Ancient discipline, vigorous KIZ： Aiming at frontiers

Many science historians say modern zoology emerged in 1552 with the publication in Paris of Edward Wooton De differentiis animalium. Others trace it back to Aristotle (382-322 BC) and his History of Animals. But no matter how old zoology is, this     

Ethical frontiers of ICT and older users: cultural, pragmatic and ethical issues

The reality of an ageing Europe has called attention to the importance of e-inclusion for a growing population of senior citizens. For some, this may mean closing the digital divide by providing access and support to technologies that increase citizen participation; for others, e-inclusion means access to assistive technologies to facilitate and extend their living independently. These initiatives address a social need and provide economic opportunities for European industry. While undoubtedly desirable, and supported by European Union initiatives, several cultural assumptions or issues related to the initiatives could benefit from fuller examination, as could their practical and ethical implications. This paper begins to consider these theoretical and practical concerns. The first part of the paper examines cultural issues and assumptions relevant to adopting e-technologies, and the ethical principles applied to them. These include (1) the persistence of ageism, even in e-inclusion; (2) different approaches to, and implications of independent living; and (3) the values associated with different ethical principles, given their implications for accountability to older users. The paper then discusses practical issues and ethical concerns that have been raised by the use of smart home and monitoring technologies with older persons. Understanding these assumptions and their implications will allow for more informed choices in promoting ethical application of e-solutions for older persons.     

Innovation in times of crisis: National Systems of Innovation, structure, and demand

This article addresses the impact of the current economic downturn on innovation across Europe. Using micro- and macro-data, we investigate to what extent some structural characteristics of National Systems of Innovation, along with demand, affect firms’ persistency in terms of innovation investment. It emerges that the effects of the economic downturn in terms of firms’ innovation investment are not the same across European countries. The competences and quality of the human resources, the specialization in the high-technology sector, together with the development of the financial system seem to be the structural factors which are able to offset the effect of the economic downturn on innovation investments of firms across Europe. Finally, some considerations about policies during recessions are discussed.     

Vaccine technology transfer in a global health crisis: Actors,capabilities, and institutions

The COVID-19 pandemic, which featured international pharmaceutical firms seeking to build global manufacturing networks to scale-up the supply of vaccines, has generated heightened interest in understanding the role of firm-to-firm technology transfer. While considerable attention has been given to tracking the extent of international vaccine technology transfer, we know little about how partnerships were established and work in practice. Understanding the challenges that such projects face, and how such challenges may be overcome, is crucially important. This paper provides an account of the partnership between the British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, the vaccine developer that has engaged in the most technology transfer and built the widest global manufacturing network, and Bio-Manguinhos, a public laboratory linked to Brazil's Ministry of Health. The case study demonstrates the importance of capabilities and regulatory flexibility. Moreover, the analysis highlights the role of political factors that affect the process of technology transfer, and innovation more broadly. Because of the risks involved and the need to quickly mobilize existing capabilities and build new ones, as well as the imperatives of coordinating among manufacturing and regulatory processes and allocating resources to make such arrangements feasible, technology transfer projects need to be enabled politically. Looking forward, the case study has implications for initiatives to expand technology transfer for broadened production of vaccines in the Global South.     

Scientific organizations in Spain (1950-1970): social isolation and international legitimation of biochemists and molecular biologists on the periphery

Through a study of Spanish scientific organizations and the involvement of Spanish scientists in international ones, the beginnings of biochemistry and molecular biology in Spain are explored. The centre-periphery dichotomy is useful in explaining the progress of the establishment of these disciplines, together with the political context, both national and international, in which such establishment took place. It is suggested that international ties and national support are both necessary, but not sufficient conditions to overcome the distance between the Spanish scientific community and the centres of development and productivity in biochemistry and molecular biology. The interplay between both national and international factors has proved to be crucial. As a tool to study the whole scientific community of biochemists and molecular biologists, scientific societies allow us to analyze the role of that interplay in Spanish scientific development.     

