Truth in numbers? Emancipation,race, and federal census statistics in the debates over Black mental health in the United States, 1840–1900

To the keen observer of American political and medical history, a disturbing set of debates surrounded the sanity of free Black residents of the United States of America after the publication of the controversial 1840 census returns on race and insanity. This article analyzes how the census became a battlefield where physicians and other commentators fought over—and thus shaped—various political meanings of Black insanity before and after the American Civil War, up until the 1890s, as the South underwent a massive political and social transformation, from slavery to emancipation. It also highlights the arguments raised by authors such as James McCune Smith and Ramón de la Sagra who attempted to disprove the returns shortly after their publication, and whose arguments contributed to efforts to combat scientific racism.     

Hacking the brain: brain–computer interfacing technology and the ethics of neurosecurity

Brain–computer interfacing technologies are used as assistive technologies for patients as well as healthy subjects to control devices solely by brain activity. Yet the risks associated with the misuse of these technologies remain largely unexplored. Recent findings have shown that BCIs are potentially vulnerable to cybercriminality. This opens the prospect of “neurocrime”: extending the range of computer-crime to neural devices. This paper explores a type of neurocrime that we call brain-hacking as it aims at the illicit access to and manipulation of neural information and computation. As neural computation underlies cognition, behavior and our self-determination as persons, a careful analysis of the emerging risks of malicious brain-hacking is paramount, and ethical safeguards against these risks should be considered early in design and regulation. This contribution is aimed at raising awareness of the emerging risk of malicious brain-hacking and takes a first step in developing an ethical and legal reflection on those risks.     

Between class and status? Examining the digital divide in Finland,the United Kingdom,and Greece

This article examines the digital divide in terms of access and the cultural use purposes of the Internet in Finland, the United Kingdom, and Greece. The analysis is based on data from Finnish, British, and Greek sections of Eurobarometer collected in 2013 (N = 3,009). Separate measures for class and status are applied in the analysis. The findings indicate that both access to and use of the Internet for cultural purposes are affected by a number of interdependent factors, whose effects and strengths vary significantly among the countries.     

Examination incentives,learning, and patent office outcomes: The use of examiner’s amendments at the USPTO

We investigate how U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent examiner experience and seniority-based incentives affect the innovation ecosystem. First, we show that examiners respond to production incentives and demonstrate learning by increasing the use of examiner’s amendments in both experience and seniority, a mechanism not previously studied. Second, this examination procedure directly benefits innovators and firms by significantly reducing prosecution processing time without impacting patent quality. Finally, after considering examiner’s amendments, the negative relationship between examiner characteristics and patent examination quality found in the previous literature does not persist at first action, a decision point that allows for the clear measurement of examiner behavior. Our results demonstrate a need for reformulated policy recommendations related to the structure of examination at the USPTO.     

Corroborating the effect of positive technology readiness on the intention to use the virtual reality sports game “Screen Golf”: Focusing on the technology readiness and acceptance model

This study investigates the positive and behavioral topic of screen golf, which is often regarded as the most commercially successful virtual reality sports game. Our team analyzed the decision-making process related to screen golf through the widely used the technology readiness and acceptance model to explain the relationships among technology readiness, belief in technology acceptance, and use intentions. The proposed model fit the data satisfactorily, and several of our hypotheses were supported. Structural equation modeling tested the nine hypotheses established based on a literature review, analyzing 350 valid responses obtained through online surveys. Perceived utility (ß = .519**) was the most influential factor in individuals’ plans to participate in the virtual sport. This means that practical considerations such as correcting individuals’ posture and improving their abilities should be prioritized when creating screen golf programs.     

Review Article��Dielectrophoresis: Status of the theory, technology, and applications

A review is presented of the present status of the theory, the developed technology and the current applications of dielectrophoresis (DEP). Over the past 10 years around 2000 publications have addressed these three aspects, and current trends suggest that the theory and technology have matured sufficiently for most effort to now be directed towards applying DEP to unmet needs in such areas as biosensors, cell therapeutics, drug discovery, medical diagnostics, microfluidics, nanoassembly, and particle filtration. The dipole approximation to describe the DEP force acting on a particle subjected to a nonuniform electric field has evolved to include multipole contributions, the perturbing effects arising from interactions with other cells and boundary surfaces, and the influence of electrical double-layer polarizations that must be considered for nanoparticles. Theoretical modelling of the electric field gradients generated by different electrode designs has also reached an advanced state. Advances in the technology include the development of sophisticated electrode designs, along with the introduction of new materials (e.g., silicone polymers, dry film resist) and methods for fabricating the electrodes and microfluidics of DEP devices (photo and electron beam lithography, laser ablation, thin film techniques, CMOS technology). Around three-quarters of the 300 or so scientific publications now being published each year on DEP are directed towards practical applications, and this is matched with an increasing number of patent applications. A summary of the US patents granted since January 2005 is given, along with an outline of the small number of perceived industrial applications (e.g., mineral separation, micropolishing, manipulation and dispensing of fluid droplets, manipulation and assembly of micro components). The technology has also advanced sufficiently for DEP to be used as a tool to manipulate nanoparticles (e.g., carbon nanotubes, nano wires, gold and metal oxide nanoparticles) for the fabrication of devices and sensors. Most efforts are now being directed towards biomedical applications, such as the spatial manipulation and selective separation∕enrichment of target cells or bacteria, high-throughput molecular screening, biosensors, immunoassays, and the artificial engineering of three-dimensional cell constructs. DEP is able to manipulate and sort cells without the need for biochemical labels or other bioengineered tags, and without contact to any surfaces. This opens up potentially important applications of DEP as a tool to address an unmet need in stem cell research and therapy.     

