This book details the forum that was held by the National Materials Advisory Board at the National Academy of Sciences. The purpose of this forum was to bring the importance of materials to the attention of policy makers and to promote interactions between policy makers and the materials community. Four key themes were addressed: the critical role of materials in advancing technology and enhancing the nation's economy, security, and health, industrial and societal needs that will require materials development in the new millennium. Materials research areas with the greatest potential for meeting those needs, and federal and industrial research initiatives that can help the materials community meet those needs. To help focus this discussion, special sessions were convened to address the current and future roles of materials in four selected areas: information technology, health and biotechnology, national security, and energy and the environment.

Looking forward to the future it is clear that today's narrow concept of fiber as a basic element for textiles, ropes and nets will become an outmoded notion. The emphasis will instead shift to new and exciting developments in fiber technology and their applications, exploring such fields as biomimetics, nanotechnology and biodegradability. ??New millennium fibers describes and identifies the scope of high-tech fibers. The present status and prospects of the fiber/textile technology are discussed and the high performance fibers are reviewed from origin to future applications, including carbon fiber. The themes of the book are summarised with a discussion on health care and the environment. ?? As the 21st century progresses fibers will enter into more novel and unexpected applications. We are approaching the age of the wearable computer and organic electroluminescence wearable displays. New potential is open in the fields of car and aerospace industry, civil engineering, separation membranes using hollow fibers for artificial organs, biodegradable fiber for ecological conservation and fibers with biological functions. ? ?New millennium fibers explores the exciting roles that fibers will play in the future and will be an essential book for all of those in the textile and fashion industry involved in fiber development or use.

Made to Measure introduces a general audience to one of today's most exciting areas of scientific research: materials science. Philip Ball describes how scientists are currently inventing thousands of new materials, ranging from synthetic skin, blood, and bone to substances that repair themselves and adapt to their environment, that swell and flex like muscles, that repel any ink or paint, and that capture and store the energy of the Sun. He shows how all this is being accomplished precisely because, for the first time in history, materials are being "made to measure": designed for particular applications, rather than discovered in nature or by haphazard experimentation. Now scientists literally put new materials together on the drawing board in the same way that a blueprint is specified for a house or an electronic circuit. But the designers are working not with skylights and alcoves, not with transistors and capacitors, but with molecules and atoms. This book is written in the same engaging manner as Ball's popular book on chemistry, Designing the Molecular World, and it links insights from chemistry, biology, and physics with those from engineering as it outlines the various areas in which new materials will transform our lives in the twenty-first century. The chapters provide vignettes from a broad range of selected areas of materials science and can be read as separate essays. The subjects include photonic materials, materials for information storage, smart materials, biomaterials, biomedical materials, materials for clean energy, porous materials, diamond and hard materials, new polymers, and surfaces and interfaces.

Offers an overview of the transformative nature of installation art over the past decade, including coverage of the work of Doug Aitken, Kazuo Katase, Hans Haacke, Christian Boltanksi, Damien Hirst, Vanessa Beecroft, Gary Hill, Mariko Mori, and Bill Viola

Higher education is facing a number of challenges in this new millennium; one well-known management guru has predicted the demise of university education as we know it. Yet the writing-across-the-curriculum movement, now more than twenty-five years old, has remained a stable part of the educational landscape, outlasting other educational innovations by adapting to new educational initiatives. How has WAC transformed itself, and what can WAC directors learn from those who are leading continuing WAC programs? This collections of essays describing how WAC programs have adapted and continue to adapt to meet new challenges is a must-read for everyone concerned with the quality of writing in higher education. Respected WAC advocates and WAC educators explain strategies for continuing WAC programs in an atmosphere of change; explore new avenues of collaboration, such as service learning and the linked-course curricula of learning communities, and predict areas into which WAC programs need to move; and suggest new directions for research on writing across the curriculum. -- From publisher's description.