Structural and Technological Characterization of Tropical Smallholder Farms of Dual-Purpose Cattle in Mexico

Simply Summary

Dual-purpose cattle smallholder farms (DP) in the tropics suffer from sustainability and viability problems. Grouping small producers according to their structure and characterizing them technologically makes it possible to identify the problems aimed to guide development policies. A sample of 1475 farms located in the tropical area of Mexico was selected. Five groups of smallholders were identified applying multiple correspondence analysis (MCA). Results show that to achieve a sustainable improvement of the DP, a deep understanding of the system, the rational use of the endogenous resources, and implementation of low-cost technologies is necessary. Very small farms (Group 3) showed orientation to subsistence. They need to improve all the technological areas. Groups 1 and 2, covered a 46.5% of the farms; these ones presented a small-scale productive model and the improvements were mainly associated to the area of reproduction and genetics. Groups 4 and 5 (29.4% of the sample) were the biggest and more specialized farms. The improvements were linked to technological areas of reproduction, feeding, management, and animal health.

Abstract

Dual-purpose cattle smallholder farms (DP) exhibit a critical economic situation. The objective of this research was building a typology for DP in tropical conditions and characterizing them technologically. This will help developing more effective public policies in DP farms located in tropical conditions. A sample of 1.475 farms located in the tropical area of Mexico was selected. The typology was built using multiple correspondence analysis (MCA). Subsequently, five groups were identified by a hierarchical cluster analysis with Ward’s method. Groups 1 and 2, covered a 46.5% of the farms; these ones presented a small-scale productive model with low levels of technological adoption, improvements were mainly associated to the area of reproduction and genetics. Very small farms (Group 3) showed orientation to subsistence. They need to improve all the technological areas. Groups 4 and 5 (29.4% of the sample) were the biggest and more specialized farms. Group four farms were located in dry tropics and showed the highest levels of technological adoption in the areas of reproduction, management, and feeding. These farms require improvement in the areas of reproduction, animal health, and feeding. Group 5 farms were located in the wet tropics and showed specialization in reproduction, genetics, and animal health areas. In this last group, it is necessary to improve management and feeding areas.

Cashing in on innovation: a taxonomy of FinTech

In this article, we provide a taxonomy of the different types of innovation occurring in financial services, a framework which we refer to as our FinTech Ecosystem. We use this FinTech Ecosystem to highlight the various areas of potential value for investors who are looking into ventures in this space as alternative investments. Our conceptual framework enables investors to examine emerging technologies and FinTech verticals through the lens of a sector analysis. To better understand where the FinTech Revolution started and where it is going, we apply the concept of digital transformation to the financial services industry which allows us to highlight the delicate risk-reward balance in FinTech.

Design of Incentive Contract for Technological Innovation of New Energy Vehicles with Asymmetric Information

The improvement of China's new energy automobile technology is one of the most pressing issues for the government and manufacturers, given that the existing new energy automobile subsidy policy is about to be withdrawn completely. Considering that the manufacturer has the private information of the initial technology level of new energy vehicles, its technology can be improved by means of technological innovation. Using principal-agent and regulation theory, this paper studies how the government designs incentive contracts to motivate manufacturers to strive to upgrade new energy automotive technology. The study has obtained a quantitative incentive contract under full information and a quantitative screening contract with asymmetric information, which provides an effective reference for the design of government subsidy contracts. It was found that the existence of asymmetric information reduces the expected net utility of the government in incentive projects, and the technology upgrading of low-level manufacturers is insufficient, but will not affect the technology upgrading of high-level manufacturers who will get information rent. The conclusion has good reference value and guiding significance for government policy-making with asymmetric information.

Population Aging, Technological Innovation, and the Growth of Health Expenditure: Evidence From Patients With Type 2 Diabetes in Taiwan

OBJECTIVES

As populations are growing older, the prevalence of chronic diseases such as diabetes mellitus is rapidly increasing. Meanwhile, many new drugs are introduced each year as a result of technological advances. This study uses diabetes as an example to investigate the relative importance of population aging and technological innovation in accounting for the growth of health expenditures.

