound as possible and t…

Geotargeted Alerts and Warnings

Following earlier workshops organized by separate National Research Council (NRC) committees that explored the public response to alerts and warnings delivered to mobile devices1 and alerts and warnings delivered using social media,2 the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate asked the Computer Sci- ence and Telecommunications Board of the NRC to convene a worksh…

The Subjective Well-Being Module of the American Time Use Survey

The American Time Use Survey (ATUS), conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, included a Subjective Well-Being (SWB) module in 2010 and 2012; the module, funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), is being considered for inclusion in the ATUS for 2013. The National Research Council was asked to evaluate measures of self-reported well-being and offer guidance about their adoption in of…

Positioning Synthetic Biology to Meet the Challenges of the 21st Century

The turn of the millennium brought into view a new research landscape in which the biological sciences loom large and where technical possibilities barely dreamt of decades ago seem legitimately attainable. The biological sciences of this century are the product of decades of advances in, for example, genetics and genomics, molecular and systems biology, and bioengineering technologies. Modern …

Twenty-First Century Ecosystems: Managing the Living World Two Centuries Aft…

The publication of the report Biodiversity by the National Academy of Sciences/Smithsonian Institution in 1988 helped reframe the concept of biological diversity as a “global resource, to be indexed, used, and above all, preserved,”1 and captured the attention of the public and policy makers. Earlier concerns about biological extinction had led to the passage of the U.S. Endangered Species …

Describing Socioeconomic Futures for Climate Change Research and Assessment

The Workshop on Describing Socioeconomic Futures for Climate Change Research and Assessment was organized in response to increas- ing recognition by the international research community working to ana- lyze the consequences of climate change that improved socioeconomic scenarios are needed to understand climate change vulnerabilities and adaptive capacity. The need for improved analysis of feed…

Review of Physical Science Proposals to the State of Ohio's 2005 Wright Cente…

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