Towards world-class science and innovation system——on culture of excellence and integrity,mentoring and collaboration

<正>he year 2014 may prove to be a major turning point in China’s development of world-class science and innovation system.At the mid-term juncture of China’s Medium-and Long-Term Program(MLP)for Science and Technology(ST)development,the Ministry of Science and Technology conducted a comprehensive review and assessment     

Comparative evaluation of ultramicro—and macro-chemo enzyme based assays of glucose, cholesterol and triglycerides

A comparison of the absorbance, enzyme/substrate concentration, reaction efficiency and sensitivity has been made for enzyme-based clinical chemistry assays, using a conventional colorimeter versus a strip-microwell reader, in order to establish the value of ultra-microchemical procedure, with reaction volume 87 μl (light path length=0.25 cm). By utilizing commercial kits available for the quantitation of serum glucose, cholesterol and triglycerides, it has been established that the micro method is highly cost effective (9–30 fold), reproducible and sensitive. Comparison of blood drawn by a finger prick (capillary) and venipuncture for normal and pathological specimens show reproducibility between different laboratory technologists and in reference with the values reported by an accredited reference laboratory. Since the micro method uses very little serum, it is most suitable for analyses of small smaples, from large population-based field trials. However, the assay range has to be titrated for each commercial kit to establish the enzyme/substrate equivalence.     

Qingdao Institute of Biomass Energy and Bioprocess Technology

The Qingdao Institute of Biomass En- ergy & Bioprocess Technology is co-founded by CAS, the provincial government of Shandong and the municipal government of Qingdao. In a bid to safeguard the public health and national safety, it is more urgent than ever before for China to establish a solid sci- entific foundation and a platform of techni- cal support for its new initiative of national industrialization featured by restructuring the national economy, changing the existing modes of econom…     

Striving for Leapfrog Development of Science and Technology

November 1,2004 marksthe 55th an-niversary of the estab-lishment of the Chi-nese Academy ofSciences. Over thepast 55 years, asChinas top academicinstitution and a com-prehensive researchcenter for natural sci-ences and hightechnology, CAS hascontributed greatly toChinas sciencedevelopment, espe-cially in basic researchand strategic stateprograms, and socio-economic progress.The past 55 yearshave witnessed theCAS scientists, in col-laboration with col-leagues across thecountry, reaped larg…     

A Comparative Study of Speaking Test and Writing Test

Part I How speaking and writing differSpeech can be broken down into pronunciation and intonation,accuracyand fluency,or it can be categorized in terms of strategies,or it can be regardedas a form of interaction and analyzed using the methods of pragmatics or dis-course analysis.The problem is that in the course of a normal conversation,allof these aspects are important.If testers try to separate out the strands,theymay well find that the ecology of speaking is different in different successf…     

Innovation in times of financialization: Do future-oriented innovation strategies suffer? Examples from German industry

Shareholder value, short-term strategies, quarterly financial reports, and performance-based remuneration are strong indicators of a financial market-oriented company. It is questionable whether innovativeness and sustainable innovation capabilities can be maintained in times of financialization focused on short-term efficiency instead of free space for creativity and learning. Using the example of established German industrial companies, I examined the extent to which financialization and financial market actors steer innovation strategies and practices. In-depth interviews with companies, cluster managers and banks and reviews of financing data do not reveal a direct influence of financial investors on innovation activities. On the contrary, companies’ managements still have the power to decide how much financial control and standardization they allow for their companies’ innovation practices. The pressure on these German companies to innovate comes from their strong market orientation rather than from financialization.     

Impact of scientific and technological innovation policies on innovation efficiency of high-technology industrial parks – A dual analysis with linear regression and QCA

Scientific and technological innovation policies play a critical role in the innovative development of high-technology industrial parks. However, it remains unclear how scientific and technological innovation policies impact the innovation efficiency of high-technology industrial parks and what the impact pathways are. An in-depth investigation of this topic can give an insight into the inherent relation between the scientific and technological innovation policies and technological innovation. By conducting a theoretical analysis, this study empirically analyzed the impact of scientific and technological innovation policies on the innovation efficiency of high-technology industrial parks. The main research methods applied in this study were linear regression and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). The results showed that the policy targets drove innovation efficiency in a relatively minor way. Among all policy tools, the demand-based policy tools had the most significant influence on innovation efficiency. The supply-based and environment-based policy tools had notable positive impacts during the lag periods of policies. The policy mix pathways for scientific and technological innovation policies that impact innovation efficiency come in four forms, namely, the targets-directed, demand-driven, supply-dominated environment optimization, and environment-dominated comprehensive pathways. Therefore, this study put forward proposals on classifying and refining the scientific and technological innovation policies and optimizing the policy mix-driven models.     

