A “Weighted Aggregate” Approach to R & D Project Selection

This article describes a general model for setting priorities on proposed R & D projects. It reports on research that evaluates methods for implementing the model. Specifically investigated were techniques for establishing criteria weights, assigning quantitative scales to qualitative criteria and modifying the model to improve its performance. Methods for solving the problem of criteria independence and for estimating probability of project success are proposed, but not tested.     

The “switch off” baseline restorer for the 120 channel silicon detector system for EXAFS at NSLS

A new circuit for high precision baseline restoration in multichannel nuclear pulse spectrometers is proposed. It has been designed for the 120 channel silicon detector system for EXAFS research at NSLS (National Synchrotron Light Source), Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA [L.R. Furenlid et al., Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A 319 (1992) 408], and is based on a current “switch off” mechanism self-triggered on the input signal pulses. No auxiliary gate signals are required, and, consequently, the network is particularly compact. As opposed to Robinson restorers, this restorer is not affected by undershoot, and it does not involve the significant complexity of gated solutions. The restorer has been tested with a 7 pole quasi-Gaussian filter permitting very high resolution X-ray spectroscopy (160 eV FWHM on pulser peak). The signal-to-noise degradation due to the restorer is about 7%. The BLR response to 18 μs large trapezoidal input pulses shows an undershoot which is about 0.3%. Baseline is correctly recovered for repetition rates of up to 5 × 10⁴ trapezoidal signals/s, which corresponds to a duty cycle of 60%. The BLR has been layed out in SMT on a 0.8 in. × 0.8 in. area, which is suitable for multichannel applications where the circuit has to be largely used as the last stage of each individual unipolar shaping filter.     

Technology transfer of hand pumps in rural communities of Swaziland: Towards sustainable project life cycle management

The research summarised in this paper explored the reasons behind the high failure rates of hand pumps from a technology transfer perspective, by examining the existing hand pump technology transfer practices and procedures in Swaziland where over 3000 hand pumps were installed and about 60% are not working. The research determined that there is a lack of proper, structured and sustainable knowledge sharing practices among the main stakeholders, suppliers, providers, users, and the government. It was observed that operations and maintenance, knowledge management, and the integration of a project life cycle management approach were crucial elements for the sustainability of hand pump-based rural water supply projects. Users have little involvement throughout the project life cycle; they do not know where and how to access parts, the majority of the areas do not have trained technicians, and government does not have stock for parts. There is poor communication between the users and suppliers, which is critical for product improvement and product support. It is therefore necessary to have a balanced focus on resource allocation for a hard and soft technology transfer process. A maintenance model resulting from the study aims to provide for practical co-ordination involving all the major stakeholders. Its objective is to establish a sustainable institutional support system through a public/private partnership.     

Traditional Versus Heterodox Motives for Academic Patenting: Evidence from the Netherlands

This paper examines what motivates university researchers to patent the results of collaborative research with business firms. We provide evidence of the existence of a motivational academic patenting space comprising (i) an industry-driven domain related to traditional-market motives (protection of inventions that will be commercialized); (ii) a university-driven domain driven by various (“heterodox”) motives related mostly to signalling specific research competences and (iii) a “hybrid” publicly driven domain related to projects aligned to the research agendas of public sponsors. These three types of motivations reflect the connections between academic patenting and different types of innovation, and the roles of industry partners in proposing, financing and performing specific research projects. We use data from 16 in depth case studies of innovations developed by Dutch universities to provide preliminary empirical evidence of this typology of motivational spaces for patenting university knowledge.     

A Report on Mudd Design Workshop II: “Designing Design Education for the 21st Century”

This paper reports on a workshop on design education held at Harvey Mudd College (HMC) in May 1999. Mudd Design Workshop II was intended to provide a forum that would bring together design educators, design researchers, and designers from industry, in order to focus exclusively on the teaching of design in engineering education for the next century. Sessions were devoted to (1) design projects in both cornerstone and capstone courses, and metrics for selecting projects; (2) discipline‐based and cross‐disciplinary design courses; and (3) pedagogy, technology, and assessment in design education. Major emergent themes included the desirability of design throughout the curriculum, focuses on coaching and on learning, roles of projects and interactive learning, and the need to better address the interactions of grading and learning. Participants' specific commitments to future actions are also given.     

A survey of 92 quality improvement projects.