METHODS

The retrospective cohort study was conducted based on claims data covering 1997 to 2006 taken from Taiwan's National Health Insurance. Patients were selected based on whether they received antidiabetic drugs. Growth in health expenditure was decomposed into 3 parts: number of patients, mean treatment cost, and the interaction between the change in the mean treatment cost and the change in the number of patients.

RESULTS

The results indicated that 75% of the growth in expenditures for treating diabetic patients is attributable to the effect of population aging, as reflected by the increase in the diabetes prevalence rate (45%) and disease severity (30%). Technological innovation, in the form of treatment substitution (10%) and treatment expansion effects (15%), accounted for only about 25% of the growth in expenditures for treating diabetic patients.

CONCLUSIONS

Population aging plays a more significant role than technological innovation in driving up health expenditures for the treatment of diabetic patients. This suggests that population aging may contribute significantly to the future growth of the healthcare sector in Asian countries such as Taiwan.

Energy and Health Efficiencies in China with the Inclusion of Technological Innovation

The price people pay for low energy efficiency includes not only high manufacturing costs, but also public health. With technological innovation as the driving factor for improving energy efficiency, this study uses two-stage dynamic undesirable data envelopment analysis (TDU-DEA) under variable return to scale to evaluate energy and health efficiencies with inclusion of technological innovation in 30 provinces of China over the period 2013–2016. The results show that the mean overall efficiencies and ranks in the eastern region are significantly higher than those in the non-eastern region, with or without the inclusion of technological innovations, and that energy efficiency in most provinces is higher than health efficiency. The average technological innovation efficiencies for energy conservation are higher than those for respiratory medical treatment. The former gap between the eastern region and non-east region is also smaller than the latter. Lastly, regions with the best technological innovation efficiencies are Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Fujian, Hainan, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shandong, Shanxi, Tianjin, Xinjiang, and Yunnan.

[Intensive care and new technologies]

New technologies have a major impact on innovation in intensive care. They are accompanied by a greater openness of the units and challenging evolutions for paramedical professions, particularly concerning their practices. The consequence is an overall, higher quality care focused both on patients and families.

Technological Innovations in Disease Management: Text Mining US Patent Data From 1995 to 2017

BACKGROUND

Patents are important intellectual property protecting technological innovations that inspire efficient research and development in biomedicine. The number of awarded patents serves as an important indicator of economic growth and technological innovation. Researchers have mined patents to characterize the focuses and trends of technological innovations in many fields.

OBJECTIVE

To expand patent mining to biomedicine and facilitate future resource allocation in biomedical research for the United States, we analyzed US patent documents to determine the focuses and trends of protected technological innovations across the entire disease landscape.

METHODS

We analyzed more than 5 million US patent documents between 1995 and 2017, using summary statistics and dynamic topic modeling. More specifically, we investigated the disease coverage and latent topics in patent documents over time. We also incorporated the patent data into the calculation of our recently developed Research Opportunity Index (ROI) and Public Health Index (PHI), to recalibrate the resource allocation in biomedical research.

RESULTS

Our analysis showed that protected technological innovations have been primarily focused on socioeconomically critical diseases such as "other cancers" (malignant neoplasm of head, face, neck, abdomen, pelvis, or limb; disseminated malignant neoplasm; Merkel cell carcinoma; and malignant neoplasm, malignant carcinoid tumors, neuroendocrine tumor, and carcinoma in situ of an unspecified site), diabetes mellitus, and obesity. The United States has significantly improved resource allocation to biomedical research and development over the past 17 years, as illustrated by the decreasing PHI. Diseases with positive ROI, such as ankle and foot fracture, indicate potential research opportunities for the future. Development of novel chemical or biological drugs and electrical devices for diagnosis and disease management is the dominating topic in patented inventions.

