Possibility spaces for citizen-driven innovations Classification and functions of urban makerspaces in Bengaluru, India

The NSFC is the largest government funding agency in China, with the primary aim to fund and manage basic research. The agency is made up of seven scientific departments, four bureaus, one general office, and three associated units. The scientific departments are the decision-making units responsible for funding recommendations and management of funded projects. Selection of research projects is an important and recurring activity in many organizations such as government research funding agencies. Current method of grouping proposals are based on manual matching of similar research discipline areas but it fails to be accurate. Text clustering methods those are not having semantic approach provide less accuracy. A novel ontology based text mining approach to cluster proposals is proposed. Research project selection is an important task for government and private research funding agencies. When a large number of research proposals are received, it is common to group them according to their similarities in research disciplines. The grouped proposals are then assigned to the appropriate experts for peer review. The review results are collected, and the proposals are then ranked based on the aggregation of the experts' review results.

Research project selection is an important task for government and private research funding agencies. When a large number of research proposals are received, it is common to group them according to their similarities in research disciplines. The grouped proposals are then assigned to the appropriate experts for peer review. Current methods for grouping proposals are based on manual matching of similar research discipline areas and/or keywords. However, the exact research discipline areas of the proposals cannot often be accurately designated by the applicants due to their subjective views and possible misinterpretations. Therefore, rich information in the proposals' full text can be used effectively. Text-mining methods have been proposed to solve the problem by automatically classifying text documents, mainly in English. However, these methods have limitations when dealing with non-English language texts, e.g., Chinese research proposals. This paper presents a novel ontology-based text-mining approach to cluster research proposals based on their similarities in research areas. The method is efficient and effective for clustering research proposals with both English and Chinese texts. The method also includes an optimization model that considers applicants' characteristics for balancing proposals by geographical regions. The proposed method is tested and validated based on the selection process at the National Natural Science Foundation of China. The results can also be used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of research project selection processes in other government and private research funding agencies.

Cancer is a group of diseases with major societal impact and accounts for approximately 55 percent of mortality in India. The Indian population is increasing in size and gradually ageing. As a result, the number of people diagnosed with and dying of cancer are increasing. Government funding agencies such as the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) has a clear definitive role in the management and control of cancer. Through Research and Development programs and multi-institutional networking programs, DBT has provided resources to individual investigators and to institutions, to carry out basic, applied, translational and clinical research and to develop new methods to prevent and treat disease and to conduct research especially in challenging areas pertaining to different types of cancer. This article summarizes the funding provided by DBT for different cancer research programs.

The general objective of the "Rehabilitation Medicine Summit: Building Research Capacity" was to advance and promote research in medical rehabilitation by making recommendations to expand research capacity. The 5 elements of research capacity that guided the discussions were (1) researchers; (2) research culture, environment, and infrastructure; (3) funding; (4) partnerships; and (5) metrics. The 100 participants included representatives of professional organizations, consumer groups, academic departments, researchers, governmental funding agencies, and the private sector. The small group discussions and plenary sessions generated an array of problems, possible solutions, and recommended actions. A post-Summit, multiorganizational initiative is called to pursue the agendas outlined in this article.

This report is based on the proceedings from the Inhalational Lung Injury Workshop jointly sponsored by the American Thoracic Society (ATS) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Countermeasures Against Chemical Threats (CounterACT) program on May 21, 2013, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The CounterACT program facilitates research leading to the development of new and improved medical countermeasures for chemical threat agents. The workshop was initiated by the Terrorism and Inhalational Disasters Section of the Environmental, Occupational, and Population Health Assembly of the ATS. Participants included both domestic and international experts in the field, as well as representatives from U.S. governmental funding agencies. The meeting objectives were to (1) provide a forum to review the evidence supporting current standard medical therapies, (2) present updates on our understanding of the epidemiology and underlying pathophysiology of inhalational lung injuries, (3) discuss innovative investigative approaches to further delineating mechanisms of lung injury and identifying new specific therapeutic targets, (4) present promising novel medical countermeasures, (5) facilitate collaborative research efforts, and (6) identify challenges and future directions in the ongoing development, manufacture, and distribution of effective and specific medical countermeasures. Specific inhalational toxins discussed included irritants/pulmonary toxicants (chlorine gas, bromine, and phosgene), vesicants (sulfur mustard), chemical asphyxiants (cyanide), particulates (World Trade Center dust), and respirable nerve agents.

