Organizational Unit:

School of Public Policy

Permanent Link

https://hdl.handle.net/1853/70716

Parent Organization

Organizational Unit

Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts

Includes Organization(s)

Organizational Unit

Technology Policy and Assessment Center

ArchiveSpace Name Record

https://finding-aids.library.gatech.edu/agents/corporate_entities/1033

Full item page

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 25

A Science of Science and Innovation Policy Research Agenda

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-12-10) Feller, Irwin ; Cozzens, Susan E.

Dr. John Marburger’s recent calls for a new science of science policy open up new opportunities to reconceptualize, retest, and revise as needed the theories, models, descriptions, and mainstream propositions underlying United States’ science and innovation policies and programs. We respond to these calls by presenting a research agenda directed at two objectives. First, as academic researchers who have long worked in the field of science and innovation policy, albeit from different analytical and disciplinary perspectives, we seek to insure that efforts to promote the "science" of science and technology, or innovation policy produce substantive scholarly work that in fact advances our fundamental understanding of underlying processes. Second, as participants in numerous U.S. and international science and innovation policy advisory forums and commissions, we seek to promote a closer, better fitting, coupling between the research communities who are addressing questions of the science of science policy -- themselves a disparate disciplinary lot -- with the policy communities who are seeking improved understandings of whether or how the decisions they have made or are being called upon to make in fact have led to the intended results. Our strategy to achieve these two objectives is to identify questions that are simultaneously intellectually challenging and policy relevant.
Developing an "Energy Sustainability Index" to Evaluate American Energy Policy

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-12-07) Brown, Marilyn A. ; Sovacool, Benjamin K.

This paper proposes the creation of an energy sustainability index (ESI) to inform policymakers, investors, and analysts about the status of energy conditions, and to help educate the public about energy issues. The proposed ESI builds on the substantial body of literature on "sustainability" and also draws on past efforts to measure environmental and energy progress – both of which are reviewed below. The index covers four dimensions (oil security, electricity reliability, energy efficiency, and environmental quality) and includes twelve individual indicators. Comparing these indicators in 1970 with 2004, nine have trended in an unfavorable direction, two have moved in a favorable direction, and one has been essentially unchanged. Clearly, the "energy problem" fretted about in the 1970s has not been fully addressed. While the proposed ESI is preliminary and requires further refinement, it takes an important step toward creating a set of indicators that can easily assess and communicate the condition of the U.S. energy system.
Balancing Uncertain Risks and Benefits in Human Subjects Research

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-06) Barke, Richard P.

Composed of a variety of scientific and technical experts plus a few lay members, thousands of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) in the US must identify and assess the potential risks to human research subjects, and balance those risks against the potential benefits of the research. These assessments are laden with uncertainty, however. Most IRBs handle risk and its uncertainty by adopting a version of the precautionary principle, which is largely suggested by the Belmont Report and the Common Rule. To assess scientific merit, IRBs tacitly employ a "sanguinity principle," which treats uncertainty as inevitable in scientific progress. In balancing the uncertainties of human subjects risks and scientific benefits, IRBs use uncertainty as a bridging device that allows the approaches of science and ethics to be reconciled. Nevertheless, the flexibility and lack of consistent oversight of how IRBs apply these principles leads to frustration by investigators who are unclear about the criteria by which their proposals are evaluated.
Power and Limits of Dynamical Systems Theory in Conflict Analysis

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-04) Hoffmann, Michael H. G.

One of the most exciting new approaches in conflict research applies Dynamical Systems Theory (DST) to explain the devastating dynamics of intractable conflicts. This paper describes what makes this approach so powerful, and discusses some of its limitations that become visible in the mathematical models of DST that are available so far. In its final section, some possible directions for further research are sketched with a special focus on identifying the elements of a conflict whose dynamics could be reconstructed by means of Dynamical Systems Theory.
NBIC - Interdisciplinarity? A Framework for a Critical Reflection on Inter- and Transdisciplinarity of the NBIC-scenario

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-04) Schmidt, Jan Cornelius

Interdisciplinarity is one of the most popular buzzwords used in contemporary knowledge politics. However, at the same time, the term is not well defined. In order to clarify its meaning, this paper classifies different kinds of interdisciplinarity. The aim is to show which specific kind of interdisciplinarity is involved in the NSF-NBIC-scenario on convergence technologies. It will be shown that the NBIC-scenario is based on a "realconstructivistic object-interdisciplinarity" that is the implicit basis for recent NBIC-knowledge politics. This type of interdisciplinarity will be explicated and contrasted with the research program of the European Union that widens the circle of convergence (Converging Technologies for the European Knowledge Society/CTEKS; Initiative of the European Commission). It will be shown that the main difference between the two programs on convergent technologies is object-interdisciplinarity on the one hand and problem-oriented-interdisciplinarity on the other hand.
Cognitive Conditions of Diagrammatic Reasoning

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-02) Hoffmann, Michael H. G.

