Science indicators as reliable evidence

Science indicators are increasingly used in policy-making. However, failure to relate interpretations of specific measures to the historical development of science can lead to errors in assessing past investments and in prioritizing future investments. This article outlines some of these sources of error, and argues for the more systematic use of historical evidence in the formulation of science policy. Irwin Feller, an economist, is a Senior Visiting Scientist at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research includes studies of the economics of academic R&D, the assessment of interdisciplinary research, and the relationship between performance measurement and science and technology policies. George Gamota, a physicist, is President of STMA, LLC. He has written extensively on technology assessment and forecasting, emerging technologies, and science policy. Recently, he led a review of New Zealand’s New Economy Research Fund (NERF), and is a foreign reviewer of the Japanese Science & Technology (JST) Corporation’s research programmes.     

Cultural heritage and the attractiveness of cities: evidence from recreation trips

Many cities are trying to attract tourists by investing in urban amenities. Cultural heritage is an important example, and substantial investments are needed to keep ancient inner cities and characteristic monumental buildings in good shape. The costs of these policies are usually clear, and the benefits are often much more difficult to assess. This paper attempts to fill part of this gap by studying the destination choices of urban recreation trips that have urban recreation as the main travel motive. We estimate a discrete choice model for destination choice that takes into account the potential importance of unobserved characteristics. The model allows us to compute the marginal willingness-to-travel for destinations offering more cultural heritage, which we measure as the area of the inner city that has a protected status because of the cultural heritage that is present there.     

Professionalism And Technocracy: Esteve Terradas And Science Policy In The Early Years Of The Franco Regime

At the peak of his career, Esteve Terradas (1883–1950) played a major role in the science and technology policy of the Franco regime. Supervising the creation of a new aeronautical centre and a state electrical company, he developed a liberal programme under an authoritarian regime. This paper explores the development and intersection of his private and public lives.     

Science Diplomacy Policy Processes in Comparative Perspective: The Use of Scientific Cooperation Agreements in Canada,India, Norway,and the UK

There is growing attention to science diplomacy among scholars, policymakers, and scientific associations around the world. However, there continues to be contestation around the concept of science diplomacy, currently framed alternately as a new understanding of diplomacy, part of the global challenges discourse, central to the internationalization of science, and typifying competitive innovation. This contestation is furthered by the involvement of a broad array of policy instruments and actors in science diplomacy. In response, this paper focuses on a single policy instrument, examining eight bilateral and multilateral scientific cooperation agreements led by Canada, India, Norway, and the United Kingdom. Kingdon’s multiple streams framework is employed to explain how the interplay between policy actors, the policy agenda, policy problems, and policy alternatives leads to the creation of science diplomacy policies. Across the cases, all of the current science diplomacy discourses were applicable, holding stronger explanatory power in the problem and policy streams of the policy process while not obviously matching processes seen in the political stream. The findings also identified a gap in the current framing in understanding how geopolitical dynamics impact the creation of science diplomacy policies and how different policy actors negotiate, exploit, or are subject to these forces. By stabilizing one element of the ongoing debates around science diplomacy, the paper contributes a deeper examination of the array of policy actors and their involvement in different stages of the policy process leading to the formation of scientific cooperation agreements as tools of science diplomacy.

     

Projectification of Doctoral Training? How Research Fields Respond to a New Funding Regime

Funding is an important mechanism for exercising influence over ever more parts of academic systems. In order to do so, funding agencies attempt to export their functional and normative prerequisites for financing to new fields. One essential requirement for fundees is then to construct research processes in the form of a project beforehand, one that is limited in time, scope and content. This article demonstrates how the public funding of doctoral programs expands this model of project research from experienced academics to the socialization process for the new academic generation. This process of “projectification” underlies funding-driven institutional changes in doctoral training. A multi-level comparative study of German policies, funding mechanisms and organizational frameworks for doctoral training demonstrates the emergence of a specific model of predefined PhD projects. The investigation of doctoral training practices reveals that socio-epistemic preconditions regulate whether research fields adopted or rejected this demanding model. This result contradicts widespread claims about a radical change in doctoral training and suggests focusing on the actual practices of field-specific doctoral research.     

