Böcker i Compass-serien

Policy makers are caught between two powerful forces in relation to testing in America's schools. One is increased interest on the part of educators, reinforced by federal requirements, in developing tests that accurately reflect local educational standards and goals. The other is a strong push to gather information about the performance of students and schools relative to national and international standards and norms. The difficulty of achieving these two goals simultaneously is exacerbated by both the long-standing American tradition of local control of education and the growing public sentiment that students already take enough tests. Finding a solution to this dilemma has been the focus of numerous debates surrounding the Voluntary National Tests proposed by President Clinton in his 1997 State of the Union address. It was also the topic of a congressionally mandated 1998 National Research Council report (Uncommon Measures: Equivalence and Linkage Among Educational Tests), and was touched upon in a U.S. General Accounting Office report (Student Testing: Issues Related to Voluntary National Mathematics and Reading Tests). More recently, Congress asked the National Research Council to determine the technical feasibility, validity, and reliability of embedding test items from the National Assessment of Educational Progress or other tests in state and district assessments in 4th-grade reading and 8th-grade mathematics for the purpose of developing a valid measure of student achievement within states and districts and in terms of national performance standards or scales. This report is the response to that congressional mandate.

Manufactured vitreous fibers (MVF), also known as synthetic vitreous fibers, are considered to be less hazardous than asbestos to human health. They are used in many thermal- and acoustical-insulation applications as an asbestos substitute or as a filtration medium. The Navy uses MVF in shipboard and onshore applications. To protect Navy personnel from harmful exposures to MVF, the U.S. Navy Environmental Health Center (NEHC) developed occupational exposure standards. The documentation assists industrial hygienists, occupational medicine physicians, and other Navy health professionals in assessing and controlling the health hazards linked with exposure to MVF.In 1997, the National Research Council (NRC) was asked to conduct an independent review of the Navy's toxicological assessment of MVF and to evaluate the scientific validity of its exposure standard of 2 fibers per cubic centimeter of air (f/cm3). The NRC assigned the task to the Committee on Toxicology, which established the Subcommittee on Manufactured Vitreous Fibers, a multidisciplinary group of experts, to determine whether all relevant toxicological and epidemiological data were correctly considered in developing the exposure standard; and to examine the uncertainty, variability, and quality of data and the appropriateness of assumptions used in the derivation of the exposure standard. The subcommittee was also asked to identify deficiencies in the MVF database and, where appropriate, to make recommendations for future research and data development.Review of the U.S. Navy's exposure Standard for Manufactured Vitreous Fibers represents the subcommittee's final report. The committee had expanded its review when in January 1999, the Navy revised its Occupational Safety and Health Program Manual (CNO 1999), changing the occupational exposure limit for MVF to the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) threshold limit value (TLV) of 1 f/cm3. The report features recommendations by the subcommittee as well as information gaps found throughout investigation. Overall, the subcommittee found that the Navy made a good start in assessing the health effects of MVF, but needed further research.

Research Council established the Ecosystems Panel in response to a request from the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). The panel's charge included periodic reviews of the ecosystems aspects of the USGCRP, and this is the first of those reviews. It is based on information provided by the USGCRP, including Our Changing Planet (NSTC 1997 and earlier editions 1); ideas and conversations provided by participants in a workshop held in St. Michaels, Maryland, in July 1998; and the deliberations of the panel. In addition, the panel reviewed the ecosystems chapter of the NRC report Global Environmental Change: Research Pathways for the Next Decade (NRC 1999a, known as the Pathways report).The USGCRP is an interagency program established in 1989 and codified by the Global Change Research Act of 1990 (PL 101-606). The USGCRP comprises representatives of the departments of Agriculture, Commerce (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and National Institute of Standards and Technology), Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services (theNational Institute of Environmental Health Sciences), Interior, and State, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Office of Management and Budget, and the intelligence community (NSTC 1997). The USGCRP's research program is described in detail in Our Changing Planet (NSTC 1997, 1999). In brief, the program focuses on four major areas of earth-system science: 1) Seasonal to interannual climate variability; 2) Climate change over decades to centuries; 3) Changes in ozone, ultraviolet (UV) radiation, and atmospheric chemistry, and 4) Changes in land cover and in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. The fourth topic is the area in which advice was requested from the ecosystems panel.The Ecosystems Panel's charge has three parts: to provide a forum for the discussion of questions of ecosystem science of interest to scientists in and out of the federal agencies, to periodically review the ecosystem aspects of the USGCRP's research program, and to help identify general areas of ecosystem science that need additional attention, especially areas that cut across ecosystems and levels of ecological organization. In addressing the second item of its charge for this report, the panel first identified the most significant and challenging areas in ecosystem science, then used that identification as a basis to make recommendations to the USGCRP. Thus, this report is not a detailed review of the USGCRP's program, but rather an attempt to identify those areas that the panel concludes are most in need of attention by a general research program on global change. As noted in this report, some of those areas are already receiving attention by the USGCRP.

The National Research Council was asked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to review the draft report of the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-CDC's working group charged with revising the 1985 radioepidemiological tables. To this end, a subcommittee was formed consisting of members of the Council's Committee on an Assessment of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Radiation Programs and other experts. The original tables were mandated under Public Law 97-414 (the "Orphan Drug Act") and were intended to provide a means of estimating the probability that a person who developed any of a series of radiation-related cancers, developed the cancer as a result of a specific radiation dose received before the onset of the cancer. The mandate included a provision for periodic updating of the tables. The motivation for the current revision reflects the availability of new data, especially on cancer incidence, and new methods of analysis, and the need for a more thorough treatment of uncertainty in the estimates than was attempted in the original tables.