In the first part of this paper, I delineate Peirce's general concept of diagrammatic reasoning from other usages of the term that focus either on diagrammatic systems as developed in logic and AI or on reasoning with mental models. The main function of Peirce's form of diagrammatic reasoning is to facilitate individual or social thinking processes in situations that are too complex to be coped with exclusively by internal cognitive means. I provide a diagrammatic definition of diagrammatic reasoning that emphasizes the construction of, and experimentation with, external representations based on the rules and conventions of a chosen representation system. The second part starts with a summary of empirical research regarding cognitive effects of working with diagrams and a critique of approaches that use 'mental models' to explain those effects. The main focus of this section is, however, to elaborate the idea that diagrammatic reasoning should be conceptualized as a case of 'distributed cognition.' Using the mathematics lesson described by Plato in his Meno, I analyze those cognitive conditions of diagrammatic reasoning that are relevant in this case.
Where Excludability Matters: Material v. Intellectual Property in Academic Biomedical Research

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-01-09) Walsh, John P. ; Cho, Charlene ; Cohen, Wesley M.

On the basis of survey responses from 507 academic biomedical researchers, we examine the impact of patents on access to the knowledge and material inputs that are used in subsequent research. We observe that access to knowledge inputs is largely unaffected by patents. Accessing other researchers' materials, such as cell lines, reagents, and antigens is, however, more problematic. The main factors associated with restricted access to materials include scientific competition, the cost of providing materials, a history of commercial activity on the part of the prospective supplier, and whether the material in question is itself a drug.
Traditional versus decentralized innovation strategies of multinational enterprises

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-01) Fernández-Ribas, Andrea ; Shapira, Philip ; Youtie, Jan

In this paper we investigate innovation strategies of foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) by distinguishing between traditional centralized and newer decentralized competence models. In centralized competence models, MNEs maintain core research and development (R&D) functions at home, and conduct design and market screening in host locations. In decentralized competence models, MNEs also undertake R&D in host country locations. We test empirically the interrelations and heterogeneities among these three types of host country affiliate innovation activities: design, market-screening, and R&D. Our results indicate that traditional and new roles of MNEs are complements, although the determinants of each strategy are somewhat different. The presence of local knowledge spillovers is positively associated with the probability that an affiliate does R&D, design, and market-screening activities. R&D activities are more likely to appear when an affiliate has more developed internal capabilities and has been operating for a longer time in the host country. Our findings provide some support for the predictions of decentralized competence models.
Learning from People, Things, and Signs

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006-11-15) Hoffmann, Michael H. G.

Starting from the observation that small children can count more objects than numbers—a phenomenon that I am calling the "lifeworld dependency of cognition"—and an analysis of finger calculation, the paper shows how learning can be explained as the development of cognitive systems. Parts of those systems are not only an individual’s different forms of knowledge and cognitive abilities, but also other people, things, and signs. The paper argues that cognitive systems are first of all semiotic systems since they are dependent on signs and representations as mediators. The two main questions discussed here are how the external world constrains and promotes the development of cognitive abilities, and how we can move from cognitive abilities that are necessarily connected with concrete situations to abstract knowledge.
Searching for Patterns of Competitive and Relational Contracting over Time: Do Prime and Subcontractor Networks Follow Similar Patterns?

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006-11) Kingsley, Gordon ; Ponomariov, Branco Leonidov

This paper explores and compares two sets of contractual relationships over a twelve-year period: the patterns of contracting between a state transportation agency and its prime contractors providing engineering design services, and between the prime- and sub-contractors. We find evidence that patterns of relational and competitive contracting may co-exist in the same contracting context. While the patterns of agency-prime contracting are indicative or relational contracting, the patterns of prime-sub contracting imply relatively more competitive processes. Implications for policy and theory of outsourcing are discussed.