Comparative study of sustainable and non-sustainable interventions in technology development and transfer to the women’s vegetable gardens in the Gambia

In the Gambia numerous projects have been implemented to boost vegetable production. A survey was conducted in Kanifing Municipality and Western Division of the Gambia to determine the level of technology development and transfer. The result shows that the total membership of the intervention sites is 726 and 1,115 growers in the non-intervention sites respectively. From the survey 92% of farmers considered variety improvement as a priority area for technology development. The result indicated that 45% of the respondents regard that 80% of technologies comes research and farmers and 90% of technology dissemination to farmers is through the public extension system, and 20% of respondents mentioned farmer groups. The aim of this study was therefore to examine acquisition, technology development, and transfer to farmers and to come with appropriate strategies of technology transfer in The Gambia in the areas of production and marketing of vegetables.      

Scale, technique and composition effects in the Mexican agricultural sector: the influence of NAFTA and the institutional environment

More than a decade after NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) entered into force, the environmental effects of agricultural trade liberalization in Mexico are still controversial, emerging, and not fully understood. This paper contributes to the literature that aims to explore trends in input use in the agricultural sector in Mexico during the post-NAFTA period among both commercial/industrial and traditional/rainfed farmers, and examines the influence of the national and multilateral institutional framework on these outcomes. We decompose the post-NAFTA agricultural production data into scale, technique and composition effects to estimate the impact that trade liberalization has had on the use of fertilizer and land use, two key agricultural inputs for which reliable aggregate data is available. We conclude that among commercial farmers patterns of crop type specialization and significant technological improvements have led to some declines in fertilizer use but they have been offset by growth in fertilizer use associated with growing agricultural output. Among traditional farmers increased output and specialization in land-intensive grain crops are contributing to an increase in land under cultivation and technological improvements show the potential, but not yet not the strength, to counteract these effects. We analyse the environmental institutional framework and rural development plans, observing that institutional weaknesses have, in several instances, reduced the environmental benefit of technique and composition effects. We conclude with recommendations about how the Mexican agricultural sector might reap the environmental benefits of international agricultural trade.     

The Lockhart Review: where now for Australia?

In 2005 a Legislation Review Committee, known as the Lockhart Review, undertook a review of the Commonwealth legislation regulating human embryo research. The report that emanated from the review was released in December 2005. If the report recommendations are implemented by the Federal Government, Australian scientists will be permitted to create human embryo entities currently known as "human embryo clones" by the process known as somatic cell nuclear transfer to develop stem cell lines for research purposes. Many argue that stem cells have the potential to be developed into valuable medical therapies that could assist with, or cure, serious diseases such as Type 1 diabetes and Parkinson's disease. This article analyses the evidence presented to the Lockhart Review and the report recommendations. It assesses where the Lockhart recommendations would place Australia in terms of worldwide embryo research. It is argued that the Federal Government should fully embrace the recommendations so that Australia can progress stem cell research to its fullest potential.     

Network building conferences in support of industry-wide innovations

Promoting industry-wide innovation is a particularly difficult problem of technology transfer because of issues of proprietary information and competition. A promising approach to this problem is network-building through mission-oriented conferences that facilitate communication among those involved in the transfer of technology. This paper defines basic concepts of networking and views mission-oriented conferences as temporary systems. It describes how one mission-oriented conference, the Footwear Technology Symposium, was designed to promote networking. The paper also provides examples of other mission-oriented conferences (including a number of what have been called “research utilization conferences”). The article concludes with a set of recommendations for planners of mission-oriented conferences.     

Reconsideration of the agricultural transfer model

The cooperative extension system in American agriculture is widely viewed as the paradigmatic public sector technology transfer system. Empirical evidence supports the view that research and extension are complementary inputs in increasing agricultural productivity. Cooperative extension, however, does not perceive itself as a technology transfer system; but as an informal education system. Many participants at the federal, landgrant university, or county levels in cooperative extension would not recognize their work within a technology transfer framework. Moreover, many would object to such a characterization of their work. The differences in perspective is accounted for, in part, by the fact that agricultural extension is part of the larger system of cooperative extension. This system, which encompasses agriculture, home economics, 4-H and community and rural development, requires a more encompassing framework than technology transfer to provide an integrated rationals for its program elements. Within the technology transfer framework, the roles of the different components of the system across the states are both highly variable and changing. Based on site interviews in nine states, analysis is presented of the current and prospective roles of extension specialists and county agents.     

