Interdisciplinary research

Administratively, the genesis of these Laboratories, which initially were called Interdisciplinary Research Laboratories and later. Materials Research Laboratories, involved many complications, most of them in Washington, not least when in 1972 responsibility for them was successfully transferred to the National Science Foundation (NSF). As Sproull cynically remarks To those unfamiliar with the workings of federal government (and especially Capitol Hill), transfer of a program sounds simple, but it is simple only if the purpose of transfer is to kill the program . 

The purpose of this publication is to provide an up-to-date reference guide for people who want full, current, trustworthy information about all aspects of energy. This includes individuals who want more information than they read in newspapers or magazines, high school and college students who want information for class discussions and papers, people looking for expert information on which to base their everyday energy-related decisions, and scholars who want a review of interdisciplinary research. 

Otherwise it has been shown that the accumulation of electrolytes by many cells runs at the expense of cellular energy and is in no sense an equilibrium condition 113) and that the use of equilibrium thermodynamic equations (e.g., the Nemst-equation) is not allowed in systems with appreciable leaks which indicate a kinetic steady-state 114). In addition, a superposition of partial current-voltage curves was used to explain the excitability of biological membranes112 . In interdisciplinary research the adaptation of a successful theory developed in a neighboring discipline may be beneficial, thus an attempt will be made here, to use the mixed potential model for ion-selective membranes also in the context of biomembrane surfaces. 

This cascading effect may have been best demonstrated from interdisciplinary research addressing the consequences of chronic oxidant air pollution exposure to the mixed conifer forests of the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California. Miller et al. (76) reported that chronic exposure to oxidant air pollutants resulted in decreased photosynthetic capacity, premature... 

Chemical engineers will be frequent participants in multidisciplinary research efforts. Chemical engineering has a long history of fraitful interdisciplinary research with the chemical... 

Ph.D. students must be prepared for the interdisciplinary environment in which they will likely spend their careers as biochemical or biomedical engineers. The best way to do this is to expose them to interdisciplinary research as graduate students. To facilitate this, a broad and stable base of research support targeted at interdisciplinary research must be created. Particularly valuable would be support targeted to... 

In this context, how can interdisciplinary research on the frontiers of the disciphne be best conducted There is an obvious role for large assemblages of researchers in centers of various types. The committee also beheves that the special needs of interdisciplinary research... 

Clearly, then, the chemical and physical properties of liquid interfaces represent a significant interdisciplinary research area for a broad range of investigators, such as those who have contributed to this book. The chapters are organized into three parts. The first deals with the chemical and physical structure of oil-water interfaces and membrane surfaces. Eighteen chapters present discussion of interfacial potentials, ion solvation, electrostatic instabilities in double layers, theory of adsorption, nonlinear optics, interfacial kinetics, microstructure effects, ultramicroelectrode techniques, catalysis, and extraction. 

The total 5-year investment in the materials chemistry programs (MC and MCCP) was more than 18 million. That number might be considered modest, but MC-MCCP accomplished two things (1) it initiated about 60 collaborative research projects in the chemistry research community, where individualism was the overwhelming norm and (2) it established within NSF a paradigm for interdivisional cooperation in the review and funding of interdisciplinary research. 

Finally, one additional comment concerning the nature of progress from interdisciplinary research is evident from the results reported in this Symposium Volume. Once again it is seen that most rapid progress is made when synthetic chemists collaborate with their colleagues in materials science or physics to determine properties of new inorganic and organometallic polymers. 

Bigazzi, G., Z. Yegingil, T. Ercan, M. Oddone, and M. Ozdogan (1994), Provenance studies of prehistoric artifacts in eastern Anatolia Interdisciplinary research results, Mineralogica et Petrographica Acta 37,17-36. 

Thomas, K. D. (1993), Molecular biology and archaeology A prospectus for interdisciplinary research, World Archaeol. 25, 1-17. 

Self-organisation is a property of complex systems these are an important area of physics and have been studied intensively in the last few years. Since 1993, the Max Planck Society has had an institute for Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden. This is an interdisciplinary research area, dealing with problems which span the range from the cosmos to the living cell. 

Interdisciplinary Research (eds S.M. Perrin and E. Scheider), Martinus NijhofF, Dordrecht, pp. 36. 

In order to fully exploit the information contained in the X-ray structures, interdisciplinary research is required, involving such disciplines as computational chemistry, medicinal chemistry, and molecular pharmacology in partnership with X-ray crystallography. In this context, the X-ray structures provide an excellent springboard for studying structure-activity/selectivity relationships, as well as the structure-based design of new ligands. 

This chapter provides examples of the contributions of computational chemistry to such an interdisciplinary research approach. These include ... 

To provide an infrastructure to promote communication between laboratory scientists and epidemiologists for the purpose of developing interdisciplinary research on gene-environment interactions in cancer etiology. 

All research questions share the characteristic of investigating value chain processes and decisions holistically like in an integrated ecosystem. Operations Research methods and Information Technology provide the capabilities to be successful in this interdisciplinary research. 

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