Rivalry and externalities in secondary art markets

Summary As is the case with other field theories, Urban Economics, Environmental Economics, etc. the microeconomics of the arts attempts to derive a set of particular propositions from the general propositions of Economic Theory. In the process a substantial amount of cross-fertilization takes place. The specific characteristics of art markets require modification or amplification of some general propositions of economic theory, which in turn may offer novel and possibly useful insights as well as testable hypotheses. The following propositions appear to emanate from the present paper.In general markets R & D efforts are directed towards product or process innovation. For the most part, a known consumer technology exists. Innovation in art markets involves product creation as well as the creation of a consumer technology capable of deriving satisfaction from consumption of the new product. In open markets, a non-patentable product would entail excessive free ridership. Such a state of affairs may discourage innovation. Primary sellers would tend to adapt to narrowly changing consumer technologies. Such was the case during most of art history up to the late 19th century. At present, museums and art critics act as quasi patent offices, which fosters innovation by assuring a positive sum game.A new consumer technology is expected to be demand-augmenting. Not necessarily in the sence of McCain [12] where discontinuous jumps in demand are postulated. Even if such shifts were to occur in individual demand curves, market demand will nevertheless be continuous. The present model presumes that the augmentation is mostly due to increasing numbers of art buyers entering as the new consumer technology casues substitution of one style for another (or one fad for another). Syndicate behavior is induced by the winners of the race who have successfully established a new consumer technology and subsequently extend an umbrella over the membership. In this manner the spoils are shared more equitably. This is a peculiarly modern phenomenon. In the past one could not put a Teniers above a Rembrandt or a Polidoro above a Raphael. The generally accepted rules of decorativeness, that is, craftmanship and composition were obvious and immediately perceptible by all.In certain instances syndicate behavior favors single leadership by an established dealer, or a small group of dealers with a proven track record in spawning new technologies. Collectors, too, are involved, by overpaying for art. The discovering collector creates entry barriers for other collectors and thus has a monopoly of discovery of purely intellectual appeal art. Followers may opt to reduce their rivalry in exchange for assurances that once the new technology is in place, they will be given the opportunity to recycle the art brought into being by the leader or leaders. Under certain conditions, as analyzed in the foregoing, this constitutes an optimal strategy.As in the classical case, entry reduces investment and drives rents to zero, if each firm invests a roughly equivalent amount in support of the prevailing consumer technology. There arises the limiting case, equivalent to pure competition (see EQ. 10). On the other hand, several counterveiling strategies are possible. For example, overpayment, as in the case of Rothko. This limits the artists' output in the market. Leftover art is donated or acquired by museums. Such art is no longer competitive, as opposed to art held by other collectors, which, diminishes art'sscarcity value.The most probable outcome of a Cournot-Stackelberg type behavior is a succession of leader-follower or leader-recyler type syndicates, each successively dissolving as new consumer technologies replace old ones. It is, of course, possible for several specialized syndicates to operate contemporaneously. The rate of turnover clearly depends on the speed of dissemination of information. The curator, critic, trustee, consultant has a vested interest in episodic art and an spawning new consumer technologies: if this were not so, there would be no need for the pre-eminance of the critic. He is the magician, the priest, the medicine man who knows the secret language and penetrates the mysteries.     

The Future of Innovation Studies in Less Economically Developed Countries

In this paper, we argue that there are patterns of innovation occurring in less economically developed countries (LEDCs) that have been historically overlooked by the innovation studies literature, including the literature on innovation systems and the triple helix. This paper briefly surveys cases in agriculture, banking, biomedicine and information and communications technologies that demonstrate organizational, scientific and technological innovation in Africa, South Asia, and Brazil. In particular, we track new developments in two distinctive patterns within LEDCs: (1) civil society as a site of innovation and; (2) innovation through appropriation. By systematically uncovering patterns of innovation in LEDCs, science and technology policy scholars may make new theoretical gains in innovation studies that can potentially contribute to innovation policies in the global South.     

