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Research Briefings ..
Research Briefing for the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science Foundation, and Selectec! Federal Departments and Agencies Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy National Academy of Sciences National Academy of Engineering Institute of Medicine NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS Washington, D.C. 1988
National Academy Press 2101 Constitution Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20418 The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a private, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and their use for the general welfare. Under the authority of its congressional charter of 1863, the Acad- emy has a working mandate that calls upon it to advise the federal government on scientific and techni- cal matters. The Academy carries out this mandate primarily through the National Research Council, which it jointly administers with the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Frank Press is President of the NAS. The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) was established in 1964, under the charter of the NAS, as a parallel organization of distinguished engineers, autonomous in its administration and in the se- lection of members, sharing with the NAS its responsibilities for advising the federal government. Dr. Robert M. White is President of the NAE. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) was chartered in 1970 by the NAS to enlist distinguished members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health sciences and health of the public. In this, the Institute acts under both the Academy's 1863 congressional charter responsibility to be an adviser to the federal government and its own initiative in identifying issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Samuel O. Thier is President of the IOM. The Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy is a joint committee of the National Acad- emy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. It includes mem- bers of the councils of all three bodies. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant LPA8501382. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 87-63132 International Standard Book Number 0-309-03828-6 Copyright C) 1988 by the National Academy of Sciences No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or other- wise copied for public or private use, without written permission from the publisher, except for pur- poses of official use by the United States government. Printed in the United States of America
Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy GILBERT S. OMENN, Dean, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle (Chairman) H. NORMAN ABRAMSON, Executive Vice-President, Southwest Research Tnstitute, San Antonio, Tex. ALBERT M. CLOGSTON, Center for Materials Science, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, N. Mex. *W. DALE COMPTON, Senior Fellow, National Academy of Engineering, Washington, D.C. PHILIP M. CONDIT, Executive Vice-President, Boeing Commercial Airplane Company, Seattle, Wash. EMILlO Q. DADDARTO, Wilkes, Artis, Hedrick and Lane, Attorneys at Law, Washington, D.C. GERALD P. DINNEEN, Vice President, Science and Technology, Honeywell, Tnc. Minneapolis, Minn. ALFRED P. FISHMAN, William Maul Measey Professor of Medicine, and Director, Cardiovascular-Pulmonary Division, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia *Term expired June 30, 1987 V RALPH E. GOMORY, Senior Vice-President and Chief Scientist, IBM Corporation, Armonk, N. Y. ZVT GRTETCHES, Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University, Cambriclge, Mass. ARTHUR KELMAN, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, Senior Research Professor of Plant Pathology and Bacteriology, Department of Plant Pathology University of Wisconsin, Madison FRANCIS E. LOW, Institute Professor, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge *EDWARD A. MASON, Vice President-Research, Amoco Corporation, Amoco Research Center, Naperville, TIl. CORNELIUS l. PINGS, Provost, University of Southern California, Los Angeles JOHN D. ROBERTS, Tnstitute Professor of Chemistry, Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California Tnstitute of Technology, Pasadena
KENNETH l. RYAN, Kate Macy Ladd Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Harvard Medical School, and Chairman, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Mass. *LEON T. STEVER, William M. Keck Foundation Professor of Geology, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena HERBERT A. SIMON, Richard King Mellon University Professor, Department of Computer Science and Psychology, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pa. *Term expired June 30, 1987 V1 Ex Officio FRANK PRESS, President, National Academy of Sciences ROBERT M. WHITE, President, National Academy of Engineering SAMUEL O. THTER, President, institute of Medicine COSEPUP Staff ALLAN R. HOFFMAN, Executive Director MYRON F. UMAN, Associate Executive Director BARBARA A. CANDLAND, Administrative Coordinator CATHY D. DYSON, Senior Secretary
RESEARCH BRIEFING TOPICS Topics cited below are followecI by the names of units that providecl staff support for their devel- opment. A collectect volume is publishecl each year as Research Briefings 1987, Research Briefings 1986, etc., by the National Academy Press, Washington, D.C. 1987 I. Order, Chaos, and Patterns: Aspects of Nonlinearity (Commission on Physical Sci- ences, Mathematics, and Resources) Biological Control in Managed Ecosystems (Commission on Life Sciences) 3. Chemical Processing of Materials and Devices for Information Storage and Handling (Commission on Physical Sci- ences, Mathematics, and Resources) 4. High-Temperature Superconductivity (Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy) 1986 I. Science of Interfaces anct Thin Films (Commission on PhysicaZ Sciences, Mathematics, and Resources) 2. Decision Making and Problem Solving (Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education) 3. Protein Structure and Biological Function (Institute of Medicine) 4. Prevention and Treatment of Viral Diseases (Institute of Medicine) 1985 Remote Sensing of the Earth (Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Resources) Pain and Pain Management (Institute of Medicine) 3. Biotechnology in Agriculture (Board on Agriculture) 4. Weather Prediction Technologies (Commission on PhysicaZ Sciences, Mathematics, and Resources) 5. Ceramics and Ceramic Composites . . V11 (Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems) 6. Scientific Frontiers and the Superconducting Super Collider (Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Resources) 7. Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (Commission on PhysicaZ Sciences, Mathematics, and Resources) 1984 I. Computer Architecture (Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems) 2. Tn-formation Technology in Precollege Education (National Academy of Sciences) 3. Chemical and Process Engineering for Biotechnology (Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Resources) 4. High-Performance Polymer Composites (Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Resources) 5. Biology of Oncogenes (Institute of Medicine) 6. Interactions Between Blood and Blood Vessels (Tnclucling the Biology of A t h e r 0 s c ~ e r 0 s i s ~ ~ ~ n s t i t u t e 0 f M e ~ i c i n e 7. Biology of Parasitism (Institute of Medicine) S. Solar-Terrestrial Plasma Physics (Commission on PhysicaZ Sciences, Mathematics, and Resources) 9. Selected Opportunities in Physics (Commission on PhysicaZ Sciences, Mathematics, and Resources) 1983 I. Selected Opportunities in Chemistry (Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Resources)
2. Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence (Commission on Behavioral and ·SociaZ Sciences and Education) 3. Immunology (Institute of Medicine) 4. Solid Earth Sciences (Commission on PhysicaZ Sciences, Mathematics, anct Resources) 5. Computers in Design and Manufacturing (Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems) O c, 1982 I. Mathematics (Commission on PhysicaZ Sciences, Mathematics, and Resources) 2. Atmospheric Sciences (Commission on PhysicaZ Sciences, Mathematics, and Resources) 3. Astronomy and Astrophysics (Commission on PhysicaZ Sciences, Mathematics, and Resources) 4. Agricultural Research (Board on Agriculture) 5. Neuroscience (Institute of Medicine) 6. Materials Science (Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems) 7. Human Health Effects of Hazardous Chemical Exposures (Commission on Life Sciences) vail
Preface Research Briefings 1987 is the sixth volume of research briefing reports published by the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP). * It brings to 36 the number of such reports prepared on a broad range of topics since the first volume in 1982 (see the list of topics on page vii). The brief- ings are prepared at the request of the Presi- dent's Science Advisor, who also serves as Director of the Office of Science and Technol- ogy Policy (OSTP), and the Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The four reports in this collection are on the topics High-Temperature Superconduc- tivity; Chemical Processing of Materials and Devices for information Storage anc! Han- dling; Order, Chaos, and Patterns: Aspects of Nonlinearity; and Biological Control in Managed Ecosystems. The superconductiv- ity briefing was prepared at the specific re- quest of the NSF director after the 1987 brief- ing activity was under way, in response to the exciting new clevelopments in supercon- ductivity in ceramic oxicle materials an- nounced early in 1987. *COSEPUP is a joint committee of the National Acad- emy of Sciences (NAS), the National Academy of Engi- neering (NAE), and the Institute of Medicine (IOM). 1X Research briefing topics generally are se- lected by the OSTP and NSF directors in the late fall in response to suggestions put for- warcl by CO SEPUP. CO SEPUP' s sugge s- tions are selected from a much larger list of suggestions offered by the commissions and boards of the National Research Council (NRC); members of the NAS, NAE, and TOM Councils; members of COSEPUP; as well as officials of the NSF and the OSTP. In- dividual briefings are designed to assess the status of a field and identify high-leverage research opportunities and barriers to progress in the field (inclucling where appro- priate, progress in commercial exploitation). They also assess U. S. capabilities in the field vis-a-vis those in other nations. The brief- ings are then prepared by panels of experts, usually in the spring, with the day-to-day as- sistance of NRC staff. This schedule allows time for COSEPUP review in late spring and presentation of the briefings, in both oral and written form, to federal officials early in the upcoming fiscal year's budget prepara- tion cycle. The briefing reports, both in indi- vidual form and as an annual collection, are then published by the National Academy Press. Over the years the value of these relatively
brief but comprehensive overviews of vari- ous frontier fields of science and technology has been recognized more broadly. The in- formation provided by the research briefings proved to be of value not only to government officials responsible for R&D planning and budget preparation, but also to officials of in- dustry and to university personnel responsi- ble for setting research priorities. Foreign science and technology officials have also shown strong interest in the research brief- ing reports. Most of the credit must go to the volunteer experts who serve on the panels, and to the NRC units and staff who so ably support the panels' day-to-day activities. ~ also want to acknowledge the confidence and continued support of the OSTP and the NSF for the research briefing activity, as well as the efforts of my colleagues on COSEPUP who serve so effectively as reviewers of the reports. it is only through the efforts of all these individuals and groups that prepara- tion of the reports is possible. Gilbert S. Omenn, Chairman Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy x
Contents Report of the Research Briefing Pane! on High-Temperature Superconductivity Report of the Research Briefing Panel on Chemical Processing of Materials and Devices for Information Storage and Handling Report of the Research Briefing Pane! on Order, Chaos, and Patterns: Aspects of Nonlinearity Report of the Research Briefing Panel on Biological Control in Managed Ecosystems X1 ...................... 1 . . .25 .39 .......... 55