Contribution to the Collective by Religious‐Zionist Adolescent Girls

The act of contribution to the collective raises a major dilemma in contemporary religious Zionism in regard to girls and women: how to maintain their traditional restriction to the domestic sphere while allowing participation in national tasks that demand their presence in the male‐dominated public sphere. From in‐depth interviews conducted with 37 seventeen‐year‐old religious girls studying in a unisex residential boarding high school, we uncover the manner in which these girls, as they proceed to young adulthood, experience the act of contribution in three social arenas: the Bnei Akiva youth movement, national service and the domestic sphere. Our analysis reveals a gradual recruitment to contribution during the passage from girlhood to womanhood, paralleled by the gradual intensification of feminine’ qualities. This process facilitates the girls’ participation in the public sphere without challenging the traditional gender dichotomy. It also constitutes a central practice by means of which religious‐Zionist society recruits the girls to the Israeli collective yet keeps them within its own socio‐cultural boundaries.     

Bidirectional delta files

A bidirectional delta file is a novel concept, introduced in this paper, for a two way delta file. Previous work focuses on single way differential compression called forwards and backwards delta files. Here we suggest to efficiently combine them into a single file so that the combined file is smaller than the combination of the two individual ones. Given the bidirectional delta file of two files S and T and the original file S, one can decode it in order to produce T. The same bidirectional delta file is used together with the file T in order to reconstruct S. This paper presents two main strategies for producing an efficient bidirectional delta file in terms of the memory storage it requires; a quadratic time, optimal, dynamic programming algorithm, and a linear time, greedy algorithm. Although the dynamic programming algorithm often produces better results than the greedy algorithm, it is impractical for large files, and it is only used for theoretical comparisons. Experiments between the implemented algorithms and the traditional way of using both forwards and backwards delta files are presented, comparing their processing time and their compression performance. These experiments show memory storage savings of about 25% using this bidirectional delta approach as compared to the compressed delta file constructed using the traditional way, while preserving approximately the same processing time for decoding.     

远程学习环境下的学生辅导对在学率的影响

以色列开放大学（OUI）是一所以远程学习及自学为主的免试入学的高等学院。对所有高等教育机构,尤其是对远程开放教育机构来说,学生的在学率问题是最被关注的。为应对这一问题,OUI决定实施一项保证在学率的项目,其目的是帮助新生解决在学习第一门课程中遇到的困难。新生和高年级的学生组成对子,由高年级的学生在第一学期作为辅导员帮助他们解决困难。本论文介绍了此项目实施情况并展示了接受辅导的学生的学习情况、就学情况、沟通情况以及他们在远程学习环境中的辅导情况。     

Organizational and institutional influences on creativity in scientific research

This paper explores institutional and organizational influences on creativity in scientific research. Using a method for identifying creative scientific research accomplishments in two fields of science (nanotechnology and human genetics) in Europe and the US, the paper summarizes results derived from twenty case studies of highly creative research accomplishments, focusing on contextual patterns at the group, organizational, and institutional levels. We find that creative accomplishments are associated with small group size, organizational contexts with sufficient access to a complementary variety of technical skills, stable research sponsorship, timely access to extramural skills and resources, and facilitating leadership. A potential institutional threat to creative science is the increase in competitive research council funding at the expense of flexible institutional sponsorship. Implications for research management and research policy are considered.     

R&D intensity, value appropriation and integration patterns within organizational boundaries

Complementary insights from Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) and the Resource-Based View (RBV) of the firm are combined to predict the relationship between firm specific technological knowledge and patterns of integration within organizational boundaries. The findings show that the level of Research and Development (R&D) intensity (representing the creation of firm specific technological knowledge) has an inverted U-shaped relationship with the propensity of firms to integrate activities within organizational boundaries. At low levels of R&D intensity, firms’ propensity to integrate their activities is low, but increases with escalating levels of R&D intensity in order to avoid the misappropriation of value generated by technological knowledge. However, beyond a certain R&D intensity level, the propensity to integrate activities declines, since the level of technological knowledge is high enough to prevent imitation by third parties. As expected we further find that firms which follow this integration pattern outperform those which do not. As the level of R&D intensity increases, the integration of production and marketing activities enables firms to improve performance until a certain R&D intensity threshold, after which such integration negatively affects performance.     

Inter-industry knowledge flows and sectoral networks in the economy of Malaysia

This research probes the configuration of technological systems in terms of inter-sectoral knowledge and intermediate goods exchanges based on a case study of 21 industry sectors in the economy of Malaysia. The case study draws on a network analysis of sectoral knowledge flows survey data and input–output exchange statistics. The results show that knowledge acquisition and dissemination networks are relatively more intra-sector, denser, and centralized than goods exchange networks, which can affect how innovations spread through the economy. Knowledge networks, however, are more likely to form sub-networks with potentially diverse capabilities and influence on the technological system. This adds new information and value for knowledge-based sectoral investment strategies.     

The role of the state in regulatory policy for nanomaterials risk: Analyzing the expansion of state-centric rulemaking in EU and US chemicals policies

This paper explores the growing power of states in transnational regulatory policies for nanotechnology risks and thereby their impact on research and technology trajectories. Decentralization of governance structure has been reported by scholars, yet the role of the state is evolving and still underexplored. We draw on a case study of nanomaterials and chemicals policies, by analyzing recent regulatory developments in the EU and US. Using data-reporting and market-entry regulations as examples, the evidence demonstrates the expansion of state-centric market-oversight rulemaking, and ‘stronger’ patterns of centralization in the EU. We argue for a significant increase in regulatory power exertion, countering predominant views on decentralization as the prevailing governance response. These findings suggest the adaptation and strengthening of state-based regulatory systems in the context of scientific uncertainty and complexity of global nanotechnology settings; despite these challenges for policy making, the EU and the US are increasing government role in technology regulatory policy.