Knowledge begets knowledge: university knowledge spillovers and the output of scientific papers from U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) projects

Scientometrics - Scientific papers submitted for publication from U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)-funded research projects are an innovative output that has yet to be studied...     

Line-of-duty deaths among U.S. firefighters: an analysis of fatality investigations

More than 100 firefighters die in the line-of-duty in the U.S. each year and over 80,000 are injured. This study examined all firefighter fatality investigations (N = 189) completed by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) for fatalities occurring between 2004 and 2009. These investigations produced a total of 1167 recommendations for corrective actions. Thirty-five high frequency recommendations were derived from the total set: six related to medical fatalities and 29 to injury-related fatalities. These high frequency recommendations were mapped onto the major operational components of firefighting using a fishbone or cause–effect diagram. Over 70% of the 30 non-external recommendations were categorized within the personnel and incident command components of the fishbone diagram. Root cause techniques suggested four higher order causes: under-resourcing, inadequate preparation for/anticipation of adverse events during operations, incomplete adoption of incident command procedures, and sub-optimal personnel readiness. These findings are discussed with respect to the core culture of firefighting.     

On the demographical changes of U.S. research doctorate awardees and corresponding trends in research fields

The demographical data of the National Science Foundation on research doctorate awardees in the United States is studied in this article. While the overall growth rate of research doctorate awardees is approximately the same as the growth rate of the whole population in the U.S. there are considerable changes in the sub-populations of research doctorate awardees. The demographic data is evaluated/discussed in more detail with respect to gender and research fields of the doctorate awardees. In particular the notion of the primacy of technology over science in the postmodern era is examined and found to be justified.     

LNG safety research in the U.S.A.

This paper describes recent LNG safety research activities in the United States. Most of these activities have been sponsored by the U.S. Department of1. Hazard assessment. These are projects aimed at the development of experimental data and analytical models to describe radiation from LNG spill f2. Accident prevention. These are studies directed toward the development of qualification tests and reliable data on the properties and behavior o3. Hazard control. These are projects which address the conceptual design, testing and engineering development of new or improved response technolo     

A comparative study of patenting activity in U.S. and Brazilian scientific institutions

Patents generated from scientific research indicate academic involvement in technology development. Academic patenting activity is recent, even in developed countries. This study compares patenting activity of Brazilian and American universities. Brazilian universities had 29.5-fold increase in applications and 4.01-fold in grants (1990–2001), about twice the increase presented by American universities in this period. However, a significant fraction of Brazilian academic applications are abandoned due to the lack of specialized staff to help in writing and to shepherd the application through the patenting process in universities. The participation of research institutes in technological innovation is increasing steadily, even without financial incentives. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

International collaboration in scientific research in Vietnam: an analysis of patterns and impact

Scientometrics - The present study sought to examine the trend and impact of international collaboration in scientific research in Vietnam during the period after the introduction of the a reform...     

Mapping the diffusion of scholarly knowledge among major U.S. research institutions

Summary This paper reports the results of a large scale data analysis that aims to identify the production, diffusion, and consumption of scholarly knowledge among top research institutions in the United States. A 20-year publication data set was analyzed to identify the 500 most cited research institutions and spatio-temporal changes in their inter-citation patterns. A novel approach to analyzing the dual role of institutions as producers and consumers of scholarly knowledge and to study the diffusion of knowledge among them is introduced. A geographic visualization metaphor is used to visually depict the production and consumption of knowledge. The highest producers and their consumers as well as the highest consumers and their producers are identified and mapped. Surprisingly, the introduction of the Internet does not seem to affect the distance over which scholarly knowledge diffuses as manifested by citation links. The citation linkages between institutions fall off with the distance between them, and there is a strong linear relationship between the log of the citation counts and the log of the distance. The paper concludes with a discussion of these results and future work.     

On the formalization and reuse of scientific research

The reuse of scientific knowledge obtained from one investigation in another investigation is basic to the advance of science. Scientific investigations should therefore be recorded in ways that promote the reuse of the knowledge they generate. The use of logical formalisms to describe scientific knowledge has potential advantages in facilitating such reuse. Here, we propose a formal framework for using logical formalisms to promote reuse. We demonstrate the utility of this framework by using it in a worked example from biology: demonstrating cycles of investigation formalization [F] and reuse [R] to generate new knowledge. We first used logic to formally describe a Robot scientist investigation into yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) functional genomics [f₁]. With Robot scientists, unlike human scientists, the production of comprehensive metadata about their investigations is a natural by-product of the way they work. We then demonstrated how this formalism enabled the reuse of the research in investigating yeast phenotypes [r₁ = R(f₁)]. This investigation found that the removal of non-essential enzymes generally resulted in enhanced growth. The phenotype investigation was then formally described using the same logical formalism as the functional genomics investigation [f₂ = F(r₁)]. We then demonstrated how this formalism enabled the reuse of the phenotype investigation to investigate yeast systems-biology modelling [r₂ = R(f₂)]. This investigation found that yeast flux-balance analysis models fail to predict the observed changes in growth. Finally, the systems biology investigation was formalized for reuse in future investigations [f₃ = F(r₂)]. These cycles of reuse are a model for the general reuse of scientific knowledge.     