Excuse me? That has to be a misprint! Even with super-hyperinflation, how is it possible that a thought that used to cost a penny just a few years ago now is supposed to cost a billion dollars?

Despite significant advances in contraceptive options for women over the last 50 yr, world population continues to grow rapidly. Scientists and activists alike point to the devastating environmental impacts that population pressures have caused, including global warming from the developed world and hunger and disease in less developed areas. Moreover, almost half of all pregnancies are still unwanted or unplanned. Clearly, there is a need for expanded, reversible, contraceptive options. Multicultural surveys demonstrate the willingness of men to participate in contraception and their female partners to trust them to do so. Notwithstanding their paucity of options, male methods including vasectomy and condoms account for almost one third of contraceptive use in the United States and other countries. Recent international clinical research efforts have demonstrated high efficacy rates (90-95%) for hormonally based male contraceptives. Current barriers to expanded use include limited delivery methods and perceived regulatory obstacles, which stymie introduction to the marketplace. However, advances in oral and injectable androgen delivery are cause for optimism that these hurdles may be overcome. Nonhormonal methods, such as compounds that target sperm motility, are attractive in their theoretical promise of specificity for the reproductive tract. Gene and protein array technologies continue to identify potential targets for this approach. Such nonhormonal agents will likely reach clinical trials in the near future. Great strides have been made in understanding male reproductive physiology; the combined efforts of scientists, clinicians, industry and governmental funding agencies could make an effective, reversible, male contraceptive an option for family planning over the next decade.

The development and dissemination of culturally relevant health care information has traditionally taken a "top-down" approach. Governmental funding agencies and research institutions have too often dictated the importance and focus of health-related research and information dissemination. In addition, the digital divide has affected rural communities in such a way that their members often do not possess the knowledge or experience necessary to use technological resources. And, even when they do, their skills may be limited, adequate only for implementing applications and programs designed by others who live and work outside of these communities. This need became the driving force in the creation of the Native Telehealth Outreach and Technical Assistance Program. The goal of the program is to equip Native community members, at both the lay and professional levels, with the means to use technology to address tribal health care needs. The transfer of relevant technical knowledge and skills enables participants to develop projects which enhance the community-wide dissemination of health care information. Nine community health advocates and professionals participated in the initial cohort. Eight of the participants successfully developed multimedia-based projects including Web sites, interactive CD-ROMs, and video focusing on a variety of health concerns. At the conclusion of the 18-month program period, projects were disseminated throughout rural communities. The NTOTAP staff continues to evaluate the use of these projects and their benefits within the rural communities.

In this issue of Addiction, Hughes and colleagues provide an outline of the reasons they accept tobacco industry funding 1. They express confidence in regulatory agencies in ensuring accountability and transparency and highlight the need to use all resources available, even from the tobacco industry itself, for finding a solution to the global public health disaster that is tobacco smoking. As Hughes et al. point out, tobacco companies seeking to make money from reduced harm products is not, in itself, a menace to public health, but tampering with research results or policy to ensure a product appears more effective and safe than it may be is a problem. Internationally, there are widespread agreements regarding the use of tobacco industry funds in research. Both the UN General Assembly and the World Health Organization (WHO) have warned of significant conflict of interest between the tobacco industry and public health 2, 3, and there is good reason for this position. The tobacco industry has been found to interfere with health science using a variety of methods such as suppressing unfavourable results and funding ‘distraction’ research on causes of disease other than smoking 4, 5. Industry interference can also extend beyond research and into science policy development. It is disconcerting that in an examination of the recent Brussels Declaration on Ethics and Principles for Science and Society Policy-making, the tobacco industry was singled out as a major player building industry coalitions to attempt to influence science policy in their favour 6. Despite the risks involved in industry funding of health research, many national and international research organizations acknowledge that engagement with industry is important. In some countries, funding partnerships are encouraged to increase the likelihood that the research is translated by end-users and the community benefits from the research, but how do researchers engage with industry and avoid or minimize interference or bias? In these instances, full disclosure of interests are an important requirement for journals and scientific meetings 7, 8. However, more is required to safeguard the independence and integrity of health research and researchers. Bauld 8 provides some guidance on how to manage partnerships, and argues that industry funding or engagement may be appropriate during development phases but not evaluations of products, and that structured risk analysis be undertaken by researchers and government. Funder interference with research is not restricted to private industry funding, and a survey of addiction science researchers found that interference can also come from government funding agencies 9. However, to date the tobacco industry have failed to demonstrate any behaviour that is likely to build trust with public health. This may be changing, as Hughes et al. point out, and the tobacco industry may be genuinely seeking a reduced harm product as a way to keep their business going; however, researchers should go into such arrangements with eyes wide open. None.

