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Sensors, satellite photography, and multispectral imaging are associated with futuristic space and communications science. Increasingly, however, they are considered part of the future of agriculture. The use of advanced technologies for crop production is known as precision agriculture, and its rapid emergence means the potential for revolutionary change throughout the agricultural sector. Precision Agriculture in the 21st Century provides an overview of the specific technologies and practices under the umbrella of precision agriculture, exploring the full implications of their adoption by farmers and agricultural managers. The volume discusses how precision agriculture could dramatically affect decisionmaking in irrigation, crop selection, pest management, environmental issues, and pricing and market conditions. It also examines the geographical dimensions--farm, regional, national--of precision agriculture and looks at how quickly and how widely the agricultural community can be expected to adopt the new information technologies. Precision Agriculture in the 21st Century highlights both the uncertainties and the exciting possibilities of this emerging approach to farming. This book will be important to anyone concerned about the future of agriculture: policymakers, regulators, scientists, farmers, educators, students, and suppliers to the agricultural industry.

"Medium- and heavy-duty trucks, motor coaches, and transit buses - collectively, "medium- and heavy-duty vehicles," or MHDVs - are used in every sector of the economy. The fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of MHDVs have become a focus of legislative and regulatory action in the past few years. Reducing the Fuel Consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles, Phase Two is a follow-on to the National Research Council's 2010 report, Technologies and Approaches to Reducing the Fuel Consumption of Medium-and Heavy-Duty Vehicles. That report provided a series of findings and recommendations on the development of regulations for reducing fuel consumption of MHDVs. This report comprises the first periodic, five-year follow-on to the 2010 report. Reducing the Fuel Consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles, Phase Two reviews NHTSA fuel consumption regulations and considers the technological, market and regulatory factors that may be of relevance to a revised and updated regulatory regime taking effect for model years 2019-2022. The report analyzes and provides options for improvements to the certification and compliance procedures for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles; reviews an updated analysis of the makeup and characterization of the medium- and heavy-duty truck fleet; examines the barriers to and the potential applications of natural gas in class 2b through class 8 vehicles; and addresses uncertainties and performs sensitivity analyses for the fuel consumption and cost/benefit estimates."--Publisher's description.

More than 50 million Americans, one out of five, suffer from hay fever, asthma, and other allergic diseases. Many of these conditions are caused by exposure to allergens in indoor environments such as the house, work, and school--where we spend as much as 98 percent of our time. Developed by medical, public health, and engineering professionals working together, this unique volume summarizes what is known about indoor allergens, how they affect human health, the magnitude of their effect on various populations, and how they can be controlled. The book addresses controversies, recommends research directions, and suggests how to assist and educate allergy patients, as well as professionals. Indoor Allergens presents a wealth of information about common indoor allergens and their varying effects, from significant hay fever to life-threatening asthma. The volume discusses sources of allergens, from fungi and dust mites to allergenic chemicals, plants, and animals, and examines practical measures for their control. Indoor Allergens discusses how the human airway and immune system respond to inhaled allergens and assesses patient testing methods, covering the importance of the patient's medical history and outlining procedures and approaches to interpretation for skin tests, in vitro diagnostic tests, and tests of patients' pulmonary function. This comprehensive and practical volume will be important to allergists and other health care providers; public health professionals; specialists in building design, construction, and maintenance; faculty and students in public health; and interested allergy patients.

Nearly everyone experiences fatigue, but some professions--such as aviation, medicine and the military--demand alert, precise, rapid, and well-informed decision making and communication with little margin for error. The potential for fatigue to negatively affect human performance is well established. Concern about this potential in the aviation context extends back decades, with both airlines and pilots agreeing that fatigue is a safety concern. A more recent consideration is whether and how pilot commuting, conducted in a pilot's off-duty time, may affect fatigue during flight duty. In summer 2010 the U.S. Congress directed the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to update the federal regulations that govern pilot flight and duty time, taking into account recent research related to sleep and fatigue. As part of their directive, Congress also instructed FAA to have the National Academy of Sciences conduct a study on the effects of commuting on pilot fatigue. The Effects of Commuting on Pilot Fatigue reviews research and other information related to the prevalence and characteristics of commuting; to the science of sleep, fatigue, and circadian rhythms; to airline and regulatory oversight policies; and to pilot and airline practices. The Effects of Commuting on Pilot Fatigue discusses the policy, economic, and regulatory issues that affect pilot commuting, and outlines potential next steps, including recommendations for regulatory or administrative actions, or further research by the FAA.

