Transient and continuant authors in a research field: The case of terrorism

The issue of research continuance in a scientific discipline was analyzed and applied to the field of terrorism. The growing amount of literature in this field is produced mostly by one-timers who “visit” the field, contribute one or two articles, and then move to another subject area. This research pattern does not contribute to the regularity and constancy of publication by which a scientific discipline is formed and theories and paradigms of the field are created. This study observed the research continuance and transience of scientific publications in terrorism by using obtainable “most prolific terrorism authors” lists at different points in time. These lists designed by several terrorism researchers, presented a few researchers who contributed to the field continuously and many others whose main research interest lay in another discipline. The four lists observed included authors who were continuants, transients, new-comers, and terminators (who left the field). The lack of continuous, full-time research in a research field is typical of many disciplines, but the influence of this research pattern on a field’s growth and stability is different for older, established disciplines than for new and formative fields of study. With in the former, intellectual mobility could contribute to the rise of new topics and probably enrich the particular scientific field; with the latter, by contrast, it could hamper the formation and growth of the field.     

Homeland security literature in relation to terrorism publications: The source and the response

Summary The literature on Terrorism and National Security (NS), and Homeland Security (HS) presents two sides of a coin: one side demonstrates the problematic nature of terrorism and asks for solutions; the other side tries to find a response and solutions to the problem. It was expected that the NS literature would emanate from the same source material as the HS publications. Analysis of the literature of terrorism, homeland security, and national security on Science Citation Index (SCI) has shown that the material on terrorism and NS stems from the same scientific sources; that is, the Social Sciences. In contrast, the HS scientific literature originates in the exact sciences, engineering, and life and environmental sources. The three kinds of literature have grown remarkably in recent years; however, cross-section search strategy between terrorism and HS studies yields small retrieval sets. This means that few articles both present the problem and propose possible solutions. Currently, HS is on one side of the scholarly arena, and NS and terrorism literature on the other side; they advance mostly in lines parallel to each other, but as the researcher moves from observing the core scientific literature toward the more general material, this state of affairs changes. Another analysis of a multimedia database, WorldCatalog (which indexes mostly books, but also videos and computer materials, both scientific and popular) demonstrates a different trend; the same publications deal with both terrorism and HS counter-terrorism, and suggested solutions.     

The contribution of on-road studies of road user behaviour to improving road safety

For over 40 years transport safety researchers have been using methods of vehicle instrumentation to gain greater insights into the factors that contribute to road user crash risk and the associated crash factors. In the previous decade in particular the widespread availability of lower cost and more advanced methods of vehicle instrumentation and recording technologies are supporting the increasing number of on-road research studies worldwide. The design of these studies ranges from multi-method studies using instrumented test vehicles and defined driving routes, to field operational tests, through to much larger and more naturalistic studies. It is timely to assess the utility of these methods for studying the influences of driver characteristics and states, the design and operation of the road system, and the influences of in-vehicle technologies on behaviour and safety for various road user groups. This special issue considers the extent to which on-road studies using vehicle instrumentation have been used to advance knowledge across these areas of road safety research. The papers included in this issue illustrate how research using instrumented test vehicles continues to generate new knowledge, and how the larger scale United States and European naturalistic and field operational test studies are providing a wealth of data about road user behaviour in real traffic. This is balanced with a number of studies that present methodological developments in data collection and analysis methods that, while promising, need further validation. The use of on-road methods to accurately describe the behaviours occurring in everyday real-world conditions, to quantify risks for safety critical events, and an improved understanding of the factors that contribute to risk, clearly has huge potential to promote further road trauma reductions.     

面向辅助创意设计的个人创造力支持系统研究

目的创造力是科学、技术和文化的核心驱动力,如何提升创造力一直是学界研究的热点和焦点。不少研究提出,可以通过构建创造力支持系统,帮助个人和群体实现创造力提升。方法通过对国内外111篇文献的集中梳理,对于其中涉及辅助创意设计的83个个人创造力支持系统进行了量化分析。结论系统地厘清了当前国内外面向创意设计的个人创造力支持系统的概念定义、适用领域、支持阶段、支持方法和支持设备,前瞻性地提出了未来可以重点关注的内容和方向,为后续研究提供了有益的借鉴和参考。面向辅助创意设计的个人创造力支持系统研究,应关注与设计智能的深度融合、跨领域知识借鉴、动态刺激调整、用户个性化定制、多样设计场景支持、多领域应用等方向。     

