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Purpose: This study conducts a systematic review of policy reforms for the evaluation of scientific and technological research (E-STR) in China’s colleges. In doing so, it identifies changes to past policies, as well as the objectives and realizability of the most recent policy reform. Design/Approach/Methods: This study systematically reviews the contexts of E-STR policy reforms in China’s colleges post 2000 using three important related policy documents from 2003, 2013, and 2020 as samples. Research findings were obtained via content analysis. Findings: Unlike previous attempts, the most recent policy reform has incorporated the lessons learned while introducing highly targeted measures and a monitoring mechanism. Such reform should accelerate the promotion of major original scientific research in China’s colleges, enhance the contribution of scientific research to socioeconomic development, and strengthen support for the cultivation of undergraduate talents. Originality/Value: Initiated in the early part of 2000, China’s latest E-STR policy reform constitutes an important turning point in the initiative to burst the research bubble and return to the essence of innovation. It will drive China’s colleges to embark on a research path that places value on original innovation and contribution to socioeconomic development.

National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research of Chile, Conicyt (Fondecyt project): 1171072.

Drawing on the notion of musical intervals, recent studies have demonstrated the use of precise frequency ratios within human vocalisation. Methodologically, these studies have addressed human vocalisation at an individual level. In the present study, we asked whether patterns such as musical intervals can also be found among the voices of people engaging in a conversation as an emerging interpersonal phenomenon. Fifty-six participants were randomly paired and assigned to either a control or a low-trust condition. Frequency ratios were generated by juxtaposing nonlocal fundamental frequency (f0) productions from two people engaged in each given dyadic conversation. Differences were found among conditions, both in terms of interval distribution and precision. These results support the idea that psychological dispositions modulate the musical intervals generated between participants through mutual real-time vocal accommodation. They also underscore the inter-domain use of musical intervals.

The development of innovative systems for rail and maritime terminals is an issue high on the agenda of the transport industry. In Europe, a number of new transport systems for unitized cargoes are already in the mature design or pilot phase. A study was done to present a subset of these systems for which pilot demonstrations exist, to identify the basic directions of the relevant technological research and to evaluate the effects of these systems on the structural and operational environment of the terminals. The relevant analysis was based on the experience extracted by field trials as well as by modeling tasks used for the evaluation of the related terminal performance. It was revealed that tasks such as the reduction of terminal access time, fast train loading and unloading, and achievement of high degrees in equipment automation are technically and operationally feasible.

In spite of the advances in high technological research creating devices to support spatial orientation of visually impaired persons, they still confront a difficult situation in public urban spaces, which are seldom accessible to them. Design solutions aiming to improve their accessibility means to enhance their perception and understanding of space, to increase their possibilities of orientation and of taking independent decisions, and also to enable them participate in the city life. For a design of this kind it is necessary to understand their rights as citizens, and their particular needs and problems arising from the reduction, or absence of vision. To reach understanding of the problem, from another frame of reference that is not visual, it is essential to develop special research methods to analyse urban spaces, and to obtain first-hand information about spatial experiences of visually impaired persons.

Our purpose in this paper is to offer an historical account of the relationship between basic, applied and technological research, as found in a case study of the Institute of Research in Applied Mathematics and Systems (IIMAS) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). We found that researchers who have dedicated themselves full-time to the development of technology related to computing science have, in their academic careers, faced a system of evaluation based upon an ideal of basic science: this results in an adverse environment for the development of technological research; and this, in turn, has negative consequences for basic research itself, as the achievements of basic and experimental science cannot be understood nowadays without any active collaboration between technology and theory. The concepts which give rise to the different forms of evaluation at UNAM resulted more from a value-ridden symbolic construction, than from the processes of the actual production of new knowledge.

This paper discusses technological learning in the oil sector in Venezuela, with the help of a case study of ORIMULSION®, which heralded a very important techno logical breakthrough for the evolution of the nationalised oil industry in this country, being at the same time a challenge and an opportunity. The technological R&D policy for heavy and extra-heavy oils and bitumens of the Orinoco Oil Belt created the conditions for the domestic system of innovation in the oil industry to realise a catching up process, taking advantage of the available opportunities: the geological wealth offered by the national subsoil, a small but growing scientific and technical community of practitioners having direct access to operational activities of the newly nationalised industry, and an institutional learning procees based on an original technological trajectory both in INTEVEP, the oil industry's technological research centre, and in the domestic operating firms. The paper traces the complexity of the learning process at different times and in a number of dimensions, with an emphasis on the mechanisms through which the researchers, technicians and managers acquired and/or improved their know-how

The implications for political science are traced of the relationship among a number of developments and concepts — innovation and the role of the state, markets and the state, pure science and technological research, innovation and development. These phenomena are linked to state policies and to traditional theoretical concepts, as well as to current challenges to theoretical thinking.

