Comparative analysis and estimation of competence of research units

The UNESCO International Comparative Study on the Organization and Performance of Research Unists (ICSOPRU) has entered the period of drawing the theoretical and methodological conclusions from and starting the practical application of its results. Based on the experience of the 3 rounds of ICSOPRU, the national team of the Ukrainian SSR has attempted to broaden the scope and methodology of this international project. The main features of our studies are as follows.

1. The comparative analysis is performed among research units working or intending to work on common research topics.
2. The complex characteristics determining the level of competence of the research units in achieving their research aims is evaluated by criteria specific to the given problems.
3. In order to gain the above mentioned results, certain additional material had been included into “The National Addendum” and the national part of “External Evaluations Questionnaire”. Some additional software had also been developed.^1–3

This paper concentrates on some methodological aspects of this approach and refers also to some problems of more intensive use of science and technology.     

How to combine term clumping and technology roadmapping for newly emerging science & technology competitive intelligence: “problem & solution” pattern based semantic TRIZ tool and case study

Competitive technical intelligence addresses the landscape of both opportunities and competition for emerging technologies, as the boom of newly emerging science & technology (NEST)—characterized by a challenging combination of great uncertainty and great potential—has become a significant feature of the globalized world. We have been focusing on the construction of a “NEST Competitive Intelligence” methodology that blends bibliometric and text mining methods to explore key technological system components, current R&D emphases, and key players for a particular NEST. This paper emphasizes the semantic TRIZ approach as a useful tool to process “Term Clumping” results to retrieve “problem & solution (P&S)” patterns, and apply them to technology roadmapping. We attempt to extend our approach into NEST Competitive Intelligence studies by using both inductive and purposive bibliometric approaches. Finally, an empirical study for dye-sensitized solar cells is used to demonstrate these analyses.     

The profile of an International Meeting

The aim of this study was to investigate the professional profile of participants in the “ACAST Colloquium”, one of the preliminary conferences leading to the United Nations Advisory Committee on Application of Science and Technology to Development (UNCSTD) meeting in Vienna in August of 1979, in order to study the different profile parameters of developing and “developed” country participants. We found that the developing countries seem to have a higher proportion of women and younger people than the “developed” countries. Participants on the whole tended to be older than a cross-section of the scientific and technological community. Approximately three-quarters considered themselves to be scientists rather than technologists. The scientists tended to be involved in some way with R & D, scientific or technological education, as well as management and administration. On the whole, the distribution of various parameters investigated was quite similar for developing and “developed” countries. Some interpretations of these results are offered.     

The validity of various fracture mechanics methods at creep temperatures

The application of stress intensity factors derived from linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) to fracture at creep temperatures has been considered. From tensile creep rupture tests on single edge notched and notched centre hole specimens of solution treated A.I.S.I. type 316 stainless steel, it is shown that a LEFM approach is inapplicable to predicting creep crack growth rates, whilst the net section stress is found to correlate well with the crack growth rates. These observations have been explained by considering the creep relaxation that takes place at the notch root, smoothing out the local stresses and thus making the LEFM stress distribution inapplicable. The resulting stress distribution supports the observation that the net section stress is a successful criterion on which to predict creep rupture in stainless steel. The limitations as a fracture mechanics method are explored and it is found that a criterion based on the amount of creep rather than stress would have advantages in some respects. In this context the “crack opening displacement” and the “fracture angle” criteria are considered and their use is found to hinge upon the development of suitable methods for relating the local displacement to the applied stress.     

Time-temperature dependent fracture toughness of PMMA

Some observations are made on the fractography of surfaces obtained by cracking “compact tension” profile testpieces of PMMA over a range of temperatures and crack speeds, both stably and unstably. To a first approximation, it was possible to group and “shift” (as in visco-elastic transformations) characteristic surface markings at various fracture toughness/temperature/crack velocity combinations, particularly in the range where a toughness-biased Ree-Eyring relationship described the experimental toughness data.     

Concentration of resources: The National Research Council's (Canada) grants in aid of research: 1964–1974

Concentration of resources continues to be an important issue in the formulation of policy for the support of university research. In this paper, techniques for quantitatively assessing two dimensions of this issue, ‘between’ and ‘within’ committee concentrations, are developed. These techniques are applied in an analysis of the peer-adjudicated grants of the National Research Council of Canada for the years 1964–1974 inclusive. Results indicate that although ‘between’ committee concentrations have responded to changing priorities for university research, ‘within’ committee concentrations have remained remarkably stable over this decade. This is seen as having important implications for recent attempts at re-orienting university research in Canada.     

