The Public as a Limit to Technology Transfer: The Influence of Knowledge and Beliefs in Attitudes towards Biotechnology in the UK

Transferring knowledge on new biotechnology applications in the European Union is restricted by limited public support. Explanations for this limited support lead us to examine the influence of knowledge and beliefs in shifting attitudes towards the uncertain consequences of unknown technologies. In addition, this paper looks at the role of perceptions of uncertainty as well as information channels. We denote as “knowledgeable” those attitudes that are held by informed individuals and as “rational irrational” those attitudes purely reflecting political and moral beliefs. The empirical analysis employs data from a UK sample of the 1999 Eurobarometer Survey 52.1. Results suggest that improving knowledge systematically raises individual support for clinical biotech applications such as animal cloning, while attitudes towards market-oriented biotech such as GM food remain systematically unaltered. When controlling for knowledge, significant factors within information channels were gender, perceptions of risk and, in certain applications, religiosity. Findings also support the hypothesis that knowledge driven attitudes arise from those applications where knowledge is shifted by perceived experience and thus perceived information costs are small. An erratum to this article is available at .     

The UK Technology Transfer System: Calls for Stronger Links Between Higher Education and Industry

Links between higher education and industry are of vital economic importance. These links provide the environment for innovation and technology transfer and are crucial for sustaining competitiveness, reinventing organisations, creating new businesses, fighting unemployment, and accelerating development programmes. Recently, Britain realised its deficiencies in the areas of education and technology, and major efforts are being made to enhance its international competitiveness. The most recent proposal is for the establishment of a University for Industry. This article discusses the background in which the development of links between higher education and industry and the University for Industry will be made.     

非暴力方式侵犯生命权犯罪的死刑控制

为了限制和废除死刑,应当对以暴力方式和非暴力方式侵犯生命权的犯罪区别对待,及时废除非暴力方式侵犯生命权犯罪的死刑.非暴力方式侵犯生命权犯罪的死刑控制不仅是全面废除死刑的重要铺垫、减少死刑执行数量的重要途径、顺应国际趋势的重要举措,而且具有很强的现实可行性.建议从立法、司法、刑事政策等方面对非暴力方式侵犯生命权犯罪死刑进行有效控制,并充分发挥刑事和解的重要作用.     

Corporate Ownership and Control in the UK: The Tax Dimension

While generally the impact tax has on patterns of corporate ownership and control has received little attention in the relevant academic literature, this paper argues that tax is potentially an important determinant of ownership patterns in large companies. The paper focuses on historical developments in Britain, where an 'outsider/arm's-length' system of corporate governance took shape during the twentieth century and became fully entrenched by the end of the 1970s. Taxes imposed on corporate profits, taxation of managerial and investment income and inheritance taxes help to explain why during this period blockholders sought to exit and why there was sufficient demand for shares among investors to permit ownership to separate from control.     

Technology Transfer to China The Issues of Knowledge and Learning

The aspect of effectiveness of technology transfer to developing countries still raises important questions from researchers and practitioners alike. Many of these questions pertain to the nature of knowledge and of the learning process. The first question for this paper is what forms of knowledge are transferred abroad by companies. The second question is what are the characteristics of the learning process in recipient firms during technology transfer. Twenty-eight Canadian manufacturing firms were interviewed. Seven case studies were also conducted in China.Our results demonstrate that tacit knowledge constitutes a substantial part of the total knowledge transferred by Canadian firms to China. The nonexplicit nature of knowledge leaves room for numerous problems of interpretation, not only at the technical and managerial level, but also at the more global level of national culture and institutions. Our findings tend to validate the evolutionary and cognitivistic positions on the nature of knowledge. The results also partly confirm our sequential model of learning.     

Regulating Science and Technology: The Case of the UK Biotechnology Industry*

This paper considers the current performance and future prospects of the UK biotech industry, particularly the biomedical sector. The central argument is that the performance of the UK biotech industry cannot be understood in isolation from the European system of regulation and, increasingly, the international regulatory environment, and from what is happening elsewhere in the regulation of science – particularly in the U.S. To develop this argument, it adopts as its conceptual framework Kim and von Tunzelmann's network alignment approach following Radosevic. It explores the link between regulatory policies and the biotechnology production system – networks between academic research, biotech firms, and large pharmaceutical companies.     

The State of the Science in Technology Transfer: Implications for the Field of Assistive Technology

The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Technology Transfer (T²RERC) hosted a “State of the Science” conference in November, 2001. The conference reviewed technology transfer work within the field of assistive technology, and summarized related work in public, private and academic sectors. Invited speakers prepared papers on various topics concerning technology transfer, and related their findings to the field of assistive technology during the ensuing discussion sessions. This paper provides an overview of the material presented by the participants, and explores the implications of their findings for one particular field of application—assistive technology for people with disabilities.     