"Advancing the state of aviation safety is a central mission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Congress requested this review of NASA's aviation safety-related research programs, seeking an assessment of whether the programs have well-defined, prioritized, and appropriate research objectives; whether resources have been allocated appropriately among these objectives; whether the programs are well coordinated with the safety research programs of the Federal Aviation Administration; and whether suitable mechanisms are in place for transitioning the research results into operational technologies and procedures and certification activities in a timely manner. Advancing Aeronautical Safety contains findings and recommendations with respect to each of the main aspects of the review sought by Congress. These findings indicate that NASA's aeronautics research enterprise has made, and continues to make, valuable contributions to aviation system safety but it is falling short and needs improvement in some key respects."--Publisher's description.

The potential for fatigue to negatively affect human performance is well established. Concern about this potential in the aviation context extends back decades, with both airlines and pilots agreeing that fatigue is a safety concern. A more recent consideration is whether and how pilot commuting, conducted in a pilot's off-duty time, may affect fatigue. The National Academy of Sciences was asked to review available information related to the prevalence and characteristics of pilot commuting; sleep, fatigue, and circadian rhythms; airline and regulatory oversight policies; and pilot and airline practices. This interim report summarizes the committee's review to date of the available information. The final report will present a final review, along with the committee's conclusions and recommendations based on the information available during its deliberations.

The Bureau of Reclamation and Sandia National Laboratories jointly developed the Roadmap to serve as a strategic research pathway for desalination and water purification technologies to meet future water needs. The book recommends that the Roadmap include a sharper focus on the research and technological advancements needed to reach the long-term objectives. The book also suggests that the environmental, economic, and social costs of energy required by increased dependence on desalination be examined. Strategies for implementing the Roadmap initiative are provided.

The report examines the Environmental Protection Agency's three-year plan for a comprehensive response to a chemical or biological attack on a civilian or public sector facility. The report states that EPA has correctly identified the essential major research areas (detection, containment, decontamination, and disposal) but calls for an initial focus on decontamination and disposal efforts and a longer term research program.

Progress in information technology (IT) has been remarkable, but the best truly is yet to come: the power of IT as a human enabler is just beginning to be realized. Whether the nation builds on this momentum or plateaus prematurely depends on today's decisions about fundamental research in computer science (CS) and the related fields behind IT. The Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) has often been asked to examine how innovation occurs in IT, what the most promising research directions are, and what impacts such innovation might have on society. Consistent themes emerge from CSTB studies, notwithstanding changes in information technology itself, in the IT-producing sector, and in the U.S. university system, a key player in IT research. In this synthesis report, based largely on the eight CSTB reports enumerated below, CSTB highlights these themes and updates some of the data that support them.

Recent rough estimates are that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) spends at least $38 billion a year on the research, development, testing, and evaluation of new defense systems; approximately 40 percent of that cost-at least $16 billion-is spent on software development and testing. There is widespread understanding within DoD that the effectiveness of software-intensive defense systems is often hampered by low-quality software as well as increased costs and late delivery of software components. Given the costs involved, even relatively incremental improvements to the software development process for defense systems could represent a large savings in funds. And given the importance of producing defense software that will carry out its intended function, relatively small improvements to the quality of defense software systems would be extremely important to identify. DoD software engineers and test and evaluation officials may not be fully aware of a range of available techniques, because of both the recent development of these techniques and their origination from an orientation somewhat removed from software engineering, i.e., from a statistical perspective. The panel's charge therefore was to convene a workshop to identify statistical software engineering techniques that could have applicability to DoD systems in development.