Investigating the integrated landscape of the intellectual topology of bioinformatics

We aim at identifying (1) whether and how various data sources influence mapping an intellectual structure of the field of bioinformatics, and (2) the landscape of bioinformatics by integrating those sources. To this end, we conduct a comprehensive bibliometric analysis by harvesting bibliographic information from DBLP, PubMed Central, and Web of Science. We then measure and compare topological characteristics of networks generated using these sources. The results show a dichotomous pattern dominated by PubMed Central and WoS. In addition, a few influential scientists in the field of bioinformatics receive very high citations from their colleagues, which is a driving force to bloom the field. These few scientists are connected to a much larger research community. Most of the researchers are intellectually linked within a few steps, in spite of the domain’s interdisciplinary characteristics. Particularly, influential authors consist of a small world. We also identify that there is not a coherent body of discipline in bioinformatics since the field is still under development. Finally, the journals and conferences indexed by each source cover different research topics, and PubMed Central is more inclusive than DBLP as an indexing database.     

Structure of reconstituted collagen hollow fibre membranes

Small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS and WAXS) methods were employed to study the structure of reconstituted collagen hollow fibre membranes and the changes that ensue upon entry of water. The tails of the SAXS curves were analysed and were shown to obey Porod's Law. WAXS and water absorption measurements as a function of relative humidity were combined with density measurements to determine the relative volume fractions of water in the “free” and “bound” states. Treating the hollow fibre as a two phase system and employing Porod's Law, average length parameters transverse to the fibre axis were extracted for the collagen fibrils and the water filled pores. All this information was synthesized to yield a model of the structural changes in the hollow fibre caused by water. Implications of such a model for qualitative and quantitative prediction of changes in properties were studied.     

Investigation of phase intergrowth morphologies in the system Zn2SiO4-SiO2 by photo-emission electron microscopy

By means of photo-emission electron microscopy, which is described briefly, X-ray diffraction and electron microprobe analysis the hypo- and hypereutectic solidification in the system Zn₂SiO₄-SiO₂ has been investigated. Faceted (idiomorphic) growth of stableα? and metastableΒ-zinc silicate with some excess SiO₂ on the hypoeutectic side of the phase diagram and a metastable region of liquid immiscibility on the SiO₂-rich (hypereutectic) side determine the respective phase intergrowth morphologies. Unconstrained eutectic solidification causes a “divorced eutectic” where the zinc silicate constituent grows first from the undercooled liquid, which is simultaneously enriched in SiO₂.     

An improved adaptive wavelet shrinkage for ultrasound despeckling

Ultrasound imaging is the most widely used medical diagnostic technique for clinical decision making, due to its ability to make real time imaging for moving structures, low cost and safety. However, its usefulness is degraded by the presence of signal dependent speckle noise. Several wavelet-based denoising schemes have been reported in the literature for the removal of speckle noise. This study proposes a new and improved adaptive wavelet shrinkage in the translational invariant domain. It exploits the knowledge of the correlation of the wavelet coefficients within and across the resolution scales. A preliminary coefficient classification representing useful image information and noise is performed with a novel inter-scale dependency measure. The spatial context adaptation of the wavelet coefficients within a subband is achieved by a local spatial adaptivity indicator, determined by using a truncation threshold. A weighted signal variance is estimated based on this measure and used in the determination of a subband adaptive threshold. The proposed thresholding function aims to reduce the fixed bias of the soft thresholding approach. Experiments conducted with the proposed filter are compared with the existing filtering algorithms in terms of Peak-Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Mean Square Error (MSE), Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM), Equivalent Number of Looks (ENL) and Edge Preservation Index (EPI). A comparison of the results shows that the proposed filter achieves an improvement in terms of quantitative measures and in terms of visual quality of the images.     

New design and construction of expandable casing tubes

Exploration for deep-geothermal resources is still a costly and high risk operation. The research association “Geothermal Energy and High Performance Drilling Research Program, gebo” was founded to improve the cost effectiveness of geothermal energy production in particular by developing new drilling concepts for deep geological layers. A mono-diameter borehole casing concept is developed to achieve this ambitious aim. To accomplish this, a special type of casing is essential, structured from folded tubulars for expandable casing applications featuring clover-like cross sections and expandable to a cylindrical form when the casing is at its downhole position. A smaller borehole volume and a reduction of drilling time and casing related costs are the main advantages of this method compared to conventional drilling. Design, material selection and realization of the folded tubulars take place at the Institut für Werkstoffkunde (Materials Science). The evaluations of the results are based on residual stress analysis and the measurement of the geometry after each deformation step at the Institute of Production Engineering and Machine Tools (IFW).     