Truth for Its Own Sake: Academic Culture and Technology Transfer at Johns Hopkins University

American research universities have long been a source of technical advance for industry, yet few have written on the history of university-industry relationships. This essay examines the evolution of practices and policies at Johns Hopkins University, which was established in 1876 as the first research university in the United States. Although an academic vision shaped its founding culture, the interests of technology transfer increasingly shape that culture. This essay considers the tensions between academic research and commercial orientation and the process of changing university orientation and culture.     

Towards a Culture of Application: Science and Decision Making at the National Institute of Standards &; Technology

How does the research performed by a government mission agency contribute to useable technologies for its constituents? Is it possible to incorporate science policy mechanisms for increasing benefits to users in the decision process? The United States National Institute of Standards &; Technology (NIST) promises research directed towards industrial application. This paper considers the processes that produce science and technology at NIST. The institute’s policies for science provide robust examples for how effective science policies can contribute to the emergence of useful technologies. To progress towards technologies that can be years away, the agency uses several means for integrating the needs of eventual information users into the prioritization process. To accomplish this, NIST units, such as the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory, incorporate mechanisms for considering user need and project impact into different stages of its scientific decision processes. This, and other specific strategies that the agency utilizes for connecting the supply of science to information demand, provide lessons for generating useable science.     

Migration Currents Among the Scientific Elite

Many countries today have policies to encourage outstanding scientists to remain, or return, ‘home’. To date, the cumulative effect of these policies remains unclear. This essay argues that we need a new approach to studying elites in science. It draws upon three studies to suggest that migration is field-specific; that migration occurs more among potential, rather than among established elites; and that policies aimed simply at attracting eminent scientists may prove inadequate to the task of sustaining national scientific communities.     

Enhancing Socio-technical Governance: Targeting Inequality in Innovation Through Inclusivity Mainstreaming

Socio-technical governance has been of long-standing interest to science and technology studies and science policy studies. Recent calls for midstream modulation direct attention to a more complicated model of innovation, and a new place for social scientists to intervene in research, design and development. This paper develops and expands this earlier work to demonstrate how a suite of concepts from science and technology studies and innovation studies can be used as a heuristic tool to conduct real-time evaluation and reflection during the process of innovation – upstream, midstream, and downstream. The result of this new protocol is inclusivity mainstreaming: determining if and how marginalized peoples and perspectives are being maximally incorporated into the model of innovation, while highlighting common problems of inequality that need to be addressed.

     

On the return of art investment return analyses

We survey more than twenty studies estimating rates of return of investments in single art objects and whole collections and evaluate the various approaches to art price movements taken so far. The majority of the estimates find lower returns for investments in art objects than for investments in financial assets. However, most existing analyses are restricted to auction data and neglect transactions cost and taxation. They partly focus on mechanistic calculations and disregard the distinguishing institutional and behavioral characteristics of art markets. We look into the possibilities to capture and empirically estimate psychic returns from owning art.     

名城名校的文化教育社区综合体实践研究--以清华大学“苏世民学者项目(书院)”为例

在信息技术和现代社交网络转型的社会背景下,具有悠久历史文脉的著名大学已成为所在名城的文化遗产和景观资源。新时代的教育模式正转型为文化教育社区。提炼了国内外高等教育新的理论实践,以清华大学"苏世民书院"为研究对象,探讨文化教育综合体设计实践思路,即新型社交生态系统的文教社区模式。     

Documentation of cultural heritage using digital photogrammetry and laser scanning

Precise documentation of cultural heritage status is essential for its protection and scientific studies carried out during the restoration and renovation process. The close range photogrammetry has been used successfully for documentation of cultural heritage. With recent developments in computer and information technologies, this well-known traditional method has been replaced with digital close-range photogrammetry. This new method offers us new opportunities such as automatic orientation and measurement procedures, generation of 3D vector data, digital ortho-image and digital surface model. Terrestrial laser scanning is another technology that in recent years has become increasingly popular for documentation which provides very dense 3D points on an object surface with high accuracy. In addition, the 3D model and digital ortho-image can be easily generated using generated 3D point cloud and recorded digital images.     