The report examines a draft plan, prepared by the Environmental Protection Agency, that identifies critical security issues for drinking water and wastewater and outlines related research and technical support needs. This report recommends increased attention to interagency coordination and encourages additional consideration of current restrictions on secure information dissemination. It further suggests that EPA incorporate the results of their research activities into an integrated water security guidance document to improve support for water and wastewater utilities.

Assessment in Support of Instruction and Learning is the summary of a National Research Council workshop convened to examine the gap between external and classroom assessment. This report discusses issues associated with designing an assessment system that meets the demands of public accountability and, at the same time, improves the quality of the education that students receive day by day. This report focuses on assessment that addresses both accountability and learning.

The report evaluates a White Paper written by restoration planners in South Florida on the role of water flow in restoration plans. The report concludes that there is strong evidence that the velocity, rate, and spatial distribution of water flow play important roles in maintaining the tree islands and other ecologically important landscape features of the Everglades.

This report reviews documents on acute exposure guideline levels (AEGLs) for nerve agents GA (tabun), GB (sarin), GD (soman), GD, and VX, sulfur mustard, diborane, and methyl isocyanate. The documents were developed by the National Advisory Committee on Acute Exposure Guideline Levels for Hazardous Chemicals (NAC). The subcommittee concludes that the AEGLs developed in those documents are scientifically valid conclusions based on data reviewed by NAC and are consistent with the NRC reports on developing acute exposure guideline levels.

Over the past half century, the international flow of goods, services, and capital has grown rapidly. Globalization creates new economic, cultural, and social opportunities, but also poses the challenge of ensuring that workers throughout the world share in these opportunities. Responding to this challenge, the U.S. government carries out a variety of policies and programs aimed at encouraging greater recognition of worker rights around the globe. The U.S. Department of State monitors worker rights abroad and reports on the status of those rights as part of its annual report to Congress in the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. Building on this history of monitoring and encouraging worker rights around the world, the Trade Act of 2002 includes on the list of overall trade negotiating objectives of the United States, promote respect for worker rights. Monitoring International Labor Standards provides expert, science-based advice on monitoring compliance with international labor standards. This report identifies relevant, valid, reliable, and useful sources of country-level data on labor standards; assesses the quality of existing and potential data and indicators that can be used to systematically monitor labor practices and the effectiveness of enforcement in order to determine compliance with national labor legislation and international standards; identifies innovative measures to determine compliance with international labor standards on a country-by-country basis and to measure progress on improved labor legislation and enforcement; explores the relationship between labor standards compliance and national policies relating to human capital issues; and recommends sustainable reporting procedures to monitor countries' progress toward implementation of international labor standards.

In November 1999, GSA and the U.S. Department of State convened a symposium to discuss the apparently conflicting objectives of security from terrorist attack and the design of public buildings in an open society. The symposium sponsors rejected the notion of rigid, prescriptive design approaches. The symposium concluded with a challenge to the design and security professions to craft aesthetically appealing architectural solutions that achieve balanced, performance-based approaches to both openness and security. In response to a request from the Office of the Chief Architect of the Public Buildings Service, the National Research Council (NRC) assembled a panel of independent experts, the Committee to Review the Security Design Criteria of the Interagency Security Committee. This committee was tasked to evaluate the ISC Security Design Criteria to determine whether particular provisions might be too prescriptive to allow a design professional "reasonable flexibility" in achieving desired security and physical protection objectives.

Biologists communicate to the research community and document their scientific accomplishments by publishing in scholarly journals. This report explores the responsibilities of authors to share data, software, and materials related to their publications. In addition to describing the principles that support community standards for sharing different kinds of data and materials, the report makes recommendations for ways to facilitate sharing in the future.

Accurate and timely environmental information can provide a tactical advantage to U.S. naval forces during warfare. This report analyzes the current environmental information system used by the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps and recommends ways to address uncertainty and leverage network-centric operating principles to enhance the value of environmental information.

The NRC has convened the Committee on Monitoring International Labor Standards to provide expert, science-based advice on monitoring compliance with international labor standards. The committee held a workshop in July 2002 to assess the quality of information and measures of progress towards compliance with international labor standards. This document summarizes the workshop. Reflecting the workshop agenda, this report focuses primarily on the availability and quality of information to measure compliance with four core international labor standards that were identified in 1998 by the ILO. The goal of this workshop summary is to communicate the key ideas and themes that emerged from the workshop presentations and discussions.

