Policy Division – författare

In 1992, Congress for the first time explicitly directed the federal agencies making SBIR grants to use commercial potential as a criterion for granting SBIR awards. In response, the Department of Defense developed the SBIR Fast Track initiative, which provides expedited decision-making for SBIR awards to companies that have commitments from outside vendors. To verify the effectiveness of this initiative, the DoD asked the STEP Board to assess the operation of Fast Track. This volume of original field research includes case studies comparing Fast Track and non-Fast Track firms, a large survey of SBIR awardees, and statistical analyses of the impact of regular SBIR and Fast Track awards. Collectively, the commissioned papers and the findings and recommendations represent a significant contribution to our understanding of the SBIR program.

This report summarizes discussions and insights from the workshop on Overcoming Barriers to Collaborative Research held March 23-24, 1998, in Irvine, California. The workshop was organized by the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss barriers to university-industry cooperation and to explore concrete approaches to overcoming them. Practitioners from universities and industry, as well as government policy makers, participated in the two-day workshop.

World human population is expected to reach upwards of 9 billion by 2050 and then level off over the next half-century. How can the transition to a stabilizing population also be a transition to sustainability? How can science and technology help to ensure that human needs are met while the planet''s environment is nurtured and restored?

Our Common Journey examines these momentous questions to draw strategic connections between scientific research, technological development, and societies'' efforts to achieve environmentally sustainable improvements in human well being. The book argues that societies should approach sustainable development not as a destination but as an ongoing, adaptive learning process. Speaking to the next two generations, it proposes a strategy for using scientific and technical knowledge to better inform future action in the areas of fertility reduction, urban systems, agricultural production, energy and materials use, ecosystem restoration and biodiversity conservation, and suggests an approach for building a new research agenda for sustainability science.

Our Common Journey documents large-scale historical currents of social and environmental change and reviews methods for "what if" analysis of possible future development pathways and their implications for sustainability. The book also identifies the greatest threats to sustainability—in areas such as human settlements, agriculture, industry, and energy—and explores the most promising opportunities for circumventing or mitigating these threats. It goes on to discuss what indicators of change, from children''s birth-weights to atmosphere chemistry, will be most useful in monitoring a transition to sustainability.

How can we understand and rise to the environmental challenges of global change? One clear answer is to understand the science of global change, not solely in terms of the processes that control changes in climate and the composition of the atmosphere, but in how ecosystems and human society interact with these changes. In the last two decades of the twentieth century, a number of such research efforts—supported by computer and satellite technology—have been launched. Yet many opportunities for integration remain unexploited, and many fundamental questions remain about the earth''s capacity to support a growing human population.

This volume encourages a renewed commitment to understanding global change and sets a direction for research in the decade ahead. Through case studies the book explores what can be learned from the lessons of the past 20 years and what are the outstanding scientific questions. Highlights include:

This book offers a comprehensive overview of global change research to date and provides a framework for answering urgent questions.

Where should the United States focus its long-term efforts to improve the nation''s environment? What are the nation''s most important environmental issues? What role should science and technology play in addressing these issues? Linking Science and Technology to Society''s Environmental Goals provides the current thinking and answers to these questions.

Based on input from a range of experts and interested individuals, including representatives of industry, government, academia, environmental organizations, and Native American communities, this book urges policymakers to:

This book will be of special interest to policymakers in government and industry; environmental scientists, engineers, and advocates; and faculty, students, and researchers.

This publication is extracted from a much larger report, Global Environmental Change: Research Pathways for the Next Decade, which addresses the full range of the scientific issues concerning global environmental change and offers guidance to the scientific effort on these issues in the United States. This volume consists of Chapter 7 of that report, "Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change," which was written for the report by the Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change of the National Research Council (NRC). It provides findings and conclusions on the key scientific questions in human dimensions research, the lessons that have been learned over the past decade, and the research imperatives for global change research funded from the United States.

