Background and Purpose

ASCE Manual No. 50, Report on Small Craft Harbors (1969), was the first attempt to consolidate some of the Corps s navigation criteria for small boat harbors. Consolidation of criteria for inland barge navigation systems and deep-draft ship channels was undertaken by the Corps in the 1970s. This effort resulted in the publication of Layout and Design of Shallow Draft Waterways, EM 1110-2-1611 (1980), and Hydraulic Design of Deep Draft Navigation Projects, EM 1110-2-1613 (1983). 

Until recently, the Corps was the exclusive designer and maintainer of navigation channels in the United States. However, with the current move to contract out design and privatize many government missions, there has emerged a private sector audience that can benefit from past experience and lessons learned. 

Unfortunately, in the 1980s and 1990s there was a government-wide initiative to reduce federal regulations. The Corps manuals were vulnerable to this purge. The ASCE Waterways Committee was aware of the potential loss of this valuable design information and undertook a preservation mission. 

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Following the background and purpose, it is time to give a road map to the remainder. At the beginning of a document, this road map foreshadows the subject s major topics in the remainder of the document. In a section or subsection an intermediate road map lays out the topics for that section or segment of writing. 

The present Consensus Document on Molecular Characterisation of Plants Derived from Modem Biotechnology constitutes the first result from a joint collaborative project implemented from 2003 to 2010 by the Working Group and the Task Force. It addresses the issues linked to molecular characterisation in a risk/safety assessment. It describes the background and purpose of molecular characterisation, transformation methods, inserted DNA, insertion site and expressed material, inheritance and genetic stability. A summary is provided under section 5 of the document, and section 1.3 explains the scope of the text as follows ... 

A major difficulty in an inorganic text is to strike a balance between a short readable book and a longer, more detailed text which can be used for reference purposes. In reaching what we hope is a reasonable compromise between these two extremes, we acknowledge that both the historical background and industrial processes have been treated very concisely. We must also say that we have not hesitated to simplify complicated reactions or other phenomena—thus, for example, the treatment of amphoterism as a pH-dependent sequence between a simple aquo-cation and a simple hydroxo-anion neglects the presence of more complicated species but enables the phenomena to be adequately understood at this level. 

The foreword is an oft-neglected element of a presentation. I use foreword (not forward) to mean an element that sets the stage for a presentation on the larger scheme of things. The term motivation is sometimes used to characterize this important presentation element. Specifically, a foreword (or motivation) should contain two elements background and rhetorical purpose. 

The use of various polysaccharides for pharmaceutical purposes has a long historical background and increased considerably during the last decades. This is not only the case for polysaccharides used as excipients, which are essential for specific formulations and constitute the most widely used form of polysaccharides, but also for a series of carbohydrate polymers which have proven to be most useful as direct drugs. 

Chapter 1 gives an introduction to the book some historical background, the purpose of the book, and some basic information on chemical information systems. 

The second section of the business plan is the background and description. Here, in a logical sequence, the plan should define the rationale for the program or service (i.e., the patient care need) and provide an explanation of why the organization is prepared to fill this need. The service opportunity provides the reader with a picture of the purpose of the proposed program and should lead directly to a description of the formal... 

The purpose of the book is to develop internal realism, the metaphysical-epistemological doctrine initiated by Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History, Introduction , Many Faces). In doing so I shall rely - sometimes quite heavily - on the notion of conceptual scheme. I shall use the notion in a somewhat idiosyncratic way, which, however, has some affinities with the ways the notion has been used during its history. So I shall start by sketching the history of the notion. This will provide some background, and it will also give opportunity to raise some of the most important problems I will have to solve in the later chapters. 

For general background and orientation purposes, it is worthwhile to present a brief summary of the different types of compounds. 

This splicing correction assay has now been widely adopted, since it has a low background and provides a positive read-out with a large dynamic response. Neutral steric-block ON, such as peptide nucleic acids (PNA) (5) or phospho-rodiamidate morpholino oligonucleotides (PMO) (6). are particularly suitable for this purpose, since they cannot recruit RNase H, they hybridize with high affinity and selectivity to complementary RNA, and they are metabolically very stable. However, they cannot be transfected with most commercially available delivery vectors. 

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