BACKGROUND: Studies focusing on the impact of improvement efforts on the organization have yielded mixed results, which has increased interest in comparing the processes of improvement used. Data for a convenience sample of 92 quality improvement (QI) projects in 32 organizations were gathered from interviews and self-reported surveys from 1998 to 2000. A self-administered questionnaire was developed to measure 70 characteristics of improvement projects. RESULTS: Most (80%) of the improvement projects were conducted by hospitals or clinics affiliated with hospitals. The projects took an average of 13 months from the team's first meeting to the end of the pilot study. Project teams met 14 times (approximately once a month) and spent 1.5 hours per meeting. Some projects did not measure the impact, others did not intend to have a specific impact, and still others measured but did not achieve the planned impact. DISCUSSION: Patients and employees may be benefitting from improvement projects, but organizations may not be leveraging these improvements to reduce cost of delivery or increase market share. Considerable variation in the projects' impact raises the question of the need to improve the improvement methods. Generalization from this study should be made with caution, as data were based on a self-selected convenience sample of organizations. Furthermore, respondents did not complete all items, and missing information may affect the conclusions. The data on current improvement practices that are provided in this study can serve as baseline data against which rapid improvement efforts can be judged.     

“I Wish that I Belonged More in this Whole Engineering Group:” Achieving Individual Diversity

Engineers need a breadth of experience to enrich the gene pool of ideas from which elegant engineering solutions can be drawn, called “individual diversity.” While performing large ethnographic research studies where hundreds of engineering students were interviewed, we interviewed Inez, a student that epitomizes individual diversity. Inez is unlike most engineers: she is female, multi‐minority, and from a socio‐economically disadvantaged background. Inez's story is told here using “ethnography of the particular,” where the story of a single individual is explored. Inez has persevered through challenges posed by her lack of familiarity with the culture of engineering, her weak high school preparation, and her feelings of being an outsider in engineering. Inez's story demonstrates that the playing field in engineering is still not level, particularly for socio‐economically disadvantaged students. Her story provides a poignant example of the impact of five of Conefrey's cultural myths of science.     

Electronic Nose for Black Tea Classification and Correlation of Measurements With “Tea Taster” Marks

Tea is an extensively consumed beverage worldwide with an expanding market. The major quality attributes of tea are flavor, aroma, color, and strength. Out of these, flavor and aroma are the most important attributes. Human experts called ldquotea tastersrdquo conventionally evaluate tea quality, and they usually assign scores to samples of tea that are under evaluation on a scale of 1 to 10, depending on the flavor, the aroma, and the taste of the sample. This paper presents a study where, first, the selection of appropriate sensors was carried out based on sensitivity with the major aroma-producing chemicals of black tea. Then, this sensor array was exposed to black tea samples that were collected from the tea gardens in India, and the computational model has been developed based on artificial neural network methods to correlate the measurements with the tea taster's scores. With unknown tea samples, encouraging results have been obtained with a more than 90% classification rate.     

Sniffing the Unique “Odor Print” of Non‐Small‐Cell Lung Cancer with Gold Nanoparticles

A highly sensitive and fast‐response array of sensors based on gold nanoparticles, in combination with pattern recognition methods, can distinguish between the odor prints of non‐small‐cell lung cancer and negative controls with 100% accuracy, with no need for preconcentration techniques. Additionally, preliminary results indicate that the same array of sensors might serve as a better tool for understanding the biochemical source of volatile organic compounds that might occur in cancer cells and appear in the exhaled breath, as compared to traditional spectrometry techniques. The reported results provide a launching pad to initiate a bedside tool that might be able to screen for early stages of lung cancer and allow higher cure rates. In addition, such a tool might be used for the immediate diagnosis of fresh (frozen) tissues of lung cancer in operating rooms, where a dichotomic diagnosis is crucial to guide surgeons.     

Functional Adhesive Surfaces with “Gecko” Effect: The Concept of Contact Splitting

Nature has developed reversibly adhesive surfaces whose stickiness has attracted much research attention over the last decade. The central lesson from nature is that “patterned” or “fibrillar” surfaces can produce higher adhesion forces to flat and rough substrates than smooth surfaces. This paper critically examines the principles behind fibrillar adhesion from a contact mechanics perspective, where much progress has been made in recent years. The benefits derived from “contact splitting” into fibrils are separated into extrinsic/intrinsic contributions from fibril deformation, adaptability to rough surfaces, size effects due to surface‐to‐volume ratio, uniformity of stress distribution, and defect‐controlled adhesion. Another section covers essential considerations for reliable and reproducible adhesion testing, where better standardization is still required. It is argued that, in view of the large number of parameters, a thorough understanding of adhesion effects is required to enable the fabrication of reliable adhesive surfaces based on biological examples.     

