Category Archives: Research Examples

Aesthetics in the age of digital humanities

Network analysis, Research Examples, Research profiling, Research Type, Science mapping, VOSViewer

One of the most difficult but yet unavoidable tasks for every academic field is to define its own nature and demarcate its area. This article addresses the question of how current computational text-mining approaches can be used as tools for clarifying what aesthetics is when such approaches are combined with philosophical analyses of the field. We suggest that conjoining the two points of view leads to a fuller picture than excluding one or the other, and that such a picture is useful for the self-understanding of the discipline. Our analysis suggests that text-mining tools can find sources, relations, and trends in a new way, but it also reveals that the databases that such tools use are presently seriously limited. However, computational approaches that are still in their infancy in aesthetics will most likely gradually affect our understanding about the ontological status of the discipline and its instantiations.

Open Access article…. for full-text, click http://www.aestheticsandculture.net/index.php/jac/article/view/30072

Author(s): Ossi Naukkarinen and Johanna Bragge
Organization: Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture; Aalto University School of Economics
Source: Journal of Aesthetics and Culture
Year: 2016

An informatics-based analysis of developments to date and prospects for the application of microalgae in the biological sequestration of industrial flue gas

Patents, Research Examples, Research profiling, Research Type, S&T lit

The excessive emission of flue gas contributes to air pollution, abnormal climate change, global warming, and sea level rises associated with glacial melting. With the ability to utilize NOx as a nitrogen source and to convert solar energy into chemical energy via CO2 fixation, microalgae can potentially reduce air pollution and relax global warming, while also enhancing biomass and biofuel production as well as the production of high-value-added products. This informatics-based review analyzes the trends in the related literature and in patent activity to draw conclusions and to offer a prospective view on the developments of microalgae for industrial flue gas biosequestration. It is revealed that in recent years, microalgal research for industrial flue gas biosequestration has started to attract increasing attention and has now developed into a hot research topic, although it is still at a relatively early stage, and needs more financial and policy support in order to better understand microalgae and to develop an economically viable process. In comparison with onsite microalgal CO2 capture, microalgae-based biological DeNOx appears to be a more realistic and attractive alternative that could be applied to NOx treatment.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00253-015-7277-7

Author(s): Xi Zhu, Junfeng Rong, Hui Chen, Chenliu He, Wensheng Hu, Qiang Wang
Organization(s): Chinese Academy of Sciences, SINOPEC Research Institute of Petroleum Processing, Hubei University of Technology
Source: Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology
Year: 2016

Interdisciplinary topics of information science: a study based on the terms interdisciplinarity index series

Interdisciplinarity, Research Examples

Interdisciplinarity is increasingly widespread. Many technological frontiers and hotspots are emerging in the intersecting research areas. The existing measurement indexes of interdisciplinarity are mostly based on the co-occurrence of authors, institutions, or references, and most focus on the tendency to interdisciplinarity. This paper introduces a new measurement index entitled topic terms interdisciplinarity (TI) for interdisciplinarity topic mining. Taking Information Science & Library Science (LIS) as a case study, this paper identifies interdisciplinary topics by calculating TI values together with Bet values, term frequency values, and others, and analyzes the evolution of interdisciplinary sciences based on social network analysis and time series analysis. It was found that the intersections of external disciplines and pivots of internal topics for LIS can be identified by the utilization of TI value and Bet values. The research has shown that the TI value can identify interdisciplinary topic terms well, and it will be an efficient indicator for interdisciplinary analysis by being complementary to other methods.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-015-1792-2

Author(s): Haiyun Xu , Ting Guo, Zenghui Yue, Lijie Ru, Shu Fang
Organization(s): Chengdu Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jining Medical University
Source: Scientometrics
Year: 2016

Navigating the innovation trajectories of technology by combining specialization score analyses for publications and patents: graphene and nano-enabled drug delivery