Varieties of innovation and business survival: Does pursuit of incremental or far-ranging innovation make manufacturing establishments more resilient?

The transition from an industrial economy to an innovation economy poses two critical questions for the manufacturing sector in advanced countries. First, given the diffusion of modern manufacturing practices around the world, what level of innovation (incremental, more far-ranging, or radical) is most likely to support a resilient domestic manufacturing sector? Second, are assumed differences in the innovative capacity across space likely to hasten the decline of rural manufacturing? To answer these questions this research combines comprehensive measures of self-reported innovation able to reliably differentiate incremental and more far-ranging innovation with establishment-level data able to examine the geographical distribution of these different innovation strategies. The data used for the analysis includes a two-period panel of manufacturing establishments surveyed in 1996 and 2013 with annual employment data indicating survival in the intervening years. Our findings suggest that long-surviving manufacturing plants overwhelmingly gravitate away from non-innovation strategies toward incremental or more far-ranging innovation orientations. A survival advantage of far-ranging innovation over incremental innovation is observed for standalone firms. We do not identify a difference in the innovation orientations of rural and urban manufacturing establishments.     

Public Understanding of and Attitudes towards Science ＆ Technology in China

China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) began the research and survey of the Chinese Public Understanding of Science and Technology at the beginning of the 1990s with the help of Prof. Jon D. Miller, then Director of US National Public Opinion Research Center and Longitudinal Stud- ies of the Youth at the Illinois University. By introduc- ing the conventional approach of indicators and a ques- tionnaire designed for the measurement of science lit- eracy popularly used in…     

Characteristics Decide one’s Fate——A Comparative Study between Jane and Tess

1. Introduction to Jane Eyre and Tess of the D’UrbervillesJane Eyre and Tess are the heroines of Charlotte Bronte and ThomasHardy’s work respectively. The two heroines are born in the same countryand the same time. They compose a beautiful and deeply moving life sym-phony by using their special struggle and their whole thought, enthusiasmand courage. All the people who have read Jane Eyre must be joyful andpride for her success and happiness, while those people who have read Tessof the…     

Same but different? Research and technology organizations,universities and the innovation activities of firms

Research and Technology Organizations (RTOs) and universities are important elements of countries’ innovation systems. As they are both halfway between science and industry, they are often considered to be the same thing. However, recent studies have stressed the differences between the two. In this paper, we analyze the innovative characteristics (impacts and types of innovation and internal R&D investments) of firms that collaborate with RTOs versus universities. Our study is based on statistical analysis of Community Innovation Survey micro-data (CIS 2012). Our results suggest that firms that see RTOs as more important sources of knowledge than universities have a higher probability of developing service innovation, invest less in internal R&D but are less likely to introduce new, groundbreaking innovations into the market. These results have significant policy and management implications, especially regarding the different but complementary contributions offered respectively by RTOs and universities.     

Information management for innovation networks—an empirical study on the “who,what and how” in networked innovation

Innovation networks are vital in advancing new product and service development. Particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises, partnering within innovation networks allows to enlarge innovation capabilities and to reach new markets. In order to create effective innovation networks, however, firms are required to adapt to the network. To do so, they must overcome three principal challenges: they need to build partnerships, integrate the partners’ value contributions, and coordinate innovation processes. We followed three innovation networks over a three-year period and examined how they successfully used information systems (IS) to respond to these challenges. On the basis of their experiences we identify IS categories and measures that support setting up an information management for networked innovation. We explicate relevant tasks for managing the aspects of “who, what and how” in networked innovation.     

On the green and innovative side of trade competitiveness? The impact of environmental policies and innovation on EU exports

This paper aims at exploring how the export competitiveness of the European Union has been affected by environmental regulation and innovation. Starting from the Porter idea that environmental policies may foster international competitiveness by inducing technological innovation. We test both the strong and narrowly strong versions of the Porter hypothesis, in order to understand if such a virtuous cycle is confined into the environmental goods sector (respecting the narrow criterion) or it spreads out through the whole economic system. For this purpose we adopt a theoretically based gravity model applied to the export dynamics of five aggregated manufacturing sectors classified by their technological or environmental content.When testing the strong version, the overall effect of environmental policies does not seem to be harmful for export competitiveness of the manufacturing sector, whereas specific energy tax policies and innovation efforts positively influence export flows dynamics, revealing a Porter-like mechanism. When testing the narrowly strong version, environmental policies, but more incisively environmental innovation efforts, foster green exports. These results show that public policies and private innovation patterns both trigger higher efficiency in the production process through various complementarity mechanisms, thus turning the perception of environmental protection actions as a production cost into a net benefit.     

