To Contribute our wisdom to the standardization and future of the world

Justas the them e ofthis year’s W orldStandards D ay,“Standards for a SaferW orld”,the W orld Standards D ay thisyear is unusual because the role of stan-dards is becom ing m ore and m ore im por-tant and irreplaceable.Standard,one ofthe key w ays to build a safe w orld isfound by years’collaborative efforts ofexperts w orldw ide w ho are engaged instandardization w ork.W e believe thatthere should be no lim it for standard.Standard is the base of w ide cooperationand com m unication f…     

A multi-level network analysis of web-citations among the world’s universities

This paper describes the results of a multi-level network analysis of web-citations among the 1,000 universities with the greatest presence on the world wide web. Using data from January 2011, it describes the web-citation network of the world’s universities and ascertains the antecedent factors that determine its structure. At the university level, the network is composed of ten groups, and the most central universities are mainly from the United States. The factors that predict the structure of the network are, whether or not the universities are in the same country, the language of instruction, the size and excellence of the institution (university ranking and the number of Nobel Prizes received), if they offer doctoral degrees, and the infrastructure of its country. Physical distance was not a determinant of the network’s structure. At the nation-state level, international connections among a nation’s universities are composed of a single cluster with the United States, United Kingdom and Germany at the center. The structure of the international network may be predicted by the countries’ overall hyperlink connections, international co-authorships, student flows and the number of Nobel Prizes won by its citizen.     

Taizhou Yangtze River Bridge—the first kilometer level three-pylon two-span suspension bridge in the world

Taizhou Bridge, located at the middle of Jiangsu Province, connecting City Taizhou and City Zhenjiang, was started in Dec. 2007. The bridge is the first kilometer-level three span suspension bridges in the world. The bridge adopts longitudinal herringbone shape steel middle pylon for the first time in the world. The foundation of the middle tower is the deepest underwater caisson in soil on earth. A great many of technical innovations are carried out to construct such a great project, such as the design techniques of the three-pylon suspension bridge, the precisely locating and bottom-sealing techniques of the large scale caisson foundation, the manufacture, combination techniques of steel and concrete in the middle tower, the welding of extra thick steel plate, the manufacture and control techniques of abnormal sections of the middle tower and so on.     

Is the United States losing ground in science? A global perspective on the world science system

Based on the Science Citation Index-Expanded web-version, the USA is still by far the strongest nation in terms of scientific performance. Its relative decline in percentage share of publications is largely due to the emergence of China and other Asian nations. In 2006, China has become the second largest nation in terms of the number of publications within this database. In terms of citations, the competitive advantage of the American “domestic market” is diminished, while the European Union (EU) is profiting more from the enlargement of the database over time than the USA. However, the USA is still outperforming all other countries in terms of highly cited papers and citation/publication ratios, and it is more successful than the EU in coordinating its research efforts in strategic priority areas like nanotechnology. In this field, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has become second largest nation in both numbers of papers published and citations behind the USA.     

Academic ranking of world universities using scientometrics - A comment to the “Fatal Attraction”

Summary The Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University published on the web the Academic Ranking of World Universities and attracted wide attentions worldwide. 60% of their criteria are based on the databases using scientometrics. They were aware of all possible technical problems, have gone through clean up processes and made necessary corrections. Highly cited researchers and articles published in Nature and Science were identified one by one and attributed to the correct institutions. They are confident that errors including human ones in their data are less than two percent. They will continue their ranking efforts, improve their ranking methodologies and provide more choices on the ranking lists.     

Rethinking adaptation for a 4°C world

With weakening prospects of prompt mitigation, it is increasingly likely that the world will experience 4°C and more of global warming. In such a world, adaptation decisions that have long lead times or that have implications playing out over many decades become more uncertain and complex. Adapting to global warming of 4°C cannot be seen as a mere extrapolation of adaptation to 2°C; it will be a more substantial, continuous and transformative process. However, a variety of psychological, social and institutional barriers to adaptation are exacerbated by uncertainty and long timeframes, with the danger of immobilizing decision-makers. In this paper, we show how complexity and uncertainty can be reduced by a systematic approach to categorizing the interactions between decision lifetime, the type of uncertainty in the relevant drivers of change and the nature of adaptation response options. We synthesize a number of issues previously raised in the literature to link the categories of interactions to a variety of risk-management strategies and tactics. Such application could help to break down some barriers to adaptation and both simplify and better target adaptation decision-making. The approach needs to be tested and adopted rapidly.     