Determinants of historic and cultural landmark designation: why we preserve what we preserve

There is much interest among cultural economists in assessing the effects of heritage preservation policies. There has been less interest in modeling the policy choices made in historic and cultural landmark preservation. This article builds an economic model of a landmark designation that highlights the tensions between the interests of owners of cultural amenities and the interests of the neighboring community. We perform empirical tests by estimating a discrete choice model for landmark preservation using data from Chicago, combining the Chicago Historical Resources Survey of over 17,000 historic structures with property sales, Census, and other geographic data. The data allow us to explain why some properties were designated landmarks (or landmark districts) and others were not. The results identify the influence of property characteristics, local socio-economic factors, and measures of historic and cultural quality. The results emphasize the political economy of implementing preservation policies.     

The Scientific Field During Argentina’s Latest Military Dictatorship (1976–1983): Contraction of Public Universities and Expansion of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET)

This study looks at some of the traits that characterized Argentina’s scientific and university policies under the military regime that spanned from 1976 through 1983. To this end, it delves into a rarely explored empirical observation: financial resource transfers from national universities to the National Scientific and Technological Research Council (CONICET, for its Spanish acronym) during that period. The intention is to show how, by reallocating funds geared to Science and Technology, CONICET was made to expand and decentralize to the detriment of universities. This was the primary tool used by the military regime to thwart higher education’s research development, bolstering research efforts at other realms. Thus, CONICET grew in budget, number of researchers, and staff size, creating new research institutes, while national universities struggled with reduced funding and were forced to shut down their institutes and programs. As a result, CONICET virtually concentrated all scientific research, foregoing the knowledge accumulated at universities, which drove a wedge between both institutions. This military approach to science and technology policy-making is discussed, bearing in mind the notion of dependence—both in terms of the state’s intervention in the inner workings of the scientific-university field as well as regarding the role played by international financial support in scientific research development.     

The influence of cultural values on U.S. and Danish students’ digital behavior: Exploring culture,new media,and social context

This study explores the intersection of culture, new media, and social context—an essential component of intercultural new media studies—by investigating the social uses of smartphones, tablets, and laptops in university classrooms in Denmark and the US. American and Danish university students differed significantly in (1) frequency of new media use, (2) preferred classroom policies regulating use, (3) perceived impact of use on learning, attention, and student participation, and (4) preferred instructor strategies for handling distracting uses. Danes and Americans also differed significantly in authority values that are linked to students' new media use in the classroom.     

The short- and long-term effectiveness of anti-piracy laws and enforcement actions

Film studios have spent the past two decades lobbying extensively to establish new legislation restricting access to copyrighted materials online. While there is growing evidence of the effect film piracy has on studio profits, the evidence on the impact of anti-piracy legislation is limited. If anti-piracy legislation is having the film industry’s desired impact, we would expect film revenues to be consistently higher following the passage of major laws that restrict access to pirated content, or major enforcement actions, such as the shutdown of Web sites that provide illegal content for download. This paper applies an intervention analysis approach to weekly data on movie box-office revenues in the USA to determine whether the passage of new anti-piracy policy has generated significant changes in box-office revenues during the period from 1997 to the present. These effects are evaluated in both the short and long term, which allows an assessment of the duration of effectiveness of government actions. The results show that four of the six included policies are ineffective in the long term and those policies that do impact revenues in the short term often harm film studios, rather than help them.