Examples of Mainly Corporate Funded Think Tanks: Cato Institute Founded in 1977 the Cato Institutes 1998 budget made up US$ 11 million. Its funding consists of corporate and private donations (especially from corporations and executives in the highly regulated industries of financial services, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals industries) and sales of publications. Catos corporate donors include tobacco firms: Philip Morris (Rupert Murdoch sits on Philip Morris board of directors) and R.J. Reynolds. Financial firms: American Express, Chase Manhattan Bank, Chemical Bank, Citicorp/Citibank, Commonwealth Fund, Prudential Securities and Salomon Brothers. Energy conglomerates: Chevron Companies, Exxon Company, Shell Oil Company and Tenneco Gas, as well as the American Petroleum Institute, Amoco Foundation and Atlantic Richfield Foundation. Furthermore the Cato Institute is funded by pharmaceutical firms: Eli Lilly & Company, Merck & Company and Pfizer, Inc., foundations, like Koch, Lambe and Sarah Scaife and companies from the telecommunications sector: Bell Atlantic Network Services, BellSouth Corporation, Microsoft, NYNEX Corporation, Sun Microsystems and Viacom.

TEXTBLOCK 1/2 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611704/100438658297

Major U.S. Think Tanks: Heritage Foundation Heritage was started to counter what it perceived as the liberal intellectual climate of Washington in the 1970s. The Heritage Foundations mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense. Heritage pursues this mission by performing research addressing key policy issues and effectively marketing these findings to its primary audiences: members of Congress, key congressional staff, policymakers in the executive branch, the nation's news media, and the academic and policy communities. Official Organizational Status: Independent research and educational institute. Political Orientation: U.S. Conservative Scope/Research Areas: The Heritage Foundation's research areas include: economic issues, health and welfare, education, culture and religion, security and defense, foreign policy and international relations/institutions. Priority is given to issues, such as: Social Security reform, fundamental tax reform, livable cities, ballistic missile defense, education reform, domestic and economic policy and foreign and defense policy. Recent publications include: Feulner, Edwin J.: The March of Freedom. (1998). Holmes, K. et.al.: 1999 Index of Economic Freedom. (1998). Funding Sources: 1998 Budget: US$ 26 million. Private donations (47 %), foundations (21 %), investment income (21 %), corporate donations (4 %). Among others US$ 1 million from the Korea Foundation - funded by South Korea's foreign ministry.

TEXTBLOCK 2/2 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611704/100438658116

Mobil One of the largest of American holding companies, primarily engaged in petroleum operations but having major interests in chemical products and retailing. It was formed in 1976 to be the parent company in the merger of Mobil Oil Corporation and Marcor Inc. Mobil Oil Corporation carries on a full range of petroleum operations from exploration to marketing, with major production in the Gulf of Mexico, California, the Atlantic coast, the Alaskan North Slope, the North Sea, and Saudi Arabia. Headquarters for Mobil Corporation (and Mobil Oil Corporation) are in Fairfax, Va.

INDEXCARD, 1/2

Neural network A bottom-up artificial intelligence approach, a neural network is a network of many very simple processors ("units" or "neurons"), each possibly having a (small amount of) local memory. The units are connected by unidirectional communication channels ("connections"), which carry numeric data. The units operate only on their local data and on the inputs they receive via the connections. A neural network is a processing device, either an algorithm, or actual hardware, whose design was inspired by the design and functioning of animal brains and components thereof. Most neural networks have some sort of "training" rule whereby the weights of connections are adjusted on the basis of presented patterns. In other words, neural networks "learn" from examples and exhibit some structural capability for generalization.

INDEXCARD, 2/2