U.S. federal laboratories and their research partners: a quantitative case study

Scientometrics - The Stevenson–Wydler Technology Innovation Act of 1980 made explicit the technology transfer responsibilities of U.S. Federal laboratories. The Federal Technology Transfer...     

The influence of proximity dimensions on international research collaboration: an analysis of European water projects

In this paper we investigate the effect of geographical, organisational and social proximity on the propensity of organisations to collaborate internationally in knowledge production. We apply logistic regression models on data from water research projects in the European Union’s Framework Programme 1–7. Although the main challenges in the water sector typically cut across borders, knowledge development is traditionally organised in national systems. These systems have a long tradition in collaborating across societal sectors. Despite the fact that about half of the collaborations in the Framework Programmes are not proximate at all, we show that all three proximity dimensions contribute to the propensity to collaborate. The three dimensions of proximity are weakly correlated, and there is a small substitution effect between organisational and geographical proximity.     

Patent licensability and life: A study of U.S. patents registered by South Korean public research institutes

The quality and value of a patent can be represented by several proxies, such as how often the patent is cited in other patents, whether it is licensed, and the age of the patent. The paper uses a binary choice model to investigate factors affecting patent licensing, and it uses double-bounded tobit and duration models to investigate factors affecting patent life. Explanatory variables and dependent variables are extracted from U.S. patent information and related data. Findings suggest research collaboration has a positive effect on both patent licensing and patent life. Other characteristics such as invention size, namely, the scope of the invention measured by number of claims, and organizational technological cumulativeness, measured by self-citation counts, also affect patent life.     

Recent internationalization of global environmental change research in Germany and the U.S.

Summary The possible existence of specialisation patterns by research fields of the Italian regions is investigated. Accordingly, bibliometric data on papers published in international scientific journals have been processed and tailored for regional comparative analysis. The results show that the trends in scientific regional specialisation are related to the research activities performed by each scientific system, but also the regional industrial skill is very often reflected in the corresponding scientific profile. The empirical evidences show also that each Italian region works as a well identifiable scientific system providing for its own specific contribution to the national performance.     

Analysis of the ch-index: an indicator to evaluate the diffusion of scientific research output by citers

This paper focuses the attention on the ch-index, a recent bibliometric indicator similar to the Hirsch (h) index, to evaluate the published research output of a scientist (Ajiferuke and Wolfram, Proceedings of the 12th international conference of the international society for scientometrics and informetrics. Rio de Janeiro, pp. 798–808, 2009). Ch-index is defined as the number such that, for a general group of scientific publications, ch publications are cited by at least ch different citers while the other publications are cited by no more than ch different citers. The basic difference from the classical h is that, according to ch, the diffusion of one author’s publication is evaluated on the basis of the number of different citing authors (or citers), rather than the number of received citations. The goal of this work is to discuss the pros and cons of ch and identify its connection with h. A large sample of scientists in the Quality Engineering/Management field are analyzed so as to investigate the novel indicator’s characteristics. Then, the analysis is preliminarily extended to other scientific disciplines. The most important result is that ch is almost insensitive to self-citations and/or citations made by recurrent citers, and it can be profitably used for complementing h.     

Technological innovation and the U.S. banking industry: Innovation in the U.S. retail and wholesale banking sectors

In this paper, case studies of “best practice” retail and wholesale banks are used to explore the influence of technological change on the banking industry. The impact that specific technologies are having on the retail and whole-sale sectors is discussed. Briefly, the evidence shows that there is tremendous pressure on the banking industry to restructure at the current level of technology and competition. Retail banks are looking to client-server, open systems, groupware, workflow software, and imaging technology to restructure and consolidate their operations. Wholesale banks are using information technology to support specialized fee-income generating strategies. Nonetheless, in both the retail and wholesale banking sectors, nonbank financial service providers such as pension funds, insurance companies, money market funds and mutual funds are gaining market share. As these competitors expand their role, I find that the financial services competitor with the best strategy and technology is increasingly no longer a traditional bank.     

美国电子普通护照的鉴别

美国自从2005年12月开始签发第一批电子护照以来,逐渐形成了电子版的外交护照、官员护照和普通护照。电子版普通护照与传统护照相比,样式及构成基本一致,但局部发生了变化,并呈现以下主要特征。