The current crisis in radioactive waste disposal coupled with increased regulatory control over medical and hazardous waste has a definite impact on medical research. In addition to increased costs, the unavailability of disposal sites has resulted in the inability to perform standard research protocols in some institutions. The system implemented at a major research medical center is discussed focusing on the methods used to collect, transport, store, and dispose of radioactive and hazardous waste. Problems faced by research scientists include, increased costs, space, staff and time spent to meet ever increasing regulatory requirements.

Federal funding of basic and applied scientific research takes place through `funding agreements' (grants, contracts, and cooperative agreements), under which federal funds are made available directly to universities and other (primarily nonprofit) research institutes, and through direct funding of research at federal laboratories. Successful navigation of these waters requires a good understanding of restrictions, which include current and pending conflict-of-interest rules, the preference for U.S. manufacturing of developed products, the federal government's retained interest in intellectual property (including its `march-in' rights), the public availability of much of the data and information developed, and, increasingly, the potential for direct government controls on the pricing of developed products.

Medicine has long enjoyed being on the cutting edge of technology. However, medicine has not been as successful in the application of hospital information systems to the delivery of health care. This paper discusses the history of hospital information systems and their future as they are called upon to support and enhance both medical and management directions in the face of health care reform.

I address ways technology can provide opportunities to alleviate current health care economic issues, and some of the problems that stand in the way of realizing these opportunities.

The initial conceptualization of agile manufacturing was the result of a 1991 study -- chaired by Lehigh Professor Roger N. Nagel and California-based entrepreneur Rick Dove, President of Paradigm Shifts, International -- of what it would take for U.S. industry to regain global manufacturing competitiveness by the early twenty-first century. This industry-led study, reviewed by senior management at over 100 companies before its release, concluded that incremental improvement of the current system of manufacturing would not be enough to be competitive in today's global marketplace. Computer-based information and production technologies that were becoming available to industry opened up the possibility of an altogether new system of manufacturing, one that would be characterized by a distinctive integration of people and technologies; of management and labor; of customers, producers, suppliers, and society.

During the past few years there has been much emphasis on the development of stereolithography resins with improved part building characteristics as well as enhanced physical and mechanical properties. A detailed presentation of the results achieved by all four companies would be well beyond the scope of this paper. However, a discussion of a new epoxy resin currently undergoing extensive diagnostic and alpha testing, including experimental data showing a number of extraordinary properties, is both timely and appropriate.

Technology per se does not provide a competitive advantage. Timely exploitation of technology is what gives the competitive edge, and this demands a major shift in the product development process and management of the industrial enterprise. `Teaming to win' is more than a management theme; it is the disciplined engineering practice that is essential to success in today's global marketplace. Teaming supports the concurrent engineering practices required to integrate the activities of people responsible for product realization through achievement of shorter development cycles, lower costs, and defect-free products.

The manufacturing base is being revitalized by new manufacturing directions such as the new agile manufacturing and environmentally-conscious manufacturing. These processes hold promise for bringing high-impact technologies to quick commercial fruition, and more than ever before they incorporate quality principles in their development and operation. Because of their pivotal role in all of these aspects, the R&D institutions must maintain a firm grasp on solid quality fundamentals and new developments in the field.

Xerox virtually created the plain paper copier industry, it enjoyed unparalleled growth and its name became synonymous with copying. However, competition in the 1970s aggressively attacked this attractive growth market and took away market share. An evaluation of the competition told Xerox that its competitors were selling products for what it cost Xerox to make them, that their quality was better and that their goal was to capture all of Xerox' market share. The fundamental precept that Xerox pursued to meet this competitive threat and recapture market share was the recognition that long term success is dependent upon total mastery of quality, especially in manufacturing. In turning this precept into reality, Xerox Manufacturing made dramatic improvements in all of its processes and practices focusing on quality as defined by the customer. Actions to accomplish this result included training all people in basic statistical tools and their applications, the use of employee involvement teams and continuous quality improvement techniques. These and other actions were successful in not only enabling Xerox to turn the competitive threat and recover market share, but to also win the Malcolm Baldrige Award for Quality in 1989.

