Reasons for and developments in international scientific collaboration: does an Asia–Pacific research area exist from a bibliometric point of view?

This paper describes the different forms of and tries to give reasons for international scientific collaboration in general. It focuses on eleven countries in the Asia–Pacific region by evaluating their national research output with the help of bibliometric indicators in particular. Over two million journal articles published by these countries between 1998 and 2007 in ISI-listed periodicals are analyzed. Discipline-specific publication and citation profiles reveal national strengths and weaknesses in the different research domains. The exponential increase in publication output by China over the last few years is astonishing, but in terms of visibility, i.e. citation rates, China cannot keep up with leading science nations, remaining below the world average. A discipline-specific analysis shows that Chinese authors took an active part in more than a quarter of all articles and reviews published in the field of materials science in 2007, while their contribution to medical research is very low. Co-publication networks among the eleven countries are generated to observe the development of cooperation bonds in the region. Applying Salton’s measure of international collaboration strength, an above-average strengthening of scientific collaboration in the Asia–Pacific region can be observed.     

The interdisciplinary nature of failure analysis

Conclusion In many cases, proper investigation of a failure involves several disciplines, and the failure analyst must recognize and use all relevant expertise to identify all the causes for a failure. This is true irrespective of the size of the damages caused by a failure, which governs the amount of time and effort that is usually put into investigating it. The analyst must keep in mind the interdisciplinary nature of failure analysis, no matter the size of the project. This article was previously published inProceedings of Failure Prevention through Education: Getting to the Root Cause. The conference was presented 23–25 May 2000, in Cleveland, Ohio, by ASM International.     

Study of impinging turbulent jet flows using the isotropic low-Reynolds number and the algebraic stress methods

 The performance of two-equation turbulence models (such as the low Reynolds number k–ɛ model of Launder and Sharma 1974) is evaluated versus the algebraic stress model (ASM) (Rodi 1976) for high Reynolds number (Re=9×10⁴) jet flows with strong streamline curvature due to impingement onto a flat plate. The partial differential equations for the conservation of mass and momentum are solved using a finite volume method and the predicted velocities are compared to experimental data by Myszko (1997). The paper demonstrates that in the free-jet region both models over-predict the thickness of the jet. The ASM predicts faster jet growth rate and smaller jet thickness than the low Reynolds number model resulting to closer agreement with the experiments. As a consequence of the better performace of the ASM in the free-jet region, predictions in the wall-jet region showed that despite the use of the logarithmic law-of-the-wall function, the ASM results are closer to the experimental points than the predictions obtained with the two-equation model. However, the rate of peak velocity decay is far higher than the experimental one with both turbulence models. Again, the decay rate predicted with the ASM fits better the exprimental data. The implementation of the ASM exhibited convergence problems most of which were atributed to the cross-derivative terms in the k and ɛ equations and were treated using a linear under-relaxation technique. In general the ASM predictions were more accurate than the low Reynolds number k–ɛ model, with an extra computational cost of less than 25%, which makes the model very attractive for the prediction of turbulence characteristics of high Reynolds number flows with strong stramline curvature. Received 20 August 2001 / Accepted 11 January 2002     

Enhancement of the precision of fiber-optic interferometers by using couplers with high spectral power or antisymmetric supermode cutoff

It is shown that in 2×2 single-mode optical-fiber directional couplers operating with cutoff of the antisymmetric normal mode of a composite waveguide, the additional stray phase shift of the waves in the forward and cross channels (found in normal couplers) vanishes. Thus, by using these couplers (instead of the usual ones) in various interferometers, the precision can be enhanced substantially. It has also been shown that the precision of interferometers with wide-band radiation sources (such as white-light interferometers and fiber-optic gyroscopes) can be improved by replacing the usual couplers with couplers of high spectral power whose splitting ratio can execute a large number of oscillations within the radiation line width, efficiently eliminating the afore-mentioned stray phase shift. Pis’ma Zh. Tekh. Fiz. 23, 76–80 (July 26, 1997)     

Random parameter models of interstate crash frequencies by severity,number of vehicles involved,collision and location type

A nine-year (1999–2007) continuous panel of crash histories on interstates in Washington State, USA, was used to estimate random parameter negative binomial (RPNB) models for various aggregations of crashes.     