基于环境分析的流通企业并购:目标、方式及制约因素

基于经济全球化的国际环境分析,流通企业并购应是以国际化发展为方向、以塑造核心竞争力为目标的战略性并购;基于流通产业结构、性质及我国流通产业的发展现状分析,实现战略性并购应以同业横向的强强并购为主。在具体的并购策略上,批发业与零售业还有一定的区别。流通企业实现上述战略性并购目标的制约因素很多,本文着重对企业自身的制约因素:动力与能力问题进行了深入分析。     

危机决策的特点、方法及对策研究

危机决策是危机管理的核心。本文从基本概念入手，重点分析了危机决策的特点，针对这些特点，提出了危机群体决策的方法；并对目前我国在危机决策中存在的主要问题，提出了改进危机决策的对策，力求对危机决策的科学化起到一定的帮助作用。     

金融危机下的我国企业人力资源管理:挑战、机遇与对策

世界金融危机使全球经济陷入困境,也影响了我国的经济发展,使我国企业的人力资源管理承受了一定压力.金融危机下,企业被迫采取的裁员、降薪、缩减或冻结招聘等行动给员工关系管理、绩效管理、薪酬管理、高层次人才招聘、企业文化建设等人力资源管理环节带来挑战,同时也给我国企业人力资源管理带来理念重构、管理变革、过程优化、文化提升、人才引进等方面的机遇.针对金融危机带来的这些挑战和机遇,企业应当采取五大对策.     

经济学为什么无法解释和推测金融危机？——兼论构建经济学新范式的三个基本原理

霍金《时间简史》给科学以如下的定义：“为了谈论宇宙的性质和讨论诸如它是否存在开端或终结的问题,你必须清楚什么是科学理论。科学理论只不过是宇宙或它的受限制的一部分的模型,一些连接这模型中的量和我们的观测的规则。它只存在于我们的头脑中,不管在任何意义上,不再具有任何其他的实在性。     

"Shocking" masculinity: Stanley Milgram, "obedience to authority," and the "crisis of manhood" in Cold War America

Stanley Milgram's study of "obedience to authority" is one of the best-known psychological experiments of the twentieth century. This essay examines the study's special charisma through a detailed consideration of the intellectual, cultural, and gender contexts of Cold War America. It suggests that Milgram presented not a "timeless" experiment on "human nature" but, rather, a historically contingent, scientifically sanctioned "performance" of American masculinity at a time of heightened male anxiety. The essay argues that this gendered context invested the obedience experiments with an extraordinary plausibility, immediacy, and relevance. Immersed in a discourse of masculinity besieged, many Americans read the obedience experiments not as a fanciful study of laboratory brutality but as confirmation of their worst fears. Milgram's extraordinary success thus lay not in his "discovery" of the fragility of individual conscience but in his theatrical flair for staging culturally relevant masculine performances.     

Chebyshev series approach to system identification,analysis and optimal control

The problems of identification, analysis and optimal control have been recently studied via orthogonal functions. The particular orthogonal functions used up to now are the Walsh, the block-pulse and the Laguerre functions. In this paper, the Chebyshev functions are introduced and solutions for the aforementioned problems are established. The algorithms proposed are analogous to those already derived for the Walsh, block-pulse and Laguerre functions. The Chebyshev series approach presented here appears to have certain advantages over other orthogonal series, and they may therefore be more suitable for the study of the problems of identification, analysis and optimal control.     

环境绩效、环境信息披露与经济绩效相关性研究综述

回顾了环境绩效、环境信息披露及经济绩效三者之间相关性的研究,在此基础上进一步指出了现有研究中的不足,有助于后续研究的开展.     

