Nation's Ability Research Articles

The Space Weather Journal: How It Began

The idea for a journal dedicated to space weather grew out of an AGU Chapman Conference in 2000. A major obstacle to improving operational space weather forecasting arises because much high‐quality research is not effectively transitioned for operational use. A large part of the problem resides in the lack of interaction among the communities involved in space weather activities. The primary goal of Space Weather: The International Journal of Research and Applications is to promote communication among scientists, engineers, technicians, science administrators, and space weather policy makers in a way that leads to continuous improvement in the nation's ability to mitigate space environment hazards to technical systems on the ground and in space.

Improbable Warriors: Mathematicians Grace Hopper and Mina Rees in World War II

June 2003 · Historically Speaking39 Improbable Warriors: Mathematicians Grace Hopperand Mina Rees in World War Il Kathleen Broome Williams Between 1943 and 1945 mathematicians Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992) and Mina Spiegel Rees (1902-1997) each held positions from which they influenced the nation's ability to wage a modern, math-dependent war.They knew of each other duringthewarand afterward theirUves intersected frequently since they moved in the same professional circles. These improbable warriors were among the few women whose war service proved profoundly beneficial to their later careers. In 1983 Grace Hopper, then seventy-six years old, was made an admiral by special appointment ofthe president ofthe United States. In 1987 the U. S. Navynameditsnew computer center in San Diego for Hopper, and in 1996, four years after her death, it launched the U.S.S. Hopper, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer. The recipient ofnumerous medals, awards, and honorary degrees, Grace Hopper was esteemed as a pioneer in the field of computing . Admiral Hopper never went to sea, but her computer expertise and managerial skills made her a pivotal figure in the navy's march to the computer age. Even when she retired in 1986—the oldestserving officer in the navy—Grace Hopper continued working as a consultant for Digital Equipment Corporation. She died in 1992 andwas buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery. Atthe heartofall these accomplishments was Hopper's brilliance in mathematics. Had it not been for World War ?, however, she might never have left the genteel campus in New Yorkwhere she was teaching. Hopper majored in mathematics at VassarCollege . AfterearningaMasters degreein 1930 and fouryears later a Ph.D. fromYak— a rare accomplishment for women in those days—she returned to Vassar to teach. But one year after Pearl Harbor Hopper joined theWAVES—navywomen—andupon graduating from midshipmen's school her mathematical skills landed herin the navy's Computation Project at Harvard University. The rapidlyexpanding data management needs ofWorld War ? accelerated the development ofmodern digital computers, especially in Britain and the United States. One American electro-mechanical device begun before the war was the brainchild ofHoward Aiken, professorofphysics and applied mathematics at Harvard. Aiken's Mark I, built by IBM, was the first functional, large-scale, automatically sequenced, general-purpose, digital computerto be produced inAmerica. When it was completed in 1944, the MarkI was installed at Harvard andwas immediately leased for the duration ofthe war by the U.S. Navy, desperate for gunnery and ballistics calculations. Aiken, a naval reserve officer, was given command of the navy's Harvard Computation Project. Aiken's computingmachine was in many ways unique. Itwas fifty feetlong, eight feet tall, and eight feet deep, filling an entire room. It had more than 750,000 parts, used 530 miles ofwire, and weighed about five tons. Most impressive were its speed and its automatic functioning. When programmed instructions were fed into the machine on punched paper tape it performed a series of arithmetic operations without human intervention . Aiken estimated that the Mark I was nearly one hundred times more productive than a manuallyoperated calculator. The original wartime staffof the Computation Labwas small—fewer than a dozen. Initially, Hopperwas one ofonlythreemathematicians writing programs for the Mark I and thus was one ofthe first-ever computer programmers. Throughoutthewarthis team, which grewto almostfortybyJanuary 1946, ran the Mark I around the clock, churning out essential data for all sorts of ordnance projects. Hopper's first task at the lab was to write a program for computing rocket trajectories. Her program accommodated inputvariables includingtargetbearing, elevation andrange, the ship's angle ofpitch and roll, drift angle, and time offlight. Until the Mark I became operational, the navy had to rely on what Hopper called "acres of girls down at Aberdeen [Proving Ground] using handdriven calculators" to create such firing tables,' and they could not keep up with the wartime demand. Anotherproblem Hopper tackled was to discern the best way for a minesweeperto locate magnetic mines. Further , she wrote a 561-page Manualthat gave a full and detailed description ofthe MarkI: all its parts and all its circuits, as well as how to programit. Years later,whenshewas asked how she learned to program the Mark I, Hopper's...