Effect of the environment on the durability of plastic-based materials

Plastics in use are exposed to diverse environments, some of which exert a detrimental effect, resulting in overall deterioration. Studies carried out at the Division of Building Research, National Research Council Canada, on the effect of natural and artificial environments for several plastic materials have established the types of change in their properties and the mechanisms involved. Detrimental changes resulting from environmentallyinduced deterioration include chemical degradation, discoloration, surface cracking, crazing, loss of compounding ingredients (e.g., exudation, leaching), fibre release (in glass-reinforced plastic), impairment of mechanical and electrical properties, loss of gloss, reduction of light transmission, opacification and pitting and scratching.     

Bibliometric analysis of diabetes mellitus research output from Middle Eastern Arab countries during the period (1996–2012)

The main objective of this study was to analyze research productivity originating from Middle East Arab (MEA) countries in the field of diabetes mellitus (DM). Data from January 1, 1996 till December 31, 2012 were searched for documents with specific words in diabetes as a “source title” and a list of 13 MEA countries as affiliation country. Research productivity was evaluated based on number of publications, citation analysis, indexing in Institute for Scientific Information and impact factor (IF). The 13 MEA countries published a total of 479 documents in 41 diabetes journals. This number represents 0.75 % of the total documents produced globally in the field of DM. The number of published documents increased by around fivefold from early 2000 to 2012. Of the 41 journal titles retrieved, 24 (58.5 %) had their IF listed in the journal citation reports 2012. Forty-two documents (14.5 %) were published in journals that had no official IF. The total number of citations for documents published from MEA countries in the field of DM, at the time of data analysis, was 5,565 with an h index of 35. The median (inter-quartile range) citation for documents from the 13 MEA countries was 4 (1–11). The top productive institution in the field of DM was United Arab Emirates University with 51 documents (10.6 %). Authors from MEA countries collaborated mostly with authors in countries like United Kingdom, USA, and Germany. The present data show promising and relatively good diabetes research productivity in MEA countries especially after 2008.     

Temperature Dependence of IPRT and SPRT Self-Heating: Does Working with {{\varvec{W}}} Really Help?

Platinum resistance thermometers (PRTs) are capable of providing reliable measurements at the millikelvin level, and are widely used in both industry and research applications. However, the intrinsic thermal noise associated with their resistance requires the use of a measurement current of typically around a milliampere to determine their resistance. Unfortunately, this same current also dissipates heat into the thermometer element, causing the well-known “self-heating” effect of typically a few millikelvins. Performing measurements in terms of the ratio to the resistance at the ice point provides some level of cancelation of this error around this temperature: If the thermal resistance between the sensor and environment were constant, this cancelation would work over a much wider temperature range. However, there is little evidence on the effectiveness of this strategy in practice. This paper reports on an extensive set of systematic measurements of the self-heating of six standard platinum resistance thermometers (SPRTs) and six industrial platinum resistance thermometers (IPRTs) of different designs, as a function of temperature, over the range from \(-190~^{\circ }\mathrm{C}\) to \(420\,^{\circ }\mathrm{C}\) , in a range of intercomparison baths and blocks. The measurements show that PRT self-heating varies from being almost constant with temperature to being nearly proportional to temperature. The assumption of a roughly temperature-independent thermal resistance is thus not justified in general. The results allow estimation of appropriate uncertainty terms for SPRT and IPRT self-heating for the two scenarios of “working in \(R\) ” and “working in \(W\) .”     

The deformation of oriented high density polyethylene

Thin, single crystal-like textured films of HDPE were uniaxiaIly elongated at 56, 93 and 129°C along the chain direction. In all cases, the initial shish-kebab morphology was transformed via <001> crystal shear, chain slip and “defect” generation within the crystalline phase. Shear between shish-kebabs was observed at all temperatures and was identified by a rotation of lamellar normals away from the elongation direction. Craze-like structures developed at all temperatures as well, but only propagated laterally at temperatures above the alpha transition temperature of polyethylene. The evolution of the crystalline phase during deformation was imaged in detail by darkfield TEM. The generation of long (3μm), thin crystalline fibrils (“protofibrils”) of about 7 nm diameter indicated that the material had undergone strain induced crystallization. Lateral connections between the original kebabs were retained during drawing in many cases, and constituted tie fibrils between adjacent “craze” fibrils. The processes which occurred in thin films at temperatures above the alpha transition and which gave rise to long crystals provided insight into the generation of a continuous crystalline phase in bulk polyethylene.     

Corrigendum of ‘A deterministic model for a repairable item inventory system with a finite repair rate’

The main purpose of this corrigendum is to indicate and rectify the same mistakes made by Schrady (1967 Schrady, D. A. 1967. “A Deterministic Inventory Model for Repairable Items.” Naval Research Logistics Quarterly 14: 391–398.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Nahmias and Rivera (1979 Nahmias, S., and H. Rivera. 1979. “A Deterministic Model for a Repairable Item Inventory System with a Finite Repair Rate.” International Journal of Production Research 17: 215–221.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and Teunter (2004 Teunter, R. H. 2004. “Lot-Sizing for Inventory Systems with Product Recovery.” Computers and Industrial Engineering 46: 431–441.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) in the course of solving their respective models in order that subsequent researchers will not follow the same. To this end, we derive the corresponding correct global-optimal formulae for the substitution-policy model (1,?n), with infinite or finite recovery (or called repair) rate, using differential calculus, as well as providing a closed-form expression to identify the optimal positive integral value of n recovery set-ups. In addition, we also rectify the formulae and solution procedure for numerically solving the constrained non-linear programme.     

