Speech given by Barbara C. Jordan for the Model Neighborhood Improvement Club in Houston, Texas, about the importance of neighborhoods to cities.

Studies on the formation and properties of new materials for high-energy, gas-phase lasers are described. Attention is directed mainly to systems having bound excited states but unbound ground states. An important class of such excimer/exciplex systems has a van der Waals dimer/oligomer as its ground state. This research attempts to probe the relative rates of electron pumping of excited-state manifolds and the preferentially pumped vibronic states within each manifold. Reactive quenching of emission, resonant self-absorption of laser emissions, and collision- and noncollision-induced intersystem crossing are also considered. Lists of personnel and facilities are included. 8 figures, 2 tables. (RWR)