THIS IS A TEST, ONLY A TEST

THE LARGEST HOMELAND security mock drill ever to be conducted in the U.S. is taking place in two widely separated cities this week to probe the nation's ability to respond to nearly simultaneous terrorist attacks. The drill is being coordinated by the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) The five-day, $16 million exercise, dubbedTOPOFF 2 (Top Officials 2), involves federal, state, and local government and public health officials; the Red Cross; first responders; and Canadian government officials and agencies. Planning for this second in a series of congressionally mandated homeland security drills began in June 2001.The first exercise took place in 2000 in three states and uncovered serious communications gaps and a public health system unable to cope with a biological weapons event. No real weapons will be used in this week's exercise, which is based on a hypothetical situation. At a May 5 press briefing, DHS Secretary Tom Ridge said ...

Lessons Learned from 2002 Spill of National Significance (SONS) Exercise Gulf of Mexico

ABSTRACT The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) hosted the 2002 SONS Gulf National Incident Commander (NIC) Exercise in New Orleans, Louisiana on 23–25 April 2002 and the 2002 SONS Gulf Executive Seminar in Washington, D. C. on 26 April 2002. This massive effort was accomplished through almost two years of planning by a government/industry workgroup representing the USCG, Texas General Land Office (TGLO), Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator's Office, ExxonMobil, Stolt-Nielsen Transportation Group, and Environmental Protection Agency Region VI. The original SONS exercise was scheduled to exercise the Nation's ability to respond to a SONS in a two-part format. The terrorist attacks at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in September 2001 required that the original SONS exercise plans be delayed and amended. The final SONS exercise format was a three-part series. The first part involved tabletop discussions with port-level responders to determine what actions and issues would result from the exercise scenarios. The second part was a multi-day NIC tabletop exercise to understand the roles and responsibilities of the NIC by exploring the NIC's reactions to the scenarios and the issues raised by the affected ports. The third part was an executive-level seminar attended by senior federal government and industry executives as well as elected officials to discuss reactions to national-level issues identified by the NIC and to enhance interagency communication at the headquarters level.

Entangled Memories: Versions of the Past in Germany and Japan, 1945—2001

In the history of memory, the national paradigm continues to reign supreme. This may come as a surprise at a time when the historical profession is beginning to discard the category of the nation and starting to produce transnational work. International comparisons and relational histories, and also the larger frameworks of European, post-colonial, or world history gradually seem to be replacing the narrow confines of the nineteenth-century paradigm of national history. Studies of memory, however, continue to cling to the nation with a peculiar stubbornness. Remembering and forgetting are the means through which nations confront their respective pasts. At the same time, nations appear as the products of memory forged into imagined communities through a series of memorial days, public speeches and visits to memorial sites. Within this scheme, an idealized or traumatic moment is remembered internally in metaphors of a 'past that does not go away'. Memory thus appears as largely a temporal relation between significant moments in the national past that linger on as memories for generations to come. In the cases of postwar Germany and Japan, the past and the present are severed through historical ruptures and 'zero hours' which, it is held, need to be bridged in order to come to terms with a traumatic experience that haunts both societies. From this perspective, memory appears as the almost direct expression of a national mentality, indicative of a nation's ability to mourn, to learn and to mature (by overcoming narrow nationalist perspectives).1 The language of temporality thus produces the familiar image of the interpretation of the past as a matter of national culture. The conventional picture of Japan as inherently unable to deal critically with her aggressive and expansionist history falls in this category. This 'inability' and 'deficiency' is frequently couched in cultural terms and explained as the product of national character.2 The German preoccupation with the nazi past, on the other hand, is attributed to a process of collective learning. Daniel Goldhagen's thesis

Mind the Three Transatlantic Power Gaps: How a New Framework Can Help Reinvent the Transatlantic Relationship

