. "Recommendations - An Agenda for Action." Materials and Man's Needs: Materials Science and Engineering. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 1974.
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Materials and Man's Needs: Materials Science and Engineering
responsiveness and creativeness that holds strong potential for upgrading technologies regarded as socially and economically important
Advances in materials and related fields feed on bodies of knowledge that require steady replenishment by research and development, suitably funded and carefully balanced between the basic and the applied.
The 24 recommendations that follow, we believe, propose realistic actions consistent with these themes. The Recommendations fall naturally into five groups, depending on the emphasis of the action proposed: technical, governmental, industrial, academic, and professional. The sequence of the Recommendations should not be construed as rank ordering in any sense.
Recommendations for Technical Action
Materials Research and Development Required for Progress in Energy Technology
The pressing demand for energy in this country is creating problems that simply cannot be solved without skillful exploitation of materials science and engineering. We must learn to generate, transmit, store, and use energy more efficiently and within appropriate environmental constraints. All too often, it seems that the developers of new technologies have counted heavily on the expectation that improved materials would somehow be discovered as needed. This risk is too great to take in the energy field. Inadequate materials hamper our current fossil- and nuclear-fuel technologies; and lacking new or
