Click on this link to see the present and past newsletters in color http://itri2.org/ITRInews/

Duane Shelton, Editor:  rds@itri2.org
* == * == *== * == * == * == * == * == * == * == * == *== * == * == * == * == * == * == *== * == * == * == * == * ==
In This Issue of ITRInews

Congress Points with Alarm at Physical Science Funding and Enrollments
A New Mega Trend: International Outsourcing of IT
Assessing the Economic Impacts of Government R&D .
Reorganization of Japanese Universities
9th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics
New ITRInews Search Engine

Featured Sites in International S&T:  
Searching Legacy Media 
Books on Assessment of International S&T

* == * == * == * == *== * == * == * == * == * == * == * == * == * == * == * == * == *== * == * == * == * == * == * ==
 

Congress Points with Alarm at Physical Science Funding and Enrollments The report accompanying the FY 2004 Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill included:  

"Investment in the physical sciences and engineering plays a critical role in enabling U.S. technological innovation and global economic leadership. It is essential to the development and utilization of our energy resources, as well as innovations in the areas of defense, the environment, communications and information technologies, health care and much more. Over the past 50 years, half of U.S. economic growth has come from prior investment in science and technological innovation. Life expectancy has grown from 55 years in 1900 to nearly 80 years today.

As a percentage of GDP, total Federal investment in the physical sciences and engineering has been cut roughly in half since 1970. American educational institutions are failing to attract sufficient numbers of U.S. students, especially women and minorities, into undergraduate and graduate programs in the physical sciences and engineering. For these skills the United States is now more heavily dependent on foreign nations than ever before.

"As fewer foreign students choose to pursue their education in the United States, and too few U.S. students enter these fields, our vulnerability grows. The National Science Foundation reports that between 1996 and 1999, the number of Ph.D.s in science and engineering awarded to foreign students declined by 15 percent. Only 5 percent of U.S. students now earn bachelors degrees in natural science or engineering. Since 1986, the total number of bachelors degrees in engineering is down 15 percent. Between 1994 and 2000, the number of Ph.D.s awarded in physics in the United States declined by 22 percent.
http://thomas.loc.gov/  Search for Committee Report 108-105 Energy and Water Development Appropriation Bill, then Government Funding of Physical Sciences

New Mega Trend: International Outsourcing of IT
While outsourcing of information technology services to countries like India has been going on for several years, the trend seems to be accelerating.  The Gartner group estimated in July, 2003 that almost 10% of all current U.S. IT jobs will be sent abroad in the next 18 months.  Indeed the term "international outsourcing" seems to have become a new management buzzword like earlier fads: "zero-based budgeting," "total quality," "creative destruction," "knowledge management," "right sizing," etc., etc.  At shareholder or security analyst meetings, management must now be prepared with a plan to send most of their current IT jobs abroad to save money.  While some skilled Indian programmers do make a tenth what U.S. programmers do, overall cost savings are often not in proportion.  http://www.ieeeusa.org/releases/2003/072103pr.html

Assessing the Economic Impacts of Government R&D.
Government R&D programs provide several types of technology infrastructure that are essential for the long-term competitiveness of domestic industries. Demand for government efficiency has increased the need for analytical tools to help rationalize and manage these programs. Yet, relatively few of them result from systematic planning or use retrospective economic impact assessments to feed into strategic planning and role justification. Even when such analyses are undertaken, poor selection of methodology and/or execution of the impact analysis can prevent policy relevant results from being attained.  This report attempts to summarize methodology lessons learned from approximately 40 retrospective and prospective microeconomic studies conducted by NIST over the past 10 years. Hopefully, it will be a useful resource for those interested in the management of government R&D.  http://www.nist.gov/director/prog-ofc/report03-1.pdf

Reorganization of Japanese Universities
This NSF/Tokyo report (#03-08) outlines changes that will occur as the result of the Japanese Diet’s adoption of the National University Reform Bills on July 9, 2003.  Viewed by the numbers, the 171 national academic institutions will be streamlined to 97 independent corporations as of April 2004.  Operationally and administratively, it is expected that each corporation will have more flexibility and autonomy, and the employees will become non-government employees. http://www.nsftokyo.org/trm.html

* == * == * == * == * == * == * == * == * == * == * == * == * == *== * == * == * == * == * == * ==
 FEATURED SITES THIS MONTH  

Legacy Media in Research.
The Internet has become so convenient for research that sometimes we forget the wealth of informaton that is available on paper. While the delays of traditional book publishing can make the material seem dated, the more extensive review and editing process can result in much higher quality material than one sees on the Web.  And a real book has lots of citations in it that can lead you to even better sources.

Futhermore, we can now have our cake and eat it, too.  The Library of Congress and Amazon have sophisticated Web interfaces that help find books on any topic. Amazon even has an internal review system that can give some guidance on the quality of books. Once a good book is found, it can usually be delivered by Amazon or Barnes and Noble in a matter of days.  If funds are limited, the interlibrary loan system in the U.S. can often provide the book for free in a month or so.  It does help to be close to a large library -- we have the world's largest library in Washington, which is one reason I live here.

My little niche of scholarship is evaluation of international R&D.  For each issue of ITRInews,  I try different search strategies to find relevant material for this three-way intersection of search terms and their synonyms. Below are some interesting hits for hits on pairs of these concepts in the book literature. I couldn't find a single book that hit all three; if you know of one, I'd appreciate hearing about it. You can find more about these books by entering the title in the search window at http://www.amazon.com.  

