To: National Desk
Contact: Sonja Gold, 972-883-6325, Kevin Finneran, 202-965-5648, both for Issues in Science and Technology
DALLAS, March 29 — The United States must act now to deal with peaking world oil production or face disruptions far greater that the 1973 oil embargo or the 1979 Iranian oil cutoff, according to an article in the spring issue of Issues in Science and Technology.
Evidence that world oil production will peak in the near future is becoming more compelling all the time, according to the article by Robert L. Hirsch, Roger H. Bezdek, and Robert M. Wendling, who produced a recent report on the subject that was published by the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.
In another article advocating change in energy policy, retired business executive Paul Lorenzini urges the United States to take “A Second Look at Nuclear Power.” If we overlook nuclear power in our quest for clean energy, he says, we will condemn ourselves to a future of increased fossil fuel use.
The spring 2005 Issues in Science and Technology also includes a special section with five articles devoted to population health: the notion that sustained health improvement for individuals can often be accomplished only through efforts aimed at groups-that is, environmental, educational, organizational, social, or policy interventions that produce population-wide effects. According to the introduction for the special section, “to build a maximally effective public health strategy for the future, we must move toward broader population perspectives on health.”
In Genomics and Public Health, Gilbert S. Omenn of the University of Michigan writes that the combination of new genetic knowledge and public health will be critical to achieve the vision of predictive, personalized, preventive health care.
In Syndromic Surveillance, Michael Stoto of the RAND Corporation writes about a new tool that public health officials have adopted for identifying emerging problems, such as a new disease or a biological attack.
In Law and the Public’s Health, Lawrence O. Gostin of Georgetown University provides a roadmap for policymakers for dealing with difficult legal, social, and ethical concerns that will arise in conjunction with potential public health initiatives.
In Preventing Childhood Obesity, Jeffrey Koplan of Emory University and Catharyn Liverman and Vivica Kraak of the Institute of Medicine argue that the United States cannot wait to design a “perfect” prevention program. Wide-ranging intervention programs are needed now, based on the best available evidence.
The final article in the special section on public health features an interview with Sarah Brown, the director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, which has been in the forefront of successful efforts to reduce teen pregnancy rates during the past decade. Brown reveals which approaches have worked and which have not.
The spring Issues also features The View from California, in which author Heather Barbour of the New America Foundation argues that although the state is a science and technology trailblazer, it is a laggard in managing the related policy dimension.
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ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY is the award-winning journal of the National Academies and the University of Texas at Dallas. The University of Texas at Dallas is an equal opportunity/affirmative action university.