In 1992, Congress for the first time explicitly directed the federal agencies making SBIR grants to use commercial potential as a criterion for granting SBIR awards. In response, the Department of Defense developed the SBIR Fast Track initiative, which provides expedited decision-making for SBIR awards to companies that have commitments from outside vendors. To verify the effectiveness of this initiative, the DoD asked the STEP Board to assess the operation of Fast Track. This volume of original field research includes case studies comparing Fast Track and non-Fast Track firms, a large survey of SBIR awardees, and statistical analyses of the impact of regular SBIR and Fast Track awards. Collectively, the commissioned papers and the findings and recommendations represent a significant contribution to our understanding of the SBIR program.

This report summarizes discussions and insights from the workshop on Overcoming Barriers to Collaborative Research held March 23-24, 1998, in Irvine, California. The workshop was organized by the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss barriers to university-industry cooperation and to explore concrete approaches to overcoming them. Practitioners from universities and industry, as well as government policy makers, participated in the two-day workshop.

World human population is expected to reach upwards of 9 billion by 2050 and then level off over the next half-century. How can the transition to a stabilizing population also be a transition to sustainability? How can science and technology help to ensure that human needs are met while the planet''s environment is nurtured and restored?

Our Common Journey examines these momentous questions to draw strategic connections between scientific research, technological development, and societies'' efforts to achieve environmentally sustainable improvements in human well being. The book argues that societies should approach sustainable development not as a destination but as an ongoing, adaptive learning process. Speaking to the next two generations, it proposes a strategy for using scientific and technical knowledge to better inform future action in the areas of fertility reduction, urban systems, agricultural production, energy and materials use, ecosystem restoration and biodiversity conservation, and suggests an approach for building a new research agenda for sustainability science.

Our Common Journey documents large-scale historical currents of social and environmental change and reviews methods for "what if" analysis of possible future development pathways and their implications for sustainability. The book also identifies the greatest threats to sustainability—in areas such as human settlements, agriculture, industry, and energy—and explores the most promising opportunities for circumventing or mitigating these threats. It goes on to discuss what indicators of change, from children''s birth-weights to atmosphere chemistry, will be most useful in monitoring a transition to sustainability.

How can we understand and rise to the environmental challenges of global change? One clear answer is to understand the science of global change, not solely in terms of the processes that control changes in climate and the composition of the atmosphere, but in how ecosystems and human society interact with these changes. In the last two decades of the twentieth century, a number of such research efforts—supported by computer and satellite technology—have been launched. Yet many opportunities for integration remain unexploited, and many fundamental questions remain about the earth''s capacity to support a growing human population.

This volume encourages a renewed commitment to understanding global change and sets a direction for research in the decade ahead. Through case studies the book explores what can be learned from the lessons of the past 20 years and what are the outstanding scientific questions. Highlights include:

This book offers a comprehensive overview of global change research to date and provides a framework for answering urgent questions.

Where should the United States focus its long-term efforts to improve the nation''s environment? What are the nation''s most important environmental issues? What role should science and technology play in addressing these issues? Linking Science and Technology to Society''s Environmental Goals provides the current thinking and answers to these questions.

Based on input from a range of experts and interested individuals, including representatives of industry, government, academia, environmental organizations, and Native American communities, this book urges policymakers to:

This book will be of special interest to policymakers in government and industry; environmental scientists, engineers, and advocates; and faculty, students, and researchers.

This publication is extracted from a much larger report, Global Environmental Change: Research Pathways for the Next Decade, which addresses the full range of the scientific issues concerning global environmental change and offers guidance to the scientific effort on these issues in the United States. This volume consists of Chapter 7 of that report, "Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change," which was written for the report by the Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change of the National Research Council (NRC). It provides findings and conclusions on the key scientific questions in human dimensions research, the lessons that have been learned over the past decade, and the research imperatives for global change research funded from the United States.