The end of the brief hot war in Iraq and the accompanying transatlantic diplomatic conflict set the stage for a new and challenging period of US-European relations. The United States, its European allies and the international community more generally face complex and multifaceted rebuilding challenges: Iraq needs to be rebuilt after the war which removed Saddam Hussein's tyrannical regime from power; the transatlantic rift must be repaired; the United Nations needs to be rebuilt, and with it the core of international law regulating the use of force. Finally, the bond of trust between Washington and the rest of the world needs to be rebuilt with a special focus on the kind of role that the United States is going to play in the international system. Tackling this daunting agenda is hardly possible without reinventing the transatlantic partnership. To this purpose both sides need to pay more attention to the various power gaps that are weakening their bonds. Based on the notion of hard and soft power we identify three power gaps that need to be addressed. The first and probably best know is the hard power gap, which has been at the fore of the transatlantic agenda since NATO's intervention in the Balkans in the mid-90s. Put most simply, the hard power gap is the result of diverging threat assessments and spending patterns on both sides of the Atlantic. Most recently, NATO has undertaken enormous efforts to address specific European shortcomings. The European Union (EU) has introduced new capability provision mechanisms to achieve its Helsinki Headline Goal and some European countries have begun to increase their defense budgets. Furthermore, EU leaders have agreed to establish an agency for defense capabilities development, research, acquisition and armaments that will help improve procurement efficiency.2 Although far from being accomplished, the good news about the hard power gap is that it has been identified as a shortcoming. The same can not yet been said about the remaining two power gaps. Second there is a soft power gap. Soft power, according to Joseph Nye, is a nation's (or group of nations) ability to influence events based on cultural attraction, ideology, and international institutions.3 The soft power gap is not the result of a lack of capabilities on

Crisis Management Teams (CMT): Leveraging the Science of Team Performance under Stress

Crisis management teams play a vital role in our nation's ability to effectively respond to disaster situations. However, the tasks that these teams perform happen infrequently and are often ambiguous and dynamic in nature. Furthermore, they involve interdependent action from many different organizations that may not work together on a regular basis. While it is common to train members in task-work skills, less common is the explicit training of teamwork skills. Research and real-world examples show that teamwork is not an automatic consequence of being in a team. As CMTs are often interdisciplinary and operate in environments characterized by stressors effective teamwork becomes even more of a challenge. Several communities have invested heavily into understanding the impact of stress on teamwork and decision-making within complex environments. The focus of this paper will be extracting lessons from these communities in an effort to provide guidance to CMTs.

The Need and Requirements for Modernizing Surface Water Quality Monitoring in the Russian Federation

Water quality monitoring in the Russian Federation faces political, technical, institutional, and financial problems. The current Russian model for gathering and production of water quality data is unreliable, out-of-date, and disconnected with current water management issues. While insufficient financing and ineffective legislation are the most obvious limitations, more importantly there is a need for a major overhaul of the program that would begin with a national framework for water quality management. This framework would provide for legal, institutional, and technical modernization of the program within a clearly-defined set of national goals for water quality management. The monitoring program in use in Russia is the legacy of the former USSR. The current growth of national priorities in terms of control and improvement of surface water quality is in contrast to the nation's decreasing ability to provide appropriate information within sustainable technical and institutional environments and that is affordable. This situation requires a new model based on the development of a flexible monitoring system focusing on water quality management. Ensuring financial stability of the monitoring system requires having a transparent and consistent program meeting the specific demands of water management. This, in turn, requires resource-saving methods and innovative relationships between agencies and with the private sector allowing cost reductions for the government.

The Chinese Enigma: Impacts of WTO Accession Upon Canadian and U.S. Exports and Imports

China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) is an important milestone in the integration of this nation into the world economy. Substantial reduction in trade barriers by China, one of the world's largest and most rapidly growing economies, is expected to have a significant impact, both on China itself and on the global economy. In assessing likely impacts on trade between China and North America of China joining the WTO, a priori one might expect new opportunities for China in labor intensive activities/products, while for the United States and for Canada one might expect added export market opportunities, as China grows, in activities/products that require land, resources and capital. However, the extent to which China and its trading partners will benefit from China's increasing integration into the global economy will largely depend on the internal changes in policy and infrastructure that may be adopted by China. China has embarked on a process of economic reform, but the speed and extent to which this continues to be pursued will affect this nation's ability to capitalize on its comparative advantages and to meet new challenges that are associated with the opportunities of access to a larger market. The difficulty of forecasting such internal changes means that China continues to be a major source of uncertainty in projecting world markets and trade flows. This uncertainty is particularly evident for trade in agricultural products

Domestic Regulation and International Trade: Where's the Race?--Lessons From Telecommunications and Export Controls

