Calls continually are made to provide economic assessments of research program achievements and efficiency. Yet little effort has been given to develop an assessment framework that would focus on the research discovery itself, treating the research manager as a producer and the research technology as a knowledge production function. The present dissertation develops such a framework and uses it, with a variety of analytical approaches, to evaluate a two-phase international aquacultural research program consisting of 55 distinct studies. A Bayesian knowledge measure is developed for this purpose, allowing close examination of each of two knowledge creation pathways ��� the extent of new findings (mean surprise) and the extent of uncertainty reduction (precision). Factors affecting each of these two pathways are estimated in decomposed form, their total effects on knowledge achievement then combined to form an aggregate knowledge production function. Team workload, education level, and scientist travel distance strongly affect knowledge creation as postulated, although exhibiting varying effect magnitudes and significances across the two program phases. A research study's analytical approach significantly affects its knowledge acquisition pathways, accounting partially for the newness of its scientific discoveries. Survey studies tend, in contrast, to have greater potential for new findings, but yield greater uncertainty than do experimental studies. In each of the two program phases, fish market trading and water quality are, in my output-elasticities-based approach, respectively the least productive topic area and research-outcome dimension. Asian researchers appear ��� compared to their colleagues in South America and Africa ��� to achieve the highest predictive precision but the least mean surprise, probably because of the greater maturity of their projects. In both program phases, estimated output elasticities imply increasing knowledge returns to scale, although the elasticities decline from 3.52 in Phase I to 1.07 in Phase II. The dual cost function approach provides indirect insight into the program manager���s investment decisions and to the returns to knowledge output, complementing the primal approach. In my cost-based approach, knowledge cost elasticities are below unity, estimated at 0.49 in Phase II and 0.37 in Phase I, consistent with the increasing returns to scale found in the output-elasticities-based approach. Given the increasing returns to scale estimated with both approaches, the aquacultural program appears to have a substantial incentive to enlarge its knowledge investments. Also consistent with duality, the least-output-productive fish-trade topic area, water-quality outcome, and Asian research are found in my cost analysis to be the most cost-consuming. The technical efficiencies of the aquacultural program's individual studies are also examined, relative to both one another and to their own potentially best practices. The examination is conducted using, successively, the Farrell input technical efficiency measure and the directional sum-distance measure. Results are consistent across these two efficiency instruments, confirming the conclusions about output and cost elasticities in the previous chapters and providing a completeness to the overall research evaluation. / Graduation date: 2013 / Access restricted to the OSU Community at author's request from Dec. 27, 2012 - Dec. 27, 2014

University of Macau / Institute of Chinese Medical Sciences

In the emerging knowledge economy, scientific pursuit in the form of international collaboration has escalated. Studies consistently report that such collaboration, which has been intensifying in the last several decades, is common among not only advanced economies but also in emerging scientific nations such as China, India, and Brazil. The emergence of a "new invisible college" of international knowledge exchange has aroused interest from social scientists and captured the attention of policymakers. Indeed, recognizing its importance as a means of monitoring and exploiting other countries' R&D investment, more and more countries champion and participate in international joint research. International collaboration between the United States (US) and China is particularly interesting. The US has been and will continue to be the leader in scientific development for the foreseeable future. However, as a rising scientific power, China is changing the global landscape of ideas and innovation along with other emerging countries. The growing significance of the US-China relationship and worldwide interest in China's development suggest that the characteristics of the scientific collaboration of these two countries and its associated knowledge dissemination across national borders are timely topics to study. Surprisingly, few studies have examined research collaboration between a scientific superpower and an emerging scientific power, particularly in the context of emerging state-of-the-art technology. This dissertation seeks to address this research gap by examining patterns of collaboration in the US-China scientific community and its impact on China's rapid knowledge accumulation in nanotechnology, if any, through Chinese knowledge moderators (CKMs)--Chinese scholars who bridge two otherwise distant scientific communities through intensive collaboration with both sides. The research focuses on the following three aspects: firstly, built upon the notions of the boundary spanner and the structural hole, the study develops the concept of Chinese knowledge moderators and uses it as an instrument to examine the relationship between international collaboration and knowledge spillover across national boundaries. Secondly, it operationalizes and tests the impact of US-China collaboration using multiple methods. In addition to citation-based indicators, based on the turnover of nanotechnology keywords, the study investigates the impact of collaborating with US scholars on CKMs' research trajectory and the international knowledge spillover facilitated by CKMs. Thirdly, utilizing a longitudinal publication dataset of 77 CKMs and their CV data, this study is able to quantify the dynamic impact of US collaboration on the quality of CKMs' research over time. The combination of bibliometric analyses, empirical testing, and case studies allows for the development of a comprehensive blueprint of US-China scientific collaboration in the field of nanotechnology. This research yields several significant findings. First, the evolution of US-China collaboration in nanotechnology has gone beyond quantitative growth, as qualitative and structural changes have begun to take place. Secondly, CKMs play a critical role in fostering China's nanotechnology development, manifested in both knowledge creation and knowledge diffusion. The present study also reveals that US-China collaboration has a diminishing effect over time on the research quality of CKMs at level of individual papers, but as pertaining to entire journals. Thirdly, the case studies on the evolution of research streams suggest that US-China collaboration influences the research trajectory of CKMs, who, as the conduits of knowledge, further disseminate it within the national boundaries of China. The research also has policy implications for both sides. Chinese policy makers need to strengthen the mechanisms that encourage CKMs collaborating with the US, and, in order to amplify international knowledge spillover, these mechanisms should further encourage more interactions between CKMs and their Chinese domestic colleagues. From the US American perspective, given China's scientific emergence in nanotechnology, the US should direct its efforts to ensuring its ample access to exploiting the heavy R&D investment of this emerging scientific powerhouse by collaborating with top Chinese scientists.

