Technology and vascularized composite allotransplantation (VCA)—lessons learned from the first bilateral pediatric hand transplant

The reconstructive principle of replacing “like with like” is best met with vascularized composite allotransplantation in which the components of an existing defect are “matched” to the greatest extent possible in a single stage restoration. Hand transplantation is a labor-intensive and time-intensive process and can be conceptualized into distinct phases that include (1) patient selection and preoperative preparation, (2) technical execution of the procedure, and (3) postoperative rehabilitation and follow-up. The advent of technological innovations, such as 3D printing technology, novel implant technology, as well as innovative imaging technology, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging have the potential of favorably affecting all phases of this process, thus contributing to improved outcomes. The use of these technologies in the world’s first case of bilateral hand transplantation in a pediatric patient is discussed.     

Lessons learned from an unsuccessful “catching-up” in the automobile industry of Iran

In contrast to existing studies mostly investigating successful cases of technological catching-up, this paper aims to analyse a limited catch-up by an Iranian automobile firm. Using thematic analysis, and based on the conceptual framework developed in the literature review, the empirical data were coded and categorised into the themes and dimensions. The resulting contextualized framework, as one of the main contributions of this study, suggests how the certain sectoral environment of the automobile industry contributes to the lackluster performance of catching-up by the domestic firm. The sectoral environment (i.e. technological regimes, market regimes, and government policies) of Iran's automobile industry (IAI) is characterized by ineffective technology transfer, diverse technological areas, high tacit knowledge, the extensive backward linkages, high scale intensity, under-developed domestic supply chain, capital-goods attitude to the consumer goods, the oligopolistic structure, and homogeneous market. This paper also identifies new catch-up's influencing factors (i.e. industrial strategy and structural issues) inductively emerged during the empirical data analysis. And finally, comparison of the automobile industry in Iran and a few Asian countries shows that local content requirements (LCRs) will not bring about indigenous development unless it is complemented by the export market discipline and scale economy.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

The first scientific investigation of Niépce’s images from UK and US collections: image substrate

Abstract

This paper reports the results of the first ever scientific investigation of the image substrate of the plates Joseph Nicéphore Niépce brought with him to England in 1827. The First Photograph, in the collection of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin, and the three plates, in The Royal Photographic Society collection of the National Media Museum, were thoroughly documented and analysed using X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF). The XRF analysis was able to objectively confirm the chemical composition of all four plates and to identify unique characteristics of the material in some of the plates. Our investigation, for the first time, was also able to provide strong evidence attributing at least one of the plates to a particular pewtersmith based on the presence of a touchmark on the back of one of the plates.     

CH2M HILL studies Hong Kong’s first desal project

CH2M-IDC Hong Kong Ltd has been selected by the Hong Kong Water Supplies Department to design, oversee operations and monitor the performance of two sea water desalination pilot plants.This is a short news story only. Visit www.filtsep.com for the latest filtration industry news.     

A bibliometric study of the world’s research activity in sustainable development and its sub-areas using scientific literature

This paper presents a bibliometric study of the world’s research activity in Sustainable Development using scientific literature. The study was conducted using data from the Scopus database over the time period of 2000–2010. We investigated the research landscape in Sustainable Development at country level and at institute level. Sustainable Development and its sub-areas are defined by keywords vetted by the domain experts, allowing publications to be identified independent of the journals and conferences in which they are published. The results indicate that institutes strong in Sustainable Development overall may not be strong in all sub-areas and that institutes not strong in Sustainable Development overall may have significant niche strengths in a given sub-area. It is also noted that China appears strong in terms of publication output in Sustainable Development and its sub-areas but it does not appear strong in terms of citation counts. The information produced in this study can be useful for government research agencies in terms of understanding how to more effectively knit together the various niche strengths in the country; and for the institutes to find strategic partners that can coordinate in niche areas of Sustainable Development and complement their strengths. In order to conduct bibliometric analysis in an interdisciplinary research area, the keyword collection approach appears to be very useful. This approach is flexible and can be used to conduct such analysis for interdisciplinary research fields.     