An Examination of Engineering Personnel Assignment Policies in the Multi-Project,Capacity Constrained Situation

Abstract:

Engineering management is often done in a multiproject setting where projects arrive dynamically, engineering human resources are overloaded, and preemption is allowed. In this simulation research, factors of that setting are varied to identify ideal resource assignment policies associated with personnel capacity loading and the use of personnel preemption. The experimental factors include resource overloading, learning rate, and the frequency and length of preemption. The performance measures are project set flow time, resource utilization, and mean project duration. The best situation is one where preemption is not allowed but where engineering resources are overloaded to 200% of capacity. The results of this research are important for engineering resource utilization and for the timely project completion, and have the additional benefit of recommending a best practice for project initiation and engineering project portfolio management.     

The IAEA's activities in radiological protection in digital imaging

The success achieved to minimise the radiation exposure to staff to levels much below the prescribed dose limits encourages a similar approach in patient protection where dose limits do not exist but where reference levels are provided. A number of radiation injuries among patients have been reported, per capita dose is increasing and medical exposure has become the largest contributor to population dose. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has supported a number of research projects, produced a wide range of guidance publications, conducted over 60 training courses in the past 5 y, produced for free dissemination training CDs on radiation protection and established a dedicated Web site on the radiological protection of patients (http://rpop.iaea.org). The number of countries that is currently receiving assistance in this field exceeds 80, as compared to about half a dozen 5 y ago. Significant results on patient dose management, demonstrating dose reduction of more than 30% while maintaining image quality, have been made available through IAEA projects.     

The atmospheric nightglow in the 300–400 nm wavelength Results by the balloon-borne experiment “BABY”

The balloon-borne experiment, named BAckground BYpass (BABY) belongs to a wider program that has as its final goal the detection and study of high-energy cosmic rays from space (satellite, Space Station). An information of fundamental importance for this class of projects concerns the nighttime background light. The instrument designed to detect fluorescence photons is basically composed of two collimated photomultipliers: a single photon-counting PMT and a charge integration PMT. We briefly report the details of the design, operation and performance of the detector, which was designed and completely built at the IFCAI–CNR Institute in Palermo. Preliminary analysis and results of the nocturnal background in the range of 300–400 nm are presented for the whole duration of the flight during the 1998 Mediterranean balloon flight campaign. A substantial part of the flight was at night over the sea.     

Changing patterns of communication among scientists in an era of “telescience”

In a work environment filled with computers, telephones, fax machines, and other telecommunications equipment, scientists can engage in a new way of conducting their research: telescience. Telescience, a term that originated at NASA, is defined as the existence of geographically dispersed, intensely communicative research groups and collaborators, electronic journals, and teleconferences. The concept seems to be a natural outgrowth of the development of “big science” in the postwar era—only now, instead of an increase in the number of journal articles or organized scientific meetings, there is an increase in the amount of interpersonal interaction facilitated by the new electronic infrastructure. It is not yet clear that telescience will become the mode in most scholarly disciplines, for a number of economic and cultural reasons. However, where it does appear, it may emerge at different rates in different disciplines as the nature and needs of those specialties encourage the differential adoption of the various telecommunications technologies. In this article, the communication processes and structures that are typical of scientific activity are summarized according to a three-stage communication cycle. In addition, the factors that affect scientists' choices of both conventional and newer telecommunication channels are discussed, as well as the barriers that may prevent them from adopting or using such channels. Finally, the potential behavioral, social, and policy implications of the growth of telescience are reviewed, especially in the social context of the contemporary research university.     

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) screening and scoping of extraterrestrial exploration and development projects

Numerous space missions are planned by government agencies and private companies, with objectives including scientific research, prospecting for and mining resources, and establishing human settlements. These projects have potential to affect the extraterrestrial environment. Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is an important tool for assessing the potential impact of projects on Earth’s environment. However, the legal requirements to undertake EIA for extraterrestrial projects are limited and most EIAs that have been conducted have not considered impacts beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Technical barriers to extraterrestrial EIA also need to be overcome, including a lack of guidelines and methodologies. This paper addresses the latter issue by identifying the extraterrestrial impacts that may arise from space projects and relating them to the environmental topic areas in the European EIA Directive. An example is then provided of how EIA screening and scoping can be undertaken for the extraterrestrial elements of space projects, using six scenarios. Effective EIA screening and scoping is key to deciding whether EIA is required and if so which topic areas should be included.     

