UTS: Accelerating public sector technology utilization

This paper describes the Urban Technology System (UTS) Program in its overall context. It also describes some specific local government needs, their technological solutions, and the results achieved through solution implementation.     

Models for commercialization of technology from universities and research laboratories

One of the most admired aspects of U.S. technology has been the ability to assimilate and commercialize new science and technology. In light of the rising international competition, there has been new emphasis placed on the commercialization of U.S. science and technology developed in the federal laboratories. While research and development remains the focus of these laboratories, passage of the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Act of 1980 and the Technology Transfer Act of 1986 has resulted in a means to further the exploitation of discoveries, patents, and copyrights developed within the laboratories. The transfer of technology to industrial partners and users is a complex task for a federal laboratory. Since the interaction with industry, as well as market knowledge and assessment of the needs of business users are beyond the charter of a federal laboratory, new organizational mechanisms are required in order to obtain full commercial value from the laboratories' efforts. A study was instituted to examine selected organizational and policy arrangements for achieving the optimum commercial value from the science and technology research at the research and development laboratories sponsored and funded by the U.S. government.     

Postmortem gastrointestinal ruptures in burn cadavers

The report informs on ruptures within the area of the gastro-intestinal tract of two siblings (2 and 3 years of age) that were fatally burned in their apartment. The ruptures are obviously pointing to an "explosive-like" evaporation of the watery part of the gastro-intestinal contents under the influence of the heat, at impeded pressure balance through shrinking of the esophagus caused by the heat in the upper area and the closure of the pylorus. Of significance here is surely also the shrinking of the gastro-intestinal wall caused by the heat and the thin abdominal walls which were not likely to have acted as "heat insulators". These findings are a supplement to the burn hematoma of the stomach as described by Berg and Schumann (1985).     

Technology transfer: Water purification,U.S. Army to the civilian community

The Logistics Support Laboratory at the Belvoir Research and Development Center is responsible for the development of water purification equipment for the field Army. Developing water purification systems for military use has led to technological breakthroughs which have benefitted the civilian community. Two examples are the evaluation of the Army's ERDLator for the decontamination of water polluted with asbestos fibers, and design of a plant for the soluble-sulfide precipitation of heavy metals from industrial wastewater.     

Some thoughts on the application of new technology to resource management needs

A brief insight into the phenomena of technology transfer are reviewed. With this as background material two propositions are stated:

1. Technology emerges from the human mind into widespread economic reality, with resulting social impacts over a long period of time. This is the process of technological innovation.
2. There always are some distinctive events, points or stages in this process that mark progress. If they can be identified, progress can be measured and related to time, cost, performance, resource usage, possible impact and other attributes. It is argued that there are at least eight identifiable stages of the process.

These stages are then discussed and conclusions are drawn.     

Technology transfer into capital-intensive industry II. Effect of legislative action

Government policy supports the customary industrial goal of putting new technology to work in industry as quickly as possible, so as to enhance productivity and save energy. There is continuing debate over how to achieve this goal, specifically as to the impact of legislation on efforts to improve industrial energy conservation. The Office of Technology Assessment has studied the effects of four types of legislation on four large energy-using industries: Chemicals, paper, petroleum refining and steel. The legislative options include fuel taxes, changes in depreciation rules, energy tax credits, and lower interest rates. The analysis indicates that reasonable levels of the first three of these will not be persuasive in motivating new investments, and will not speed up the rate of new technology penetration. The limits of new technology introduction are set by capital availability and cash flow. Accordingly, lower interest rates which promote capital availability would indeed increase the levels of capital spending and hence accelerate energy conservation.     

The meaning of party labels

To determine the meaning(s) of the concepts Republican, Democrat, and Independent, the most frequently cited attributes of each party label were scaled in terms of their semantic centrality. An analysis of the magnitude scale values demonstrates that the labels Republican and Democrat have unique cognitive properties which easily discriminate one label from another. The most characteristic and discriminating properties refer to (1) voting, (2) electioneering, and (3) other forms of electoral behavior. Although these two labels have many strong properties over which there is considerable agreement, such consensus is lacking for the fewer and weaker properties which characterize and discriminate the label Independent. Whereas Republican and Democrat are sharply delineated, semantic inversions of one another, the concept Independent is ambiguously defined and only weakly distinguishable from other concepts.