Journal overview: This electronic-only journal was published by the American Mathematical Society from 1995 to 2007 and

is currently published by the American Institute of Mathematical Sciences as Electronic Research Announcements in Mathematical Sciences. As published by the AMS, a research announcement was designed to communicate its contents to a broad mathematical audience. Copying and reprinting: Material in this journal published by the AMS (Volumes 1--13) may be reproduced by any means for educational and scientific purposes without fee or permission with the exception of reproduction by services that collect fees for delivery of documents and provided that the customary acknowledgment of the source is given. This consent does not extend to other kinds of copying for general distribution, for advertising or promotional purposes, or for resale. Requests for permission for commercial use of material published by the AMS should be addressed to the Acquisitions Department, American Mathematical Society, 201 Charles Street, Providence, RI 02904-2294 USA. Requests can also be made by email to reprintpermission@ams.org . Excluded from these provisions is material in articles for which the author holds copyright. In such cases, requests for permission to use or reprint should be addressed directly to the author(s). Copyright ownership is indicated in the notice in the lower righthand corner of the first page of each article. Indexing and archiving notes: This journal as published by the AMS is indexed in Mathematical Reviews, Zentralblatt MATH, Science Citation Index--ExpandedT, ISI Alerting Services, CompuMath Citation Index, and Current Contents, Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences. This journal as published by the AMS is archived in Portico.
The Electronic Research Collection (ERC) is a partnership between the United States Department of State and the Federal Depository Library at the Richard J. Daley Library, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). The Government Printing Office, which is responsible for the national system of federal depository libraries, officially recognizes this unique partnership as the first electronic partnership agreement between an executive agency and a depository library. This partnership began in 1994. ERC has two purposes. First, it is responsible for electronically archived information products produced by State Department from 1990 to 1997. UIC also works to assure that the electronic archives are easily accessible and clearly organized. Second, the UIC depository librarians work with the State Department public affairs staff to answer email questions from the public, and help users find other information sources about U.S. foreign policies and programs. For the most current information, please visit the US State Department homepage.

Electronics Research Center

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Model of Electronics Research Centers first phase of construction is examined by (from left) Dr. Albert J. Kelley, Deputy Director; Edward Durell Stone, and Dr. Winston E. Kock, Director. Credit: Michael Hahn Great Images in NASA

The Electronics Research Center (ERC), was a NASA research facility located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, across the street from MIT at Kendall Square. The ERC opened in September 1964, taking over the administration of contracts, grants, and other NASA business in New England from the antecedent North Eastern Operations Office (created in July 1962), and closed in June 1970. The campus is now the site of the United States Department of Transportation's John A. Volpe National Transportation

Mission
It served to develop the space agency's in-house expertise in electronics during the Apollo era. A second key function was to serve as a graduate and post-graduate training center within the framework of a regional government-industry-university alliance. The ERC was just as important a NASA field center as the Langley Research Center or the Marshall Space Flight Center. By fiscal 1968, NASA planned for the ERC to be employing 1,600 professional and technical workers plus another 500 in administrative and support positions (Kelley, n.p.).
[edit] Benefits of location

The location of the ERC allowed it to take advantage of the close proximity to MIT and (to a lesser extent) Harvard University, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the U.S. Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory, and the electronics industry located along Route 128. At the time, the technical, industrial, and commercial aspects of microelectronics were ascendant, especially in the Boston-Cambridge technopolis.

[edit] Nature of research

Research at the ERC was conducted in ten different laboratories: space guidance, systems, computers, instrumentation research, space optics, power conditioning and distribution, microwave radiation, electronics components, qualifications and standards, and control and information systems. Researchers investigated such areas as microwave and laser communications; the miniaturization and radiation resistance of electronic components; guidance and control systems; photovoltaic energy conversion; information display devices; instrumentation; and computers and data processing. Although no publication to date has investigated the nature of the research or professional training conducted at the ERC, an internal NASA publication lists a few accomplishments identified with the center in passing:

a high-frequency (30 GHz) oscillator a miniaturized tunnel-diode transducer a transistor more tolerant of space radiation

"One particularly interesting development," the source added, "has been in the area of holography. At the Electronics Research Center, holography has been used for data storage, and has permitted a remarkable degree of data compression in the storing of star patterns" ( Preliminary History , 1:V-11, 1:V-34 & 1:V-35). A book on holography written by one of the ERC's directors, Dr. Winston Kock, indicates some of the facility's contributions, such as Lowell Rosen's improvement of so-called focused-image holography (Kock, 80-82).