The National Academies Science, Technology, and Law Program convened three workshops focusing on specific aspects of OMB's "Guidelines for Ensuring and Maximizing the Quality, Objectivity, Utility, and Integrity of Information Disseminated by Federal Agencies." The workshops were intended to assist the agencies in developing their agency-specific implementation guidelines. This workshop report details the approaches agencies are considering using to implement the guidelines.

In 2001, with support from National Science Foundation, the National Research Council began a review of the evidence concerning whether or not the National Science Education Standards have had an impact on the science education enterprise to date, and if so, what that impact has been. This publication represents the second phase of a three-phase effort by the National Research Council to answer that broad and very important question. Phase I began in 1999 and was completed in 2001, with publication of Investigating the Influence of Standards: A Framework for Research in Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education (National Research Council, 2002). That report provided organizing principles for the design, conduct, and interpretation of research regarding the influence of national standards. The Framework developed in Phase I was used to structure the current review of research that is reported here. Phase II began in mid-2001, involved a thorough search and review of the research literature on the influence of the NSES, and concludes with this publication, which summarizes the proceedings of a workshop conducted on May 10, 2002, in Washington, DC. Phase III will provide input, collected in 2002, from science educators, administrators at all levels, and other practitioners and policy makers regarding their views of the NSES, the ways and extent to which the NSES are influencing their work and the systems that support science education, and what next steps are needed.

Since 1988, the Board on International Comparative Studies in Education (BICSE) at the (U.S.) National Research Council of the National Academies has engaged in activities designed to increase the rigor and sophistication of international comparative studies in education by encouraging synergies between large and smaller scale international comparative education research, to identify gaps in the existing research base, and to assist in communicating results to policy makers and the public. Under the current grant (1998-2002), funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, BICSE has sponsored public events and commissioned papers on the effects of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the power of video technology in international education research, international perspectives on teacher quality, and advances in the methodology of cross-national surveys of education achievement. This report responds to a request from the board's sponsors under the current grant to produce a report that builds on its previous work.

The report provides an independent assessment of suitable test protocols that might be useful and reliable for the testing and evaluation of standoff chemical agent detectors. The report proposes two testing protocols, one for passive detectors and one for active detectors, to help ensure the reliable detection of a release of chemical warfare agents. The report determined that testing these detectors by release of chemical warfare agents into the atmosphere would not provide additional useful information on the effectiveness of these detectors than would a rigorous testing protocol using chemical agents in the laboratory combined with atmospheric release of simulated chemical warfare agents.

The report explores how best to communicate weather and climate information by presenting five case studies, selected to illustrate a range of time scales and issues, from the forecasting of weather events, to providing seasonal outlooks, to projecting climate change.

Knowledge of time is essential to precise knowledge of location, and for this reason the Navy, with its need to navigate on the high seas, has historically played an important role in the development and application of advanced time realization and dissemination technologies. Discoveries coming from basic research funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) lie at the heart of today's highest performance atomic clocks, Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) expertise played a role in developing the space-qualified atomic clocks that enable the Global Positioning System (GPS), and the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO) maintains and disseminates the standard of time for all of the Department of Defense (DOD). The Navy has made major investments in most aspects of precision time and time interval (PTTI) science and technology, although specific PTTI-related research has also been funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and non-DOD agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Department of Commerce. Navy funding, largely through ONR, has a history of being an early enabler of key new developments. Judicious funding decisions by the Navy--particularly by ONR program officers--have underpinned most of the major advances in PTTI science and technology (S&T) in the last 50 years. PTTI is important to modern naval needs, and indeed to all the armed Services, for use in both navigation and communications. Precise time synchronization is needed to efficiently determine the start of a code sequence in secure communications, to perform navigation, and to locate the position of signal emitters. Precise frequency control is required in communications for spectrum utilization and frequency-hopped spread-spectrum techniques. There are many examples of essential military operations that depend on PTTI and could benefit from improvements in PTTI technology. These include: -GPS clocks and autonomous operations, -Weapon system four-dimensional coordination, -GPS antijamming, -Network-centric warfare, and -Secure military communications. This report summarizes that reductions in the size, weight, and power requirements and increases in the ruggedness of PTTI devices without sacrificing performance would put more accurate and precise timekeeping in the hands of the warrior, improving capabilities in all of the above operations.

