Value Engineering is an organized problem solving technique that utilizes communication and teamwork skills -- skills heralded as strengths for women. Value Engineering offers an excellent career opportunity for women in the engineering profession. It is an expanded career path that is currently being overlooked by women. Value Engineering is supported by SAVE (Society of American Value Engineers) and certification in the process can be achieved in two years. For women in the engineering profession, VE is an ideal place to redirect their existing skills and training. The number of certified women is a minority, creating a wide-open field of opportunity in federal and state agencies as well as private industry. Value Engineering can provide that new avenue for engineering careers -- a new direction where current skills can be applied to a diverse and exciting profession. 1 fig.

The revival of interest in nuclear ground-state octupole deformations that occurred in the 1980's was stimulated by observations in 1980 of particularly large deviations between calculated and experimental masses in the Ra region, in a global calculation of nuclear ground-state masses. By minimizing the total potential energy with respect to octupole shape degrees of freedom in addition to {epsilon}{sub 2} and {epsilon}{sub 4} used originally, a vastly improved agreement between calculated and experimental masses was obtained. To study the global behavior and interrelationships between other nuclear properties, we calculate nuclear ground-state masses, spins, pairing gaps and {Beta}-decay and half-lives and compare the results to experimental qualities. The calculations are based on the macroscopic-microscopic approach, with the microscopic contributions calculated in a folded-Yukawa single-particle potential.