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The United States has jurisdiction over 3.4 million square miles of ocean—an expanse greater than the land area of all fifty states combined. This vast marine area offers researchers opportunities to investigate the ocean’s role in an integrated Earth system, but also presents challenges to society, including damaging tsunamis and hurricanes, industrial accidents, and outbreaks of waterborne diseases. The 2010 Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon oil spill and 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami are vivid reminders that a broad range of infrastructure is needed to advance our still-incomplete understanding of the ocean. The National Research Council (NRC)’s Ocean Studies Board was asked by the National Science and Technology Council’s Subcommittee on Ocean Science and Technology, comprised of 25 U.S. government agencies, to examine infrastructure needs for ocean research in the year 2030. This request reflects concern, among a myriad of marine issues, over the present state of aging and obsolete infrastructure, insufficient capacity, growing technological gaps, and declining national leadership in marine technological development; issues brought to the nation’s attention in 2004 by the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. A 15-member committee of experts identified four themes that encompass 32 future ocean research questions–enabling stewardship of the environment, protecting life …

A \Staged Z-Pinch” is a fusion-energy concept in which stored-electric energy is first converted into plasma-liner-kinetic energy, and then transferred to a coaxialtarget plasma [H. U. Rahman, F. J. Wessel, and N. Rostoker, Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, p. 714(1996)]. Proper choice of the liner and target materials, and their initial radii and mass densities, leads to dynamic stabilization, current amplification, and shock heating of the target. Simulations suggest that this configuration has merit as a alternative inertial-confinement-fusion concept, and may provide an energy release exceeding thermonuclear break-even, if tested on one of many newer pulsed power systems, for example those located at Sandia National Laboratories.