Speed choice and driving performance in simulated foggy conditions

Driving in fog is a potentially dangerous activity that has been investigated in a number of different ways; however, most have focused on identifying the underlying perceptual changes that result in an inability to perceive speed of vehicle motion. Although the previous research has identified the perceptual changes associated with driving in fog and shows that people are highly likely to perceive their speed to be higher than it actually is, these research studies have not investigated driving behavior when drivers are allowed to maintain speed as they feel appropriate and make use of the vehicle's speedometer. In addition, much of the existing research focuses on speed perception and presents a limited view of other driving performance metrics in terms of lane keeping and event detection. The current study addresses these issues utilizing a driving simulator-based method where fog is simulated as a distance dependent contrast reduction while having participants drive at speeds they feel are appropriate. A number of different instructions and speed feedback mechanisms were tested in order to determine how drivers react when driving in varying levels of fog. Results also include lane keeping measures in order to assess whether drivers are willing to drive at speeds where their lane keeping performance is degraded due to the reduced visibility. Results indicate that, in general, drivers do not tend to slow down significantly until visibility distance is drastically reduced by fog; however, lane keeping ability is maintained throughout most of the range of visibility distances. Lane keeping ability was reduced only when fog results in visibility distances <30 m. Overall, the current study shows that drivers are willing and able to maintain vehicular control at high speed when driving in fog; however, it is important to note that drivers chose to drive at speeds where they would be incapable of stopping to avoid obstacles in the roadway even if they were to identify and react to the obstacle immediately at the border of visibility distance. This research suggests that safety benefits may be gained by convincing drivers to slow down more than they would on their own when driving in fog or enhancing a vehicle's ability to identify and react to hazards that are not visible to the driver. In order to further understand the effects of driving in fog, future naturalistic driving research should focus on identifying and mitigating risky behaviors associated with driving in foggy conditions.     

Fifteen years after September 11: Where is the medical research heading? A scientometric analysis

The attacks of 9-11 have been not only the cause of the deaths of thousands of people but have also had an enormous impact on the health of the survivors, the rescue workers, the fire fighters and many more people worldwide. This study aims to depict a representative global picture of the research output of 15 years after the attacks of 9-11 by analyzing the bibliometric data of the overall publications with particular focus on medical topics. This study subsequently deepens the scientometric approach of the overall terrorism research of Magnone in 2014, also published in Scientometrics. The USA has published the most by far, taking the absolute numbers into account. When evaluating citation or socio-economic ratios, Israel takes first place. The main collaborating partner of the USA is the UK, followed by Canada. The share of European countries is rising over time, linked with the terror attacks in European cities. There are only a few other countries involved. Prospective study approaches should be concentrated on international performances as a contribution in dealing with terrorism, its causes and its consequences. The improved access and involvement of other countries’ scientists in the research and publication processes by a greater network would be an important component in facing international terrorism.     

The evaluation of scientific productivity in Brazil: An assessment of the mental health field

Brazilian scientific production has increased significantly over the last decade, and mental health has been a leading research field in the country, with a growing number of articles published in high quality international journals. This article analyses the scientific output of mental health research between 2004 and 2006 and estimates individual research performance based on four different strategies. A total of 106 mental health scientists were included in the analysis; together they published 1,209 articles indexed in Medline or ISI, with over 65% of the production in journals with impact factor ≥1. Median impact factor of publications was 2. Spearman correlation coefficient showed a large positive correlation between all four different measures used to estimate individual research output. Ten investigators were together responsible for almost 30% of the articles published in the period, whereas 65% of the sample contributed with less than 10 articles.     

The growing number of patent citations to scientific papers: Changes in the world,nations, and fields

This study analyzes USPTO patents in the period 1998–2017. The number of science-related patents has increased twice as fast as the number of patents and scientific publications, and the number of cited papers per patent has almost doubled. These results vary substantially from one scientific and technological field to another. The proportion of the research papers cited by a patent has doubled. It refers to papers that are mostly published by the countries that have developed both scientific and technological capability and, surprisingly, are mainly used by inventors abroad. However, a weak relationship between the number of citations received from patents and papers reveals that the assessment of research performance needs some changes as the percentage of papers related to the innovations has grown over time.     

Defining and screening crash surrogate events using naturalistic driving data

Naturalistic driving studies provide an excellent opportunity to better understand crash causality and to supplement crash observations with a much larger number of near crash events. The goal of this research is the development of a set of diagnostic procedures to define, screen, and identify crash and near crash events that can be used in enhanced safety analyses. A way to better understand crash occurrence and identify potential countermeasures to improve safety is to learn from and use near crash events, particularly those near crashes that have a common etiology to crash outcomes. This paper demonstrates that a multi-stage modeling framework can be used to search through naturalistic driving data, extracting statistically similar crashes and near crashes. The procedure is tested using data from the VTTI 100-car study for road departure events. A total of 63 events are included in this application. While the sample size is limited in this empirical study, the authors believe the procedure is ready for testing in other applications.     

