"'Biotechnology' is a terrible term," says David Kingsbury of the National Science Foundation, who has been chairing the federal-wide effort to coordinate biotechnology regulations and guidelines (1). Although definitions of biotechnology have changed often during recent years, the word's meaning has seldom proved a serious stumbling block However, in 1986, federal officials renewed the debate ...

In this article, we review five health care cost-containment efforts from 1971 to the present and summarize key research findings on the effects of each on cost, quality, and access. These efforts include the Nixon Economic Stabilization Program (ESP), Carter-era hospital cost-containment efforts, Medicare hospital and physician payment, and State hospital ratesetting programs. The purpose of t...

In order to provide insight into current physics teaching practices and recommended reforms, we outline the history of physics education in the United States—and the accompanying pedagogical issues and debates—over the period 1860–2014. We identify key events, personalities, and issues for each of ten separate time periods, comparing and contrasting the outlooks and viewpoints of the different ...

W analyze firms’ decisions to invest in customer relationship management (CRM) initiatives such as acquisition and retention in a competitive context, a topic largely ignored in past CRM research. We characterize each customer by her intrinsic preference towards each firm, the contribution margin she generates for each firm, and her responsiveness to each firm’s retention and acquisition effort...

Forecasting exchange rates is an important financial problem that is receiving increasing attention especially because of its difficulty and practical applications. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been widely used as a promising alternative approach for a forecasting task because of several distinguished features. Research efforts on ANNs for forecasting exchange rates are considerable. ...

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a typical traditional medicine (TM) with a long-standing history of preventing and curing diseases in China and other countries in East Asia. Standardization of TCM has been a topic of discussion over the past few decades in China with the goal of promoting advances in TCM in China and elsewhere around the world. Many quality and safety control standards fo...