Oklahoma has established a customer-driven industrial extension system. A publicly-chartered, private non-profit corporation, the Oklahoma Alliance for Manufacturing Excellence, Inc. (`the Alliance') coordinates the system. The system incorporates principles that Oklahoma manufacturers value: (1) decentralization and local accessibility; (2) coordinated existing resources; (3) comprehensive help; (4) interfirm cooperation; (5) pro-active outreach; (6) self- help and commitment from firms; (7) customer governance; and (8) performance accountability. The Oklahoma system consists of: (1) a network of locally-based broker/agents who work directly with manufacturers to diagnose problems and find appropriate assistance; (2) a group of industry sector specialists who collect and disseminate sector specific technological and market intelligence to the broker/agents and their clients; (3) all the specialized public and private sector resources coordinated by the system; and (4) a customer- driven coordination and evaluation mechanism, the Alliance.

Cleveland, with its surrounding industrial region, historically has been one of the great manufacturing centers in America. From the mid-19th Century's fledgling steel industry to today's sophisticated durable goods manufacturing base, the economic strength of Northern Ohio has been built on manufacturing. But success has not been easily won, especially in recent years. In the late '70s and early '80s regional manufacturing companies, mainly small and medium sized, faced overwhelming adversity: foreign competition, lack of available capital, management-labor conflicts, and a serious recession -- all of which resulted in a loss of nearly one-quarter of the area's manufacturing jobs. It was under these conditions that in 1984 an organized group of area business and civic leaders, known as Cleveland Tomorrow, established the Cleveland Advanced Manufacturing Program (CAMP). CAMP's mandate: To unify industrial, government, and university resources in a mutual effort to improve manufacturing through advanced technology.

The goal of visualization and graphics oriented scientists, engineers, and educators is to electronically share their products with colleagues around the United States and the world. Thus, these specialists have dubbed their communication requirement as `100 megabits (per second) to the desktop.' This simply means that these high technology specialists would like to transmit and receive visual products in real-time, unimpeded by the network speed and interconnection protocols.

The planning of advanced broadband digital networks, or the information highways, gives rise to a host of problems in terms of the public versus private roles, computer versus telecommunications applications, research versus educational objectives, and political versus technical goals. Among these dangers is the possibility that a form of `technological determinism' will be used to create an all fiber based network that is one-dimensional in concept, rather inflexible in design, and ill-suited to accommodate rural and remote locations in the form of isolated research centers, hospitals, or universities. There is a serious need to consider the assymetrical nature of research networks, variable restoration needs, mobile access links to research networks, and the diversity of requirements for educational, medical and other user communities.

These remarks were given at the First Annual Symposium on Coupling Technology to National Needs as part of a panel on `Visualization and Communication: Overhead Imagery.' Based on the author's involvement with remote sensing policy while at the Department of Commerce from 1990 to 1993, the paper provides a brief overview of U.S. policy and legislation affecting remote sensing, discusses recent developments, and identifies continuing issues for commercial ventures. Example issues include operating licenses, export controls, government as a customer, and strategic partnerships.

Our national competitiveness -- and the profits of many corporations managed and owned by U.S. citizens -- depend heavily on the outcome of Al Gore's efforts to `reinvent government,' and to create a National Information Infrastructure (NII). Both of these efforts depend in turn on many players, both in and out of government, but two of the players could have an especially substantive impact on how America does business as we enter the era of information warfare: the Secretary of Labor, and the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI).

Today's intelligence analysis environment is more complex with an ever increasing focus on technology to solve the analyst's problems and to make the information processing and analysis simpler. The analytic emphasis is heavily oriented toward document selection, data extraction and data monitoring, as well as toward the drafting, coordinating and editing of written reports and similar intelligence products. The Advanced Information Processing and Analysis Steering Group (AIPASG) desires to have an impact on technology development and on the technology insertion to solve high priority information processing and analysis problems.

Behind the Japanese success story in the development of electronic imaging and high definition television (HDTV) is a long term national technology development policy. The objective of this paper is to review the Japanese national technology policy on electronic imaging and HDTV, and to summarize the objectives of the key research and development projects between Nippon Hoso Kyokai and the Japanese industry. Some of the features of this policy are summarized here.

This paper discusses the previous decades' swinging pendulum of energy policy as it described national need and the ability of our institutions to represent consumer interests. Today's energy policy is a product of 20 years of regulation written by competing and sometimes politicized interests.