Hispanics are defined as people of Spanish-speaking origin from Latin America, the Caribbean, or Europe. Hispanics vary in terms of socioeconomic status, race, religion and/or more. A common occurrence among the Hispanics, however, are the emerging issues concerning their health.It is estimated that by 2050 Hispanics will make up more than 25% of the United States' population. It is thus important that they have the resources to contribute maximally to American society. This can come about by first understanding and dealing with issues surrounding their health. In hopes of examining these issues and as a part of its continuing commitment to promote a national dialogue on race and diversity in the United States, the National Academies organized an expert meeting on Emerging Issues in Hispanic Health on April 10, 2002. Emerging Issues in Hispanic Health: Summary of a Workshop includes a review of key demographic data, such as population statistics, that characterize the Hispanic population in the United States; research on the socioeconomic, sociocultural, and behavioral determinants of health; effects of selective migration; the apparent epidemiological paradox: the relatively positive health outcomes observed in some Hispanic populations despite their relatively poor socioeconomic status or other types of disadvantage such as discrimination; and more.

The technical, scientific, policy, and institutional environment for conducting Earth science research has been changing rapidly over the past few decades. Changes in the technical environment are due both to the advent of new types and sources of remote sensing data, which have higher spatial and spectral resolution, and to the development of vastly expanded capabilities in data access, visualization, spatial data integration, and data management. The scientific environment is changing because of the strong emphasis on global change research, both nationally and internationally, and the evolving data requirements for that research. And the policy and institutional environment for the production of Earth observation data is changing with the diversification of both remote sensing data and the institutions that produce the data. In this report, the Space Studies Board's Steering Committee on Space Applications and Commercialization explores the implications of this changing environment, examining the opportunities and challenges it presents.

"Dedicated to the memory of David Wynn-Williams (1946-2002) ..."

This report is a product of the Committee on Restoration of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem (CROGEE), which provides consensus advice to the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force. The Task Force was established in 1993 and was codified in the 1996 Water Resources Development Act (WRDA); its responsibilities include the development of a comprehensive plan for restoring, preserving and protecting the South Florida ecosystem, and the coordination of related research. The CROGEE works under the auspices of the Water Science and Technology Board and the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the National Research Council. The CROGEE's mandate includes providing the Task Force not only with scientific overview and technical assessment of the restoration activities and plans, but also providing focused advice on technical topics of importance to the restoration efforts. One such topic was to examine "e;the linkage between the upstream components of the greater Everglades and adjacent coastal ecosystems."e;This report addresses this issue by breaking it down into three major questions:What is the present state of knowledge of Florida Bay ("e;the Bay"e;) on scientific issues that relate to the success of the overall CERP?What are the potential long-term effects of Everglades restoration as currently designed on the nature and condition of the Bay?What are the critical science questions that should be answered early in the restoration process to design a system that benefits not only the terrestrial and freshwater aquatic Everglades but the Bay as well?This study was inspired in part by the 2001 Florida Bay and Adjacent Marine Systems Science Conference held on April 23-26, 2001 in Key Largo, Florida. An overlapping meeting of the CROGEE was held at the same location on April 26-28, 2001. The conference was organized by the Program Management Committee (PMC) of the Florida Bay and Adjacent Marine Systems Science Program. The PMC organized the conference around five questions suggested by the Florida Bay Science Oversight Panel. These questions related to circulation, salinity patterns, and outflows of the Bay; nutrients and the nutrient budget; onset, persistence and fate of planktonic algal blooms; temporal and spatial changes in seagrasses and the hardbottom community; and recruitment, growth and survivorship of higher trophic level species. Some of these issues are discussed in the present report. However, as noted earlier, this report focuses on the subset of questions that relate to linkages between the Bay and the upstream portion of the Everglades system that arose at the 2001 Florida Bay Conference.