The Claims™/U.S. Patent Abstracts database is presented as a potential online source for information on technology and physiological methods in psychology.

In September 1973, the Pugwash Movement realigned its sights on international collaboration in scientific and technological research as the surest means of promoting development in the Third World, when at its Twenty-third General Conference at Aulanko, Finland, it came to the conclusion that experience having proved its earlier premises to be false, explorations needed to be made in self-reliance as an alternative strategy. Accordingly, it held a Symposium in June 1975 at Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, which was attended by 20 participants from the three developing continents and from North America and Europe. There were also some observers from UN agencies. At its conclusion, the Symposium directed the author, who had acted as the rapporteur of the Symposium, to prepare a report along the ‘outlines’ unanimously approved by the participants. The following essay is the result of his labours. It examines the genesis of the concept of self-reliance, explains the concept itself, outlines the transitional steps, spells out the implications for international organizations as well as developing countries, and gives the guidelines of action by the Pugwash Movement itself.

This article argues for the need to put into practice a profound and comprehensive intellectual revolution, affecting to a greater or lesser extent all branches of scientific and technological research, scholarship and education. This intellectual revolution differs, however, from the now familiar kind of scientific revolution described by Kuhn. It does not primarily involve a radical change in what we take to be knowledge about some aspect of the world, a change of paradigm. Rather it involves a radical change in (...) the fundamental, overall intellectual aims and methods of inquiry. At present inquiry is devoted to the enhancement of knowledge. This needs to be transformed into a kind of rational inquiry having as its basic aim to enhance personal and social wisdom. This new kind of inquiry gives intellectual priority to the personal and social problems we encounter in our lives as we strive to realize what is desirable and of value – problems of knowledge and technology being intellectually subordinate and secondary. For this new kind of inquiry, it is what we do and what we are that ultimately matters: our knowledge is but an aspect of our life and being.

The proportion of fiber strength utilized in the yarn spun under standard procedures of spinning adopted at the Cotton Technological Research Laboratory and at the United States Department of Agriculture Laboratories has been examined. It has been found that the proportion of fiber strength utilized in CTRL spun yarns of lower counts is lower than that utilized by USDAL—spun yarns of similar counts. However, there is little difference in the case of higher counts. The reduction in the former case has been attributed to adoption of the three-roller system of drafting in spinning at CTRL, and of the double-apron high-draft system at the USDAL, for lower counts. For higher counts the same system is em ployed at both places. Incidently, it has been found that improved length and fineness of fibers increase the proportion of fiber strength utilized; however, the influence of fiber tenacity depends on the system of spinning adopted.

FROM the standpoint of statistical knowledge, it has been said that the motion picture industry probably knows less about itself than any other major industry in the United States. Without attempting to debate the validity of this assertion, one would be decidedly less than candid if he did not admit that only a smattering of dependalile statistical information now exists about this industry. While significant strides have been made in the highly important field of technological research, only recently has attention been turned to fact-finding on an industry-wide scale. In order to remedy an acknowledged paucity of authoritative factual data, early in 1946 the Motion Picture Association of America, under the direction of President Eric Johnston, established a Department of Research to undertake an extensive, long-range program for the benefit of the entire industry.

How is it possible to doubt that if mankind's traditional enemies of hunger, disease and backbreaking labour are eventually to be beaten for all mankindand are to remain beaten-then science must continue to remain in the forefront of the struggle? Even if it is the case that scientific knowledge and its technological applications are being used by some people to oppress other people, then how is it possible to doubt that it is social and political change that is necessary, not changes in scientific practice and knowledge-and, least of all, complete rejection of the scientific enterprise? All too easily, apparently. Within the last few years a large number of articles and books have appeared that seriously question 'whether scientific and technological research as currently practised do not intrinsically contain the seeds of their destructive application" and, to a very great extent, answer this (and similar questions) very emphatically in the affirmative. Furthermore, although such indictments of science (for they are no less) have not been confined to the 'radical left', nevertheless so impassioned and widespread has been the challenge of the New Left to science's claim even to value neutrality, let alone to social virtue, that one social historian of science believes that