This report discusses the use of technology in education of students K-12 and university.

The staff paper is part of a larger, ongoing OTA assessment of the ozone nonattainment issue, requested by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

This report discusses the necessity of quality health care information, the access to health information and the intentions of providing such information.

Annual report of the progress and budgets of the Office of Technology Assessment.

Scientific and technical journals in biology and medicine have extensively covered a debate about whether and how to determine the function and order of human genes on human chromosomes and when to determine the sequence of molecular building blocks that comprise DNA in those chromosomes. This report surveys the points made so far in the debate that involves science, technology, and politics, focusing on those that most directly influence the policy options facing the U.S. Congress.

Students make many choices over a long period, and choose a career through a complicated process. This process includes formal instruction in mathematics and science, and the opportunity for informal education in museums, science centers, and recreational programs. The influence of family, teachers, peers, and the electronic media can make an enormous difference. This memorandum analyzes these influences. Because education is “all one system, ” policymakers interested in nurturing scientists and engineers must address the educational environment as a totality; changing only one part of the system will not yield the desired result.

This report provides the Office of Technology Assessment with an overview of some of the investment issues affecting the future of the electric power industry in support of OTA's ongoing study on competition in the industry.

This report describes the new technologies being used in criminal justice and, as in all of the reports of this series, addresses that delicate balance to be maintained between the national interest and individual rights.

Annual report detailing the progress and budget of the Office of Technology Assessment.

This report focuses on the formal policies and guidelines’ through which health care institutions articulate decision making procedures and identify permissible options regarding the use of life-sustaining treatments for adult patients in their care.

Changes in how physicians and hospitals are paid have made individual consumers, health insurers, employers, and medical providers more sensitive to the cost implications of their decisions. At the same time, these policy changes have elevated the importance of having consumers be informed about the quality of medical providers. Purchasers of medical care (individual consumers, employers, health insurers) need to know about any differences in quality so that they can weigh quality along with cost in making decisions.

This OTA assessment addresses the effectiveness and costs of selected strategies for promoting and maintaining the health of children and to identify strategies whose implementation could substantially improve children’s health or lower health care costs.

This report is the unclassified version of a classified document delivered to Congress at the end of August 1987. In attempting to reach agreement with the Department of Defense on what information could be included in an unclassified report, OTA found the wheels of bureaucracy to turn very slowly—when they turned at all. Only through the active intervention of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, beginning in late in November 1987, and extending to the end of March, 1988, was a partial resolution of the problem achieved.