Recent events in the high-performance computing industry have concerned scientists and the general public regarding a crisis or a lack of leadership in the field. That concern is understandable considering the industry's history from 1993 to 1996. Cray Research, the historic leader in supercomputing technology, was unable to survive financially as an independent company and was acquired by Silicon Graphics. Two ambitious new companies that introduced new technologies in the late 1980s and early 1990s—Thinking Machines and Kendall Square Research—were commercial failures and went out of business. And Intel, which introduced its Paragon supercomputer in 1994, discontinued production only two years later.

During the same time frame, scientists who had finished the laborious task of writing scientific codes to run on vector parallel supercomputers learned that those codes would have to be rewritten if they were to run on the next-generation, highly parallel architecture. Scientists who are not yet involved in high-performance computing are understandably hesitant about committing their time and energy to such an apparently unstable enterprise.

However, beneath the commercial chaos of the last several years, a technological revolution has been occurring. The good news is that the revolution is over, leading to five to ten years of predictable stability, steady improvements in system performance, and increased productivity for scientific applications. It is time for scientists who were sitting on the fence to jump in and reap the benefits of the new technology.

In many European countries the controlled biological treatment of organic solid waste is a suitable method in waste management. Technical prerequisites such as collection and separation systems for household waste often exist and sufficient treatment facilities for controlled aerobic composting or even anaerobic digestion are available. Space for landfill is scarce and therefore expensive in many industrial countries and biotreatment is much cheaper than incineration. The advantage of composting compared to other waste treatment techniques is not only the relatively low costs but also the technical reasons. An obvious example is the direct disposal of packaging with alimentary residues and the subsequent biological treatment. Not only green waste from gardens or biowaste from kitchens can be treated, but any compostable material is in principle suitable, for example waste from the food industry or packaging and packaging materials made from paper, cardboard, wood, or biodegradable plastics. Biological treatment has already become a good way of meeting, for example, Germany legislative targets to reduce and recycle garbage.

Prerequisites for controlled biological treatment are suitable technical facilities plus standards and directives for waste management. An example is the European packaging directive which harmonizes national measures concerning the management of packaging and packaging waste. The aim is to prevent any impact of the use of packaging on the environment or to reduce such an impact. For applying this directive and any similar regulations, it is important to have clear definitions, standardized test methods, and suitable evaluation criteria to identify biodegradable packaging materials and to differentiate compostable from noncompostable packaging materials which can commonly be used and the results of which are accepted by all parties concerned.

Through my interdisciplinary graduate work, I have attended conferences organized by various professional societies such as the Materials Research Society (MRS), American Physical Society (APS), Optical Society of America (OSA), and American Chemical Society (ACS). I have also participated in some of their employment workshops and have searched their websites for employment resources. This article elaborates on information and services that professional societies and organizations can provide to ease employment search for their student membership.

Career Workshops. These workshops provide excellent guidance, especially for students initiating their employment search. Obviously, the best ones are conducted by people who recruit PhD graduates. I attended an employment workshop organized by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) during the 1995 MRS Fall Meeting. An extremely dynamic hightechnology industrial recruiter conducted the workshop. The mock interviews, mininetworking groups, and resume and cover letter critique involved audience participation and were highly effective. I strongly recommend such a workshop. On the other hand, I have also been frustrated with workshops in which speakers did not have a technical PhD background since I often found their suggestions unsuitable.

Employment Database. A website with current job postings mainly for PhD graduates is extremely useful. The National Academy of Science (http://www2.nas.edu) is among the few sources for this. The critical issue in this case is to have a well-maintained site with frequent updates and a search engine. Another alternative, which we have been using at the University of Rochester, is to circulate job postings via electronic mail. Again, timeliness is the key issue.

The use of nuclear fission to generate power results in waste materials that can be hazardous to people and to other life forms, particularly in the first few hundred years after the wastes are created. There is a worldwide consensus that the management of these wastes must not place undue burdens on future generations. In some countries, the opinion is openly stated that those who enjoyed the benefits of the power that produced the wastes must be responsible for taking care of the wastes. Opinions diverge when discussion turns to the question of whether the wastes will always be a liability or eventually become an asset.

Another point of consensus is that at least some of the radioactive wastes should be disposed of by a method that securely isolates them from the accessible environment of plant, animal, and human life until the radioactivity levels have decayed to levels similar to those found in natural environments. Different countries take different positions on the details of what the activity level might be that constitutes the end of moral responsibility for the wastes, but the general position is basically the same worldwide. I explore some concerns about how disposal containers and waste repositories might be marked with suitable identification. In particular, I examine whether the message to be conveyed by the markings needs to change with time and with the entity examining the objects, and whether we can design markers that will convey this potentially variable message.

The following is an edited transcript of the plenary lecture presented by John P. McTague at the 1996 MRS Fall Meeting on December 2,1996 in Boston.

Long before 1993, the journey from New York City to San Francisco, across the continent, and from New York City to London, across the sea, will be made between the sunrise and sunset of a summer day. The railway and the steamship will be as obsolete as the stagecoach. And it will be as common for the citizen to call for his dirigible balloon as it now is for his buggy or his boots. Electricity will be the motive power, and aluminium or some lighter metal will be the material of the aerial cars, which will navigate the abyss of the sky.

John J. Ingalls

“Remarkable Changes in Everyday Life”(1893)