环境管制下FDI、经济增长与环境污染关系的实证研究

本文考虑了环境管制因素下FDI、经济增长与环境污染关系问题,并运用联立方程模型检验中国1996-2008年期间三者相互作用关系以及各自的主要影响因素.方程估计结果显示:(1)人均GDP与环境污染之间存在倒U型库兹涅茨曲线.目前中国地区经济增长对环境污染的作用存在差异化,具体表现在东部地区经济增长将对环境污染起到抑制作用,而中西部地区经济增长则加剧环境污染.(2)FDI与经济增长之间具有相互的促进作用,FDI与环境之间表现为FDI加剧环境污染.环境管制抑制了FDI和污染排放量的增长,对环境保护起到了促进作用.     

提高信息资源水平,促进经济增长,应对金融危机

分析信息资源水平与经济增长之间相互促进、相互制约的关系,并通过实证分析证实这种关系,在此基础上提出相关的政策建议。     

Service robots,care ethics,and design

It should not be a surprise in the near future to encounter either a personal or a professional service robot in our homes and/or our work places: according to the International Federation for Robots, there will be approx 35 million service robots at work by 2018. Given that individuals will interact and even cooperate with these service robots, their design and development demand ethical attention. With this in mind I suggest the use of an approach for incorporating ethics into the design process of robots known as Care Centered Value Sensitive Design (CCVSD). Although this approach was originally and intentionally designed for the healthcare domain, the aim of this paper is to present a preliminary study of how personal and professional service robots might also be evaluated using the CCVSD approach. The normative foundations for CCVSD come from its reliance on the care ethics tradition and in particular the use of care practices for: (1) structuring the analysis and, (2) determining the values of ethical import. To apply CCVSD outside of healthcare one must show that the robot has been integrated into a care practice. Accordingly, the practice into which the robot is to be used must be assessed and shown to meet the conditions of a care practice. By investigating the foundations of the approach I hope to show why it may be applicable for service robots and further to give examples of current robot prototypes that can and cannot be evaluated using CCVSD.     

American Catholicism's science crisis and the Albertus Magnus Guild, 1953-1969

During the middle decades of the twentieth century, American Catholic scientists experienced a sense of crisis owing to the paucity of scientific research performed either by individual Catholics or in Catholic institutions of higher learning. In 1953 the Rev. Patrick Yancey, S.J., the chairman of the biology department at a small Jesuit college and a member of the newly created National Science Board, led efforts to establish a national organization of Catholic scientists. Subsequently known as the Albertus Magnus Guild, this organization attempted both to improve Catholics' scientific performance and to refute the widely held notion among non-Catholic Americans that Catholicism was inherently hostile to science. By reflecting on Yancey's career as an educator and scientist and on the history of the guild, this article seeks to deepen our understanding of twentieth-century Catholic science education and reveal the ways in which Catholic scientists approached the issues surrounding the interaction of science and religion.     

Patenting the bomb: nuclear weapons, intellectual property, and technological control

During the course of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government secretly attempted to acquire a monopoly on the patent rights for inventions used in the production of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. The use of patents as a system of control, while common for more mundane technologies, would seem at first glance to conflict with the regimes of secrecy that have traditionally been associated with nuclear weapons. In explaining the origins and operations of the Manhattan Project patent system, though, this essay argues that the utilization of patents was an ad hoc attempt at legal control of the atomic bomb by Manhattan Project administrators, focused on the monopolistic aspects of the patent system and preexisting patent secrecy legislation. From the present perspective, using patents as a method of control for such weapons seems inadequate, if not unnecessary; but at the time, when the bomb was a new and essentially unregulated technology, patents played an important role in the thinking of project administrators concerned with meaningful postwar control of the bomb.     

集聚外部性、环境技术效率与节能减排

利用2001～2008年中国制造业面板数据,实证分析了由专业化集聚带来的马歇尔外部性和由多样化集聚带来的雅各布斯外部性对环境及工业协调性的影响,试图寻求新的节能减排的政策着力点。研究发现:马歇尔外部性和雅各布斯外部性都与代表环境及工业协调性的环境技术效率呈"倒U型"曲线关系;马歇尔外部性和雅各布斯外部性会对环境及工业协调性共同起作用。建议政府积极利用这两种外部性正效应实现节能减排。