230 Ergebnisse - Zeige 81 von 100.

As the second decade of the 21st century begins, the challenge of how to feed a growing world population and provide sustainable, affordable energy to fulfill daily needs, while also improving human health and protecting the environment, is clear and urgent. Increasing demand for food and energy is projected at the same time as the supply of land and other resources decrease. Increasing levels of greenhouse gasses alter climate, which, in turn...

Toxicogenomics is a discipline that combines expertise in toxicology, genetics, molecular biology, and environmental health to help understand the response of living organisms to stressful environments. The National Research Council convened a workshop to discuss how toxicogenomic data could be applied to improve risk assessments, particularly cancer risk from environmental exposure to chemicals. Risk assessments serve as the basis of many pub...

In 1997, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) formed the National Astrobiology Institute to coordinate and fund research into the origins, distribution, and fate of life in the universe. A 2002 NRC study of that program, Life in the Universe: An Assessment of U.S. and International Programs in Astrobiology, raised a number of concerns about the Astrobiology program. In particular, it concluded that areas of astrophysics rel...

A study of the status and future of marine biotechnology. It addresses the question of where the federal government should invest its limited funds and what future initiatives should be planned.

The stresses associated with climate change are expected to be felt keenly as human population grows to a projected 9 billion by the middle of this century, increasing the demand for resources and supporting infrastructure. Therefore, information to assess vulnerabilities to climate change is needed to support policies and investments designed to increase resilience in human and Earth systems. There are currently many observing systems that ca...

In cooperation with IAP: The Global Network of Science Academies, International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, International Union of Microbiological Societies, Polish Academy of Sciences.

In 2005, the National Academies released the book, Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research, which offered a common set of ethical standards for a field that, due to the absence of comprehensive federal funding, was lacking national standards for research. In order to keep the Guidelines up to date, given the rapid pace of scientific and policy developments in the field of stem cell research, the Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research Adv...

On October 25-26, 2005, the Chemical Sciences Roundtable held a workshop to explore issues involving those who use and contribute to chemical literature, as well as those who publish and disseminate chemical journals. As a follow-up to the workshop, a summary was written to capture the presentations and discussions that occurred during the workshop. As a forum to discuss chemistry journals within the larger context of scientific, technical and...

The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Maryland, is designed to handle pathogens that cause serious or potentially lethal diseases, which require the research performed on them be contained to specialized laboratories. In 2007 a decision was made to expand those facilities causing concern among area residents that public health and safety risks, and strategies to mitigate those concerns were not adequatel...

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11) on the United States prompted a rethinking of how the United States prepares for disasters. Federal policy documents written since 9/11 have stressed that the private and public sectors share equal responsibility for the security of the nation's critical infrastructure and key assets. Private sector entities have a role in the safety, security, and resilience of the communities in which they o...

More accurate forecasts of climate conditions over time periods of weeks to a few years could help people plan agricultural activities, mitigate drought, and manage energy resources, amongst other activities, however, current forecast systems have limited ability on these time- scales. Models for such climate forecasts must take into account complex interactions among the ocean, atmosphere, and land surface. Such processes can be difficult to ...

Toxicogenomics, the study of how genomes respond to exposure to toxicants, may ultimately hold the promise of detecting changes in the expression of a person's genes if he or she is exposed to these toxicants. As the technology rapidly develops, it is critical that scientists and the public communicate about the promises and limitations of this new field. Communicating technical information to the public about a developing science can be chall...

Support for this project was provided by the National Science Foundation under contract no. ATM-0135923.

Methane hydrate is a natural form of clathrate - a chemical substance in which one molecule forms a lattice around a "guest" molecule with chemical bonding. In this clathrate, the guest molecule is methane and the lattice is formed by water to form an ice-like solid. Methane hydrate has become the focus of international attention because of the vast potential for human use worldwide. If methane can be produced from hydrate, a reasonable assump...

This report examines the proposed testing methodology and facility that the Department of Defense (DOD) will use to test and evaluate the effectiveness of its detection system against biological warfare agents?an issue that impacts battlefield missions as well as homeland security missions. The report assesses a proposal to construct a whole system live agent testing facility at West Center Test Center, Dugway Proving Ground in Utah for testin...

Recent and forecasted advances in microbiology, molecular biology, and analytical chemistry have made it timely to reassess the current paradigm of relying predominantly or exclusively on traditional bacterial indicators for all types of waterborne pathogens.? Nonetheless, indicator approaches will still be required for the foreseeable future because it is not practical or feasible to monitor for the complete spectrum of microorganisms that ma...

The workshop examined the following three questions: (1) What projections have been made by government agencies for the U.S. supply of and demand for natural gas over the next 10 to 20 years? (2) Where are the current natural gas reserves and resources? (3) By what means and by how much can future reserves, resources, and production be increased?

The Multifunction Phased Array Radar (MPAR) is one potentially cost-effective solution to meet the surveillance needs and of several agencies currently using decades-old radar networks. These agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration s (NOAA) National Weather Service (NWS), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have many and varied r...

The past 15 years have seen marked progress in observing, understanding, and predicting weather. At the same time, the United States has failed to match or surpass progress in operational numerical weather prediction achieved by other nations and failed to realize its prediction potential, as a result, the nation is not mitigating weather impacts to the extent possible. This book represents a sense of the weather community as guided by the dis...

Workshop was held January 6-7, 2011, The Georgetown University Hotel and Conference Center, 3800 Reservoir Rd, NW, Washington, D.C.