This paper examines the effects of international trade on domestic regulation, illustrating general points through discussion of recent experience in telecommunications regulation and export control regimes. Critics of international trade assert that trade undermines a nation's ability to maintain an independent national regulatory structure that would be chosen under democratic-representative processes, promoting instead a race to the bottom in protection of public interests. The race-to-the-bottom metaphor builds on economic writings suggesting that, at least under certain conditions, open trade in goods leads to factor price equalization with reduced returns to factors (e.g., low-skilled labor) that are relatively abundant in other nations. Although the conditions from which factor-price-equalization was deduced seldom occur, the transmission of competitive effects from trade resembles the effects predicted by the race-to-the-bottom metaphor. Unlike that metaphor, however, trade's competitive effects generally benefit both national economic welfare and individual liberty. That is generally true of trade's effects, including reduction of the scope or bite of domestic regulation: trade-induced changes in such regulation most often will enhance national welfare by allowing increased competition and diminishing economic rents protected by regulatory intervention. Trade can produce a diminution of national welfare in some instances, where trade undermines the ability of a nation to deal with certain negative externalities of production, but this will be the exceptional case. Trade's tendency to diminish regulatory rents will be inimical to the interests of many politicians and politically influential groups, which will face higher costs to maintaining favored regulatory policies. These individuals and groups have incentives to argue that particular instances of open trade fit the limited circumstances in which trade reduces national economic welfare. They will claim as well that trade reduces the ability of national polities to design regulation favored by each nation's citizens. If all processes governing regulation in the absence of trade are taken as part of the calculus of what a nation's citizens favor, this claim is a tautology. If, however, citizens' views are abstracted from current political-decisional processes, trade is seen to serve (under most conditions) to counteract antidemocratic tendencies in domestic governance, protecting individual liberty in a world of diverse tastes.

Vaccine Safety: Injecting a Dose of Common Sense

Vaccine Safety: Injecting a Dose of Common Sense

Productivity trends in the new millennium

Recent productivity gains reflect past investments in information technology (IT). Yet, the demand for highly skilled IT workers may well exceed the current supply. Optimistic about the nation's ability to fill this potential skills gap and develop the organizational structures that will make efficient use of the new technologies, the authors of this article describe how the digital economy will continue to drive economic expansion. After examining workforce development needs and ways to fill the growing skills gap, they offer a four-point program for maintaining high productivity through technology management, streamlined organizational structures, distance learning, and performance measurement. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Productivity trends in the new millennium

Recent productivity gains reflect past investments in information technology (IT). Yet, the demand for highly skilled IT workers may well exceed the current supply. Optimistic about the nation's ability to fill this potential skills gap and develop the organizational structures that will make efficient use of the new technologies, the authors of this article describe how the digital economy will continue to drive economic expansion. After examining workforce development needs and ways to fill the growing skills gap, they offer a four-point program for maintaining high productivity through technology management, streamlined organizational structures, distance learning, and performance measurement. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Harnessing science and technology

A new report by the National Research Council says that the United States' ability to convert science and technology into new products, jobs, and profits is being fueled by a strong research and development base and by a favorable economic climate.But the report cautions that serious deficiencies in pre‐college education and wavering support for basic research may erode the nation's ability to achieve sustained economic growth and improved living standards in the next century.

Interview: Benchmarking Industry Views of Environmental Issues?

Chamber President Tom Donohue contends that the cumulative impact of environmental initiatives will reduce the nation's ability to protect its environment.

Plugging into the wired world: Perspectives from Singapore

Singapore's vision of a smart city or the ‘intelligent island’ is becoming a reality at the turn of the millennium. With the recent launch of Singapore ONE (One Network for Everyone), a nationwide broadband high‐speed network, it will deliver interactive, multimedia applications and services to every home, school and office in Singapore. Today, the provision of the one‐stop non‐stop business and government services; on‐line shopping, cyberbanking and stock trading; and the virtual college and library are some implementations of the island's IT initiatives. Singapore's readiness to brave the cyberworld is the result of its concerted efforts to embrace information technology and communications as important milestones to boost its economic structure since the early 1980s. Like any developments of physical infrastructures that have tremendous impact on the nation's ability to succeed, the nationwide information infrastructure was strategically planned and implemented to support the emerging electronic commerce and cybersociety. This paper provides an analysis of how Singapore builds its national information infrastructure, promotes the adoption of information technology, and establishes electronic commerce to create the digital economy to ride into the twenty‐first century. Its success in building its high‐value added information technology hub is due to considerable efforts of the policy‐makers. However, Singapore's experiences may not be directly transferable to other countries. It is nevertheless interesting to understand the basic ingredients used to diffuse and infuse the island's sophisticated national IT strategies.

