This assessment analyzes the problem of acid deterioration of books and the program underway at the Library of Congress. The program at the Library involves the chemical treatment of books in a unique and effective process that, however, also presents some new engineering and safety concerns. Because of these concerns, the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations requested this independent review of the Library’s system and other available or potential processes.

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.

This report illustrates a range of options for congressional action in nine principal areas of public policy related to infertility: collecting data on reproductive health; preventing infertility; information to inform and protect consumers; providing access to infertility services; reproductive health of veterans; transfer of human eggs, sperm, and embryos; recordkeeping; surrogate motherhood; and reproductive research.

This report in the series illustrates a range of options for congressional action in three major areas of public policy related to this application of biotechnology: the criteria for review of planned introductions for potential risk, the administrative mechanisms for applying such review criteria, and the research base supporting planned introductions.

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.

This report addresses the issues of detection, identification, yield estimation, and evasion to arrive at answers to the two critical questions: 1) Down to what size explosion can underground testing be seismically monitored with high confidence? 2) How accurately can the yields of underground explosions be measured?

The report highlights strategic choices available to Americans as we negotiate a period of major transformation. The choices we make will have profound consequences for the quality of work and the amenities available to Americans and for America’s role of leadership in the free world.