Guenter,

You raise some excellent points.  As you might guess, I have had some bad
experiences with "academics" in the past.  People who researched for
"knowledge sake" rather than for a practical solution to an existing problem.
 I did not mean to impune all of academia.  I suppose I should not let my
negative experiences bias me.

I can commiserate with you on the difficulties of presenting a highly
technical topic to a marginally educated audience.  As an individual who does
some consulting and much technical writing, I understand.  If you write for
the masses, you bore the technically aware.  If you write at a higher level,
it goes over the heads of most people.  Usually, I try to tailor my
presentation to the audience, but have several versions of my presentation
ready.  If I had been in your shoes presenting the results of the flux study,
I might have prepared two papers, one for the masses, coached in
generalities, and make reference to the fact that a more in-depth paper was
available.  If I were making the presentation to a highly technical crowd, I
would give the more technical presentation, but make reference that I more
general paper was available for the less knowledgable (managers).  I have
found this approach to be successful.

Getting funding for the work is a problem and in the US, government funding
is drying up.  I am convinced now that it is how politically well placed you
are that determines funding, not what the research is.  We just finished up
our 4th ARPA (our government research agency) research contract, and I won't
do another one.  The administrative hassles far outweigh the information
gained or the money brought in.  It also takes an incredible lead time to get
such in place.  This was part of my point in my long response to Gordon Davy.
 Even with funding, major research takes a long time to put into place,
usually longer than we have time for during specification drafting.

Some universities, at least in the 80's, would do some informal testing with
private industry.  These days, you have to fight the university bureacracy
and the "publish or perish" syndrome.  With universities looking for money,
they want cash for any analysis they do, or they want to have the professors
name heading a paper.  Both are complications I can do without.

Thank you for your response.  I enjoy many of your responses in TechNet.

Sincerely,
Douglas Pauls
Technical Director
Contamination Studies Laboratories
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