Office of Technology Assessment - 48 Matching Results

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Finding a balance: computer software, intellectual property and the challenge of technological change

Description: This report identifies three policy issues; 1) the appropriate scope of copyright protection for computer software; 2) patent protection for software-related inventions and algorithms, and how the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will handle these types of applications; and 3) complications facing librar4ies and commercial and private producers and users of digital information, including computer-based mixed media products.
Date: 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Fueling development: energy technologies for developing countries: summary

Description: This report discusses the issues surrounding energy efficiency in developing countries. Explores the way in which developing countries meet their energy needs, and how that affects the political stability and broad-based economic growth.
Date: 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Fueling Development: Energy Technologies for Developing Countries

Description: This report examines the delivery of energy services in developing countries and how the United States can help to improve these energy services while minimizing environmental impacts, OTA examines the technologies and policies that will enable more efficient use of energy and the most promising new sources of energy supply.
Date: April 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Genetic Counseling and Cystic Fibrosis Carrier Screening: Results of a Survey

Description: This paper presents results from a 1991 OTA survey of 431 genetic counselors and nurse geneticists. It was conducted to better understand the environment in which the average genetic counselor or nurse in genetics works, to describe the infrastructure and tools available to these professionals, to assess the state of practice in the provision of cystic fibrosis (CF) carrier screening, and to evaluate their attitudes regarding CF carrier screening.
Date: October 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Genetic Tests and Health Insurance: Results of a Survey

Description: This background paper describes results from a 1991 OTA survey of U.S. health insurers’ attitudes toward genetic tests and genetic information— both how they currently view information from various sources (e.g., genetic tests, other medical tests, or family histories) in underwriting decisions and how they might reimburse consumers for genetic tests. It also reports data on the role health insurers expect genetic tests and genetic information will play in their business practices over the comi… more
Date: October 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Global Standards: Building Blocks for the Future

Description: There are standards to protect the environment and human health and safety, and to mediate commercial transactions. Other standards ensure that different products are compatible when hooked together. This report is looking across industry sectors; it evaluates the U.S. standards setting process in the light of its changing economic and technological environment, and compares it to processes in other countries.
Date: March 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Green Products by Design: Choices for a Cleaner Environment

Description: In this report, OTA provides a conceptual overview of how designers might integrate environmental concerns with traditional design objectives, and how policymakers can best take advantage of such opportunities. Although the concept of “green” design is gathering momentum, a number of technical, behavioral, economic, and informational barriers need to be addressed.
Date: September 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Home Drug Infusion Therapy Under Medicare

Description: This report deals with the drug and biological infusion treatments (including blood transfusions) being used in the home but not yet explicitly covered by Medicare in that setting. Medicare does cover total parenteral nutrition (TPN) in the home for individuals with long-term disabilities that prevent them from being able to digest food. TPN has many similarities to the therapies discussed in detail in this report, and many providers of HDIT also provide TPN and other nutritional products and s… more
Date: May 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Identifying and Controlling Pulmonary Toxicants

Description: This Background Paper examines whether the agencies responsible for administering Federal environmental and health and safety laws have taken this concern for respiratory health to heart. This paper provides a partial response to the committees’ request for an assessment of noncancer health risks in the environment and follows OTA’s previous work on carcinogenic, neurotoxic, and immunotoxic substances.
Date: June 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Lessons in Restructuring Defense Industry: The French Experience

Description: This background paper first describes the structure and management of the French defense-industrial base and then reviews a variety of strategies the French Government and industry are pursuing to rationalize the base, while preserving key technological assets and strengthening the competitive position of French defense contractors in world markets.
Date: June 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Managing Industrial Solid Wastes From Manufacturing, Mining, Oil and Gas Production, and Utility Coal Combustion

Description: This background paper examines wastes generated by industrial activities that play a dominant role in our national economy-oil and gas production, mining and mineral processing, coal combustion, and manufacturing. In previous reports on municipal solid waste and medical waste, OTA examined other solid wastes not classified as hazardous.
Date: March 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Monitoring Limits on Sea-Launched Cruise Missiles