A autora avaliou a qualidade dos artigos publicados na literatura brasileira, na área de Ortopedia e Traumatologia. Foi feita a revisão de todos os artigos constantes dos sumários da Acta Ortopédica Brasileira e da Revista Brasileira de Ortopedia, em seus fascículos publicados nos anos de 2004 e 2005. Considerou que o conteúdo dessas duas Revistas retrata a produção científica nacional na área e que sua análise pode responder ao objetivo do trabalho. Após o levantamento da literatura, foi escolhida a classificação de Cook adaptada por Atallah para a classificação dos artigos por Nível de Evidência. Foi utilizada a lista de Atallah para a avaliação metodológica para trabalhos sobre terapêutica, etiologia e diagnóstico. Os artigos de ciência básica foram avaliados por suas características metodológicas e classificados por parâmetros representativos de seu nível e utilizados formulários preenchidos por dois avaliadores. Foram aplicados cálculos de estatística descritiva. A autora conclui que a qualidade metodológica dos artigos publicados nas revistas analisadas é inadequada e tem baixo Nível de Evidência. / The author evaluated the quality of articles published within the field of Orthopedics and Traumatology in Brazil. A review was conducted on all the articles appearing in the summaries of Acta Ortopédica Brasileira and Revista Brasileira de Ortopedia, in their issues published in the years 2004 and 2005. The author took the content of these two journals to portray the national scientific production in this field and made the assumption that analysis of these journals would provide answers for the study objective. After surveying the literature, the classification of Cook as adapted by Atallah for classifying articles by evidence level, was chosen. Atallahs list for evaluating the methodology of studies on therapies, etiologies and diagnoses was utilized. Articles on basic science were evaluated according to the methodological characteristics and were classified using parameters that represented their level. Forms filled out by two evaluators were utilized. Descriptive statistical calculations were applied. The author concluded that the methodological quality of the articles published in the journals analyzed is inadequate and provides a low level of evidence.

The Master’s thesis deals with the evaluation of an investment project for the construction of terraced garages in Breclav. The aim is to prepare a feasibility study and to appraise the feasibility of the said building project. The structure of the study is tailored to the meaning and objectives of this dissertation, which is focused on marketing research and estimation of demand. Part of the feasibility study are also chapters that describe the essence of the project and its different phases, project management, the impact of construction on the environment, financial plan, evaluation of economic efficiency, schedule and risk analysis. The result of the study is to evaluate the feasibility of the investment project under specified conditions.

An der TU Dresden wurden zwei Umfragen durchgeführt um die Benutzung Literaturrecherchewerkzeuge zu erfassen. In dieser Arbeit wurden die Umfragen analysiert.:1 Einleitung 1 2 Aktuelle Forschung im Bereich der Recherchevisualisierung 3 2.1 CircleView 4 2.2 Action Science Explorer 5 2.3 CiteWiz 5 2.4 Web of Science - CitationMaps 6 2.5 Science of Science (Sci2) Tool 7 2.6 CiteSpace 8 2.7 Microsoft Academic Search 8 3 Auswertung der Umfragen 11 3.1 Hintergrund 11 3.2 Grundgesamtheit und Repr¨asentativit¨at 11 3.3 Methoden zur Auswertung 12 4 Auswertung der Mitarbeiterumfrage 15 4.1 Rahmendaten 15 4.2 Beantwortung der Fragestellungen 19 4.2.1 Unmittelbare Fragestellungen zur Wahl einer günstigen Visualisierungsform(Kernfragen zur Visualisierung) 19 4.2.2 Mittelbare Fragen (Kontextfragen) 24 5 Auswertung der Studentenumfrage 35 5.1 Rahmendaten 35 5.2 Beantwortung der Fragestellungen 39 6 Zusammenfassung und Ausblick 45 Literaturverzeichnis i A Anhang v A.1 Zusätzliche Abbildungen und Tabellen v A.2 Umfrage Studenten xii A.3 UmfrageMitarbeiter xxi

