New this Week: Accounting for Health and Health Care; Understanding the Changing Planet

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Dear Subscriber, Last week the National Academy of Engineering announced the participants in the 16th Frontiers of Engineering symposium. The participants, 86 of the nation's brightest young engineers, will focus on cloud computing, autonomous aerospace systems, engineering and music, and engineering inspired by biology. The event will take place September 23 to 25 at IBM Learning Center in Armonk, New York. You can view the full list of participants here. Accounting for Health and Health Care: Approaches to Measuring the Sources and Costs of Their Improvement Prepublication It has become trite to observe that increases in health care costs have become unsustainable. How best for policy to address these increases, however, depends in part on the degree to which they represent increases in the real quantity of medical services as...   Evaluation of Biomarkers and Surrogate Endpoints in Chronic Disease Many people naturally assume that the claims made for foods and nutritional supplements have the same degree of scientific grounding as those for medication, but that is not always the case. The IOM recommends that the FDA adopt a consistent scientific...   Provision of Mental Health Counseling Services Under TRICARE In this book, the IOM makes recommendations for permitting independent practice for mental health counselors treating patients within TRICARE--the DOD's health care benefits program. This would change current policy, which requires all counselors to practice...   Understanding the Changing Planet: Strategic Directions for the Geographical Sciences From the oceans to continental heartlands, human activities have altered the physical characteristics of Earth's surface. With Earth's population projected to peak at 8 to 12 billion people by 2050 and the additional stress of climate change, it is more...   NOAA's Education Program: Review and Critique There is a national need to educate the public about the ocean, coastal resources, atmosphere, and climate. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency responsible for understanding and predicting changes in the Earth's...   Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies: Final Report The United States spends approximately $4 million each year searching for near-Earth objects (NEOs). The objective is to detect the NEOs that may collide with Earth. The majority of this funding supports the operation of several observatories that scan...   Conducting Biosocial Surveys: Collecting, Storing, Accessing, and Protecting Biospecimens and Biodata Prepublication Recent years have seen a growing tendency for social scientists to collect biological specimens such as blood, urine, and saliva as part of large-scale household surveys. By combining biological and social data, scientists are opening up new fields of inquiry...   Waste Forms Technology and Performance: Interim Report The Waste Forms Technology and Performance study examines requirements for waste form technology and performance in the context of the disposal system in which the waste will be emplaced. The Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management...   Imagine it!² is the documentary about how people change the world through science, engineering, and entrepreneurship. Watch the video Driving and the Built Environment Download Podcast Read the book: Unsubscribe To unsubscribe from this list please go here or reply to this message with "unsubscribe" in the subject line. To manage your subscriptions and account preferences go here. Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. 500 Fifth St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001. Privacy Statement