CONCLUSIONS

This multifaceted analysis of patent documents provides a deep understanding of the focuses and trends of technological innovations in disease management in patents. Our findings offer insights into future research and innovation opportunities and provide actionable information to facilitate policy makers, payers, and investors to make better evidence-based decisions regarding resource allocation in biomedicine.

Perspectives of Australian policy-makers on the potential benefits and risks of technologically enhanced communicable disease surveillance - a modified Delphi survey

Background

Event-based social media monitoring and pathogen whole genome sequencing (WGS) will enhance communicable disease surveillance research and systems. If linked electronically and scanned systematically, the information provided by these technologies could be mined to uncover new epidemiological patterns and associations much faster than traditional public health approaches. The benefits of earlier outbreak detection are significant, but implementation could be opposed in the absence of a social licence or if ethical and legal concerns are not addressed.

Methods

A three-phase mixed-method Delphi survey with Australian policy-makers, health practitioners and lawyers (n = 44) was conducted to explore areas of consensus and disagreement over (1) key policy and practical issues raised by the introduction of novel communicable disease surveillance programmes; and (2) the most significant and likely risks from using social media content and WGS technologies in epidemiological research and outbreak investigations.

Results

Panellists agreed that the integration of social media monitoring and WGS technologies into communicable disease surveillance systems raised significant issues, including impacts on personal privacy, medicolegal risks and the potential for unintended consequences. Notably, their concerns focused on how these technologies should be used, rather than how the data was collected. Panellists held that social media users should expect their posts to be monitored in the interests of public health, but using those platforms to contact identified individuals was controversial. The conditions of appropriate use of pathogen WGS in epidemiological research and investigations was also contentious. Key differences amongst participants included the necessity for consent before testing and data-linkage, thresholds for action, and the legal and ethical importance of harms to individuals and commercial entities. The erosion of public trust was seen as the most significant risk from the systematic use of these technologies.

Conclusions

Enhancing communicable disease surveillance with social-media monitoring and pathogen WGS may cause controversy. The challenge is to determine and then codify how these technologies should be used such that the balance between individual risk and community benefit is widely accepted. Participants agreed that clear guidelines for appropriate use that address legal and ethical concerns need to be developed in consultation with relevant experts and the broader Australian public.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s12961-019-0440-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

How Does CEO's Environmental Awareness Affect Technological Innovation?

In this paper, we conduct an empirical study on the impact of CEOs' environmental awareness on technological innovation. To this end, we obtain a large sample with 7615 observations from Chinese A-share listed firms between the years of 2003 and 2014. Our empirical results show that a CEO's environmental awareness has a significant positive impact on technological innovation of his/her enterprise. Environmentally conscious CEOs will invest more in R&D and obtain more patents. This will help their enterprises achieve higher efficiency of technological innovation. Furthermore, the environmental awareness of a CEO has a more significant impact on technological innovation if his/her enterprise is subject to a higher level of monitoring. We also conduct robustness check of our findings and provide managerial insights and proactive government policies to raise the environmental awareness of CEOs and improve the innovation vitality of enterprises.

The Path to Innovation: The Antecedent Perspective of Intellectual Capital and Organizational Character

Purpose: The high-speed growth of China's large-scale new economy indicates that innovation has become the most important economic growth pole. The study aims to explore the structure of the path to innovation, in which we focus on the mediating effect of organizational character. Design/methodology/approach: Considering the indigenous context of China's new economy, the study divides innovation into two types: technological innovation and business model innovation. Then, we build a path model to achieve the innovation by taking intellectual capital and organizational character as antecedents. Finally, a structural equation model is built to measure the path on the basis of sample data collected via a questionnaire survey. Findings: The results indicate that intellectual capital has a significant positive direct effect on technological innovation, but its direct effect on business model innovation is not significant. Organizational character not only mediates the relationship between the intellectual capital and technological innovation, but also plays a mediating role in the effect path from the intellectual capital to business model innovation. In addition, technological innovation has a positive impact on the business model innovation, and mediates the relationship between the intellectual capital and business model innovation. Originality/value: The study takes intellectual capital and organizational character as the common antecedents of innovation and breaks down the content of innovation research into technological innovation and business model innovation. Thus, it establishes a new theoretical analysis framework for dual innovation research and enriches the related theories. The framework would have stronger explanatory power for revealing the innovation strategy and behavior carried out by a large number of corporate organizations in China and the boom of new economy. Furthermore, it would lead enterprises to organize innovation activities more effectively and improve their innovation performances.