Amazon.com

Science Under Scarcity: Principles and Practice for Agricultural Research Evaluation and Priority Setting
by Julian M. Alston, G.W. Norton (Editor), P.G. Pardey (Editor), J.W. Alston (Editor).  CABI Publishing, CAB International; (September 1998).  Resources for agricultural science are scarce across the world. Yet even as budgets shrink, agricultural research is expanding into important new areas, including environmental preservation, food safety, food quality, and rural development. This volume provides invaluable advice for evaluating research in agriculture and setting priorities.

Learning from Others: International Comparisons in Education (Science and Technology Education Library, 8)
by Diane Shorrocks-Taylor (Editor), Edgar W. Jenkins (Editor). Kluwer Academic Publishers; (May 2000). This book describes a number of international comparative studies of pupils' achievement, and examines the factors associated with successful teaching and learning and with school effectiveness. It describes the usefulness of such studies for policy makers, test designers, researchers and teachers, while offering a realistic and critical account of their limitations. Both large and small scale studies are considered, and particular attention is given to the contribution that international comparative research can make to raising the standards of work, especially in school science and mathematics, in different educational systems.

Global Science & Technology Information: A New Spin on Access
by Caroline S. Wagner, Allison Yezril. RAND; (September 1999).  This report on the current and future need for global technology assessment and science and technology information among government and industry decision makers and researchers was conducted by RAND for the National Science Foundation.  In the more than 30 years the U.S. federal government has tracked and monitored international science and technology information (ISTI), the global marketplace and the economy have changed dramatically. Capabilities in other nations have matured, resulting in highly competitive products. The RAND survey described here suggests that there is a need for timely, unbiased, global, and easily accessible ISTI, that government collection and analysis of that information are and will continue to be desirable.  [This RAND report was actually commissioned by NSF to assess our WTEC program.] 

Library of Congress

At the Library of Congress, you can search at: http://www.loc.gov  Here are a few interesting books in their collection.  (They also have a clearinghouse of S&T links at  http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/resources.html )

The metrics of science and technology
by Eliezer Geisler. Westport, Conn. : Quorum Books, 2000. xvi, 380 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Handbook of quantitative studies of science and technology
Edited by A.F.J. van Raan. Amsterdam ; New York : North-Holland ; New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Sole distributors for the U.S.A. and Canada, Elsevier Science Pub. Co., 1988. ix, 774 p. : ill. ; 25 cm

Indicators of Indian science and technology
By Ashok Jain ... [et al.]. New Delhi : Segment Books, c1996.xiii, 151 p. : ill. ; 22 x 27 cm.

Science and technology indicators in ASEAN.
Jakarta, Indonesia : ASEAN Secretariat, [1997] viii, 94 p. ; 30 cm.

Science and technology indicators in the CIS : data book
Editors, L. Gokhberg and L. Mindeli ; authors, T. Aksenova ... et al.]. Moscow : Centre for Science Research and Statistics, 1996. 229 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 30 cm.

Science and technology indicators / Republic of Indonesia .
[Jakarta] : Science and Technology for Industrial Development : Badan Pengkajian dan Penerapan Teknologi, 1993- v. : ill. ; 30 cm. 1st ed. (1993)-

Science indicators and the evaluation of scientific activity
Edited by Bluma C. Peritz. Technion City, Haifa, Israel : S. Neaman Institute Press, 1992. 84 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Toward a metric of science : the advent of science indicators
Edited by Yehuda Elkana ... [et al.]. New York : Wiley, c1978. xiv, 354 p. ; 24 cm.

Trends in Japan's industrial R&D activities : principal indicators and survey data.
[Tokyo?] : Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Industrial Science Technology policy and Environment Bureau, Technology Research and Information Office, c2001. 196 p.  There is a serial listing with a similar title.

Monitoring Australia's scientific research : partial indicators of Australia's research performance
By Linda Butler. Canberra, ACT : Australian Academy of Science, c2001. x, 173 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.

Health technology assessment and diffusion of health technology
by   Peter Bo Poulsen. Odense [Denmark] : Odense University Press ; Portland, OR : International Specialized Book Services [distributor], 1999. xiv, 285 p. : ill. ; 25 cm

Health care technology and its assessment : an international perspective
by H. David Banta and Bryan R. Luce. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1993. xxii, 352 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

International technology transfer : concepts, measures, and comparisons
Edited by Nathan Rosenberg and Claudio Frischtak. New York : Praeger, 1985.xxix, 329 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.

Science and technology advice for Congress
Edited by M. Granger Morgan and Jon Peha.  Washington, DC : Resources for the Future, 2003.

Technology assessment : using biometrics for border security
 United States General Accounting Office. Washington, D.C. (P.O. Box 37050, Washington 20013) : U.S. General Accounting Office, [2002] viii, 231 p. : ill., maps ; 28 cm.  [So GAO is taking up some of the slack from the demise of OTA.]

Technology assessment in the war on terrorism and homeland security : the role of OTA :
By Mottur, Ellis R.  A report prepared at the request of Ernest F. Hollings, Chairman, for the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, United States Senate. Washington : U.S. G.P.O. : For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., 2002. vii, 38 p. ; 24 cm.

Bioterrorism preparedness and response : use of information technologies and decision support systems
Prepared for Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Rockville, MD : U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, The Agency, [2002] 354 p.

* == * == *== * == * == * == * == * == * == * == * == *== * ==* == * == * == * == *== * == * == * ==
Copyright © 2003 ITRI,  Inc. Comments to rds@itri2.org please.

ITRI, Inc.
633A Main Street
Laurel, MD 20207
301-490-6835