Extension services and intermediaries: Brokering federal technologies to smaller firms

Extension services and other organizations that assist small and medium-size firms can play an important role in brokering technology from federal laboratories and other R&D sources. They can help the firms identify and define their technology needs and can help interpret and apply federal-laboratory technologies to meet those needs. These are some of the conclusions of a recent Federal Laboratory Consortium project, designed and managed by INNOVATION ASSOCIATES and overseen by the National Association of Management and Technical Assistance Centers. Major recommendations resulting from the project include: a re-examination by Congress of the federal technology-transfer structure to eliminate redundancies and fill gaps; funding extension services to facilitate hiring of dedicated technology-transfer staff; and providing additional incentives and creating informal mechanisms that encourage federal laboratories to work with small firms. The author also recommends that extension services view relationships with federal laboratories as long-term development rather than short-term “fix-its,” provide proactive and continuous follow-up of small firms working with federal laboratories, and act as an advocate on behalf of small firms. The following article discusses the project and its findings. Observations, issues, and recommendations are found at the end of the article.     

Grace,gold, or glory? Exploring incentives for invention disclosure in the university context

What motivates university scientists to identify practical applications for their research results and consider having them patent-protected? A wealth of research points towards a complex blend of factors, including organizational antecedents, social norms and personal-level expectations. Few studies, however, have attempted to investigate the effect of concrete incentives from the perspective of individual scientists’ decision-making. In this paper, we operationalize the propensity to patent and commercialize research results as the intention to submit an invention disclosure filing. We use scenario-based conjoint analysis to capture university scientists’ preference structures for different incentive policies. Results indicate that direct and indirect financial incentives are dominant drivers. In addition, a grace period that would allow for patenting and publishing in parallel and the inclusion of patents in academic performance assessments are worth considering, whereas the specific setup of the technology transfer organization and public recognition of achievements in form of an award appear to have limited effect. However, preferences for incentives and hence their effectiveness vary significantly across academic disciplines and ranks as well as with scientists’ working experience, patenting experience and research orientation. On this basis, we can derive more qualified recommendations for incentive system design.     

The accumulation and transmission of wealth over a long period: example of a rural family from Loire-Atlantique in the 19th and early 20th centuries

This research seeks to trace the transfer of wealth down the male line of a rural French family through the 19th and 20th centuries, and to decipher the logic of accumulating and transferring wealth. The subject will be approached from an angle different from that of Segalen [Ethnol. Fr. 8 (1978) 271], who followed which farmers had cultivated the same farm through two centuries. The itinerary of wealth passing through the six generations examined here was traced using the range of legal documents that mark a person's life: purchases, sales, exchanges, marriage contracts, gifts, and inheritances. Wealth behavioral patterns that are assumed to follow an economic logic are described using neoclassical economic models.     

Federal-state cooperation in science and technology programs

During the past several years participants in the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable, chaired by Richard Celeste, have discussed cooperation in science and technology programs between state and federal agencies. The result is the following paper on the potential for and means of promoting such cooperation. The roundtable is sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. [It was] created in 1984 to provide a forum where scientists, administrators, and policy makers from government, university, and industry can come together on an ongoing basis to explore ways to improve the productivity of the nation's research enterprise. The object is to try to understand issues, to inject imaginative thought into the system, and to provide a setting for discussion and the seeking of common ground. The roundtable does not make recommendations, nor of fer specific advice; it develops options and brings interested parties together.     

论西部开发中的有效制度供给

文章首先提出并论证了我国西部开发成功的关键在于有效的制度供给 ,并从多方面对有效制度供给的前提和基础进行了研究和阐述 ,最后对有效制度供给从财产权的合理配置和有效保护、微观主体的制度创新、有关可持续发展的制度供给、财政转移资金使用效率确保等几方面进行了有针对性的研究。     

Transfer of advanced manufacturing technology from Canadian universities to industry

Although advanced manufacturing technology (AMT) is a key factor in improving North America's industrial competitiveness, there is a problem in transferring it from university to industry. This study, conducted for a Canadian governmental agency, addresses the problem by querying Canadian professors, university-liaison officers, and administrators of intermediary (broker) organizations in order to uncover the processes of AMT transfer; that is, the ways in which technical knowledge embodied in inventions is converted into outputs used by companies. Four processes, in which the critical entities are professors, universities, intermediary organizations, and spinoffs, account for what has been transferred While the first is by far the most significant currently, the third has a high future potential. An analysis of barriers suggests that while some probably inhibit all four transfer processes, others have their impacts on only one specific process. If we are going to raise the number of transfers, we must work more diligently to pinpoint the causes for low levels of transfer. Studying the barriers to university transfer in general should therefore yield information on which barriers are associated with which processes.     

