Trip to Russia and Uzbekistan,April 2013

The author reports on her trip to Moscow and Uzbekistan. In Moscow she attended and presented a paper at the conference Rumiantsevskie chteniia [Rumiantsev readings] 2013. After the conference she set up a new approval plan for Yale University Libraries with Natasha Kozmenko Booksellers. In Tashkent she participated in the seventh international conference Information and Library Resources for Science, Education, Culture, and Business: Central Asia 2013. She and some of the other participants also traveled to Samarkand.     

Politicking for the Public Library

ABSTRACT

In today's current political environment raising support for millage renewals, bond campaigns or even millage continuations for public libraries is affected by national politics, and a tendency towards tax aversion on principle across the country. The lessons we can learn from the governing boards of small and rural public libraries are worth raising up to a greater national consciousness. Board governance, community consciousness, and facilities management are clear and logical tools that elected boards of public libraries can use to politick for support of libraries.     

Initiative and Referendum Process in Idaho: A Research Guide

SUMMARY

This article is intended to be used as a starting point for those researching statutes either proposed or passed via the initiative or referendum process. A brief history of I&R in Idaho is followed by an annotated list of research resources to use when studying Idaho I&R.     

Researching Initiatives and Referenda: A Guide for Missouri

SUMMARY

This research guide is intended for those wishing to explore the history and develop a basic understanding of the initiative and referenda petition process in Missouri. The I&R process attracted national attention when Missouri's controversial Constitutional Amendment 2 dealing with stem cell research appeared on the ballot in the 2006 general election. Recently, there have been efforts to overturn this petition which narrowly passed. Hopefully, this guide will provide background and suggest paper and electronic resources for those wishing to study the process and determine what “paper trail” is available for initiatives and referendum in Missouri.     

On using humor to market higher education: at whose expense is the clowning?

This essay examines the deliberately humorous approaches undertaken in two recent higher education marketing endeavors: The American Council on Education's ‘Solutions for Our Future’ campaign and Stanford's ‘Hail, Stanford, Hail’ initiative. Three television commercials from each project are described and discussed in light of a view of comedy advanced by philosopher Kenneth Burke. Specifically, this essay identifies among each trio of videos a markedly different ‘clown’ – a figure at whom the audience is encouraged to laugh yet ultimately redeem. In turn, higher education marketing professionals and leaders are invited to reflect on choices associated with employing humorous messaging strategies.     

Problems and Solutions for American Political Coverage

Drawing on Shoemaker and her colleagues’ five levels of analysis, i.e. the individual, routine, organization, institutional, and social system levels, this study examines news media’s post-election self-examination. This study uses natural language processing-related techniques to analyze a corpus of news articles published 10 days after the election day to understand the nature and distribution of identified problems and proposed solutions at the five levels. This study finds that news media's inward reflections focused more on the routine level while problems at individual and organizational levels were not prominently examined. Outwardly, more discussions were pointed to institutions that share the media ecosystem with the news industry. This study serves as an empirical contribution to metajournalistic discourse analysis. Findings reveal the discursive struggle to construct and reconstruct the journalistic field.     

Reconsidering the Bayh-Dole Act and the Current University Invention Ownership Model

The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 provided U.S. universities with the right to commercialize employees’ inventions made while engaged in government-funded research. This paper argues that the current university invention ownership model, in which universities maintain de jure ownership of inventions, is not optimal either in terms of economic efficiency or for advancing the social interest of rapidly commercializing technology and encouraging entrepreneurship. We argue that this model is plagued by ineffective incentives, information asymmetries, and contradictory motivations for the university, the inventors, potential licensees, and university technology licensing offices (TLOs). These structural uncertainties can lead to delays in licensing, misaligned incentives among parties, and obstacles to the flow of scientific information and the materials necessary for scientific progress. The institutional arrangements within which TLOs are embedded have encouraged some of them to become revenue maximizers, rather than facilitators of technology dissemination for the good of the entire society.We suggest two alternative invention commercialization models as superior alternatives. The first alternative is to vest ownership with the inventor, who could choose the commercialization path for the invention. For this privilege the inventor would provide the university an ownership stake in any returns to the invention. The inventor would be free to contract with the university TLO or any other entity that might assist in commercialization. The second alternative is to make all inventions immediately publicly available through a public domain strategy or, through a requirement that all inventions be licensed non-exclusively. Both alternatives would address the current dysfunctional arrangements in university technology commercialization.     

What drives the formation of ‘valuable’ university–industry linkages?: Insights from the wine industry

Most of the literature on university–industry (U–I) linkages assumes that these linkages are beneficial per se. We question this assumption, suggesting that not all such linkages are equally helpful. In this paper, we explore the factors driving the formation of ‘valuable U–I linkages’, conceived as those linkages between universities and firms that have a higher potential to diffuse knowledge to other firms in their regional economy. Our empirical strategy combines case-study methodology with econometric techniques using data from two wine clusters in Chile and in Italy. The firm's knowledge base is found to be a key driver of ‘valuable’ U–I linkages. We conclude that selectivity should be encouraged among policy makers endeavouring to promote U–I linkages.     

Locating the equilibrium points of a predator–prey model by means of affine state feedback

A predator–prey model with prey-dependent functional response is considered. The set of all points in the positive quadrant of the state plane that can be made equilibrium points by means of an affine state-feedback control law is determined, and the values of the control parameters ensuring the desired equilibria are provided. It is shown how the asymptotic stability of the equilibrium points depends on simple geometric conditions. The problem of stabilizing unstable equilibrium points is also briefly discussed.