[edit] Controversy and funding

The Electronics Research Center was at the heart of political controversy from the start. The conception, siting, and shutting down of the ERC is an engaging political tale. President John F. Kennedy and Webb kept the project out of the budget process until after Ted Kennedy's successful first election to the Senate. His campaign slogan had promised that he could "do more for Massachusetts." After the President belatedly put the ERC project in the budget process, Congress rebelled. In addition to Republican members, Representatives from the Midwest and other regions feeling swindled out of the NASA largesse repeatedly fought efforts to fund the ERC. The issue split the Congress along both party and regional lines. [1] As a result, the ERC had the most deliberated and defended existence and siting of any NASA Center. Although the only Center ever closed, the ERC actually grew while NASA eliminated major programs and cut staff. Between 1967 and 1970, NASA cut permanent civil service workers at all Centers with one exception, the ERC, whose personnel grew annually. Hardest hit by the cuts had been the Marshall Space Flight Center, whose future was then the subject of agency debate (Levine, 134-135). NASA Administrator James Webb, more than any other individual, shaped the ERC. Webb saw it as fulfilling a broader mission as part of the nation's Cold War struggle on the economic and intellectual battleground of the Space Race. The ERC was an archetype for Webb's regional

"university-industry-government complex" analogous to the military-industrial complex, organized because Webb believed that no single institution had the requisite resources to fight this war. The ERC's training of critically needed engineers and scientists served the same Cold War aim (McDougall, 376 & 381). The ERC has received hardly any attention as a subject of scholarly or lay studies. No single work, neither book nor article, has been devoted to the ERC itself. The few works that consider the ERC other than in passing focus on the turbulent political circumstances surrounding its creation (Murphy, 225-264; Hechler, 219-231). A thesis written for the MIT Sloan School of Management is the only work that deals solely with the facility's closing (Rollins).[2]

[edit] References
1. ^ Murphy, Thomas. Science, Geopolitics, and Federal Spending. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1971. 2. ^ Rollins, Robert H., II. "Closing of the NASA Electronics Research Center: A Studyof the Reallocation of Space Program Talent." M.S. Thesis, Alfred P. Sloan School of Management, MIT, May 1970, 106-187, in Boyd C. Myers, II. A Report on the Closing of the NASA Electronics Research Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Washington: NASA, October 1, 1970. online at http://klabs.org/history/erc/erc_close.pdf

"Effort Embraces Spectrum from SST to Private Planes." Aerospace Technology, November 20, 1967, 21:11, 56-7. Hechler, Ken. Toward the Endless Frontier: History of the Committee on Scienceand Technology, 1959-1979. Washington, DC: GPO, 1980. Kelley, Albert J. Preliminary draft. "Staff Report on the Electronics ResearchCenter," January 1963, File 4878, NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. Levine, Arnold S. Managing NASA in the Apollo Era. SP-4102. Washington: NASA, 1982. Mark, Hans, and Arnold Levine. The Management of Research Institutions: A Look at Government Laboratories. SP-481. Washington: NASA, 1984. McDougall, Walter A. ... The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age. New York: Basic Books, 1985. "Preliminary History of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration duringthe Administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson: Final Edition." Manuscript. 2 vols. Washington: NASA, 1969. Rhea, John. "ERC is Focal Point of Future Efforts." Aerospace Technology, November 20, 1967, 21:11, 53-6. Rollins, Robert H., II. "Closing of the NASA Electronics Research Center: A Studyof the Reallocation of Space Program Talent." M.S. Thesis, Alfred P. Sloan School of Management, MIT, May 1970, 106187, in Boyd C. Myers, II. A Report on the Closing of the NASA Electronics Research Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Washington: NASA, October 1, 1970. Tomayko, James E. Computers in Spaceflight: The NASA Experience. New York: M. Dekker, 1987. Also published as Computers in Space: Journeys with NASA. Indianapolis: Alpha Books, 1994.

[edit] Proceedings of ERC symposia

From the Washington: Scientific and Technical Information Division, NASA

Evaluation of Motion-Degraded Images. NASASP-193. 1969. Future Fields of Control Application. NASA SP-211. 1969. NASA Inter-Center Control Systems Conference. 1978. Proceedings of the Computer-aided System Design Seminar. 1969. MIT, April 9, 1969. Recent Advances in Display Media. NASA SP-159. 1968. Spaceborne Multiprocessing Seminar. Cambridge: ERC, 1966. Kennedy, Robert S., and Sherman Karp, ed. Optical Space Communication. NASA SP 217. 1969. Mannella, Gene G., ed. Aerospace Measurement Techniques. NASA SP-132. 1967. Thompson, William I., III. The Color of the Ocean. 1969.