国外生态文明建设的科技发展战略分析与启示

本文对比分析了国外生态文明建设的科技发展战略制定与发展变化情况,总结经验与教训,为我国生态文明建设提供参考。分析结果表明,各国将科技创新作为生态文明建设的核心驱动力,建立和完善科技创新机制和体系是生态文明建设科技支撑的重要内容和保障。我国生态文明建设应更加重视科技发展战略工作,围绕国土空间开发与资源配置、生产生活消费、生态保护与建设以及环境保护等领域,在低碳技术、绿色经济、生态恢复和环境治理技术等重要领域瞄准核心问题,加强科技战略布局。     

Scientometrics: State-of-the-art

In this presentation we argue that the core research activities of scientometries fall in four interrelated areas: science and technology indicators, information systems on science and technology, the interaction between science and technology, and cognitive as well as socioorganisational structures in science and technology. We emphasize that an essential condition for the healthy development of the field is a careful balance between application and basic work, in which the applied side is the driving force. In other words: scientometrics is primarily a field of applied science. This means that the interaction users' is at least as important as the interaction with colleague-scientists. We state that this situation is very stimulating, it strengthens methodology and it activates basic work. We consider idea of scientometrics lacking theoretical content or being otherwise in a 'crisis-like' situation groundless. Scientometrics is in a typical developmental stage in which the creativity of its individual researchers and the ‘climate’ and facilities of their institutional environments determine the Progress in the field and, particularly, its relation with other disciplines. These aspects also contribute substantially to the reputation of scientometrics as a research field respected by the broader scientific community. And this latter point is important, both to let quantitative studies of science and technology take more advantage of an academic environment, as well as to keep it innovative and thus attractive in terms of applications at the longer term.     

The role of editorial material in bibliometric research performance assessments

In this study, the possibilities to extend the basis for research performance exercises with editorial material are explored. While this document type has been traditionally not considered as an important type of scientific communication in research performance assessment procedures, there is a perception from researchers that editorial materials should be considered as relevant document types as important sources for the dissemination of scientific knowledge. In a number of these cases, some of the mentioned editorial materials are actually ‘highly cited’. This lead to a thorough scrutiny of editorials or editorial material over the period 1992–2001, for all citation indexes of Thomson Scientific. The relevance of editorial materials through three quantitative bibliometric characteristics of scientific publications, namely page length, number of references, and the number of received citations, are thoroughly analyzed.     

Relative age of references as a tool to identify emerging research fields with an application to the field of ecology and environmental sciences

Emerging scientific fields are commonly identified by different citation based bibliometric parameters. However, their main shortcoming is the existence of a time lag needed for a publication to receive citations. In the present study, we assessed the relationship between the age of references in scientific publications and the change in publication rate within a research field. Two indices based on the age of references are presented, the relative age of references and the ratio of references published during the preceding 2 years, and applied thereafter on four datasets from the previously published studies, which assessed eutrophication research, sturgeon research, fisheries research, and the general field of ecology. We observed a consistent pattern that the emerging research topics had a lower median age of references and a higher ratio of references published in the preceding 2 years than their respective general research fields. The main advantage of indices based on the age of references is that they are not influenced by a time lag, and as such they are able to provide insight into current scientific trends. The best potential of the presented indices is to use them combined with other approaches, as each one can reveal different aspects and properties of the assessed data, and provide validation of the obtained results. Their use should be however assessed further before they are employed as standard tools by scientists, science managers and policy makers.     

Correspondence between self-reported and objective measures of driving exposure and patterns in older drivers

The driving behavior of older adults has been traditionally examined using questionnaires and diaries. The accuracy of self-reports has been questioned, and in-vehicle recording devices touted as more objective measures of real-world driving. The purposes of this study were to replicate and extend prior research comparing self-report and actual measures of driving exposure and patterns. Two electronic devices were installed in the vehicles of 61 drivers (67-92 years, 59% women) who were instructed to drive as usual over 1-week. Participants completed trip logs, daily diaries, a questionnaire on usual driving habits, ratings of situational driving frequency and avoidance and a follow-up interview. Only 53% of the sample attempted to estimate how far they had driven over the week and self-estimates were inaccurate (ME = 77.5 km; CV = 44.5%). Drivers tended to miss a significant number of trips and stops in their diaries. Driving behavior over the week was fairly consistent with usual practices regarding time of day, driving in certain areas, and night driving. However, subjects drove in challenging situations more than usual. Triangulating multiple sources of electronic and self-reported data provided a better understanding about the behavior of older drivers.     

