Scientific and Technological Innovation and Innovation-Oriented Culture

The nature of science lies in probing into the laws of the structure, interaction, movements and changes of the objective world. Science means to discover new phenomena and species, and create new theories and develop new ideas. The nature of technology lies in creating new tools, procedures and methods so as to change the world and reach the goals determined by mankind.     

Mitigating South Africa’s HIV Epidemic: The Interplay of Social Entrepreneurship and the Innovation System

With the struggle against apartheid achieved, South Africa faced the new struggle of overcoming the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This paper examines the response of government, the innovation system and civil society in rising to the challenge. The response included a fatal denialism concerning the etiology of AIDS, a fatalism that constitutes political market failure. This political market failure was counteracted through the emergence of social entrepreneurship in the form of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) that mobilized civil society and like-minded health practitioners and researchers within the innovation system. Dependency Theory coupled with a Quadruple Helix model of the innovation system offer possible explanations of this complex human tragedy and the way that government was compelled to embark on a massive program of providing anti-retroviral therapy that has now significantly improved life expectancy. The paper provides socio-economic context, appraisal of the innovation system, and a sketch of how the Quadruple Helix took form. Of special importance is the independence of South Africa’s ‘Republic of Science.’ Independent courts were critical in allowing TAC to obtain remedy against government, Big Pharma, and AIDS dissident scientists. It is argued that its Republic of Science met its obligation of objectivity by shifting emphasis to the cause of AIDS research in the face of official denialism. In effect, the system of innovation and social entrepreneurs are shown to have acted in concert in constituting a Quadruple Helix.     

Beyond the “Charmed Circle” of OECD: New Directions for Studies of National Innovation Systems

In this paper, we engage with the widespread and influential approach of National Innovation Systems (NIS). We discuss its adequacy to non-OECD countries, especially in Latin America where it tends to be reified. Although the NIS approach is meant to address the most pressing needs of the economies it applies to, we argue that it would benefit from developing a more encompassing scope, allowing integration of greater diversity and complexity. By retracing the history of regimes of science, technology and innovation in Latin America, we explore the following paradox: whereas numerous Southern scholars urge the pressing need to develop an innovation agenda for Southern countries with a “Southern framework of thought”, they continue to heavily rely on a reductionist version of the NIS-approach that prevents such a “Southern perspective” to fully emerge. This creates problems for actors willing to use NIS more reflexively, and it also affects the effectivity of science, technology and innovation (STI) policies in non-OECD countries. We formulate a research agenda with three suggestions for further engaging NIS both conceptually and practically. Using such analytical perspectives, we argue, might benefit both to scholarly work about NIS, but could also allow for a better articulation with STI regimes in Southern countries.     

“Innovation Studies”: The Invention of a Specialty

Innovation has become a very popular concept over the twentieth century. However, few have stopped to study the origins of the category and to critically examine the studies produced on innovation. This paper conducts such an analysis on one type of innovation, namely technological innovation. The study of technological innovation is over one hundred years old. From the early 1900s onward, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and economists began theorizing about technological innovation, each from his own respective disciplinary framework. However, in the last forty years an economic and ??dominant?? understanding of technological innovation has developed: technological innovation defined as commercialized invention. This paper documents the origins of this representation and the tradition of research to which it gave rise: ??innovation studies.?? More specifically, it analyzes what distinguishes this tradition from that concerned with technological change as the use of inventions in industrial production, and looks at why such a tradition originated in Europe.     

The EPSRC’s Policy of Responsible Innovation from a Trading Zones Perspective

Responsible innovation (RI) is gathering momentum as an academic and policy debate linking science and society. Advocates of RI in research policy argue that scientific research should be opened up at an early stage so that many actors and issues can steer innovation trajectories. If this is done, they suggest, new technologies will be more responsible in different ways, better aligned with what society wants, and mistakes of the past will be avoided. This paper analyses the dynamics of RI in policy and practice and makes recommendations for future development. More specifically, we draw on the theory of ‘trading zones’ developed by Peter Galison and use it to analyse two related processes: (i) the development and inclusion of RI in research policy at the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC); (ii) the implementation of RI in relation to the Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) project. Our analysis reveals an RI trading zone comprised of three quasi-autonomous traditions of the research domain – applied science, social science and research policy. It also shows how language and expertise are linking and coordinating these traditions in ways shaped by local conditions and the wider context of research. Building on such insights, we argue that a sensible goal for RI policy and practice at this stage is better local coordination of those involved and we suggest ways how this might be achieved.     

The Church of the Maddalena in Venice: the use of laser in the cleaning of the façade

The Church of the Maddalena was built between 1763 and 1778 by Tommaso Temanza. The building has a central plan and is surmounted by a copper-covered brick masonry dome. The conservation work conducted on the façade has highlighted the superb quality workmanship of the Istrian stone surfaces, which feature extremely fine grain, perfectly regular tooth-chiselling. This finish has led, however, to very specific conditions of decay and laser treatment provided appreciably better results than traditional chemical and mechanical methods. In addition to laser, however, other methods of cleaning were used in order to find the best response to each of the various situations encountered. Indeed it should be emphasized that in restoration it is often appropriate to exploit the potential of several systems, combining their action on the basis of careful preliminary analyses.     