Noninvasive Featherlight Wearable Compliant “Marine Skin”: Standalone Multisensory System for Deep‐Sea Environmental Monitoring

Advances in marine research to understand environmental change and its effect on marine ecosystems rely on gathering data on species physiology, their habitat, and their mobility patterns using heavy and invasive biologgers and sensory telemetric networks. In the past, a lightweight (6 g) compliant environmental monitoring system: Marine Skin was demonstrated. In this paper, an enhanced version of that skin with improved functionalities (500–1500% enhanced sensitivity), packaging, and most importantly its endurance at a depth of 2 km in the highly saline Red Sea water for four consecutive weeks is reported. A unique noninvasive approach for attachment of the sensor by designing a wearable, stretchable jacket (bracelet) that can adhere to any species irrespective of their skin type is also illustrated. The wearable featherlight (<0.5 g in air, 3 g with jacket) gadget is deployed on Barramundi, Seabream, and common goldfish to demonstrate the noninvasive and effective attachment strategy on different species of variable sizes which does not hinder the animals' natural movement or behavior.     

“Low-Tech” Innovations

This paper is about an industrial sector which, according to the usual socio-scientific indicators, is referred to as “low-tech”, respectively as non-research intensive and which mostly comprises “traditional” industries. The interest in this sector is motivated by the contradictory situation that, on the one hand, the debate about the perspectives of modern societies focuses on the rapidly growing importance of technological innovations, knowledge and research-intensive economic sectors while, on the other hand, traditional industries make up a considerable fraction of employment and production, especially also in developed economies. On the basis of the results of extensive empirical research, this contribution tries to find answers to the basic question, whether one can speak of an innovation mode typical of the low-tech sector. The institutional based innovation systems approach forms the categorical basis of the analysis. In order to elucidate the specific features of low-tech innovations, they are, in conclusion, compared to the general characteristics of high-tech-based innovation processes.     

The ESA contribution to space research on two-phase systems

This paper gives an overview of the research programme in Heat and Mass Transfer coordinated by the European Space Agency (ESA). This research programme consists of six projects involving more than 30 partners, both academia and industry, spread in 11 countries in Europe, Canada and Israël. The microgravity experiments performed up to now are recalled as well as their main results. Finally, the experiments planned for the coming years, particularly in the Fluid Science Laboratory (FSL) on the International Space Station (ISS), are briefly described.     

Impact analysis of the materials research programmes ”Matfo” and ”MaTech” of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research – BMBF <Emphasis Type="Italic">Extended summary of a study published in September 1999</Emphasis>

The study presents the findings of an impact analysis of public support by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, BMBF, in the field of materials research. The Project Management Organization New Materials and Chemical Technologies, NMT, at Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH is acting on behalf of the BMBF. More than 350 projects with industrial participation have been analysed to determine the effectiveness of the project funding in application-oriented materials research. In addition some projects were assessed in depth to provide case studies for various areas of materials science. The scientific and technical success as well as the commercial, ecological and sociological (job-market effects) impacts of projects finished for at least one year have been investigated by means of a questionnaire addressed to the industrial participants with the following results: Received: 10 December 1999 / Reviewed: 29 February 2000 / Accepted: 29 February 2000     

Designing in young organisations: engineering change propagation in a university design project

Engineering change (EC) is an important phenomenon in the design of products and systems, accounting for nearly one-third of the work effort; however, the literature has been focused on mature firms, and few studies have documented the impact of EC beyond them. Hence, we use a case study approach to study EC and its propagation in the context of a university design project as an example of young organisations, and compare it with the existing work done on mature firms. It was found that 33% of the changes that occurred in the case study were planned, and change propagation accounted for 20% of all changes. The propagation of changes was usually one step (67%), and it was concentrated in one independent network (54%). The results were subsequently compared with EC studies done in mature firms, being revealed that EC behaves differently in the context of a university design project; hence, existing change management tools developed to suit mature firms may not be directly suitable for supporting university design projects. The findings from this work can be used as a platform to better understand how EC propagates when designing in young organisations and shape the development of appropriate change management tools.