Re-thinking Innovation in Organizations in the Industry 4.0 Scenario: New Challenges in a Primary Prevention Perspective

In organizations, innovation is considered a relevant aspect of success and long-term survival. Organizations recognize that innovation contributes to creating competitive advantages in a more competitive, challenging and changing labor market. The present contribution addresses innovation in organizations in the scenario of Industry 4.0, including technological innovation and psychological innovation. Innovation is a core concept in this framework to face the challenge of globalized and fluid labor market in the 21st century. Reviewing the definition of innovation, the article focuses on innovative work behaviors and the relative measures. This perspective article also suggests new directions in a primary prevention perspective for future research and intervention relative to innovation and innovative work behaviors in the organizational context.

Effects of technology assumptions on US power sector capacity, generation and emissions projections: Results from the EMF 32 Model Intercomparison Project

This paper is one of two syntheses in this special issue of the results of the EMF 32 power sector study. This paper focuses on the effects of technology and market assumptions with projections out to 2050. A total of 15 models contributed projections based on a set of standardized scenarios. The scenarios include a range of assumptions about the price of natural gas, costs of end-use energy efficiency, retirements of nuclear power, the cost of renewable electricity, and overall electricity demand. The range of models and scenarios represent similarities and differences across a broad spectrum of analytical methods. One similarity across almost all results from all models and scenarios is that the share of electricity generation and capacity fueled by coal shrinks over time, although the rate at which coal capacity is retired depends on the price of natural gas and the amount of electricity that is demanded. Another similarity is that the models project average increases in natural gas power generating capacity in every scenario over the 2020-2050 period, but at lower average annual rates than those that prevailed during the 2000-2015 period. The projections also include higher gas capacity utilization rates in the 2035-2050 period compared to the 2020-2050 period in every scenario, except the high gas price sensitivity. Renewables capacity is also projected to increase in every scenario, although the annual new capacity varies from modest rates below the observed 2000-2015 wind and solar average to rates more than 3 times that high. Model estimates of CO2 emissions largely follow from the trends in generation. Low renewables cost and low gas prices both result in lower overall CO2 emission rates relative to the 2020-2035 and 2035-2050 reference. Both limited nuclear lifetimes and higher demand result in increased CO2 emissions.

Evolving patterns in a collaboration network of global R&D on monoclonal antibodies

We investigated the evolution process of collaborative inter-organizational network of the research and development (R&D) on monoclonal antibody (mAb) over the past 30 y. The annual detection of the collaboration network provides dynamics on network structures and relationship changes among different organizations. Our research showed continuous growth of the network's scale and complexity due to the constant entry of new organizations and the forging of new partnering relationships. The evolving topological features reveal a core-periphery structure that became clearer over time and an increasing heterogeneity within the collaborative mAb R&D network. As measured by the number of network participants, dedicated biotechnology firms (DBFs) were the dominant organization form in the field of mAb development, but their average centrality was reduced during the period of 2004-2009, when pharmaceutical companies took over the positions of DBFs. Along with the network evolution, 2 waves of substitution on the leading positions were driven by technological innovations and mergers and acquisitions (M&A). In addition, this study analyzed organizational-level behaviors to help understand the evolution of network structures over the field of mAb development across the different technologically innovative or economic contexts.