Economic Growth and Basic Human Needs

An enduring debate in the political economy of development turns upon the question of whether trade-offs exist between economic growth and the equitable provision of basic human needs (such as adequate nutrition, shelter, and education) in poor areas. Much of the empirical work on this growth-welfaredebate has supported the argument that improvements in basic welfare and enhanced economic performance are mutually reinforcing processes. But if the relationships between improved welfare and factors of growth have been fruitfully examined, the effects of growth and growth-oriented policies upon subsequent levels of poverty and inequality are less clear. In a past issue of this journal, political scientists Bruce E. Moon and William J. Dixon argue that higher rates of economic growth do not improve a nation's ability to meet the basic needs of its population. However, two problems undermine Moon and Dixon's analysis and cast doubt upon the accuracy of their conclusions. I address this concern, constructing and estimating a dynamic model of the impact of growth upon basic welfare that tries to account for these problems. The findings confirm Moon and Dixon's general conclusion, but suggest that the impact of growth-related factors upon basic needs outcomes may be less enduring than they had supposed, with beneficial consequences of either positive externalities or effective government intervention (or both) soon outweighing any detrimental effects of sustained growth. Do trade-offs exist between economic growth and the equitable provision of basic human needs in poor areas? Basic human needs are material and social requirements of human functioning, such as minimum levels of nutrition, shelter, and education. Although these requirements may differ across regions and cultures,1 similar conditions tend to prevail in areas where these needs-whatever they may be-are poorly met: life expectancy is generally low, infant mortality rates are high, and the scope of human activity is limited for most people to meeting the bare necessities of day-to-day survival. Such widespread destitution will have adverse effects on labor productivity, and will preclude the possibility of private savings and investment for much of the population. These conditions can trap a nation or region within a vicious circle of increasing demands upon resources and institutions and a diminishing capacity of the material and institutional environments to meet these demands.

An Analysis of Some of the Principal Legal Questions Relating to U.N. Weapons Inspections in Iraq

AbstractThe multi-year U.N. weapons inspection program in Iraq has encountered numerous difficulties. Its basic objectives have been to ascertain the extent of Iraq's atomic, biological, and chemical weapons, and ballistic missile systems, and then to undertake efforts designed to eliminate such and complicate that nation's ability to reconstruct that arsenal. A wide variety of legal issues surround the operation of the inspection program. Some of these arise from the seminal U.N. resolutions on the subject, and associated operational documents drafted by the Secretary-General, while others arise from the February 23, 1998, Memorandum of Understanding between Secretary Kofi Annan and the Iraqi government. In this article, six of the principal legal issues are subjected to analysis. It is suggested that ambiguity affects some, but not all of the issues. Nevertheless, the ambiguity that is extant, though presenting the potential for complex and unsettling difficulties, has permitted the development of an inspection regime unprecedented in international law.

RESPONDING TO DROUGHT: COMMON THREADS FROM THE PAST, VISIONS FOR THE FUTURE

ABSTRACT: A number of studies conducted since the late 1970s have evaluated state and federal responses to drought in the United States. Each of these studies identified a number of key issues and impediments that needed to be addressed to improve the nation's ability to cope with and prepare for future episodes of drought. A content analysis of these studies was performed to identify common threads in their recommendations. The premise of this analysis was that the series of drought years that occurred between 1986 and 1992 and recurred between 1994 and 1996 increased awareness of our nation's continuing and apparent growing vulnerability to drought. This awareness has led to greater consensus among principal constituents and stakeholders, and also a greater sense of urgency to implement actions now to lessen vulnerability. The results of this analysis revealed that several themes recur: create an integrated national drought policy and plan; develop an integrated national climate monitoring (drought watch) system; incorporate drought in FEMA's National Mitigation Strategy; conduct post-drought audits of response efforts; establish regional drought forums; and encourage development of state drought mitigation plans.

Section Five Future Developments

There has been considerable debate over the causes and consequences of ‘deindustrialisation’. The relative decline of manufacturing, and particularly of manufacturing employment, and the corresponding relative growth of services, is prevalent in both slow and fast growing economies. This has led many to argue that the process is one of historical evolution such that the advanced stage of economic development is characterised by a modern tertiary sector with growing preferences for service products. This paper argues that this view is an oversimplification: dein‐dustrialisation may result from economic success; however, it may also reflect economic weaknesses. In particular, a declining manufacturer sector may have adverse impacts on a trading nation's ability to generate sufficient exports to pay for necessary imports, and hence also on the growth of productivity, national income and living standards.