The objective of this research is to build a decision model for a comprehensive assessment of solar photovoltaic technologies using multiple perspectives. These perspectives include: social, technological, economic, environmental, and political (STEEP) with each perspective consisting of multiple criteria. Hierarchical decision modeling and expert judgment quantification are used to provide the relative ranking of the perspectives and criteria. Such modeling is effective in addressing technology evaluations with competing and contrasting perspectives and criteria where both quantitative and qualitative measurements are represented. The model is then operationalized by constructing desirability functions for each criterion. The combined results provide an overall numerical score for each technology under consideration as well as criteria desirability gaps. This model is useful for assessing photovoltaic technologies from varying worldviews such as the electric utility worldview, the photovoltaic manufacturer's worldview, or the national policy worldview. This model can also provide guidance to decision makers and practitioners on areas of improvement for a selected technology. The research utilizes the electric utility worldview as a case study.

(in English): This thesis performs a descriptive bibliometric analysis of science production in 17 fields of social sciences and humanities in the Czech Republic, successfully verifying the usability of institutional data for this purpose. It focuses on the central areas of scientific production research: publishing strategies, scientific cooperation and the degree of internationalization of the R&D results. The thesis compares the monitored indicators within two ten-year periods: 1998-2007 and 2008-2017. Through the analysis of the R&D results, it reveals not only significant institutional differences, but above all, distinctive field specifics, which point to considerable diversity of the fields of social sciences and humanities. At the same time, it confirms an increase in the number of R&D results and a higher degree of internationalization and scientific cooperation between the analysed periods. The contribution of the work lies not only in the provided characteristics and detailed assessment of the usability of data, but also in pointing out the breadth of the uses of institutional resources for the analysis of scientific production, which far exceeds the capabilities of the IS VaVaI system.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Yan, Jiaxiang. M.S.E.C.E., Purdue University, May 2013. Modeling, Monitoring and Optimization of Discrete Event Systems Using Petri Nets. Major Professor: Lingxi Li. In last decades, the research of discrete event systems (DESs) has attracts more and more attention because of the fast development of intelligent control strategies. Such control measures combine the conventional control strategies with discrete decision-making processes which simulate human decision-making processes. Due to the scale and complexity of common DESs, the dedicated models, monitoring methods and optimal control strategies for them are necessary. Among various DES models, Petri nets are famous for the advantage in dealing with asynchronous processes. They have been widely applied in intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and communication technology in recent years. With encoding of the Petri net state, we can also enable fault detection and identification capability in DESs and mitigate potential human errors. This thesis studies various problems in the context of DESs that can be modeled by Petri nets. In particular, we focus on systematic modeling, asynchronous monitoring and optimal control strategies design of Petri nets. This thesis starts by looking at the systematic modeling of ITS. A microscopic model of signalized intersection and its two-layer timed Petri net representation is proposed in this thesis, where the first layer is the representation of the intersection and the second layer is the representation of the traffic light system. Deterministic and stochastic transitions are both involved in such Petri net representation. The detailed operation process of such Petri net representation is stated. The improvement of such Petri net representation is also provided with comparison to previous models. Then we study the asynchronous monitoring of sensor networks. An event sequence reconstruction algorithm for a given sensor network based on asynchronous observations of its state changes is proposed in this thesis. We assume that the sensor network is modeled as a Petri net and the asynchronous observations are in the form of state (token) changes at different places in the Petri net. More specifically, the observed sequences of state changes are provided by local sensors and are asynchronous, i.e., they only contain partial information about the ordering of the state changes that occur. We propose an approach that is able to partition the given net into several subnets and reconstruct the event sequence for each subnet. Then we develop an algorithm that is able to reconstruct the event sequences for the entire net that are consistent with: 1) the asynchronous observations of state changes; 2) the event sequences of each subnet; and 3) the structure of the given Petri net. We discuss the algorithmic complexity. The final problem studied in this thesis is the optimal design method of Petri net controllers with fault-tolerant ability. In particular, we consider multiple faults detection and identification in Petri nets that have state machine structures (i.e., every transition in the net has only one input place and one output place). We develop the approximation algorithms to design the fault-tolerant Petri net controller which achieves the minimal number of connections with the original controller. A design example for an automated guided vehicle (AGV) system is also provided to illustrate our approaches.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The collection of pages spread before you now, this story-thesis, is a collection of stories about my journey from cult member to the place in life I am now, stories about those stories, and stories about the people who lived or read them, talked about them, and were changed by the tellings. Most importantly, the goal of this story-thesis is to illustrate how the process of story-making and -telling changes how we interpret our identities and our lifeworlds. I argue that the stories that we share change our identities, and I also argue that how we perceive our identity and the identities of others affects the stories that we share.