Microstructural analysis of the brass seat of a valve from the 1907 steam tug “Hercules”

The steam tug Hercules was an ocean-going and bay tug for 55 years before being retired. It is now being restored by the National Park Service (as of 1993 printing of this article). A broken steam valve was obtained for microstructural examination. The body was gray cast iron, and the stem and seat were brass. The examination centered on corrosion of the brass components. The seat and shaft were α brass, with a hardness of 64 and 79 DPH, respectively. A nut held the shaft onto the seat and was α-β brass with a hardness of 197 DPH. Welded on the end of the shaft was a ring of hard (DPH 294) α-β brass, which seated against the nut. The brass seat and stem showed little corrosion. However, the α-β brass nut and welded tip show extensive dezincification. This process of removal of Zn and the retention of Cu began in the high Zn β phase, but eventually both phases were attacked. The depth of penetration was consistent with dezincification rates reported in the literature for such brasses in salt water if the valve had been in service about 55 years. Reprinted from Microstructural Science, vol. 20, Metallographic Characterization of Metals after Welding, Processing and Service, Proc. of the Twenty Fifth Annual Tech. Meeting of the International Metallographic Society, W.R. Kanne Jr., G.W.E. Johnson, J.D. Braun, and M.R. Louthan, Jr., ed., The International Metallographic Society, Columbus, Ohio, and ASM International, 1993, pp. 471–484.     

South African research in selected scientific areas: Status 1981–2000

The paper is a bibliometric study of the publication and citation patterns and impact of South African research 1981–2000 in five selected research fields: Animal & Plant sciences; Chemistry; Biochemistry; Microbiology & molecular biology, including genetics; and Physics, excluding Space science. Data are collected from Science Citation Index via the ISI product National Science Indicators. With the exception of Microbiology & molecular biology and Physics the results demonstrate a decrease of SA publications from 1986–1990. The SA world share declines for all five fields. First from the period 1994–1998 the Animal & plant sciences and Microbiology & molecular biology turn the decline into an increase. Absolute citation impact is increasing for all the fields from 1989–1993, except for Chemistry. One reason for the decline is a lower publication output. General & internal medicine, as an supplementary volume-heavy field observed, declines in citations until that same period from which it becomes stable, also in impact, but with a marked decrease in cited paper proportion. In citation world shares the five fields combined show positive signs also since 1989–1993, after which period the international eco-political embargo of SA was lifted. However, Biochemistry and Chemistry continue to decline during the 1990s. Citation impact relative to the world shows a similar pattern, but stagnation appears towards the end of the 1990s in all the observed fields combined. The trends are quite similar to those of Mexico and New Zealand. It is thus highly uncertain if a general citation embargo of SA occurred; yet, in some fields like the Animal & plant sciences, Veterinary science, Chemistry, and General & internal medicine there are signs that a mild citation embargo might have occurred. However, the economic embargo, combined with a significant brain drain, may have had an effect on the publication productivity, after it was lifted. For all indicators Chemistry is undergoing a marked decline during the last decade. This is in line with the negative trends for General & internal medicine, whereas some other medical specialities, biology, economics and other social sciences, the engineering fields and materials sciences keep stable or increase their production. SA is in line with the Mexican development but below that of New Zealand, seemingly losing ground to the developed countries. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

John Collier,Jr

Abstract

After sending off a portfolio of his pictures to the headquarters of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in Washington, DC, John Collier, Jr, became so preoccupied with just trying to survive in photography that he forgot about his submission. As weeks turned into months, he bounced from one photography job to another. Collier felt that he had hit rock bottom in 1941 working as a printer for Gabriel Milan's, ‘a very cut-throat photography company in San Francisco’. Then one day his labour in the laboratory was interrupted by a telephone call from Washington. ‘I was called out of my little dungeon where I was tinting goldtoned baby portraits and picked up the phone and couldn't hear what the man said, having a life-long hearing difficulty’. Collier handed the receiver over to the nearest person, who happened to be his boss, to relay the message. ‘There's a crazy guy in Washington, DC, who wants to pay you $2,300 a year. You'd better take it because I'm going to fire you’. A shocked and elated Collier took the receiver, and confirmed his acceptance with a simple ‘Yes’. Although Collier did not hear anything that Roy Stryker, Head of the Historic Section, said in reply, he immediately prepared to leave for the nation's capital, and became what turned out to be the last photographer hired for the greatest documentary project the world has ever known. ‘This was the climax of the concern that I had to do something about direct analysis and observation, about what was going on around me at the time of the Great Depression’. ¹     

A test of differences in the literature history of four historical accounts of the quantum mechanics problem

This paper examines four historical accounts of the quantum mechanics problem in physics. The purpose is to describe the litrature used by the histories quantitatively using frequency of date of publication. Additionally, one of the histories was tested against the other three to determine differences. A Moments Test and a t Test were employed. The results indicated the literature history of quantum mechanics, when plotted as a function of frequency of publication date is non-normal, negatively skewed, and is platykurtic. The test for difference between the one history and the cumulative histories was non-significant. Interpretations of the results are discussed.     