How and when information proactiveness leads to operational firm performance in the banking sector of Pakistan? The roles of open innovation,creative cognitive style,and climate for innovation

Utilizing the assumptions of the Resource-based theory, this study examined how and why new, rare, and inimitable resources in the form of information proactiveness motivation influence operational firm performance. We hypothesized open innovation as a mediator between information proactiveness motivation and operational firm performance. We also hypothesized the interactive effects of an individual’s creative cognitive style and information proactiveness motivation on open innovation whereas climate for innovation and open innovation jointly influence operational firm performance. A temporally segregated data (n = 260) was collected in three-time intervals from employees working in the banking sector of Islamabad, Pakistan. Utilizing the PROCESS approach, the findings of the study indicate that open innovation mediates the relationship between information proactiveness motivation, and operational firm performance. Moreover, the creative cognitive style was found to moderate the relationship between information proactiveness motivation and open innovation whereas climate for innovation emerged as a moderator between open innovation and operational firm performance. This research focused on unique information and contextual resources which directly and indirectly play significant roles in promoting the firm's open innovation and subsequent operational firm performance.     

The politics of research and innovation: Understanding instrument choices in complex governance environments – the case of France and Italy

What governments desire to achieve, and how they want to accomplish their goals, represent the core of any policy design process. However, it is still unclear how partisan politics, in its combined effect with path-dependency forces, influence policy makers’ choices over alternative instrument mixes. Through a comparative analysis of Research and Innovation (R&I) instrument choices in countries characterized by different paradigmatic models of policy (Italy and France), the paper investigates how the politics of different cabinets influence the formulation of national R&I strategies and the extent to which these decisions are constrained by the legacy of previous choices. By capitalizing on a new proposed treatment of policy instruments, the paper contributes to the definition of the types of tools found in policy mixes, investigating how national R&I instrument mix variations develop. The results of the analysis indicate how the selection of R&I policy instruments does not closely follow traditional left versus right-wing political cleavages, and their evolution is generally influenced by a combination of different context-dependent dynamics. However, when partisan acceptance of consolidated R&I instrument mixes across cabinets is present, this triggers a consolidating effect on path-dependency forces.     

Book Series on History of Science and Technology in Modern China off Press

Studies on the History of Science and Technol- ogy in Modern China, a book series chief-ed- ited by CAS President LU Yongxiang, has been officially published by Shandong Education Press. As the first multi-volume corpus to explore the S&T history of modern & contemporary China in an all-round and in-depth way, the series embodies the main achieve- ments scored by a research project entitled A Compre- hensive Study on S&T Development in Modern & Con- temporary China with the support o…     

How do men and women differ in research collaborations? An analysis of the collaborative motives and strategies of academic researchers

Do men and women academic faculty vary in their research collaboration patterns and strategies? This straightforward question does not lend itself to a straightforward answer. A great many sex-correlated variables could possibly mitigate the relationship of sex and collaboration. If one finds sex-correlated differences in the number of collaborators, can one infer that there is something intrinsic to men's and women's work strategies and preferences? Or would such differences owe instead to women's and men's different positions in work structures and hierarchies? The focus here is on two sets of research collaboration variables, numbers of collaborators and the collaboration strategies employed. The study uses questionnaire data from the U.S. National Survey of Academic Scientists (n = 1714) and tests several hypotheses about collaboration numbers and strategies. Regression results indicate, counter to the core hypotheses and almost all published literature, that in a properly specified model, one taking into account such factors as tenure, discipline, family status and doctoral cohort, women actually have somewhat more collaborators on average than do men. For both men and women, those with more industrial interactions and those affiliated with university research centers have more collaborators. Men and women differ in their collaborator choice strategies. Men are more likely to be oriented to “instrumental,” and “experience” strategies, while both men and women are motivated by “mentoring” strategies. Regression analyses show that for both men and women, having a coherent collaborator choice strategy predicts the number of collaborators.