国际法中的特别法优先原则

国际法规则的冲突是国际法不成体系的重要表现,特别法优先原则强调适用更特殊、更具体的特别法规则,是解决这种冲突的重要方法。冲突确实存在与规则属于同一事项构成了该原则适用的基本条件,而调整事项和规则所涉及的缔约方则构成确定一般法和特别法的参考因素。     

CLOUD act agreements from an EU perspective

For many years, transatlantic cooperation between the EU and the US in the area of personal data exchange has been a subject of special interest on the part of lawmakers, courts – including supranational ones – NGOs and the public. When implementing recent reform of data protection law, the European Union decided to further strengthen guarantees of the protection of privacy in cyberspace. At the same time, however, it faced the practical problem of how to ensure compliance with these principles in relation to third countries. The approach proposed in the GDPR, which is based on a newly-defined territorial scope of application, clearly indicates an attempt to apply EU rules extraterritorially in relation to data processors in third countries.Irrespective of EU activity, the United States has also introduced its own regulations addressing the same problem. An example is the federal law adopted in 2018, specifying how to execute national court orders for the transfer of electronic data. The CLOUD Act was established in response to legal doubts raised in the Microsoft v United States case regarding the transfer of electronic data stored in the cloud by US obliged entities to law enforcement authorities, as well as in cases where this data is physically located in another country and its transfer could result in violating the legal norms of a foreign jurisdiction. The CLOUD Act also facilitates bilateral international agreements that enable the cross-border transfer of e-evidence for the purposes of ongoing criminal proceedings. Both the content of the new regulations and the model proposed by the US legislature for future agreements concluded on the basis of the CLOUD Act can be seen as an alternative to regulations arising from EU law.The purpose of this paper is to analyse the CLOUD Act and CLOUD Act Agreements from the perspective of EU law and, in particular, attempt to answer the question as to whether this new legal mechanism brings the EU and the USA closer to finding common ground with regard to a coherent model of exchange and protection of personal data.     

A study of the potential risk of gunshot residue transfer from special units of the police to arrested suspects

The presence of gunshot residues (GSRs) on arrested suspects can help the Court to form an opinion regarding the possibility of utilization of firearms by these suspects. Since the presence of a few particles can in some cases already have a strong indicative value, the GSR experts have to evaluate in their daily work the risk of a potential contamination of these suspects during their arrest. A few studies conducted on police officers and police facilities concluded that the risk of secondary transfer on arrested suspects is quite negligible. However, the case of special force units of the police should be taken into account, since these units can be assumed to be highly contaminated by GSR due to their intensive training. The aim of this study is to evaluate this possibility of particle transfer by performing simulations of arrests by special force police units, according to both low and high contamination scenarios. The results show that secondary transfers of GSR during these simulations are in most cases not negligible, even for the low contamination scenario. This is especially apparent on the vests of the target persons, with an average of 7 GSR particles (2 PbBaSb and 5 TiZn) found on the stubs used on these materials. Of course, the major contamination levels were observed in the case of the high contamination scenario, due to the use of highly contaminated gloves by the police officers during the arrests. Some recommendations are proposed to take into account this risk of contamination and to try to minimize it, or at least to better identify it.     

Study of the adhesion of explosive residues to the finger and transfer to clothing and luggage

It is important to understand the extent of transfer of explosive particles to different surfaces in order to better evaluate potential cross-contamination by explosives in crowded security controls such as those at airports. This work investigated the transfer of nine explosive residues (ANFO, dynamite, black powder, TNT, HMTD, PETN, NH₄NO₃, KNO₃, NaClO₃) through fingerprints from one surface to another. First, the extent of adhesion of explosive residues from different surfaces to the bare finger, nitrile and latex gloves was studied. Then, the transfer of explosive residues from one surface to another through fingerprints was investigated. Cotton fabric (hereinafter referred to as cotton) as clothing material and polycarbonate plastic (hereinafter referred to as polycarbonate) as luggage material were chosen for the experiments. These surfaces containing explosive particles were imaged using a reflex camera before and after the particles were transferred. Afterwards the images were processed in MATLAB where pixels corresponding to explosive residues were quantified. Results demonstrated that transfer of explosive residues frequently occurred with certain differences among materials. Generally, the amount of explosive particles adhered to the finger decreased in the following order: skin>latex>nitrile, while the transfer of particles from the finger to another surface was the opposite. The adhesion of explosive residues from polycarbonate to the finger was found to be better compared to cotton, while the amount of particles transferred to cotton was higher.     