政府在以科技进步推动就业中的职能作用

解决就业问题的关键在于依靠科技进步来发展经济,调整产业结构,走新型工业化道路.作为科技计划、科技政策和就业政策的制定者,政府只有正确定位自己的职能,才能更好地发挥其在科技进步中的积极作用,促进就业.     

Regulation of Technology Transfer to Developing Countries: The Relevance of Institutional Capacity*

This article revisits the debate over appropriate approaches to the regulation of technology transfer to developing countries. It begins by contrasting two stylized approaches, labeled for convenience the “New International Economic Order” model and the “Globalization” model, which have historically struggled for acceptance. It then explores the implications for the choice between these or alternative models of the fact that many developing countries presently lack the institutional capacity required to provide optimal regulation of technology transfer. Existing discussions appear either to assume that developing countries possess sufficient institutional capacity to design and implement sophisticated regulatory regimes, or to take the opposite approach and assume a drastic shortage of institutional capacity. Both approaches ignore the intermediate category of countries that do face constraints upon institutional capacity but are striving to overcome them. The analysis here is intended to demonstrate the general point that a country's present and future institutional capacity ought to be considered highly relevant to the design of central aspects of the regime that it uses to regulate technology transfer. The analysis is also designed to highlight the specific need for attention to the distinctive questions of regulatory design which arise in countries that are in the process of enhancing their institutional capacity in this and other regulatory contexts.     

Policies and Developments Relating to the Sexual Exploitation of Children: The Legacy of the Stockholm Conference

This article begins by noting the huge amount of attention that is now being paid at almost every level – international, European, national and by independent organisations and NGOs – to the growing problem of international child sexual exploitation and considers why this is the case. It then comments briefly on what we mean by international sexual exploitation, noting that different definitions are used. The main part of the article reviews developments in this field, beginning with the main international measure: the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and then goes on to review the 1996 First World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation (the Stockholm Congress). After that some key measures subsequently adopted at international and national level, as well as by the European Union (which is increasingly taking international child sexual exploitation within its remit) are outlined. Lastly, some final thoughts are set out in the conclusion.     

UK Abortion Law: Reform Proposals,Private Members’ Bills,Devolution and the Role of the Courts

UK abortion law remains unsettled, and subject to on‐going controversy and reform. This article offers a comprehensive critique of all reforms implemented or proposed since 2016. It examines reforms proposed in both Houses of Parliament and contextualises them within a public law analysis, showing both that the complex parliamentary processes relating to Private Members’ Bills have frustrated reform attempts, and that these attempts have been contradictory in their aims between the two Houses. Secondly, it examines the unique positions of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to show the extent to which devolutionary settlements have influenced both reforms and executive involvement. Finally, it examines the potential impact of the courts on abortion law following Re Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission's Application for Judicial Review, showing that the Supreme Court's reframing of the debate in human rights terms is likely to affect abortion law, not only in Northern Ireland, but in the whole of the UK.     

The Government and the Opposition: Postscript to the Presidential Elections

Boris Yeltsin, who won an impressive victory in the 1996 presidential elections, used "Do not allow the country to return to Communism" as his principal campaign slogan. His supporters concentrated all their propaganda on this theme: we must move forward and continue the reforms, or return to the past. As a result, the extremely difficult problems facing the country today were, so to speak, put on hold. There was no serious discussion of how the reforms should be continued or which direction they should take.     

Interpreters of the Koran: The Legacy of a Theologian Is Held to Be Extremism

A court proceeding that gave rise to an ambiguous reaction in society came to a close yesterday. The Koptev district court in the capital held fourteen books of the collected works Rusale-i-Noor, of Turkish theologian Baduzzaman Said Nursi to be extremist literature. His work was considered by the court to be dangerous for society upon the basis of a petition of the procurator of Tatarstan. And the proceeding itself took place in a closed manner and was delayed several times due to the appointment of another expert review, for which time was naturally required.     

Technology Transfer via the Internet: A Way to Link Public Science and Enterprises?

The Internet is receiving increasing attention as a medium for technology transfer between public research and the business sector. Technology policy hopes that Internet presentations of research activities at public institutions will facilitate the exploitation of research results, particularly from those institutions not engaged in technology transfer so far. Based on a survey of public research units in natural sciences and engineering in Germany, we analyze the determinants of firm contacts established via the Internet. Special attention is paid to the effect of experiences in firm interaction in the past. Estimation results suggest that Internet contact to firms is more likely to be established by public research units that are already well situated in the transfer market. Research units that orient their homepage design towards the business sector are more likely to build Internet-based contact with firms. However, there is no evidence that public research units that have not been engaged with firms so far, use the Internet more intensively to get into the transfer business. Our results show that the Internet has a certain potential for advancing technology transfer at public research, although this potential is not fully utilized yet, at least in the case of Germany.