While there is consensus that attention is needed to perform many daily activities, such as driving, there has not been widespread agreement on how to measure it. The UFOV^TM Visual Attention Analyzer is a new instrument developed to assess the functional attentional skills required for driving and attentionally demanding occupations, and to train those skills when they are diminished or for exceptional performance. The focus of this paper is to describe the uses for this technology and discuss its validation regarding crash risk among older drivers.

The Alliance for Transportation Research in Albuquerque, New Mexico is adapting Sandia and Los Alamos Labs' defense technologies to alleviating the problems of DWI in the state of New Mexico and the nation.

This initiative addresses the utilization of current technology to increase the efficiency of police officers to complete required Driving Under the Influence (DUI) forms and to enhance their ability to acquire and record crash and accident information. The project is a cooperative program among the New Mexico Alliance for Transportation Research (ATR), Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the New Mexico State Highway and Transportation Department. The approach utilizes an in-car computer and associated sensors for information acquisition and recording. Los Alamos artificial intelligence technology is leveraged to ensure ease of data entry and use.

Future operational IVHS services and networks promise to transform the implementation of emergency/incident response and management/notification systems. Properly structured systems should improve highway safety, accident morbidity/mortality and incident mitigation with positive impacts on traffic congestion and the environment. Emergency/incident response management support systems should be developed from a systems perspective. This implies an iterative process from fundamental needs, to requirements/specifications to alternative systems architectures and evaluation of operation and functional characteristics with respect to the requirements. The methodology may be extended to other IVHS realms, including MAYDAY (9-1-1) communications, ATIS, etc.

The high incidence of traumatic injury and death is significant among the western, rural United States. A number of characteristics and factors contribute to this concern, among them extremes in population, distance, terrain, and resources. Opportunity exists to apply current and future advanced technology to impact trauma prevention, communication, emergency response, trauma system support and monitor trauma outcome.

This presentation highlights the results of a recently completed study that examines the Texas- Mexico multimodal transport system already in place, current plans for improvements or expansion, and opportunities and constraints faced by each transport mode -- motor carriage, rail, maritime, and air. Particular emphasis is given to findings regarding transportation developments in Mexico. The study concludes that in Mexico, all modes are working at establishing new services and strategic alliances, intermodal arrangements are on the rise, and private-sector participation in infrastructure improvements is growing daily at Mexican seaports and airports as well as within that nation's highway and rail systems. This presentation looks at developments that concern privatization, deregulation, infrastructure improvements, financing arrangements, and new services in Mexico.

A recurring need of Texas border communities is the provision of more bridge crossings over the Rio Grande. Work has also focused on developing a comprehensive international study database requiring extensive bi-national networking, including visits to federal agencies in Mexico and the U.S., and to every border city. The final products consist of a comprehensive description of the Texas-Mexico border, electronically organized in data base format, as well as recommendations about the feasibility of additional toll bridges at each sector of the Texas- Mexico border.

The transportation of hazardous materials has steadily increased through out the past thirty years and will continue to grow through the end of the century. The development of advanced technology to track extremely dangerous shipments and provide immediate electronic load information is essential to both transportation and public safety agencies. Federal, state and local transportation and public safety agencies must have hazardous material transportation information in order to plan, train and equip responders to meet the identified threat. Tracking and identification technology must be consistent within and across state and international borders. The development and implementation of a strategy and technology will require federal, state and private industry coordination and financing.

Increased public concern about the transportation of hazardous materials has caused the assurance of safe transport of this material to be a pressing national need. United States Department of Energy (DOE) programs involve the transportation of many hazardous and radioactive materials, and the national need to assure that these materials are transported in a safe manner is being addressed through the application of technology developed as part of the DOE/Albuquerque Operations Office's Transportation Base Technology Program. Currently the Albuquerque Operations Office is the integrator of DOE's Transportation Base Technology Program. Activities in this area include: packaging development, engineering analysis, testing, advanced technology development, packaging certification support, regulatory standards development, information systems management, and risk and systems analysis support. This paper addresses the specifics of DOE activities in these areas.

Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) is demonstrated as a tool for the detection and tracking of sources of aerosol pollution. Existing elastic lidars have been used to demonstrate the potential of the application of this technology in urban areas. Data from several experiments is shown along with analysis methods used for interpretation of the data. The goal of the project is to develop a light-weight, low-cost, lidar system and data analysis methods which can be used by urban planners and local air quality managers. The ability to determine the sources, i.e., causes, of non-attainment may lead to more effective use of tax dollars. Future directions for the project are also discussed.

