This paper emphasizes recent changes in the market for health care and health insurance in the Twin Cities, including the growth of managed care organizations, the growth of integrated delivery systems, the development of health insurance purchasing coalitions, and recent state health care reforms. The report concludes with a discussion of potential lessons from the Twin Cities for the health reform debate.

The report reviews data concerning the contribution of genetic factors to several severe mental disorders; described methodologies used in the studies, and broached several policy issues relevant to this area of research.

This report discusses globalization in perspective, U.S. technology policy in international economic perspective, and other aspects of technological developments. The most technologically sophisticated and economically significant sectors of the U.S. economy are now characterized by high levels of international production, foreign direct investment, trade among affiliated companies, and complex forms of international financial and technological collaboration.

This report examines an array of sustainable development definitions and discusses their common elements. Current agriculture, energy, and industry technologies are described as well as the strides being made in education, communication, and information technologies that could support sustainable development.

This background paper concludes that continued use of the radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) at Burnt Mountain entails low risk for the safety of maintenance workers and local populations and for the environment.

This report is the fifth publication from OTA’S assessment on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, examines the whole range of consequences for proliferation of the Soviet Union’s breakup.

In June 1995, OTA convened a workshop that brought together some of the world’s leading practitioners, academic experts, experienced diplomats, and leading technologists in order to study and discuss this issue. This report contains a summary of the results of the workshop, along with the original papers presented.

This report examines the question of how telecommunication related aid policies might be designed to support both United States trade and foreign aid goals.

This report assesses the state of the knowledge, identifies key future challenges in each of the three components of earthquake risk reduction—earth science, engineering, and implementation—and offers policy options to improve federal efforts.

A report on information about the Earth obtained from satellite systems assists the National Weather Service (NWS) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in conducting its legislatively mandated programs to provide weather and flood forecasts and warnings for the American public, improve public safety, and provide weather information for commerce and science.

This report takes one critical step—identifying and commenting on the available data—that may help in developing priorities for the use of limited resources to protect children from health and safety hazards in schools.

This background paper examines the complexities of innovation and commercialization in an attempt to demonstrate the linkages between science, technology, and innovation, and to highlight the growing importance of factors other than basic research in commercial success.

This paper first presents an overview of the nature and extent of the brownfields problem and discusses several key issues relating to their cleanup and redevelopment. Next, it examines three primary state approaches for addressing brownfields, with a particular focus on state voluntary cleanup programs. It then presents more detailed information on the voluntary programs in Minnesota, California, and Ohio.

This report discusses the major issues in the public school system, providing information, and contributing a broad range of perspectives that helped shape the issues regarding education and technology. The report shows that helping schools to make the connection between teachers and technology may be one of the most important steps to making the most of past, present, and future investments in educational technology and in our children’s future.

The report discusses the opportunities for Native Americans to use telecommunications (including computer networking, videoconferencing, multimedia, digital and wireless technologies, and the like) in the realms of culture, education, health care, economic development, and governance.

The purpose of this background paper is to describe the current state of development of HIV vaccines, and to discuss what is known about adverse reactions that may occur. The background paper provides an overview of ethical issues that arise in the conduct of HIV vaccine trials. The report also discusses alternatives to the current product liability system to encourage the development of HIV vaccines and to fairly compensate those who are harmed as a result of adverse reactions to the vaccine.

This report discusses a seven-country study of hospital financing is an attempt to find lessons for the United States. The individual experiences over the past decade of the United States and six of its international peers—Canada, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden—in hospital financing and payment systems are reviewed by experts in each country.

This report analyzes universities’, companies’, and researchers’ experiences and perspectives since enactment of federal laws to enhance technology transfer—especially as it pertains to research funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy, the agencies funding U.S. efforts in the Human Genome Project.

This report assesses the factors that facilitate international partnerships in big science projects and those that, conversely, favor the pursuit of purely national projects. The paper also reviews and identifies several important issues to consider in structuring future collaborations.

This paper updates and develops some key issues that OTA had identified in its earlier report, in light of recent developments in the private sector and in government.

This report describes how analysts developed and evaluated a number of alternative configurations of technology that, combined with certain legal and institutional innovations, could greatly enhance the capability of law enforcement agencies to detect and prosecute money launders seeking to exploit U.S. financial institutions and wire transfer systems.

This report analyzes what International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards can and cannot be expected to accomplish, identifies areas where they might be broadened and improved, and presents options for doing so.

This report reviews the roles that analyses of control technology and regulatory impacts play in OSHA’s standard setting process, and evaluates the various methods and resources on which the agency draws in conducting these efforts. In addition, based on findings from close examinations of a number of OSHA’s past rule-makings, the report provides a critical appraisal of how well these analyses seem to be helping the agency achieve its basic occupational safety and health mission.

The paper is divided into two sections, one on the PRC and one on Japan. Each section describes the structure and management of the respective defense industrial base and then compares it with its U.S. counterpart. The paper then assesses the degree to which lessons from the PRC and Japanese cases can be applied to the U.S. defense technology and industrial base (DTIB).