This book re-examines the rationale for public policy, concluding that the prevailing 'public knowledge' model is evolving towards a networked or distributed model of knowledge production and use in which public and private institutions play complementary roles. It provides a set of tools and models to assess the impact of the new network model of funding and governance, and argues that governments need to adapt their funding and administrative priorities and procedures to support the emergence and healthy growth of research networks. The book goes on to explain that interdependencies and complementarities in the production and distribution of knowledge require a new and more contextual, flexible and complex approach to government funding, monitoring and assessment. The chapters in this book issue a series of challenges to the next generation of science and technology policy. The need for new systems of governance in science and innovation make a single, all encompassing rationale for public funding unnecessary and irrelevant. The new policy questions that matter concern the means and mechanisms for intervention - the use of policy to harness, support and expand the interaction and dynamism of research networks composed of public and private actors.

What is the influence of software systems on an organization's ability to create knowledge, learn, adapt to change and innovate? While organization, management and innovation theory has primarily focused on the impact of software on measures such as process efficiency and speed, this book argues that integrated systems and digital technologies offer even more fundamental implications for the innovating firm. A series of detailed case studies provides the foundations for a deeper theoretical and empirical understanding of the nature and dynamics of software, knowledge, organization and their complex interactions. The author demonstrates how software induces the radical reconfiguration of organizational knowledge and learning dynamics, including an organization's ability to create, store, transfer and integrate knowledge across heterogeneous organizational boundaries. The book provides a unique perspective on what organizations know and how they use that knowledge to build, sustain and renew their capabilities. This includes understanding how information systems can be designed or implemented in such a way as to favour innovation and adaptation, and to prevent unfavourable patterns of behaviour. The book represents an in-depth and systematic attempt to characterize the fundamental influence of software over the processes that underpin an organization's ability to create and manage knowledge. Scholars and students interested in innovation, technological change and information technology, and managers in software and other hi-tech industries will find this an insightful and highly rewarding study.

The book is a review of some basics notions in optics. The first chapter starts with a review of Newton's laws and planetary motion and some related equations. The second chapter deals with the planet earth's atmosphere; the third is an introduction to remote sensing. Chapter 4 and 5 introduce a background on Maxwell's laws in electromagnetism and light polarization. Some other topics of interest have been also developed. Among these topics are the light interaction with spherical surfaces and related equations, light Interference, linear polarization by anisotropy, Fourier transform spectroscopy, and an introduction to Lidar.

Multinational Enterprises, Innovative Strategies and Systems of Innovation explores the extent to which multinational enterprises (MNEs) are decentralising the creation of new technological capabilities to various different countries. The book contends that technological strategies and innovation activities undertaken by firms are a critical part of the increasing internationalisation of economic activity, and that MNEs are the main actors for these changes. It goes on to explain that MNEs must now effectively manage new technological assets in order to cope with extensive changes in the nature of international competition. Experts from a network of thirteen European countries attempt to promote a better understanding of tendencies towards a new international dynamic of technology creation and diffusion. The contributors to the book then explore the factors determining the process of decentralisation and the resulting consequences for national systems of innovation. This thorough and easily accessible analysis of new trends in the technological strategies of MNEs and their implications for national systems of innovation will be of enormous interest to those specialising in the internationalisation of the economy or the economic analysis of technical change. In addition, the book will provide an excellent source of background information for policymakers when drafting new policies, and for corporate decision-making in the private sector.

Korea has been at the centre of intense debate concerning the role of government in economic development. Taking an in-depth approach, this book analyses the path of Korea's industrial technology development. In contrast to many previous studies on Korea, the author argues that the role of foreign multinational enterprises has been significant while the government's was surprisingly limited in scope. The author addresses three main questions: * How was Korea able to develop so effectively despite the low inflow of foreign technologies and capital? * What is the role of multinational enterprises in 'teaching' technology to the firms from developing countries? * What has been the influence of public policy on Korea's technology development? The author demonstrates that the key to the Korean electronics industry's spectacular growth has been through its participation in and learning from an inter-firm arrangement called 'original equipment manufacturing' (OEM) arrangement, and a number of firm-level case studies support this argument. This book will be of special interest to scholars of industrial and development economics, innovation and Asian studies. It will also be of use to policymakers responsible for industrial policy development.

The progress of civilization can be, in part, attributed to their ability to employ metallurgy. This book is an introduction to multiple facets of physical metallurgy, materials science, and engineering. As all metals are crystalline in structure, it focuses attention on these structures and how the formation of these crystals are responsible for certain aspects of the material's chemical and physical behaviour. Concepts in Physical Metallurgy also discusses the mechanical properties of metals, the theory of alloys, and physical metallurgy of ferrous and non-ferrous alloys.

As poets continue to use digital media technology, functionalities of computing extend aesthetic possibilities in documents focusing attention on crafting verbal content. Utility of these machines and tools enables multiple types of compounded articulation (combinations of verbal, visual, animated, and interactive elements). Building larger public awareness of the mechanics of digital poetry, New Directions in Digital Poetry aspires to influence the formation of writing with media in literary society of the future, specifically as a record of a particular technological era. Emerging from these studies is that digital poetry as a WWW-based, networked form happens 'in stages', 'on stages'. Few works require singular responses from viewers - both composition of works and viewing them are processes involving multiple steps and visual scenarios. For anyone interested in the interplay of poetry and technology, this book provides an informed look at digital poetry in its contemporary state. In the process of performing close readings, Funkhouser makes suggestions and provides methods for viewing works, for audiences perhaps unfamiliar with mechanical and semiotic conventions being used.

The internet has changed the way we communicate and so changed society and culture. Internet, Society, and Culture offers an understanding of this change by examining two case studies of pre and post internet communication. The first case study is of letters sent to and from Australia in 1835-1858 and the second is a study of online gaming. In both case studies, the focus is on the ways communication is created. The result is the definition of two types of communication that are lived simultaneously in the twenty-first century. One type of communication is from before the internet and relies on the body having touched and created a message-for example, by attaching signature-to stabilise the nature of sender, message and receiver. Internet-dependant communication is different because no identity-marker can be trusted on the internet and so individuals' styles of communicating are used to stabilise the transmission of messages. Being after the internet means having to live these two contradictory forms of communication. >