地方政府如何实施品牌带动战略推动区域经济社会发展的研究

实施品牌带动战略,企业是主体,市场是主导,政府作推动。目前国内外对企业如何实施品牌战略有较多研究,但对政府如何推动品牌带动战略实施的系统性研究不够。本文主要通过分析当前地方政府推动实施品牌带动的战略存在的问题和应做的工作,为地方政府推动实施品牌带动战略提供借鉴。     

The Driver Prioritisation Questionnaire: Exploring drivers’ self-report visual priorities in a range of driving scenarios

Previous research has noted that novice drivers are at greatest risk of an accident. One reason that has been reported for this is that they have not developed the optimum visual search strategies of their more experienced counterparts. One might expect that new drivers might be taught the appropriate visual skills while learning to drive, though this requires instructors to have introspection into their own visual skills before they can be passed on to the student. In addition novice drivers should be able to acquire the instructed skills. This study used an image-based questionnaire to assess driving instructors’ and novice drivers’ priority ratings for attending to different areas of the driving scene across nine scenarios. It was predicted that if instructors and novices have introspection into the relative importance of these different areas, there should be agreement across the sample of participants. Additionally it was considered important to assess which areas of the visual scene are important across all different scenarios and which areas change in priority with a change in scenario. Results showed that for both groups the opinions regarding visual field prioritisation were highly consistent when compared to chance. Despite the rating consistencies, group differences were found, across all scenarios with “Rear View Mirrors” being the visual field with the most frequent observed group differences. Certain categories (“Road Ahead” and “Mirrors”) were highly ranked across all scenarios, while other categories were more scenario specific. We conclude that both groups have insight into some elements of visual search. However, in many occasions the prioritisation was different between driving instructors and novice drivers. It appears that during the learning process the novice drivers did not adopt the prioritisation strategies seen in driving instructors. This has important implications for the teaching of visual skills in driving.     

Electromobility research in Germany and China: structural differences

Electromobility (e-mobility) is applicable to issues from sustainable transportation to revolutionary driving behaviour. The wide-ranging influence of this concept calls for a shift toward an internationalization of e-mobility research in developed and developing countries alike. Germany and China, as the major exporters and volume producers in the automotive industry, have established the goal of becoming market leaders in e-mobility by 2020. Compared to China, Germany, as a forerunner in the field of e-mobility, is unexpectedly lagging behind in both the sale volume of electric vehicles (EVs) and the share of international publications. Since 2006, China has been the second largest single “producer” of EV-related published research, trailing only the United States. However, the technological capabilities—applying science to real-world issues—seem to be under-represented in these publications. This paper explores structural differences in e-mobility research landscapes and examines possible contextual explanations for the differences between Germany and China. The study involves a detailed comparison of articles sourced from the two countries, beginning with a broad overview of recent research and ending with a short content analysis of the statement concerning current progress and practical challenges for e-mobility development in Germany and China. The conclusion reached is that both countries have explored topics related to EV modes, batteries, energy management and the smart grid; however, specific terms of interest have evolved differently in the two countries. Compared with China, Germany has not achieved a rapid increase in the number of international publications but has still accumulated a vast reservoir of scientific talents and technological resources through the scientific collaboration between academia and industry. Universities, as the main loci of scientific research in China, have actively engaged in international cooperation, addressing problems with no apparent differences from those addressed in Germany. The authors’ views relative to the development of e-mobility in the two countries vary greatly from group to group, indicating that differences should be considered in both the pattern of knowledge production and the research context.

     

Thematic issue: driving automation and autonomy

ABSTRACT

Automated driving has the potential to support drivers, freeing them up to do other things, such as work, rest or play. The problem is that in the present instantiation, automated driving requires the driver to perform a monitoring function and be ready to intervene if required. This is the worst of all worlds of automation. The monitoring task can be (if performed properly) more demanding than manual driving and the driver is not freed up to do other things. Worse still, is that the monitoring task cannot be sustained for long and, on occasions, led to a vehicle collisions because the driver cannot intervene in a timely manner. One of the first studies conducted over twenty years shows this to be the case and there really has not been any improvements since. This special issue reports on the latest development in vehicle automation and points to future directions that research should be directed.     

New York State science and technology resources

Since September 2001, the need for commercializing college and university-based research into products and processes to safeguard our society has intensified. No state was more affected by the tragic events of September 11th than New York. And since that time, no state has devoted more resources to meeting these challenges than New York. Much of the newly available funding is being invested through the New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research (NYSTAR), created by Governor George E. Pataki and the State legislature in 2000 to promote economic development through technology transfer. This article provides an overview of the science and technology resources available to companies in New York State for increasing their competitiveness and improving the lives of us all.