The Kaldor–Verdoorn law at the age of robots and AI

This paper contributes to the literature around the Kaldor–Verdoorn law and analyses the impact of robotisation on the channels through which the law shapes labour-productivity growth. We start with a simple evolutionary reinterpretation of the law that combines Kaldorian and neo-Schumpeterian arguments. We then apply a GMM estimator to a panel of 17 industries in 25 OECD capitalist economies for the period 1990–2018. After elaborating on the general evidence of the evolutionary interpretation of the law, the estimates suggest a positive influence from robotisation: a higher robot density strengthens both the channel that ties labour productivity dynamics with mechanisation, and the one connected with the general advancement of science and technology which joins productivity to aggregate demand. This overall result is robust to several specifications of the underlying econometric model. Moreover, we find some evidence of technological unemployment out of the macroeconomic factor. Results agree with the empirical literature that suggests different impacts from robotisation on the basis of the level of economic activity considered.     

Unmasking the interplay between technology evolution and R&D collaboration: Evidence from the global semiconductor manufacturing industry, 1990–2010

Technological progress in an industry is enabled by the collective R&D efforts of suppliers, users and research organizations. In this study, we explore how the pattern of R&D collaboration within the industry community evolves over the technology life cycle. We propose that as the technology evolves from an initial emergence stage to subsequent stages of growth and maturity, there is a corresponding change in the opportunities and challenges confronting industry participants. This results in a shift not only in the relative propensities for internal and collaborative R&D, but also in the distribution of the different types of collaborative interactions involving research organizations, suppliers and users. The context for the study is the global semiconductor manufacturing industry from 1990 to 2010. During this period, the industry experienced exponential technological progress that was fueled by the deep ultraviolet (DUV) manufacturing technology. We draw upon a comprehensive archival dataset of more than 12,000 articles presented in industry technical conferences to analyze the pattern of collaborative R&D during the emergence, growth and maturity stages of the DUV technology. The observed trends in the semiconductor manufacturing industry point to intriguing shifts in the efforts and interactions among suppliers, users and research organizations as they collectively push the technology envelope forward.     

Global excellence at the expense of local diffusion, or a bridge between two worlds? Research in science and technology in the developing world

Do world-leading researchers from developing countries contribute to upgrading locally, or do they disengage from the local context? The paper investigates the scientific collaborations of university-based science and technology researchers in the database of the South African National Research Foundation (NRF), and analyses the co-authorships of researchers who were ranked by the NRF during the 2001-2007 period. To establish the extent to which a researcher can access knowledge outside the South African academic science and technology research community, and share it inside that community, we develop a measure of ‘gatekeeping’. The evidence suggests that there is not a local/global trade-off in knowledge creation in academia in the developing world, and that the world-leading researchers in developing countries may play an especially important role as conduits of new knowledge in their country.     

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.     

Civil Society and the Shaping of Communication–Information Policy: Four Decades of Advocacy

This article initiates exploratory empirical research on how civil society collective action has reacted to and affected communication–information policy (CIP), a policy domain that has been reshaped by technological and industrial change. It reviews the relevant theory on social movements, citizens groups, and interest groups from political science. Data are gathered on two dimensions of the research question: (1) We quantify the number of public interest advocacy groups focused on CIP in the United States from 1961 to the present, using organizational ecology methods. (2) We track the number of U.S. Congressional hearings held each year on CIP issues. The results show that CIP now exceeds other social movement issues (women, civil rights, the environment, human rights) as a major concern of Congressional activity, that the issues are becoming more interdependent, and that modes of citizens advocacy have undergone drastic changes in recent years.     

What Is the Content of the World's Technologically Mediated Information and Communication Capacity: How Much Text,Image, Audio,and Video?

This article asks whether the global process of digitization has led to noteworthy changes in the shares of the amount of text, images, audio, and video in worldwide technologically stored and communicated information content. We empirically quantify the amount of information that is globally broadcast, telecommunicated, and stored (1986–2007) and assess the evolution of the respective content shares. Somewhat unexpectedly, it turns out that the transfer from analog to digital has not led to toward increasing shares of media-rich audio and video content, despite vastly increased bandwidth. First, there is a certain inertia in the evolution of content, which seems to stick to stable proportions independent of its technological medium (be it analog vinyl and VHS tapes, or digital CDs and hard disks). Second, the relative share of text and still images actually captures a larger portion of the total amount than before the digital age. Text merely represented 0.3% of the (optimally compressed) bits that flowed through global information channels in 1986 but grew to almost 30% in 2007. On another level, we are seeing an increasing transition of text and images from one-way information diffusion networks (like newspapers) to digital storage and two-way telecommunications networks, where they are more socially embedded. Both tendencies are good news for big-data analysts who extract intelligence from easily analyzable text and image data.     

Nikolai Vasilevich Sorokin and his research in botany,mycology, and microbiology at Imperial Kazan University, 1871–1901

In 2019, the world scientific community celebrates the 110th anniversary of the death of Nikolai Vasilevich Sorokin (1846–1909), an eminent Russian biologist. On this occasion, this paper reviews the life and work of Sorokin, who was known for many important scientific breakthroughs, particularly in botany, mycology, and microbiology. Drawing upon Sorokin’s publications and unpublished papers from archives, this account traces his key educational influences and the development of his research interests, research-related travels, contributions to the Russian movement in women’s higher education, and his key publications, particularly his four-volume treatise on plant parasites.