This paper discusses the key technology and policy issues of technology transfer, highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. as a global competitor, examines typical barriers to successful technology transfer, provides an overview of past efforts at coupling technology to national needs and outlines a proposed methodology for effective technology transfer.

There is a need in public safety for real-time data collection and transmission from one or more sensors. The Rome Laboratory and the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization are pursuing an effort to bring the benefits of Open System Architectures (OSA) to embedded systems within the Department of Defense. When developed properly OSA provides interoperability, commonality, graceful upgradeability, survivability and hardware/software transportability to greatly minimize life cycle costs, integration and supportability. Architecture flexibility can be achieved to take advantage of commercial accomplishments by basing these developments on vendor-neutral commercially accepted standards and protocols.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is currently participating in multiple national projects to assess the needs of law enforcement, as related to electronic surveillance. The purpose of these projects is to articulate those needs and concerns, from a state and local perspective, to the respective industries and provide support for federal legislation requiring industry to include law enforcement needs when designing and implementing or transferring new technology to public or commercial use.

The FBI DRUGFIRE Program entails the continuing phased development and deployment of a scalable automated firearms identification system. The first phase of this system, a networked, database-driven firearms evidence imaging system, has been operational for approximately one year and has demonstrated its effectiveness in facilitating the sharing and linking of firearms evidence collected in serial, gang, and drug-related shooting investigations. However, there is a pressing need for development of enhancements which will more fully automate the system so that it is capable of processing very large volumes of firearms evidence. These enhancements would provide automated image analysis and pattern matching functionalities. Existing `spin off' technologies need to be integrated into the present DRUGFIRE system to automate the 3-D mensuration, registration, feature extraction, and matching of the microtopographical surface features imprinted on the primers of fired casings during firing.

Forensic DNA profiling technology is a significant law enforcement tool due to its superior discriminating power. Applying the principles of population genetics to the DNA profile obtained in violent crime investigations results in low frequency of occurrence estimates for the DNA profile. These estimates often range from a frequency of occurrence of 1 in 50 unrelated individuals to 1 in a million unrelated individuals or even smaller. It is this power to discriminate among individuals in the population that has propelled forensic DNA technology to the forefront of forensic testing in violent crime cases. Not only is the technology extremely powerful in including or excluding a criminal suspect as the perpetrator, but it also gives rise to the potential of identifying criminal suspects in cases where the investigators of unknown suspect cases have exhausted all other available leads.

With the increase in business automation and the widespread availability and low cost of computer systems, law enforcement agencies have seen a corresponding increase in criminal acts involving computers. The examination of computer evidence is a new field of forensic science with numerous opportunities for research and development. Research is needed to develop new software utilities to examine computer storage media, expert systems capable of finding criminal activity in large amounts of data, and to find methods of recovering data from chemically and physically damaged computer storage media. In addition, defeating encryption and password protection of computer files is also a topic requiring more research and development.

Remote sensing requires very high processing throughputs. The details of the processing vary tremendously from one scenario to another. Through simulations we have shown that the 3-D computer efficiently executes a wide range of processing from a broad spectrum of sensors. In this paper we describe the architecture, the new 3-D technologies, and then discuss the application of this technology to public safety monitoring applications.

The need for reliable processing is essential in communication satellite systems. Because of the fault tolerance, testability and radiation requirements of the RH32 program, these processors meet the need for reliable processing in a space environment. These processors were designed to be used as embedded processors and are ideal for commercial satellite systems, where the need for reliable processing is essential. Other applications for these processors include commercial avionics and nuclear waste management systems. This paper discusses the RH32 program, both Honeywell's and TRW's approaches, and several public safety applications which the RH32 can support.

It is now U.S. defense policy that there will be no new platform starts. The emphasis for platforms will be on O&M cost reduction, life-extension improvements, and force-multiplier- device upgrades. There is also an increasing emphasis on hand-held force-multiplier devices for individuals, which is the focus of this paper. Engineering issues include operations analysis, weight, cube, cost, prime power, ease of use, data storage, reliability, fault tolerance, data communications and human factors. Two examples of hand-held devices are given. Applications include USMC, Army, SOCOM, DEA, FBI, SS, Border Patrol and others. Barriers to adoption of such technology are also discussed.