Stimulating Patient Engagement in Medical Device Development in Kidney Disease: A Report of a Kidney Health Initiative Workshop

New technologies challenge current dialysis treatment paradigms as devices become smaller, more portable, and increasingly used outside the dialysis clinic. It is unclear how patients will view this care transition, and it will be important to consider patient and care partner perspectives during all aspects of development for novel dialysis therapies, from design and clinical trials to regulatory approval. To gain insight into this area, the Kidney Health Initiative, a public-private partnership between the American Society of Nephrology, the US Food and Drug Administration, and nearly 80 member organizations and companies dedicated to enhancing patient safety and fostering innovation in kidney disease, convened a workshop of patients, care partners, and other kidney community stakeholders. The workshop included background presentations followed by focused small group discussions in 3 areas (device design, clinical trials, and regulatory approval). Participants explored how to involve patients throughout the life cycle of a medical device, including discussions of how patients can influence device design, assist in the planning and implementation of clinical trials, and provide input to affect regulatory decisions. Patients were engaged in the workshop discussion and interested in sharing their perspectives, but they recommended additional efforts around education, communication, and outreach in these areas.

Using technology and collaborative working for a positive patient experience and to improve safety

Clinicians who treat patients with wounds need access to the resources that will enable them to deliver the best and most appropriate treatments. A partnership working initiative between Greenwich CCG Medicines management (commissioner), Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust (provider) and ConvaTec (commercial partner) was set up to provide wound-care dressings and products to patients via the community services. It lead to improved access, greater patient benefits, a reduction in dressings waste, and an increase in clinical confidence to make cost-effective, evidence-based prescribing decisions. This inspired the commissioners to collaborate with BlueBay (technology partner) to 'trailblaze' the development and introduction of an electronic wound care template for practice nurses and doctors in primary care to use in conjunction with VISION and EMIS, clinical software systems used in GP practices. This interoperability of clinical systems to improve wound care is, to date, the only one of its kind in the UK.

Research Infrastructure for Collaborative Team Science: Challenges in Technology-Supported Workflows in and Across Laboratories, Institutions, and Geographies

Collaborative research has many challenges. One under-researched challenge is how to align collaborators' research practices and evolving analytical reasoning with technologies and configurations of technologies that best support them. The goal of such alignment is to enhance collaborative problem solving capabilities in research. Toward this end, we draw on our own research and a synthesis of the literature to characterize the workflow of collaborating scientists in systems-level renal disease research. We describe the various phases of a hypothetical workflow among diverse collaborators within and across laboratories, extending from their primary analysis through secondary analysis. For each phase, we highlight required technology supports, and. At time, complementary organizational supports. This survey of supports matching collaborators' analysis practices and needs in research projects to technological support is preliminary, aimed ultimately at developing a research capability framework that can help scientists and technologists mutually understand workflows and technologies that can help enable and enhance them.

Wearable monitors for patients following discharge from an intensive care unit: practical lessons learnt from an observational study

AIMS

To identify the practical challenges encountered when using wearable monitors for patients discharged from the intensive care unit.

BACKGROUND

Patients discharged from intensive care units are a high-risk group that might benefit from continuing observation using 'wearable' monitors to enable faster identification of physiological deterioration and facilitate timely clinical action. This area of technological innovation is of key interest to nurses who manage this group of patients.

DESIGN

A prospective observational study.

METHODS

An observational study conducted in 2013-2014 used wearable monitors to record continuous observations for patients discharged from an intensive care unit to develop a predictive model of patients likely to deteriorate. Screening data for study eligibility and case report form data to assess monitor tolerance and comfort were collected daily and analysed using Microsoft Access.