On the Waterside

Unlike other watertowns in north Zhejiang and south Jiangsu which have become popular tourist attractions in recent years, Anchang, another watertown, is quietly tucked away near the ancient city Shaoxing.     

A Perfect Marriage of the Soundless and the Sound

Gao Nianhua as a specialist in ancient architecture and Chen Hongbing as an opera singer are well known in Hangzhou. But few local people know they are husband and wife, for they seldom appear together in news stories.How they knew each other and how they got married was a delightful anecdote. Gao and Chen's elder brother were good buddies in their early youth. Chen's family knew him well. Years later, a close friend of Chen Hongbing arranged a blind date     

Knowledge for the West,Production for the Rest?

This article develops the argument that a ‘knowledge economy,’ despite its cheerful optimism, is also an elegant incarnation of the demise of Western economies. An analysis of policy documents, research statements, and national accounts reveals this paradoxical coexistence of anxiety and progress in the discourse on knowledge economies. While the concept is often hailed as a temporal concept (superseding other forms of economic production), this article argues that a knowledge economy is best understood as a spatial concept – it is a way of contending with global reorganizations of production. This spatial approach is elaborated to tackle three paradoxes. (1) A knowledge economy enfolds defeat with progress. (2) A knowledge economy downplays the importance of industrial labor and simultaneously depends on it to materialize its ideas. (3) While seemingly intangible and ephemeral, a knowledge economy is fixed in place in national economies through government and corporate policy (including through the emergent phenomenon of ‘knowledge-adjusted gross domestic products’). A spatial approach provides a view of the tenuous global interconnections and specific conditions that prop up a knowledge economy, and shows how the concept is mobilized to redraw the map so that endangered economies can regain their challenged sense of centrality in a world economy.     

Crossing the communication divide: Intergroup contact and the desire to learn the outgroup’s language

This paper explores the role of ethnolinguistic vitality and intergroup contact in changing attitudes and the interest to learn Hungarian among Slovak-speaking secondary school students in Southern Slovakia (N?=?225). Several indirect paths linking the all these variables were found. In general, lower local ethnolinguistic vitality of Hungarian decreased intergroup anxiety and increased the quality of contact with members of the Hungarian minority, which led to a more positive attitude toward the Hungarian minority, and enhanced the interest to learn Hungarian.     

Uncertainty in the Movie Industry: Does Star Power Reduce the Terror of the Box Office?

Everyone knows that the movie business is risky. But how risky is it? Do strategies exist that reduce risk? We investigate these questions using a sample of over 2000 motion pictures. We discover that box-office revenues are asymptotically Pareto-distributed and have infinite variance. The mean is dominated by rare blockbuster movies that are located in the far right tail. There is no typical movie because box-office revenue outcomes do not converge to an average: revenues diverge over all scales. The studio model of risk management lacks a foundation in theory or evidence, and revenue forecasts have zero precision. Movies are complex products and the cascade of information among film-goers during the course of a film's run can evolve along so many paths that it is impossible to attribute the success of a movie to individual causal factors. The audience makes a movie a hit and no amount of “star power” or marketing can alter that. The real star is the movie.     

Business schools,the anxiety of finance,and the order of the ‘middle tier’

Financial imagination plays a fundamental, yet ambivalent role in the establishment of hierarchies within and between business schools, and in business life at large. This study examines this process in the ‘middle tier’ of business education: that is, in the social space in which students and instructors understand themselves to occupy a ‘mid-range’ position within an order of excellence and success. Largely articulated through business school rankings, this order strongly relies on the centrality of the financial curriculum, proficiency in which is understood as both a proxy for smartness and a sign of moneymaking capacity. In the ‘middle tier’, this order manifests in the form of an anxiety: an order that, though legitimate, is thought not to be attained, or hardly attainable. The study draws from ethnographic investigation in a ‘middle tier’ business school with attention to how finance is made sense of in relation to an alternative curriculum, and in connection with the aim of ‘making it to the top’. A comparison with a ‘top tier’ business school allows furthering understanding of how the order of business schools relies on the anxiety of finance in order to reproduce an acquiescence to dominant financial imagination.     

Zhidun the Accomplished Monk

On December 3rd,2006,China Post issued a set of stamps entitled "Magic Stallion" in memory of an accomplished monk named Zhidun in the Eastern Jin Dynasty(317-420).     

Doctor in the Air

Every day at 5:45 am, Doctor Health speaks on Zhejiang People's Radio to hundreds of thousands of listeners. The popular program is composed of two parts. The first part is devoted to health issues and the second is assigned for calls from listeners. Listeners phone in to ask for information and obtain second medical opinions. Doctor Health does her best to offer her opinions and give medical advice. The program is so popular that it is extremely difficult for one to get through to the program hostess.     

Biking across the Country

Zhang Yuzheng is a biking legend,for she has traveled across China on thirteen bike journeys since 1990.Of her bike journeys,the shortest one lasted about dozens of days,and the longest ones lasted ten months,start-ing in spring and ending before winter came.     

A Bright Pearl in the Darkness --English Training Center for the Disabled

In China,there are 18 college studentsout of 10,000 people while only one out ofevery 10,000 disabled studies at universityaccording to authoritative data.That is tosay,an overwhelming majority of the disabledwith normal intelligence are turned down fromhjgher education for various reasons.