The luminous intensity of regional ‘night-light’ output can predict the growing volume of published scientific research by ‘luminaries’ in developing countries

Scientometrics - Global scientific research output has experienced continuous and rapid growth during the last 20 years. The spatial and temporal variations of the international papers at...     

The human factors in risk analyses of process plants: The control room operator model ‘TESEO’

The ability to make mistakes is an innate human trait; however, until recently, the ability to spread death and destruction through one's own mistakes has been mainly limited to political men and Generals. Nowadays, there are other individuals capable, when carrying out their work, of making mistakes with exceptionally grave consequences. This is caused by the construction of increasingly larger plant (with consequently higher destructive potentials), to the centralization of controls in one single, or a few, control rooms, and to the fact that many important decisions are concentrated on a few operators. Recent surveys seem to reveal that at least 40% of the total of disastrous events in industrial activities derive from human error. It therefore appears evident that each risk analysis made on systems in which man plays a part, must take possible human error into consideration.This report is an attempt to suggest data, methodologies and programs for an analysis of human factors in process industries.     

The meaning of ‘value’ in purchasing,logistics and operations management

We investigate the current conception of ‘value’ within the production-oriented disciplines of purchasing and supply, logistics and operations management. The research design entails a four-step content analysis of peer-reviewed journal articles drawn from these disciplines. Based upon the application of this method, we found that the conception of value within these production-oriented disciplines is subject to a considerable interpretive viability issue. Our findings suggest four contributory factors to this issue: a lack of theoretical rigour; a lack of definitional rigour; a plethora of [undefined] value-related terms in circulation within the field; and a large variety of linguistic usages of these terms, with ‘value’ being used as a verb, adjective and noun. This has profound implications as it throws into question much extant research in this field. How, for example, is it possible to effectively study something that is inadequately defined? It also has significant practical implications, as how is it possible to design an effective or efficient production system or supply chain premised upon the principle of value if none of the actors have a common understanding or consensus of what value is?     

The operating characteristics of‘ single’ and ‘ double’ non-mechanical flow line systems

Two types of ‘ series queue ’ type flow-lines are simulated. Both are balanced, mechanically unpaced systems with provision for interstage buffer stocks. The effects of buffer capacity, service-time variability and number of stations on the output efficiency of both types of line are examined and comparisons are made.     

The acquisition of tacit knowledge in China: An empirical analysis of the ‘supplier-side individual level’ and ‘recipient-side’ factors

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Dickens and ‘photography’ in ‘household words’

Abstract

The January 1981 issue of History of Photography (Vol. 5, No. 1 , p. 51), Lindsay Lambert writes: ‘The following article [‘Photography, 1853’] appeared in Household Words (19th March 1853). The journal was edited by Charles Dickens, and since the article carries no other by-line, it may well have been written by the editor himself’.     

The role of Fourier theory and of modulation in the prediction of visible moiré effects

Modern moiré theory is largely based on the Fourier approach. And yet, it seems that the Fourier theory by itself cannot answer all questions related to moiré effects. We present some visible phenomena in the superposition of periodic structures (such as line gratings) that are not captured by the Fourier approach. We discuss their significance, and provide possible explanations. In particular, we introduce the infinite module spanned by the frequencies of the original individual layers as a main tool in the moiré theory. We discuss its significance on the visible periodicities in the layer superposition–either real moiré effects, or pseudo-moiré (modulation) effects having no corresponding impulses in the Fourier spectral domain.     

The effect of co-inventors’ reputation and network ties on the diffusion of scientific and technical knowledge from academia to industry in South Africa

In this paper, it is found that the co-inventors' and coauthors linkages and h-indexes highly enhanced the flows of academic knowledge into industrial patents in South African firms. The findings are based on an in-depth analysis of 1702 patents and 332 science sources that had linkages with patents filed by South African enterprises at the USPTO and elsewhere between 1976 and 2010. The data on co-inventors and co-authors networks/ties as well as their h-indexes can improve prior art searches and the patent examination process. Such ties can boost knowledge diffusion in large R&D and innovation clusters and hubs, globally.     

Photography in the Szondi Test: ‘The Analysis of Fate’

Léopold Szondi invented a projective test using photographs of people with mental pathologies to determine the unconscious, ancestral illnesses (or aptitudes) of his subjects. Szondi’s images were garnered from psychiatric textbooks published around 1900. Such photographs presumably revealed unconscious thoughts, desires, and destinies in the course of a test session. If a patient responded positively to a photo-portrait of a diagnosed ‘hysteric’, for instance, this indicated that the subject herself had unconscious, inherited hysterical traits. Szondi’s reasoning was predicated upon two commonly held fallacies: first that an individual’s physical appearance is the external marker of mental life, and second that photography is a transparent means of revealing true facts. In spite of (or maybe even because of) such problematic assumptions, Szondi’s use of photographs can be located historically in a tradition of reading human character from portraiture. The test was widespread, and was even administered to Adolf Eichmann at the time of his trial in Jerusalem – an ironic cultural development as Szondi himself would have been among the thousands of Jews deported from Hungary directly to Auschwitz by Eichmann had the Szondi family not been rescued by the Kastner train of 1944.     

Identifying ‘associated-sleeping-beauties’ in ‘swan-groups’ based on small qualified datasets of physics and economics

Scientometrics - ‘Sleeping beauties’ refer to the papers that received no or scarce citation after appearance, but considerable citations several years later, which is a special...