Future-oriented technology analysis, Patents, Research Examples, S&T lit, ,

In this study, we combine the specialization scores for publications and patents (the latter is a new indicator of cross-disciplinary engagement) to achieve more comprehensive navigation of the innovation trajectory of a technology. The patent specialization score draws upon counterpart research publication indicator concepts to measure patent diversity. Two nano-based technologies—Nano-enabled drug delivery (NEDD) and Graphene—provide contrasting explorations of the behavior of this indicator, alongside research publication indicators. Results show distinctive patterns of the two technologies and for the respective publication and patent indicators. NEDD research, as evidenced by publication and citation patterns, engages highly diverse research fields. In contrast, NEDD development, as reflected in patent International Patent Classifications (IPCs), concentrates on relatively closely associated fields. Graphene presents the opposite picture, with closely linked disciplines contributing to research, but much more diverse fields of application for its patents. We suggest that analyzing the field diversity of research publications and patents together, employing both specialization scores, can offer fruitful insights into innovation trajectories. Such information can contribute to technology and innovation management and policy for such emerging technologies.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11192-015-1826-9

Author(s): Seokbeom Kwon, Alan Porter, Jan Youtie
Organization(s): Georgia Institute of Technology
Source: Scientometrics
Year: 2016

Identification of technology development trends based on subject-action-object analysis: The case of dye-sensitized solar cells

Future-oriented technology analysis, Research Examples,

Identification of technology development trends is essential for supporting decision makers in forecasting and identifying related innovation activities and industrial growth. Different from the traditional technology development trends based on keyword-based quantitative methods, which usually predict trends by finding key technologies without showing how to develop them, our method allows the identification of future direction and industry goal for the technology domain and shows detailed paths for achieving them. Thus, our method has constructed technology roadmapping (TRM) with seven layers (material, technology, influencing factor, component, product, goal, and future direction) on the basis of subject–action–object analysis. The detailed paths for developing this as a trend can be shown by the interaction among these TRM elements. In addition, the method also sets three indicators as a discriminating standard to find key players that can support the trend by engaging technological innovation scenarios. The case of a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) is exemplified to illustrate the detailed procedure of our method. The results reveal the development trends in the field of DSSCs, the detailed paths to achieve them, and key countries that support them.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004016251500133X

Author(s):  Xuefeng Wang, Pengjun Qiu, Donghua Zhu, Liliana Mitkova, Ming Lei, Alan L. Porter
Organization(s): Beijing Institute of Technology, Georgia Tech
Source: Technological Forecasting and Social Change
Year: 2015

Nano-enabled drug delivery systems for brain cancer and Alzheimer’s disease: research patterns and opportunities

Literature Based Discovery, Research Examples, Research profiling,

“Tech mining” applies bibliometric and text analytic methods to scientific literature of a target field. In this study, we compare the evolution of nano-enabled drug delivery (NEDD) systems for two different applications – viz., brain cancer (BC) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) – using this approach. In this process, we derive research intelligence from papers indexed in MEDLINE. Review by domain specialists helps understand the macro-level disease problems and pathologies to identify commonalities and differences between BC and AD. Results provide a fresh perspective on the developmental pathways for NEDD approaches that have been used in the treatment of BC and AD. Results also point toward finding future solutions to drug delivery issues that are critical to medical practitioners and pharmaceutical scientists addressing the brain.

FROM THE CLINICAL EDITOR: Drug delivery to brain cells has been very challenging due to the presence of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Suitable and effective nano-enabled drug delivery (NEDD) system is urgently needed. In this study, the authors utilized “tech-mining” tools to describe and compare various choices of delivery system available for the diagnosis, as well as treatment, of brain cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26115642

Author(s): Jing Ma, Alan Porter, TM Aminabhavi, Donghua Zhu
Organization(s): Beijing Institute of Technology, Georgi
Source: Nanomedicine
Year: 2015

Map of science with topic modeling: Comparison of unsupervised learning and human-assigned subject classification

Research Examples, Science mapping,

The delineation of coordinates is fundamental for the cartography of science, and accurate and credible classification of scientific knowledge presents a persistent challenge in this regard. We present a map of Finnish science based on unsupervised-learning classification, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this approach vis-à-vis those generated by human reasoning. We conclude that from theoretical and practical perspectives there exist several challenges for human reasoning-based classification frameworks of scientific knowledge, as they typically try to fit new-to-the-world knowledge into historical models of scientific knowledge, and cannot easily be deployed for new large-scale data sets. Automated classification schemes, in contrast, generate classification models only from the available text corpus, thereby identifying credibly novel bodies of knowledge. They also lend themselves to versatile large-scale data analysis, and enable a range of Big Data possibilities. However, we also argue that it is neither possible nor fruitful to declare one or another method a superior approach in terms of realism to classify scientific knowledge, and we believe that the merits of each approach are dependent on the practical objectives of analysis.

