  Renormalization group has enjoyed successes in other areas of statistical
physics. However, its application to turbulence faces several technical
difficulties, which have had to be circumvented by uncontrolled approximations.
Indeed, in view of the deterministic nature of the Navier-Stokes equations, it
is clear that the operation of averaging out the high-wavenumber modes while
keeping the low-wavenumber modes constant, cannot be done rigorously and in
itself can only be an approximation.
  With points like this in mind, we have recently adopted direct numerical
simulation as a tool for probing the basic feasibility of using RG techniques
to reduce the number of degrees of freedom requiring to be numerically
simulated. In this paper, we present some of the first results of this
approach.