Description: This report examines in detail ways in which compliance with such a regime might be monitored. Surveying the life-cycle of SLCMs from development testing through deployment and storage, the assessment identifies the ‘indicators’ by which the missiles might be tracked and accounted for. It also assesses the paths of evasion that a determined cheater might take to avoid the proposed monitoring measures.
Date: September 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Performance Standards for the Food Stamp Employment and Training Program

Description: This report on proposed performance standards for the Food Stamp Employment and Training Program (FSET) responds to a mandate in the Hunger Prevention Act of 1988 (Public Law 100- 435). This report, then, goes beyond the original mandate and analyzes successful employment and training programs. Based on this analysis, the report identifies several alternative approaches to increasing the impact of FSET.
Date: February 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Cystic Fibrosis and DNA Tests: Implications of Carrier Screening

Description: This report concludes that the value of the cystic fibrosis (CF) carrier test is the information it provides. No one can estimate in common terms what it means to an individual to possess information about his or her genetic status, especially when the value concerns reproductive decision-making. As our knowledge of the human genome increases, what we do with information such as CF carrier status will depend on the perceptions and beliefs of all Americans.
Date: August 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Disposal of Chemical Weapons: Alternative Technologies

Description: This background paper briefly describes the Army’s chemical weapons destruction program, discusses the factors that could affect a decision to develop alternatives, discusses the alternatives, and illustrates the difficulty of gaining public acceptance of complex technical systems.
Date: June 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Does Health Insurance Make a Difference?

Description: This background paper reviews and evaluates the available literature linking health insurance coverage with the utilization and process of health care services and with individual health outcomes.
Date: September 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Evaluation of the Oregon Medicaid Proposal

Description: This report discusses the Oregon legislature that passed the Oregon Basic Health Services Act in 1989, which established three mechanisms for increasing access to health insurance.
Date: May 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Finding a Balance: Computer Software, Intellectual Property and the Challenge of Technological Change

Description: The report identifies three policy issues: 1) the appropriate scope of copyright protection for computer software; 2) patent protection for software-related inventions and algorithms, and how the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will handle these types of applications; and 3) complications facing libraries and commercial and private producers and users of digital information, including computer-based mixed media products.
Date: May 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Forest Service Planning: Accommodating Uses, Producing Outputs, and Sustaining Ecosystems

Description: This report on forest planning evaluates technological, biological, social, economic, and organizational dimensions of national forest planning. It discusses the agency’s planning technologies, the appeals and litigation processes, and the relationship between national planning under Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act (RPA) and forest-level planning under National Forest Management Act (NFMA).
Date: February 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

A New Technological Era for American Agriculture

Description: The report concludes that these technologies have the potential to provide new solutions to many agricultural problems. The challenge, however, will be whether government, industry, and the public can strike the proper balance of direction, oversight, and use to allow these technologies to flourish. Congress will be faced with many issues and choices as American agriculture moves into this new era.
Date: August 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

After the Cold War: Living With Lower Defense Spending

Description: This report focuses on ways to handle the dislocation of workers and communities that is, to some degree, inevitable in the defense cutback. It opens a discussion of how defense technologies might be converted to commercial applications. The second and final report of the assessment will continue that discussion and will concentrate on opportunities to channel human and technological resources into building a stronger civilian economy.
Date: February 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Building Energy Efficiency

Description: This report focuses on energy use in buildings, which account for over one-third of all energy used in the United States. Significant energy savings in buildings are possible through the use of commercially available, cost-effective, energy efficient technologies; yet adoption rates for these technologies are often low. Interviews with industry, property managers, homeowners, and others were used to explore why technology adoption rates are so low. Past Federal efforts to encourage energy effic… more
Date: May 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Building Future Security: Strategies for Restructuring the Defense Technology and Industrial Base

Description: This report elaborates on the findings of the earlier OTA publications and examines in greater detail the specific policy choices involved in restructuring the defense technology and industrial base (DTIB) over the next decade.
Date: June 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
open access

Special Care Units for People With Alzheimer's and Other Dementias: Consumer Education, Research, Regulatory, and Reimbursement Issues

Description: This report analyzes the available information about special care units for people with dementia. It discusses ways in which the Federal Government could encourage and support what is positive about special care units and at the same time protect vulnerable patients and their families from special care units that actually provide nothing special for their residents.
Date: August 1992
Creator: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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