From a Means to an End: Patenting in the 1999 Danish ‘Act on Inventions’ and its Effect on Research Practice

This paper examines the potential pitfalls for academic research associated with goal displacements in the implementation of goals and indicators of research commercialization. We ask why patenting has come to serve as the key policy indicator of innovative capacity and what consequences this has for the organization of academic research. To address these questions, the paper presents a case study from Denmark on, firstly, why and how the 1999 Danish ‘Act on Inventions’ introduced patenting as a central instrument to Danish science policy and, secondly, the effects the Act has had on Danish university organization and research practices. We trace why and how commercialization was introduced as an important objective in Danish science policy since the 1980s. The increased focus on patents is explained as an isomorphic adjustment to an international ‘science policy field,’ manifested in particular through OECD statistics, where patenting has come to serve as a key metric in international rankings. In a second step, we examine what effects the patenting requirements have had on organization and research practice at a Danish university. We show that in practice ‘number of patents’ changed from serving as an indicator of innovative capacity to being a policy goal in itself, thus in effect producing a goal displacement that is potentially damaging for both academic research and innovation capacity of the surrounding society. As a consequence of this goal displacement, active scientists now increasingly engage in patenting primarily as a means to fulfill organizational targets and to increase their ‘fundability,’ rather than to promote commercial applications of their research. In conclusion, we discuss how these unfulfilled policy ambitions have led to a retrospective redefinition of policy goals rather than an adjustment of the actual policy tools.     

IPv6: The next generation Internet Protocol

IPv4, the workhorse protocol of the currently popular TCP/ IP protocol suite, is fast becoming obsolete. The exponential growth of the Internet is the main reason that has required the creation of the next generation of Internet Protocol-IPv6. IPv6 is much more flexible and promises to take care of the address space and security issues in the foreseeable future. Part 1 of the paper lays the foundation of the various issues involved in designing the Internet Protocol and motivates the need for an upgraded version of this protocol.     

Rethinking participation in the Aarhus as European Capital of Culture 2017 project

This paper examines the relationship between cultural participation and regional development with reference to the European Capital of Culture in 2017. From the bidding stage, Aarhus 2017 claimed it put “participation” at the heart of its strategic plans, through consultation at roadshows and exhibitions. In addition, it aspired to use culture as a catalyst for development not only in the city of Aarhus but across the region of Central Denmark. This paper, therefore, examines how participation is defined and implemented to address regional development in the Aarhus 2017 process through textual analysis of documentation from Aarhus 2017 and delivery partners as well as over 20 interviews with managers and participants involved in a range of 2017 projects. The paper argues against the common prioritisation of urban and professional cultural institutions and makes the case for decentralised cultural provision that supports both amateurs and professionals through a regional networked structure.     

Practical Applications as a Source of Credibility: A Comparison of Three Fields of Dutch Academic Chemistry

In many Western science systems, funding structures increasingly stimulate academic research to contribute to practical applications, but at the same time the rise of bibliometric performance assessments have strengthened the pressure on academics to conduct excellent basic research that can be published in scholarly literature. We analyze the interplay between these two developments in a set of three case studies of fields of chemistry in the Netherlands. First, we describe how the conditions under which academic chemists work have changed since 1975. Second, we investigate whether practical applications have become a source of credibility for individual researchers. Indeed, this turns out to be the case in catalysis, where connecting with industrial applications helps in many steps of the credibility cycle. Practical applications yield much less credibility in environmental chemistry, where application-oriented research agendas help to acquire funding, but not to publish prestigious papers or to earn peer recognition. In biochemistry practical applications hardly help in gaining credibility, as this field is still strongly oriented at fundamental questions. The differences between the fields can be explained by the presence or absence of powerful upstream end-users, who can afford to invest in academic research with promising long term benefits.     

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Q 论坛附件可以合并下载吗？ 用QQ邮箱的时候发现邮件里的附件可以合并成一个zip文件下载，下戴后解压就行，挺方便的。请问大嘴，论坛上帖子里的附件可以合并下载吗？很多论坛都限制了附件大小，一个10M的软件只有分作8、9个1M大小的分卷才能上传为附件。下载的时候一个个点起来太麻烦了。     

Integrierte Entwicklung von Automotive-Software mit AutoFocus

Zur Beherrschung der komplexen vernetzten und verteilten Funktionen von Automotive-Software ist eine Beschreibung des zu erstellenden Systems auf verschiedenen Abstraktionsebenen und schrittweise überg?nge zwischen diesen Ebenen notwendig. Neben der Definition geeigneter Ebenen werden zur Unterstützung echtzeitkritischer Systemanteile ein einheitliches Berechnungsmodell, ebenenspezifische Beschreibungstechniken, sowie methodische Regeln für diese Abstraktionsebenen eingeführt und in den Werkzeugprototypen AutoFocus integriert.     

Dimensions of variability in embedded operating systems

Design, implementation, and re-engineering of operating systems are still an ambitious undertaking. Despite, or even because, of the long history of theory and practice in this field, adapting existing systems to environments of different conditions and requirements as originally specified or assumed, in terms of functional and/or non-functional respects, is anything but simple. Especially this is true for the embedded systems domain which, on the one hand, calls for highly specialized and application-aware system abstractions and, on the other hand, cares a great deal for easily reusable implementations of these abstractions. The latter aspect becomes more and more important as embedded systems technology is faced with an innovation cycle decreasing in length. Software for embedded systems needs to be designed for variability, and this is in particular true for the operating systems of this domain. The paper discusses dimensions of variability that need to be considered in the development of embedded operating systems and presents approaches that aid construction and maintenance of evolutionary operating systems. CR subject classification  C.3; D.2.11; D.2.13; D.4.7