Firm growth and R&D investment: SVAR evidence from the world’s top R&D investors

Understanding causal relationships among key economic variables is crucial for policy makers, who wish to e.g. stimulate private R&D growth. To this end, we applied a technique recently imported from the Machine Learning community (Structural Vector Autoregressions (SVARs) identified using Independent Components Analysis (ICA)) to a data-set of the world’s largest R&D investors. Our analysis highlights the key role of firm growth in the areas of employment and sales, rather than growth of profits or market capitalization, in stimulating R&D growth. R&D growth appears toward the end of the causal ordering of the growth process. Our results suggest that policies to increase private R&D would do better to target growth of sales and employment rather than market capitalization or profits.     

The Summit for world Standards Day 2004 Held in Beijing

On October 14th 2004, the Summit for World Stan-dards Day was held in Beijing, hosted by the Stan-dardization Administration of China (SAC) and Certification and Accreditation Administration of China (CNCA). Based on the theme of “Standards Connect the World”, the confer-ence discussed “how standardization work play the function of connecting the whole world better, realizing industry up-grading and economic lifting-off, and promoting national e-conomy to develop fast in a healthy …     

Climate-induced population displacements in a 4°C+ world

Massive population displacements are now regularly presented as one of the most dramatic possible consequences of climate change. Current forecasts and projections show that regions that would be affected by such population movements are low-lying islands, coastal and deltaic regions, as well as sub-Saharan Africa. Such estimates, however, are usually based on a 2°C temperature rise. In the event of a 4°C+ warming, not only is it likely that climate-induced population movements will be more considerable, but also their patterns could be significantly different, as people might react differently to temperature changes that would represent a threat to their very survival. This paper puts forward the hypothesis that a greater temperature change would affect not only the magnitude of the associated population movements, but also--and above all--the characteristics of these movements, and therefore the policy responses that can address them. The paper outlines the policy evolutions that climate-induced displacements in a 4°C+ world would require.     

World Standards Day Message 14 October 2005 Standards for a safer world

W e all w ant to live in a safer,m ore secure w orld.B ut earthquakes and hurricanes,floods,transportationand dom estic accidents,epidem ics and industrial disas-ters still account for m any thousands of deaths and in-juries each year,in addition to m aterialand socialdam-age.International Standards offer w idely accepted andrecognized solutions to prevent and respond to thesethreats.The role thatstandards can play in preventing orm itigating such hum an and m ateriallosses is increasing-ly re…     

Agriculture and food systems in sub-Saharan Africa in a 4°C+ world

Agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa faces daunting challenges, which climate change and increasing climate variability will compound in vulnerable areas. The impacts of a changing climate on agricultural production in a world that warms by 4°C or more are likely to be severe in places. The livelihoods of many croppers and livestock keepers in Africa are associated with diversity of options. The changes in crop and livestock production that are likely to result in a 4°C+ world will diminish the options available to most smallholders. In such a world, current crop and livestock varieties and agricultural practices will often be inadequate, and food security will be more difficult to achieve because of commodity price increases and local production shortfalls. While adaptation strategies exist, considerable institutional and policy support will be needed to implement them successfully on the scale required. Even in the 2°C+ world that appears inevitable, planning for and implementing successful adaptation strategies are critical if agricultural growth in the region is to occur, food security be achieved and household livelihoods be enhanced. As part of this effort, better understanding of the critical thresholds in global and African food systems requires urgent research.     

‘Triad’ or ‘tetrad’? On global changes in a dynamic world

The US-EU race for world leadership in science and technology has become the favourite subject of recent studies. Studies issued by the European Commission reported the increase of the European share in the world’s scientific production and announced world leadership of the EU in scientific output at the end of the last century. In order to be able to monitor those types of global changes, the present study is based on the 15-year period 1991–2005. A set of bibliometric and technometric indicators is used to analyse activity and impact patterns in science and technology output. This set comprises publication output indicators such as (1) the share in the world total, (2) subject-based publication profiles, (3) citation-based indicators like journal-and subject-normalised mean citation rates, (4) international co-publications and their impact as well as (5) patent indicators and publication-patent citation links (both directions). The evolution of national bibliometric profiles, ‘scientific weight’ and science-technology linkage patterns are discussed as well. The authors show, using the mirror of science and technology indicators, that the triad model does no longer hold in the 21^st century. China is challenging the leading sciento-economic powers and the time is approaching when this country will represent the world’s second largest potential in science and technology. China and other emerging scientific nations like South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil and Turkey are already changing the balance of power as measured by scientific production, as they are at least in part responsible for the relative decline of the former triad.     