The Portable Reconfigurable Line Sensor (PRLS) is a bistatic, pulsed-Doppler, microwave intrusion detection system developed at Sandia National Laboratories for the U.S. Air Force. The PRLS is rapidly and easily deployed, and can detect intruders ranging from a slow creeping intruder to a high speed vehicle. The system has a sharply defined detection zone and will not falsely alarm on nearby traffic. Unlike most microwave sensors, the PRLS requires no alignment or calibration. The PRLS's unique ellipsoidal detection zone eliminates the need for an offset distance to achieve total detection coverage. The sensors themselves are inside their own detection zone and are therefore self-protecting. Its portability, battery operation, ease of setup, and rf alarm reporting capability make it an excellent choice for perimeter, portal, and gap-filler applications in the important new field of rapidly-deployable sensor systems.

Law enforcement officials have long recognized that a wide and dangerous gap exists in the range of tools that are available to them. The most common law enforcement tools, the nightstick and the gun, may be either too weak or too strong a response to many police situations. In violent confrontations, officers may be obliged to choose an unnecessarily strong response for lack of an effective alternative weapon. These problems demand that we persevere in the development of less than lethal weapons, that is, weapons which are designed to provide effective enforcement while at the same time minimizing the risk of life.

The threat posed to commercial aviation by small, concealed plastic explosives is particularly onerous. Small amounts of these highly energetic explosives are difficult to reliably detect using current technologies. But they can cause significant damage to an aircraft that can result in the destruction of the aircraft, resulting in loss of life. The key issues regarding explosive detection technologies include: What methods can detect plastic explosives? How do these methods perform in practice? How can the different methods be best employed to counter the terrorist threat?

This manuscript describes an example of transfer technology from a U.S. Government Laboratory to commercial products that meet national needs in the public safety and health care sectors. Funded by the U.S. Army, the first project is the development of a portable, non-powered food warming device for serving meals to soldiers in the field. The second project is being funded by the National Institutes of Health for development of a heat therapy device for relief from rheumatoid arthritis discomfort in the hands and other affected joints. Both of these heating devices are portable, reusable heat pack products that can be regenerated in a microwave oven or in boiling water. The knowledge developed during these two projects will be applied to many other related products. Applications in support of natural and manmade disaster relief include food warming heat packs for food service to victims and rescue workers in sustained black-out conditions, and heat pack warming blankets for emergency medical situations in which patients are in traumatic shock and the onset of hypothermia is imminent.

For all but the lowest levels of radioactive wastes, a satisfactory permanent disposal scheme is not currently available. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is a model research and development program to demonstrate safe and effective means of removing transuranic nuclear wastes from the biosphere. This paper gives the historical development of the WIPP project, the classes of waste to be included in the project, the geologic basis of the repository, and methods used for characterizing the waste. Emphasis is given on how characterization methods are used to demonstrate compliance with regulatory criteria for handling various classes of waste.

Maps and other information are available on the national, regional, state, and local levels that show the supporting infrastructure such as sources and distribution of water, power, natural gas, crude oil and petroleum products, coal, LNG, railroads, roads, sewage lines, ocean and inland waterway routes, barge and ship traffic and capacity, and telephone systems. Information is also available on military base and National Guard unit locations and their equipment such as diesel generators, tanker and other trucks. The data includes capacity and flow-rates. All of this can be put into a computer, with computer displays including overlay maps an numeric data tags on the screen. With this alone, officials can war-game to see the impact of potential threats, both on an area, and on others `downstream' where utility-product flow through the affected area may be disrupted.

The Department of Defense (DoD), in support of the National Drug Control Strategy, has designated that detecting and countering the production, trafficking and use of illegal drugs is a high priority national security mission. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) Counterdrug Program is assisting DoD in this objective by developing technology and prototype systems to enhance the capabilities of the DoD and civilian law enforcement agencies, consistent with the DoD mission and the supply reduction goals of the National Drug Control Strategy. The objective of this paper is to summarize the current ARPA Counterdrug Program, with special emphasis on the current efforts and future plans for developing technology to meet the National needs for Non-Intrusive Inspection.