Secondary transfer of organic gunshot residues: Empirical data to assist the evaluation of three scenarios

The present study aimed at providing data to assess the secondary transfer of organic gunshot residues (OGSR). Three scenarios were evaluated in controlled conditions, namely displacing a firearm from point A to point B, a simple handshake and an arrest involving handcuffing on the ground. Specimens were collected from the firearm, the hands of the shooter and the non-shooter undergoing the secondary transfer in order to compare the amounts detected.Secondary transfer was observed for the three scenarios, but to a different extent. It was found that displacing a firearm resulted in secondary transfer in <50% of the experiments. The firearm also had an influence, as contrary to the pistol, no secondary OGSR were detected using the revolver. Shaking the hand of the shooter also transferred OGSR to the non-shooter's hand. In that case, the amount of OGSR was generally higher on the shooter than on the non-shooter. Finally, the largest secondary transfer was observed after the arrest with handcuffing with positive results in all cases using the pistol. In that scenario, the amounts on the shooter and the non-shooter were in the same range.This study highlights that the secondary transfer must be taken into account in the interpretation of OGSR. Indeed, an individual's hands might be contaminated by handling a firearm or having physical contact with a shooter.     

Narcotics and Drug Abuse

Fifty years ago, the U.S. President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice saw drugs as a modest but growing problem for the criminal justice system. The reemergence of heroin occupied the Commission's attention. Many recommendations are admirable, such as a focus on public health interventions and a concern about the appropriateness of criminal prohibitions on marijuana use. Throughout the past 50 years, the problem has both massively expanded and changed in many ways; the principal drug of abuse has shifted multiple times, as has the populations most affected by them. Policy, largely stuck on tough enforcement for 30 years, is now moving in a direction more consistent with the Commission's views. Researchers have made only modest advances in understanding what enforcement can do to reduce drug use and related problems, but society has made some progress in developing interventions that have both a sound theoretical base and the promise of avoiding the unintended negative consequences of the highly punitive system of the 1980s and 1990s. A Commission in 2018 would face a much different and larger problem that has transformed many aspects of criminal justice. Investing in more data collection and evaluation research would be among its major recommendations, as would an admission of considerable uncertainty about what to do with the latest twist in the U.S. drug problem, the addition of the much more dangerous fentanyls.     

Cloud forensics–Tool development studies & future outlook

In this work, we describe our experiences in developing cloud forensics tools and use them to support three main points:First, we make the argument that cloud forensics is a qualitatively different problem. In the context of SaaS, it is incompatible with long-established acquisition and analysis techniques, and requires a new approach and forensic toolset. We show that client-side techniques, which are an extension of methods used over the last three decades, have inherent limitations that can only be overcome by working directly with the interfaces provided by cloud service providers.Second, we present our results in building forensic tools in the form of three case studies: kumodd–a tool for cloud drive acquisition, kumodocs–a tool for Google Docs acquisition and analysis, and kumofs–a tool for remote preview and screening of cloud drive data. We show that these tools, which work with the public and private APIs of the respective services, provide new capabilities that cannot be achieved by examining client-side artifacts.Finally, we use current IT trends, and our lessons learned, to outline the emerging new forensic landscape, and the most likely course of tool development over the next five years.     

Worldwide policy trends in agricultural extension: Part I

Agricultural extension is one of the oldest and most important prototypes for technology-transfer organizations. The purpose of this paper is to help policymakers to keep track of how extension is developing in countries throughout the world. Such attention is especially warranted as extension has come under attack both in its identification with the public sector and in how that tie is expressed. Five fundamental models for organizing extension are outlined: farmingsystems research and extension, farming-information dissemination, training and visit, communications for technology transfer, and the cooperative-extension system of the U.S. Part I of this two-part paper outlines the major policy issues raised by these models and Part II (to be published in a later issue) will provide an in-depth discussion of a central issue underlying these models: the appropriate role of public- versus private-sector extension.     

Farm transmission and the commercialization of agriculture in northern Maine in the second half of the 19th century

The transition to capitalism has been one of the most discussed issues in the historiography of the rural United States in the 18th and 19th centuries, but the typology, and the “market revolution” construed upon it, are problematic. The article explores some of these problems by examining the commercialization of eastern Canadian agriculture, which was a prolonged process starting in the beginning of the 19th century in the St. Lawrence–Great Lakes axis and ending during the 1960s in the outlying parts of Quebec, Ontario, and the Maritime Provinces. It is difficult to identify clear trends in the numbers yielded by evidence from this region for the time period in question. Highly commercial farms were more likely than the others to transfer all their property to their children. Deficit farmers were much more likely than the others to transfer all their property to outsiders. But the data do not support the view that farmers who were keen on turning their farms into moneymaking businesses adopted property transmission practices that were markedly different from the others. And before the 1830s, there was really no need to have strategies in place because land was plentiful.