SEM fractography and failure analysis of nonmetallic materials

This paper analyzes a collection of SEM fractographs compiled from 12 years of undergraduate and graduate level courses on fractography and failure analysis. Each nonmetallic material studied (glass, plastic, FRP, and wood) was fractured under controlled conditions so that the fracture was due mainly to one mode of loading such as tension, torsion, unidirectional bending, fatigue by reverse bending, and impact. With the aid of the stereomicroscope and the SEM, the fracture features of each sample were analyzed and fractographs obtained at a wide range of magnifications. The features and direction of crack propagation were correlated with the mode of loading which induced the fracture. From this study, correlations among the main fracture modes, micromechanisms, microfracture features, and loading conditions were compiled. Such correlations are invaluable for the proper interpretation of fracture features during failure analysis especially where little is known about the cause of the fracture. Reprinted from Microstructural Science, vol. 21, Metallographic Characterization of Materials Behavior, Proc. of the Twenty Sixth Annual Tech. Meeting of the International Metallographic Society, C.R. Brooks and M.R. Louthan, Jr., ed., The International Metallographic Society, Columbus, Ohio, and ASM International, 1994, pp. 121–134.     

Susan Lipper

Abstract

When William Norman opened his photographic studio in a tiny redbrick house on Bleury Street in Montreal in late 1856,1 Letter from Alice Notman, Montreal to her parents Mr and Mrs Thomas, Woodwork, England. 28 December 1856. the 30-year-old immigrant could not have dreamed that this small beginning would one day expand into a vast enterprise spanning four Canadian provinces and six states in the eastern USA.² Nor could he have known that the business would continue long after his death, and that the firm's production of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photographs would become the foundation of an archives of international repute and his pictures cherished by millions.     

Alfred Stieglitz

Abstract

Several recent projects devoted to Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) reveal current trends in scholarship regarding this key figure in twentiethcentury cultural history. Two new publications focus primarily upon the myriad significant contributions he made to the ali and culture of the United States. For the historian of photography, these works offer useful insights conceming the intellectual and altistic climate that informed Stieglitz, md which can be productively applied to discussions of his photographic oeuvre. Venturing off the printed page, a documentary film revisits the Stieglitz biography and lauds his photography as one of the major artistic achievements of the twentieth century. Those looking for a comprehensive assessment of Alfred Stieglitz's endeavours as a photographer, however, will have to wait a little longer. The National Gallery of Art in Washington intends to publish a major catalogue, Stieglitz, in 2002, in conjunction with an exhibition featuring a selection of Stieglitz's photographs drawn from their collection. I await this publication with great anticipation. Meanwhile, the National Gallery has developed an innovative website that previews their undertaking.     

Benjamin Robins (1707–1751): Opting not to be a commissary for Acadia but a fortifications engineer in East India

After the printing of his little “budget”‡ of New Principles of Gunnery in 1742 [1,2], Robins would seem to have become unsure as to what and where he should apply his talents. Not obtaining a permanent appointment as Professor of Fortification at the Woolwich Military Academy in 1741, his search for self-esteem in employment seems to have led him to accept the post, in 1749, of Director General of Engineering for the East India Company in the Carnatica, India, and where at work in 1751, he died of malaria one year after landing from England.

The paper describes some of the historical and technical background, e.g. of the military engineer and the establishment of some fortifications by the British in the 17th and 18th centuries on the eastern side of the Indian subcontinent, at the start of less than two centuries of subsequent Empire. Some account of one Western European nation's involvement in overseas military engineering is outlined; we do not restrict this only to Robins' period but indicate how it continued and developed for a generation after he died. Robins' decease at the height of his career in early middle age, surely cut by one half a great career of unfulfilled promise in engineering science and practice.

Originally, as a consequence of the signing of the terms of the peace treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, after the War of the Austrian Succession, Robins was offered the opportunity to go to Paris, “as a commissary to set the limits of Acadia”. This he declined, choosing rather to go out East.

English mid-18th century sensitivity to events in Acadia is fully described. The contest between the English and French for Empire in Southern India and Nova Scotia is described (relatively) extensively and reveals the depth of competition between the nations. Details pertaining to Acadia are given in Part I and to India in Part II.     

Assessing probabilistic forecasts of multivariate quantities,with an application to ensemble predictions of surface winds

We discuss methods for the evaluation of probabilistic predictions of vector-valued quantities, that can take the form of a discrete forecast ensemble or a density forecast. In particular, we propose a multivariate version of the univariate verification rank histogram or Talagrand diagram that can be used to check the calibration of ensemble forecasts. In the case of density forecasts, Box’s density ordinate transform provides an attractive alternative. The multivariate energy score generalizes the continuous ranked probability score. It addresses both calibration and sharpness, and can be used to compare deterministic forecasts, ensemble forecasts and density forecasts, using a single loss function that is proper. An application to the University of Washington mesoscale ensemble points at strengths and deficiencies of probabilistic short-range forecasts of surface wind vectors over the North American Pacific Northwest.     

