The report, released by the members of the Student Public Interest Research Groups (Student PIRGs), a network of campus-based advocacy groups, said textbook companies are taking advantage of a skewed market in which students are forced to buy books assigned by professors.

Students spend an average of about $900 on textbooks every year, according to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. The GAO also found the price for books had tripled between 1986 and 2004, growing at twice the rate of inflation.

The Student PIRGs point out that "the party that orders textbooks -- faculty -- is not the same party that must purchase textbooks -- students -- removing price as a primary consideration in the ordering process." The group also notes that students have no way to "exert their own market power" by finding competitors with lower prices.

The Student PIRGs also criticized publishers for frequently releasing new editions -- often without adding significant educational value -- and thereby squelching a used-book market. Companies also add CD-ROMs and other supplementary "bells and whistles" that drive up costs.

Some companies offer low-cost alternatives to their texts such as softcover, spiral-bound books or online versions. But the Student PIRGs found that the 22 frequently assigned textbooks cost an average of $131.44. Less than half of these have less-expensive counterparts, and those ring up at an average of $65.32 apiece.

And two-thirds of the "low cost" textbooks reviewed by researchers were offered on websites separate from the company’s primary online catalog. The group also found that publishers often limit how students can use online texts. Some, for instance, restrict their ability to print out web pages, imposing challenges for students with infrequent Internet access or who have difficulty reading on a computer screen.

Publishers argue that textbooks are expensive to buy because they are expensive to produce. "Textbooks are a niche market, and the price to produce them is incredibly high, compared to, say, a novel, where thousands of copies are printed on cheaper paper and ink," Bruce Hildebrand of the Association of American Publishers told USA Today. "You don't realize how much it costs when you pay for rights for all the content, all the charts and art."

But some of the cost of the high-priced books is padding publishers’ profit. This July, McGraw-Hill, a major publisher, announced a profit of $121 million. The company Pearson reported profits of $802 million.

The Student PIRGs noted that a small-but-growing group of alternative publishers has sprung up, offering low-cost texts or free online educational materials. Professors who had used such materials in their classes responded positively overall to the quality and usefulness of the alternatives, according to PIRG.

For example, the student-run TextBookRevolution.org collects links to free online textbooks, many of which are first-year science or computer training texts.

While online textbooks are a new and growing development, they are "by no means the dominant force in the market," Dave Rosenfeld, a PIRG coordinator, told The NewStandard.

To expand the scope of services providing free online texts, the researchers encourage professors to use free materials found on sites such as Connexions to build their syllabi. Launched in 1999 by Rice University, Connexions allows academics to publish articles using the Creative Commons license, which is less restrictive than a traditional copyright, and use these materials as an alternative to assigning textbooks.

But with such reforms reliant on the goodwill of professors, many students have taken it upon themselves to minimize the financial drain of purchasing textbooks. Through websites such as WhyBuy.com, an "online bartering community" run by college students, users pay a $5 fee to swap textbooks rather than purchasing new or used ones at a bookstore. Other sites include BookSwap.com or TextSwap.com. Some universities and the website CraigsList.org also help students trade or sell books with each other rather than through a bookstore.

Anti-nuclear groups and residents in California and New Mexico are accusing the federal government of starting construction on a controversial biodefense lab without fully assessing and publicizing its projected environmental impact.

In a lawsuit brought to an appeals court in San Francisco last Tuesday, the groups are demanding the Department of Energy (DoE) expand its investigation into public-health threats they say the agency's project at the Livermore National National Laboratory poses.

The proposed lab, set to open in August, is a Biosafety Level 3 Facility, which is suited for working with airborne infectious agents that can cause lethal diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention definition. Activist groups Tri-Valley Cares and Nuclear Watch of New Mexico, joined by California and New Mexico residents, argued in a previous court briefing that the laboratory's plans to "aerosolize" bioagents would leave nearby residents in the developed area vulnerable to exposure, especially in the event of an earthquake. The activists also argued that adding the presence of bioagents to a nuclear laboratory makes it more vulnerable to terrorist attack.

Circuit Chief Judge Mary Schroeder expressed concern about the laboratory at Tuesday's hearing. "What I find to be the most troublesome thing is this is being built in a very highly populated area," she said, according to the Contra Costa Times.

The groups' main legal linchpin is that the Department of Energy did not release an environmental-impact statement, which federal agencies must do before starting projects that could be harmful to the public health. Such statements can take months to complete. The Oakland office of the Department's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) filed its own environmental assessment report of the project in December 2002. The NNSA downplayed public-health risks in a statement released in conjunction with the study.

"Based on the analysis in the environmental assessment for the proposed project," NNSA manager Camille Yuan-Soo Hoo said in a statement, "NNSA has determined that no significant environmental impacts are expected and the potential consequences from routine operations would be minimal." The NNSA manages the nation's nuclear-weapons development programs on behalf of the DoE.

According to news reports, defense attorneys said the Department considered the impact of catastrophes and determined no significant dangers.

But opponents of the lab said that given the area's high population and proximity to two fault lines, the Department should have issued an environmental-impact statement. An EIS would detail all harmful effects, natural resources used and alternatives to the proposal, as well as require public hearings.

"As BSL-3 labs experimenting with aerosolized, highly contagious and potentially deadly pathogens and toxins proliferate, the risk of accidental releases of these poisons into the human environment grows," they argued in a brief.

One deadly pathogen that could be housed at the facility is anthrax, which thousands of people could be exposed to if five grams were accidentally released, according to Matthew McKinzie, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. McKinzie calculated potential anthrax plumes in the event of a catastrophe and provided written testimony during proceedings.

Using the computer model Hazard Prediction and Assessment Capability, McKenzie said that depending on wind direction, the number of people exposed could be as low as 300 and as high as 128,000. McKinzie calculated that at a concentration in which a person has a 2 percent chance of dying from exposure, the dispersion could cause 6 to 2,500 deaths.

The advocacy groups first sued the Energy Department in August 2003, calling for a halt on the construction of the lab. The US District Court in Northern California sided with the DoE, allowing the agency to begin construction of the laboratory. Legal controversies have not discouraged the University of California, which operates the Livermore facility, from pursuing the development of more biodefense labs. The public university announced plans to bid on another "Bio Level 3-4 facility" that would test even deadlier pathogens, according to a meeting of the University Committee on Research Policy held in April.