Assessing obliteration by incorporation in a full-text database: JSTOR,Economics, and the concept of “bounded rationality”

To evaluate the usefulness of a full-text database as a source for assessing obliteration by incorporation (OBI), 3,707 article records including the catchphrases “bounded rationality” and/or “boundedly rational” (connected with the work of H. A. Simon) in the article text were retrieved from JSTOR, a full-text database with broad disciplinary coverage. Two subsets were analyzed—a 10 % systematic sample of all records and a set of all articles in Economics journals (with the addition of the Journal of Economic Theory). A majority of articles in the 10 % sample came from Economics and Management journals, while Psychology was poorly represented. In the 10 % sample, based on the percentage of true implicit citations between 1992 and 2009 in the 80 % of records that had a catchphrase in the body of the article, rather than just in the reference list, annual OBI ranged from 0 to 70 % (mean 33 %) with no discernible trend. The Economics articles showed a narrower range of OBI—fluctuating around 40 % implicit citations over the same time period. In both data sets, a large proportion of indirect citations were to sources that themselves cited a relevant work by Simon. Over 90 % of the articles in both the 10 % sample and the economics journal set would not have been retrieved with a database record search because they lacked the catchphrase in the record fields.     

From a quasi-static fluid-based evolutionary topology optimization to a generalization of BESO

A new algorithm is proposed for topology optimization based on a fluid dynamics analogy. It possesses characteristics similar to most well-known methods, such as the Evolutionary Structural Optimization (ESO)/Bidirectional Evolutionary Structural Optimization (BESO) method due to Xie and Steven (1993 Xie, Y. M., and G.P. Steven. 1993. “A Simple Evolutionary Procedure for Structural Optimisation.” Computers and Structures 49 (5): 885–896. doi: 10.1016/0045-7949(93)90035-C[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], “A Simple Evolutionary Procedure for Structural Optimisation.” Computers and Structures 49 (5): 885–896.), which works with discrete values, and the Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization (SIMP) method due to Bendsøe (1989 Bendsøe, M.P. 1989. “Optimal Shape Design as a Material Distribution Problem.” Structural Optimization 1 (4): 193–202. doi: 10.1007/BF01650949[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], “Optimal Shape Design as aMaterial Distribution Problem.” Structural Optimization 1 (4): 193–202.) and Zhou and Rozvany (1991 Zhou, M., and G.I.N. Rozvany. 1991. “The COC Algorithm—Part II: Topological, Geometry and Generalized Shape Optimization.” Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering 89 (1–3): 309–336. doi: 10.1016/0045-7825(91)90046-9[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], “The COCAlgorithm–Part II: Topological, Geometry and Generalized Shape Optimization.” Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering 89 (1–3): 309–336.) (using Optimality Criterion (OC) or Method of Moving Asymptotes (MMA)), which works with intermediate values, as it is able to work both with discrete and intermediate densities, but always yields a solution with discrete densities. It can be proven mathematically that the new method is a generalization of the BESO method and using appropriate parameters it will operate exactly as the BESO method. The new method is less sensitive to rounding errors of the matrix solver as compared to the BESO method and is able to give alternative topologies to well-known problems. The article presents the basic idea and the optimization algorithm, and compares the results of three cantilever optimizations to the results of the SIMP and BESO methods.     

Can the technological impact of academic journals be evaluated? The practice of non-patent reference (NPR) analysis

Journal rankings and journal ratings are important to governments, research institutes, and scientific research in general, and they frequently serve as the criteria for evaluating research performance to determine whether specific researchers will receive promotions and/or earn research grants. However, the only widely adopted journal assessment method is known as impact factor (IF), which focuses on citations in academic journals. However, IF disregards the technological applications and value of academic journals. In this article, we propose a method to rank academic journals that utilizes non-patent references in patent documents. We also compare the differences between journal rankings derived by using IF with those derived from the Intellectual Property Citation Index (IPCI) across different fields; moreover, some fields contain positive and significant correlations between IF and the IPCI. The results of this study offer a new perspective from which to assess the technological value of academic journals, particularly those in the technological and scientific fields. This study considers linkages among science and technology and the needs of the stakeholders in journal assessment to shed light on journal assessment and journal ranking methods.