Electronic commerce and user-based design of a web site: Targeting the technology transfer audience

Web sites have the potential of playing a major role in the exchange of technology related information between federal laboratories and commercializers in the private sector. Most, if not all, Web site designs are developed based on the organization's perception of what the target audience wants from a Web site. This contribution addresses the issue of successful Web site design from the user's perspective in the context of technology transfer. The orientation takes into account important concepts and principles such as cost, marketing, diffusion, information retrieval, and strategic networking. The results of a survey of private sector technology transfer professionals offer insights to meet the target audience's needs, thus making a Web site a timely and cost-effective electronic linkage for interaction, information-seeking, and networking functions that enable technology transfer. This work was funded by United States Air Force contract number F30602-95-C-0240.     

Bypassing obstacles to access: How NGOs are taken piggy-back to the UN

Human Rights Review -     

Static screening instruments for risk of minor and major violence

Background: Screens for violent convictions that are simple, accessible and parsimonious are needed, as a first stage in identifying those at high risk for further assessment. Aims: To construct and validate screening tools for minor and major violence convictions for released prisoners. Methods: Internal validation sample of 1647 serious offenders and an external validation of 46,704 general prisoners. The outcomes were binary indicators for having at least one conviction for minor and major violence. Risk factors were convictions for violence and age. Results: In the external validation sample, the instrument for risk of minor violence (PMIV) identified correctly 60.8% of male and 66.2% of female general prisoners. For risk of major violence, the instrument (PMAV) identified correctly 68.0% of male and 79.3% of female prisoners. Conclusions: The PMIV and PMAV will efficiently assist practitioners in a first stage of screening before in-depth clinical assessment of risk for future violent convictions.     

How citizenship matters: narratives of stateless and citizenship choice in Estonia

The phenomenon of statelessness is most often studied as an issue of international and human-rights law. In contrast, this paper examines narratives of citizenship choice among initially stateless Russian-speaking residents of Estonia in order to explore the practical meanings of (non)citizenship in a context where the available options include both national citizenship and statelessness. While legal aspects of citizenship do explain many of the perceived benefits and disadvantages of various citizenship options, we find that deliberations about citizenship choice also reflect extra-legal normative and affective dimensions of civic belonging. The resulting multidimensional model of citizenship helps account for courses of action that would appear anomalous if citizenship choice were merely an instrumental matter of weighing the costs and benefits of different options. It also points to a growing disjuncture among citizenship as a source of legal rights and obligations, as a normative framework, and as a site of attachment and identification.     

The Rockefeller and Gates Foundations in Global Health Governance

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is the world's wealthiest philanthropic organisation and a major player in global health governance. While its emergence may be dramatic, BMGF's role in global health mirrors the experience of the Rockefeller Foundation's International Health Division nearly 100 years earlier. Both organisations provoked fear and consternation, but their supporters argued that both offered innovative techniques and filled niches governments could not or would not address. This article examines the parallels in arguments for and against the global health activities between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. It also calls into question larger questions about the role of private actors in global governance and whether their activities in recent years are really all that unprecedented.     

Was There a Soviet Nationality Policy?

Abstract

The essay challenges the frequent references to the concept of Soviet nationality policy by historians and social scientists. The argument proceeds, first, by unpicking some of the logic in the use of the term; second, by examining the evidence for the existence and nature of such a policy; and third, by considering alternative explanations for major decisions and events concerning non-Russian nationalities in the Soviet Union. The essay concludes that, at least after the 1920s, there was no Soviet nationality policy, and the processes of negotiation and nation-promoting practices pursued by republic leaders were, instead, the key influences on decision-making.