RESULTS/FINDINGS

Patients (n = 2704) were discharged from an intensive care unit during the study, 208 consented to wearing the monitor. Of the 192 included in analysis, 130 (67·7%) removed the monitor before the trial finished. Reasons cited for removal included 'discomfort and irritation' 61 (31·8%) and 'feeling too unwell' 8 (4·2%). Five hundred seventeen patients were screened following adaption of the wearable monitor. Despite design changes, 56 (10·8%) patients were unable to wear monitors for reasons related to their anatomy or condition. Of 124 patients, 65 patients (52·4%) who were approached refused participation.

CONCLUSION

Work is needed to understand wireless monitor comfort and design for acutely unwell patients. Product design needs to develop further, so patients are catered for in flexibility of monitor placement and improved comfort for long-term wear.

Technological innovation and its effect on public health in the United States

Background

Good public health ensures an efficient work force. Organizations can ensure a prominent position on the global stage by staying on the leading edge of technological development. Public health and technological innovation are vital elements of prosperous economies. It is important to understand how these elements affect each other. This research study explored and described the relationship between these two critical elements/constructs.

Methods

Indicators representing technological innovation and public health were identified. Indicator data from 2000 to 2009 were collected from various US federal government sources, for the four US Census regions. The four US Census regions were then compared in terms of these indicators. Canonical correlation equations were formulated to identify combinations of the indicators that are strongly related to each other. Additionally, the cause–effect relationship between public health and technological innovation was described using the structural equation modeling technique.

Results

The four US Census regions ranked differently in terms of both type of indicators in a statistically significant manner. The canonical correlation analysis showed that the first set of canonical variables had a fairly strong relationship, with a magnitude > 0.65 at the 95% confidence interval, for all census regions. Structural equation modeling analysis provided β < −0.69 and Student’s t statistic > 12.98, for all census regions. The threshold Student’s t statistic was 1.98. Hence, it was found that the β values were significant at the 95% confidence interval, for all census regions.

Discussion

The results of the study showed that better technological innovation indicator scores were associated with better public health indicator scores. Furthermore, the study provided preliminary evidence that technological innovation shares causal relation with public health.

Catalysts for Stone Age innovations: What might have triggered two short-lived bursts of technological and behavioral innovation in southern Africa during the Middle Stone Age?

Fossil and genetic evidence suggests the emergence of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) in sub-Saharan Africa some time between 200 and 100 thousand years (ka) ago. But the first traces of symbolic behavior-a trait unique to our species-are not found until many tens of millennia later, and include items such as engraved ochres and eggshells, tools made from bone, and personal ornaments made of shell beads. These behavioral indicators appear in concert with two innovative phases of Middle Stone Age technology, known as the Still Bay (SB) and Howieson's Poort (HP) industries, across a range of climatic and ecological zones in southern Africa. The SB and HP have recently been dated to about 72-71 ka and 65-60 ka, respectively, at sufficiently high resolution to investigate the possible causes and effects. A remarkable feature of these two industries is the spatial synchroneity of their start and end dates at archaeological sites spread across a region of two million square kilometers. What were the catalysts for the SB and HP, and what were the consequences? Both industries flourished at a time when tropical Africa had just entered a period of wetter and more stable conditions, and populations of hunter-gatherers were expanding rapidly throughout sub-Saharan Africa before contracting into geographically and genetically isolated communities. The SB and HP also immediately preceded the likely exit time of modern humans from Africa into southern Asia and across to Australia, which marked the beginning of the worldwide dispersal of our species. In this paper, we argue that environmental factors alone are insufficient to explain these two bursts of technological and behavioral innovation. Instead, we propose that the formation of social networks across southern Africa during periods of population expansion, and the disintegration of these networks during periods of population contraction, can explain the abrupt appearance and disappearance of the SB and HP, as well as the hiatus between them. But it will take improved chronologies for the key demographic events to determine if the emergence of innovative technology and symbolic behavior provided the stimulus for the expansion of hunter-gatherer populations (and their subsequent global dispersal), or if these Middle Stone Age innovations came into existence only after populations had expanded and geographically extensive social networks had developed.