Under Dor Guez’s Bed: Scenes from the “Christian Palestinian Archive”

The impulse for artist Dor Guez’s ongoing Christian Palestinian Archive (CPA) project can be traced to 1948, the year in which Israel was founded as a state and annexed local Palestinian territories, deporting and displacing their residents. These events are regarded as Nakba (catastrophe) by the Arab population. By examining the formation of the CPA Project, the circulation of images in and out of this private archive and Guez’s photographic practices, this essay suggests the CPA does not construct a lost national identity, but rather narrates and maintains images of a private and personal disaster. By so doing, it exposes governmental and authorial mechanisms that excluded these communities and bodies, but have nonetheless failed to prevent their inevitable emergence into the public sphere. This essay also recognises Guez as part of a growing group of Israeli and Palestinian artists who return to the silenced moments of Nakba and undermine systems that preserved prevalent narratives, such as institutional photographic archives and national museums.     

Research and innovation in South African universities: from the triple helix’s perspective

Different from most prior research studying the influence of networks on scientific knowledge creation by taking on a single social-based perspective, this study offers an integrated frame based upon both social-based and knowledge-based views. This study incorporates quantitative bibliometric methods of analysis and network analysis. Based on 51,972 alternative energy patents in 1998–2012, we build knowledge networks composed of technological classifications and social networks capturing collaborations. Based on patent citation networks, we use citations in every period to calculate researcher’s knowledge creation performance. We hypothesize that centrality of researchers in the knowledge network and their knowledge creation display an inverted-U relationship. What’s more, we propose that this curvilinear relation is moderated by their structural holes and centrality in the collaboration network. Based on the negative binomial model with fixed effects and robust tests, results indicate that (1) locations of the researchers in knowledge network contribute more to knowledge creation when their centrality is moderate, rather than high or low; (2) at a moderate level of knowledge network centrality, the researchers, who occupy more central positions or span more structural holes in collaboration network, will benefit more than the ones who do not. The findings of this research, besides having implications for research on knowledge networks, have implications on scientometric indicators, multiple networks study, and knowledge creation process.     

Building journal’s long-term impact: using indicators detected from the sustained active articles

Scientometrics - The Journal’s Impact Factor is an appropriate measure of recent concern rather than an effective measure of long-term impact of journals. This paper is mainly to find...     

Euclid’s Elements in the Czech Lands

[Terentianus 1st – 2nd century A.D.]

This article is dedicated to Euclid’s Elements, to translations of this work into Czech, and to the translators who have taken on the task of translation. It contains a short overview of the results achieved during a three-year project supported by the Czech Grant Agency.We explored how Euclid’s Elements were spread around the Czech lands.We will try to describe the circumstances that lay behind attempts to translate the Elements into the Czech language.     

The first scientific investigation of Niépce’s images from UK and US collections: image layer and image formation

Abstract

The article reports on the results of the first ever scientific investigation of all heliographic and heliogravure plates created by Joseph Nicephore Niépce in France that he brought with him in 1827 to England. In hopes of presenting his invention to the Royal Society of London and to the Royal court, he may have selected the best examples of his experiments that were able to demonstrate the entire range of applications of his photographic processes. The in-depth scientific investigation of four still surviving plates in the Royal Photographic Society collection of the National Media Museum in Bradford and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin provided new insight into the material aspects of J.N. Niépce’s experiments, new and sometimes surprising and unexpected information of the image structure and image formation. The microscopic and analytical investigation of the images in combination with a broad battery of supporting analyses, artificial ageing studies and process re-creations allowed us to correct many pieces of information previously obtained by interpreting J.N. Niépce’s letters and documents. Our investigation also established, for the first time, a scientifically based conservation baseline for the long term monitoring of the state of preservation of these iconic plates and resulted in the development of new, inert, gas filled and sensor equipped enclosures for their long term display and storage.     

Deville and Särndal’s calibration: revisiting a 25-years-old successful optimization problem

TEST - In 1992, in a famous paper, Deville and Särndal proposed the calibration method in order to adjust samples on known population totals. This paper had a very important impact in the...