Electronic research tools

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Scientists report significant advances in flexible electronics research

June 18, 2009 by Laura Mgrdichian

In work that represents a key step toward bringing bendable, flexible electronic devices into our homes and businesses, Stanford University researchers have created very thin, high-performance transistors using networks of carbon nanotubes deposited onto flexible surfaces. The work is reported in a recent online edition of Nano Letters. Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), each resembling a tiny seamless cylinder of chicken wire, have many properties that make them attractive for electronics research. They conduct

electricity well, are mechanically strong, and chemically stable, and research groups across the world are investigating how to use them to create new electronics, particularly bendable electronics applications such as flexible roll-up display screens and electronic skin. These applications require thin semiconducting films - thin transistors, essentially - uniformly deposited onto large, flexible substrates, such as polymers, using methods that are compatible with large-scale manufacturing. But such methods have so far eluded scientists, partially because large amounts of SWNTs tend to be too disorganized to be suitable for incorporation into devices. They are randomly aligned, have different chiralities (that is, have molecular structures that are not symmetric), and can bundle together. Stanford chemical engineer Zhenan Bao said to PhysOrg.com, My group's work demonstrates a simple method to produce low-power, high-mobility flexible transistors with good electrical characteristics. In past research, Bao and her colleagues developed a one-step process in which the chirality and alignment of SWNTs can be homogenized at room temperature by controlling the surface chemistry of the substrate onto which the nanotubes are deposited. The result is a well aligned layer of SWNTs, but the group used silicon dioxide as the gate dielectric (a component of a transistor), which is a very rigid material. We've now built upon that research using a polymer dielectric, which, aside from being mechanically robust and physically flexible, has chemical functionality to tune the surface chemisty and can smooth a rough substrate, said Stanford researcher Mark Roberts, the first author of the paper. Furthermore, they can be extremely thin with high capacitances, which is desirable of a gate dielectric, and their resistance to water could also be very useful in certain applications. Additionally, the transistors work at low power, needing only an operating voltage below one volt. The group chemically modified a polymer surface with a very thin layer terminated with an amine, a compound belonging to class of organic compounds derived from ammonia. The amine functionalizes the polymer surface, helping the semiconducting nanotubes adhere. The researchers then deposited the nanotubes via spin-coating, in which the polymer substrate is rapidly rotated - between 3600 and 4000 revolutions per minute - and a solution containing SWNTs is applied to it. Using various analysis methods, Bao and her group discovered that their method yielded a layer of SWNTs that did not bundle and were well aligned. Further, the chemical properties of the amine layer allowed the nanotubes to self-sort their chiralities, which Bao and her group describe as a major step toward the realization of inexpensive SWNT electronic devices on transparent, flexible substrates. More information: Nano Lett., Article ASAP DOI: 10.1021/nl900287p

Copyright 2009 PhysOrg.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in whole or part without the express written permission of PhysOrg.com.

ELECTRONIC RESEARCH INFORMATION AND COMPLIANCE (eRIC) CHALLENGE/SITUATION Protecting human clinical trial participants is important, especially for stakeholder committees, such as the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and the research committees, who review those trials for ethics and drug efficacy on a continuous basis. However, these processes and workflows are complex. It involves time-sensitive communication across various stakeholders; timely alerts and notifications; data integrity/quality assurance; data consistency; monitoring protocol statuses and lifecycles; audit trails and reporting, all of which have the potential to impede overall efficiency. There is a clear requirement for a solution that would facilitate communication and exchange information; create automation and collaboration; and decrease redundancy and human errors due to poor version control and paper-dependent tactics, while protecting the rights and welfare of the people who participate in research. APPROACH The solution needed to eliminate redundancy and human risk for errors; minimize liability; increase standardization; streamline meeting logistics; make it easier to comply with standards; maintain an audit trail; and control access. It needed to automate and centralize the clinical trial registration process on a single platform; reduce clinical trial setup time; and increase standardization. SOLUTION eRIC is a paperless, electronic system that automates the submission, tracking, and reviewing of scientific regulatory and compliance information required for the safe conduct of human subject research. eRIC easily routes forms for approvals; securely collects electronic signatures; quickly views user tasks; submits protocol application forms and easily attaches related documents; enters protocol data into protocol application templates and informed consent forms; and aut automatically saves updated information. eRIC modules include protocol, meeting, documents and review management; electronic signature; alerts/notifications; reporting; IRB task facilitation; and interfaces. It is a single-source collaboration platform that aids the process of reviewing research protocols and related materials. BENEFITS

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