Medicare, ethics, and reflexive longevity: governing time and treatment in an aging society

The clinical activities that constitute longevity making in the United States are perhaps the quintessential example of a dynamic modern temporality, characterized by the quest for risk reduction, the powerful progress narratives of science and medicine, and the personal responsibility of calculating the worth of more time in relation to medical options and age. This article explores how medicine materializes and problematizes time through a discussion of ethicality-in this case, the form of governance in which scientific evidence, Medicare policy and clinical knowledge and practice organize first, what becomes "thinkable" as the best medicine, and second, how that kind of understanding shapes a telos of living. Using liver disease and liver transplantation in the United States as my example, I explore the influence of Medicare coverage decisions on treatments, clinical standards, and ethical necessity. Reflexive longevity-a relentless future-thinking about life itself-is one feature of this ethicality.

A generic bio-economic farm model for environmental and economic assessment of agricultural systems

Bio-economic farm models are tools to evaluate ex-post or to assess ex-ante the impact of policy and technology change on agriculture, economics and environment. Recently, various BEFMs have been developed, often for one purpose or location, but hardly any of these models are re-used later for other purposes or locations. The Farm System Simulator (FSSIM) provides a generic framework enabling the application of BEFMs under various situations and for different purposes (generating supply response functions and detailed regional or farm type assessments). FSSIM is set up as a component-based framework with components representing farmer objectives, risk, calibration, policies, current activities, alternative activities and different types of activities (e.g., annual and perennial cropping and livestock). The generic nature of FSSIM is evaluated using five criteria by examining its applications. FSSIM has been applied for different climate zones and soil types (criterion 1) and to a range of different farm types (criterion 2) with different specializations, intensities and sizes. In most applications FSSIM has been used to assess the effects of policy changes and in two applications to assess the impact of technological innovations (criterion 3). In the various applications, different data sources, level of detail (e.g., criterion 4) and model configurations have been used. FSSIM has been linked to an economic and several biophysical models (criterion 5). The model is available for applications to other conditions and research issues, and it is open to be further tested and to be extended with new components, indicators or linkages to other models.

Trends for nanotechnology development in China, Russia, and India

China, Russia, and India are playing an increasingly important role in global nanotechnology research and development (R&D). This paper comparatively inspects the paper and patent publications by these three countries in the Thomson Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI) database and United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database (1976-2007). Bibliographic, content map, and citation network analyses are used to evaluate country productivity, dominant research topics, and knowledge diffusion patterns. Significant and consistent growth in nanotechnology papers are noted in the three countries. Between 2000 and 2007, the average annual growth rate was 31.43% in China, 11.88% in Russia, and 33.51% in India. During the same time, the growth patterns were less consistent in patent publications: the corresponding average rates are 31.13, 10.41, and 5.96%. The three countries' paper impact measured by the average number of citations has been lower than the world average. However, from 2000 to 2007, it experienced rapid increases of about 12.8 times in China, 8 times in India, and 1.6 times in Russia. The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), and the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) were the most productive institutions in paper publication, with 12,334, 6,773, and 1,831 papers, respectively. The three countries emphasized some common research topics such as "Quantum dots," "Carbon nanotubes," "Atomic force microscopy," and "Scanning electron microscopy," while Russia and India reported more research on nano-devices as compared with China. CAS, RAS, and IIT played key roles in the respective domestic knowledge diffusion.

Will Future Measurement Needs of the Semiconductor Industry Be Met?

We discuss the ability of the nation's measurement system to meet future metrology needs of the semiconductor industry. Lacking an acceptable metric for assessing the health of metrology for the semiconductor industry, we identify a limited set of unmet measurement needs. Assuming that this set of needs may serve as proxy for the galaxy of semiconductor measurement needs, we examine it from the perspective of what will be required to continue the semiconductor industry's powerful impact in the world's macro-economy and maintain its exceptional record of numerous technological innovations. This paper concludes with suggestions about ways to strengthen the measurement system for the semiconductor industry.