How Stieglitz came to photograph cityscapes

Abstract

Beginning in 1927, at the age of 63, Alfred Stieglitz began photographing the views of Manhattan outside the windows at the Intimate Gallery, his third-floor exhibition space on East 59th Street, and at the thirtieth-floor apartment at the Shelton Hotel, at 49th Street and Lexington Avenue, where he lived with Georgia O'Keeffe. In concerted bursts over the next four years, and then intermittently until ill-health forced the end of his picture-making in 1937, Stieglitz produced about 90 cityscapes, most of them depicting the changing views from .the Shelton and from his seventeenthfloor gallery An American Place, at 53rd Street and Madison Avenue, where he moved operations just after the stockmarket crash of 1929.1 The key set of Stieglitz's photographs in the National Gallery, Washington, DC, deposited there by Georgia O'Keeffe in 1949, includes 80 New York cityscapes from 1927 and after. The collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art has, among its late cityscapes, a handful that are not present in Washington, being variants in either negative, cropping, or photographic paper. These have been donated in stages over the years by Dorothy Norman. Further examples of variations from the images in Washington are unknown at present. These hard-edged yet lush gelatine silver prints vividly document a building boom of the late 1920s and early Depression years which transformed the refined, residential ‘uptown’ that Stieglitz had known all his life into a skyscraper-ridden ‘midtown’, a centre for office rentals, luxury apartment hotels and the fme art trade (figure 1).     

Predicting faculty job centrality in communication

Data from 1,581 faculty members affiliated with 98 doctoral-granting Communication programs in the United States were analyzed to determine normative publication rates and predictors of position centrality in the faculty hiring network. The Communication Institute for Online Scholarship (CIOS) database was used to measure publication frequency in refereed journals. Position centrality was measured using a Communication program’s relative position in the hiring network as established by Barnett, Danowski, Feeley, and Stalker (2010). The average publication frequencies by academic rank were as follows: assistant professors averaged 2.29 articles (N = 441, SD = 3.29); associate professors averaged 6.69 articles (N = 497, SD = 5.77); professors averaged 10.92 articles (N = 542, SD = 12.09). Results from multiple regression analyses indicate the number of publications for faculty members and position centrality of where one earned his or her doctoral degree significantly predicted current position centrality. Publication numbers for one’s advisor and year of earned doctorate did not emerge as significant predictors of position centrality.     

Microstructural phenomena associated with micrometeoroid impact craters in aluminum and stainless steel

We explore the metallurgical and materials implications for hypervelocity impact crater formation in some representative materials exposed in space in low-Earth orbit. Radial cracks associated with small size (<0.2 mm) craters in anodized aluminum alloy illustrate the importance of impacting particle flux and size distributions. Novel sectioning and etching of selected craters in stainless steel bolt heads has illustrated the potential for detailed characterization of cracking, phase changes, and extreme deformation proximate to the crater wall while thin sections through the crater and selectively ion-milled to electron transparency have illustrated shock pressure effects on microstructures below the crater for the first time. The use of optical, acoustic, and electron microscopy is illustrated in the characterization of hypervelocity impact crater-related microstructures and these observations point to the essential role to be played by imaging techniques in understanding the environmental effects of space in low-Earth orbit on the behavior of materials and space structures. Reprinted from Microstructural Science, vol. 20, Metallographic Characterization of Metals after Welding, Processing and Service, Proc. of the Twenty Fifth Annual Tech. Meeting of the International Metallographic Society, W.R. Kanne Jr., G.W.E. Johnson, J.D. Braun, and M.R. Louthan Jr., ed., The International Metallographic Society, Columbus, Ohio, and ASM International, 1993, pp. 261–80.     

Nalimov and the Polish Way Towards Science of Science

Nalimov's relations with Polish scientists date from the sixties. He was present in Polish science owing to his publication — also specially prepared for Polish journals — and for his participation in Polish-Soviet science of science conferences organized alternately in Poland and in (of that time) Soviet Union. He had a high opinion — which he many times expressed — on contemporary condition of Polish science of science as well as on its previous achievements. In such opinion he was not isolated; also John Bernal and Derek de Solla Price referred in their papers to precursory statements of Maria and Stanisław Ossowski formulating already in the thirties of XX century progressive programme for science of science research. Ten years earlier a similar views upon science presented world-famous Polish sociologist Florian Znaniecki. So, in the first part of the paper a common way of thinking and approaching science of science basic problems in Ossowski's, Znaniecki's and Nalimov's works is presented. In the second part the direct contacts of Nalimov with Polish science of science researchers widely described and commentated in Polish journals are discussed. At least using citation analysis the influence of Nalimov's ideas on science of science and scientometrics in Poland is presented. As a base to citation analysis the journal Problems of the Science of Science (1965–1999) and monographs devoted to scientometrics, bibliometrics and informetrics were taken. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.