Headline News, Science Views (1991) / Chapter Skim
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2 Technology in Everyday Life
2 Technology in Everyday Life
Pages 19-52
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From page 21... ...
we discovered—contrary to what one might expect that there are more effective ways to protect young bus riders than with seat belts. In fact, we concluded that the overall potential benefit of requiring seat belts in school buses is insufficient to justify any new federal standard, although states and local school systems might want to install them on their own .
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From page 22... ...
Still, 40 or 50 deaths of children cause acute suffering for the families involved, and we ought to reduce this toll if we can. Our committee, which included experts in highway safety, pediatrics, bus manufacture, occupant-restraint systems and other fields, calculated that equipping all school buses with seat belts would save one life and avoid several dozen serious injuries each year.
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From page 23... ...
Many of these deaths could be prevented with better safety training for both children and drivers and by installing stop-signal arms and improved cross-view mirrors on buses. Other possible techniques include loudspeakers to warn children, crossingcontroT arms to guide them as they cross the street, and electronic or mechanical sensors to help bus drivers detect children in blind spots outside the buses.
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From page 24... ...
Together with telecommunications, they account for a tenth of our country's gross national product. All of these diverse enterprises depend on the microchip, the incredibly small and powerful device that is the fundamental building block for all computers.
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From page 25... ...
A COMPUTER FUTURE WITHOUT A HEART Drawing by Bill Hogan The Record, Hackensack, NJ.
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From page 26... ...
computer hardware manufacturers may find themselves limited to specialty markets, which is roughly comparable to our automobile industry agreeing 50 years ago to produce only jeeps and convertibles. This new situation threatens a loss of jobs and profits not only for U.S.
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From page 27... ...
Equipment Corp., chaired a colloquium on the fixture of the U.S. computer industry for the Computer Science and Technology Board of the Nationa]
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From page 28... ...
The system would send each vehicle owner a monthly bill. Roadside transmitters could send messages to voice synthes~ers inside vehicles, informing drivers about road conditions.
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From page 29... ...
Ervin is a research scientist at the Transportation Research Institute at the University of Michigan. Man Chen is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan.
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From page 30... ...
Louis lie even further in the future. In a report being released today, a committee of the National Research Council said the outlook is bleak unless something is done to accommodate the continuing growth of air travel.
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From page 32... ...
New aircraft that can operate on very short runways or that take off and land vertically could replace conventional planes for shorter flights while requiring much less space at airports. This could free longer runways for large jets or allow air service at smaller satellite airports near major population centers.
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From page 33... ...
That might not appear to be as alarming as a terrorist attack on other targets, such as an airliner or a municipal water supply, but the situation threatens far more than Sunday chats with Grandma. Major disruption of telephone lines could prevent air traffic controllers from communicating, cut off police and fire services and wreak havoc on businesses that send large amounts of data over the lines.
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From page 34... ...
Aitnough lines of this capacity are not yet in service, the trend clearly is towards concentrating more and more calls onto fewer fibers. Digital switching technology is concentrating the network in a similar fashion, routing far more calls than did previous devices.
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From page 35... ...
Crisismanagement capabilities could be improved, such as by requiring companies to provide priority service to police, hospitals and other selected users during declared emergencies. More should be done to protect telephone software from hostile use.
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From page 37... ...
~ chaired a National Research Council committee that examined this recently and we came away worried about how well, and how fast, the United States will be able to respond to conventional wars in the future. In today's technological world, it will be much harder to gear up for an extended fight than it was during World War II, when "Rosie the Riveter" and millions of other Americans worked around the clock to produce the guns, tanks and other supplies for the nation's "arsenal of democracy." Today, Rosie might need a degree in computer science and the skills to work on an advanced fighter aircraft, not to mention the right equipment, materials and support system.
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From page 38... ...
The Defense Department is aware of the need for industrial preparedness, but its process for ensuring it is fragmented and inadequate. President Bush should create a national group to set clearer policies for industrial preparedness and Defense Secretary Cheney should elevate responsibility for the issue to a higher level.
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From page 39... ...
The main difference between houses and televisions, of course, is that houses require land, which is in fixed supply with rapidly escalating costs. Housing prices also are affected by interest rates, local business conditions and other factors that are hard to ameliorate.
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From page 40... ...
To succeed, experimental programs would need to protect prototype designs and a limited number of housing units from frivolous lawsuits, ant} to disseminate their results widely.
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From page 41... ...
DESIGNING FOR AN AGING AMERICA 41 Instead of wringing our hands endlessly about housing costs, it's time we tackled each of the components of that cost and, with respect to technology, became more creative about supporting research and development. Americans need houses they can afford.
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From page 42... ...
This is not to suggest that the needs of the elderly have been ignored; many companies produce excellent products for older customers. Neither is aging synonymous with frailty or illness.
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From page 43... ...
Czaja is research director at the Stein Gerontological Institute in Miami and associate professor of industrial engineering at the University of Miami.
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From page 44... ...
The problem is not only earthquakes, but natural disasters generally. Hurricane Hugo, Hurricane Terry and the Bay Area earthquake followed on the heels of wilt/fires in the West, flash floods and debris flows in Hawaii and an earthquake in southern California during the past two years.
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From page 45... ...
This past week, the United Nations acted to implement a worldwide program that designates the 1990s as the "International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction." The program will encourage scientists, engineers, public officials, urban planners and others from around the world to share research and information on hazard-reduction techniques. For Americans, this need not require losing perspective about the tradeoffs involved in cost, land use, convenience and the like.
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From page 46... ...
Jortb erg Imagine a national asset whose value dwarfs the cost of the Clean Air BiD, child care, fighting drugs and other initiatives combined. Such an asset exists, but it has the misfortune of falling under the heading of "infrastructure." ~ would wager that most people who read that word immediately think of bridges or potholes.
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From page 47... ...
Our country is in a similar position with its severe budget deficit, yet it is failing to maintain and repair its buildings. Department of Defense buildings alone are worth more than $500 billion, and the nation's 8S,021 public school buildings are close behind.
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From page 48... ...
Techniques exist to accomplish this, and officials ought to start using them. Second, budgets should reflect the fact that adequate maintenance and repair are essential parts of the overall cost of owning public buildings.
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From page 49... ...
On the other hand, the evidence is convincing that sea level is rising and that many coastal communities lack the data they need to make realistic decisions about coping with the situation in the decades ahead. Most scientists agree that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, caused in part by our modern appetite for fossil fuels and forest products, are creating a "greenhouse effect" that will raise world temperatures by three to eight degrees Farenheit over the next century.
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From page 50... ...
Also of special concern are the intrusion of salt water into underground aquifers and the impact of rising sea level on coastlines that have special environmental, as opposed to economic, value. Again, it is important to stress that global sea level is rising slowly enough to prepare for its effects.
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From page 51... ...
TOUGH CHOICES ABOUT RISING SEA LEVEL 51 make these multi-million-dolIar decisions more knowledgeably. The time to start getting ready is now, before the waters rise any higher.
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