On the Correction of the Melting Curve of the Eutectic Co–C for the Effect of the Thermal Inertia of the Furnace

This paper considers the influence of the thermal inertia of the furnace on the shape of the melting curve of the eutectic Co–C. To this end, melting experiments have been performed in a uniform three-zone furnace, with an inherent substantial thermal inertia. The thermal inertia has been quantified by measuring the step-response of the furnace with the sample in its solid state, just below its melting temperature. From the analysis of the effect of the thermal inertia of the furnace, it turned out that during melting the temperature distribution within the furnace, surrounding the crucible, is bound to be in a non-stationary state. This provided the key to properly finalizing the correction to be applied. The shape of the corrected curve differs considerably from that of the curve, as measured, in that the former shows a flatter melting plateau, and a larger curvature on the way down to the solidus point. As regards the liquidus temperature \(T_{\mathrm{liq}}\)—of major interest in the characterization of the transition temperature of high-temperature fixed points—it is demonstrated that the thermal inertia of the furnace shows a kind of self-compensating mechanism. But the effects of the thermal inertia of the furnace on the parameters defining the Scheil fit, involved in the correction procedure, were considerable.     

On the Origin of the δk-Model and the Model of Plastic Strips

On the basis of a survey of works, we demonstrate the priority of the Lviv school of mechanics in the field of creation and development of the deformation theory of limiting equilibrium of bodies with cracks known as the _k -model. The theory is based on the criterion of crack opening displacement proposed by Leonov and Panasyuk and on the procedure of evaluation of this quantity by modeling the inelastic zones in front of the crack by cuts the edges of which are loaded by certain stresses ₀ whose physical meaning is determined by the properties of the material. This method (known as the model of plastic strips) is also used for the determination of the development of plastic zones at the crack tip for various configurations of plates and loads and also in twisted bodies. The results of numerical calculations agree with the experimental data.     

Great differences in the ways of implementing the new EIA Directive – the offerings of the EIALAW 2018 conference

On the 23 March 2018, the most recent developments of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) law were examined by experts in Helsinki. The main theme of the conference was the comparison of the implementation experiences of various countries concerning the reformed EU EIA Directive. The European EIA debate was reflected against experiences in Canada. This paper examines the key points of the conference presentations and the lessons of the event.     

一杯沁人心肺，淡雅幽香的清茶——记Sil—world TS—840信号线

自从前几个月器材升级之后，我听音乐的兴趣更大了，时间也比以前更多了，每天下班后都是早早的回家，摆弄我那套宝贝音响，总是要到夜深入静才依依不舍地关机睡觉，结束一天的音乐旅程，而那些已买了多年的老ＣＤ唱片也被一一请到碟机里歌唱，看看有没有新的发现，美丽安ＭＩ１２０ＭＫ Ⅱ与城堡Ｉｎｖｅｒｓｉｏｎ１５真是一对重播古典的好搭档，早被打入冷宫的德国ＤＧＧ公司的几张８０年代录音唱片这下才焕发了青春，露出了它美好真实的一面，以前觉得沉闷灰暗的一些室内乐录音今天听来明快了许多，也增添了几分细腻感人的色彩，看来真…     

The improvement of the amorphous environment of the germanate–tellurate glasses in the presence of the gadolinium ions

Glasses in the system xGd₂O₃·(100 − x)[TeO₂·GeO₂] with 0 ≤ x ≤ 50 mol% have been prepared from melt quenching method. In this paper, we investigated changes of the coordination numbers of germanium, tellurium, and gadolinium ions by investigations of FTIR, EPR, and UV–VIS spectroscopy. By analyzing the structural changes resulted from the IR spectra we found that the bending modes of [GeO₄] structural units and the deformed modes of the Te–O–Te linkages produce intercalation of the [GdO _n ] entities in the germanate–tellurate chain network and densification of the glasses by increasing the number of [GeO₆] structural units. EPR spectra of the studied samples reveal that the gadolinium ions play a role of network former. The UV–VIS spectra show broad UV absorption bands located in the 250–350 nm region. Their intensity increase with the increasing of Gd₂O₃ content showing that these stronger transitions can be due to the presence of the O=Ge bonds (n–π* excitations) of [GeO₅] structural units. The [GeO₅] structural units are more stable thermodynamically than their analogues and the [GeO₆] structural units produce the improvement of the amorphous character of these glasses.