Full-text available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.23596/full

Author(s): Arho Suominen and Hannes Toivanen
Organization(s): VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd
Source: Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology
Year: 2015

Technology Mining of Gulf Coast Intellectual Assets: Discovering Regional Assets for Economic Development

CTI, Research Examples, Research Type, ST&I policy, Strategic planning

The Gulf Coast is facing significant challenges in rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. Post disaster perceptions of blight and crime have severely harmed the bread-and-butter industry of the area: tourism. As a result, the region must take inventory of its intellectual assets in order to determine new areas for economic development. This chapter first discusses the importance of absorptive capacity in economic development. It then presents from a technology mining study conducted on the intellectual assets (publications and patents) along what is known as the I-10 Corridor in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. These results reveal indicators of the economic development struggle of the region. More importantly, they reveal the technology areas, largely economically untapped, where the region exhibits strong research capabilities and educational focus, indicating high levels of absorptive capacity and thus, are areas prime for economic development. In addition, the paper demonstrates how technology mining can be used as a tool to aid in economic development decision-making.

http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/6716

Author(s): Cherie Courseault Trumbach, Sandra Hartman and Olof Lundberg
Organization(s): University of New Orleans
Source: Management of Technology Innovation and Value Creation: Selected Papers from the 16th International Conference on Management of Technology; World Scientific
Year: 2015

Nano/micro-electro mechanical systems: a patent view

Citation analysis, CTI, Patents, Research Examples, Research profiling, Research Type, Strategic planning

Combining both bibliometrics and citation network analysis, this research evaluates the global development of micro-electro mechanical systems (MEMS) research based on the Derwent Innovations Index database. We found that worldwide, the growth trajectory of MEMS patents demonstrates an approximate S shape, with United States, Japan, China, and Korea leading the global MEMS race. Evidenced by Derwent class codes, the technology structure of global MEMS patents remains steady over time. Yet there does exist a national competitiveness component among the top country players. The latecomer China has become the second most prolific country filing MEMS patents, but its patent quality still lags behind the global average.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11051-015-3273-1

Author(s): Guangyuan Hu and Weishu Liu
Organization(s): Shanghai University of Finance and Economics,Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Source: Journal of Nanoparticle Research
Year: 2015

Corporate philanthropy and community involvement. Analysing companies from France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain

Research Examples, ST&I indicators

This paper analyses the philanthropic behaviour of companies listed on four stock markets: the IBEX 35 (Spain), CAC-40 (France), DAX-30 (Germany) and AEX-25 (Netherlands). A bibliometric method was used to obtain keywords related to corporate philanthropy in literature, while a qualitative content analysis was undertaken to obtain specific philanthropy-related words from company annual reports. 19 groups of words (codes) were defined, indicating the terms used by companies to express corporate philanthropy and community involvement, the forms they use to express such involvement, and the formulas chosen to channel their aid. The word analysis also gave information about the stakeholders that companies take into account when they become involved in community issues. Different hypotheses were stated to determine whether the use of words was related to country, firm size (revenues and employees) or industry. The use of probit regression also allowed us to obtain combinations of these variables that explained the probability of using every term together but not separately. The results indicated that the variables which most affected philanthropic codes were country and revenues. Conversely, the variables which least influenced philanthropic codes were number of employees and industry.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11135-015-0287-9

Author(s): Blanca de-Miguel-Molina , Vicente Chirivella-González, and Beatriz García-Ortega
Organization: Universitat Politècnica de València
Source: Quality & Quantity
Year: 2015