A discussion of the current organization and Central Team functions will be given. A possible project organization at the stage where governance by government funding agencies becomes needed is given. Goals for the first year of the Global Design Effort will be presented together with a technically limited time line.

How can we speed up both basic and translational scientific research without major new financial investment? One way is to speed up the process by which good proposals are funded. Another is to do a better job of identifying research that is potentially transformative. There are internal institutional barriers as well as sluggish and conservative policies in place in many government funding agencies, universities, and private firms, policies that are risk-averse and characterized by short-term accounting. While perhaps calling for transformational research, their selection procedures promote normal basic research and translational research instead. This chapter proposes that progress can be made by giving increased weight to heuristic appraisal—appraisal of the future promise of proposed research—and correspondingly less weight to confirmational appraisal—the logical and probabilistic relations between theories and data sets already on the table. Emphasis on the latter, as studied by traditional confirmation theory, is a legacy of logical positivism. Adapting a form of scenario planning from the business community is one positive suggestion.

Readmission after psychiatric hospitalization is widely used as a quality of care indicator by government funding agencies, policy-makers, and hospitals deciding on clinical priorities. Readmission rates are calculated accurately to allow these varied groups to correctly translate the knowledge into appropriate, tangible outcomes. We aimed to assess how well hospital readmission rates, calculated using only readmissions to the discharging institution, can approximate actual readmission rates. We used administrative data sources to identify patients with a mental health discharge in the province of Ontario (2008-2011). We identified mental health readmissions within 30 and 90 days of discharge occurring to the hospital from which the patient was discharged (within-hospital readmissions), and compared readmission rates using only within-hospital admissions with actual readmission rates. The percentage of readmissions occurring to the discharging institution ranged from 39% to 89% (median 73%) and from 37% to 86% (median 70%) for 30- and 90-day readmissions, respectively. Using only within-hospital readmissions to rank hospitals by their readmission rates, only 56% of hospitals for 30-day readmissions and 50% for 90-day readmissions were ranked in the same quartile as when actual readmission rates were used. These findings highlight the importance of measuring psychiatric readmissions at the system level, particularly for hospitals with lower discharge volumes. As well, the high likelihood that multiple hospitals are involved in the hospital-based care of people who require readmission requires consideration at clinical and policy levels.

Patterns of nanotechnology innovation and governance within a metropolitan area

Many universities, research institutions, and government funding agencies are continuously attempting to grade or rank journals for their academic value. Such grading is needed both for funding and resource allocation purposes and for personnel decisions. In grading journals, objective information, such as the impact factors (the most commonly used journal citation information provided by Journal Citation Reports) and/or subjective information, such as experts' judgments about the journals, are used. Grading of journals is typically done by a committee. Most of the existing approaches only consider either the subjective or the objective information. While such approaches work in many cases, they may not work in many others. Complaints about politics, inconsistencies and unfairness are common in many situations. This paper presents a methodology that integrates both types of information, providing a comprehensive method for assessing the quality of journals. The method employs a fuzzy set approach that also deals with the imprecise and missing information frequently inherited in the evaluation process. The proposed evaluation model is implemented in a Web-based system. A pilot evaluation study indicated that participants clearly preferred the system and its major features.

Chronic disease programs in state public health agencies across the United States are increasingly taking action to integrate activities across single-disease program lines. The perceived benefits of program integration are the motivating force behind these actions, but there is little documentation about how to integrate programs, what the benefits are to program integration, and what barriers exist. Public health agencies recognize benefits from chronic disease program integration because of the potential for efficient use of staff, funds, and surveillance and intervention efforts. Recent reductions in state and federal funding for chronic disease prevention have increased the need for partnerships to make achievement of program objectives possible, but there are constraints imposed by 1) funding that is specific to a disease or an organization (i.e., categorical) and may be unavailable to integrated programs; 2) barriers in the way agencies and organizations operate; and 3) program accountability that is not flexible enough to enable chronic disease integration. Despite these barriers, public health organizations see value in program integration, and there is a growing determination among public health professionals and policy makers to coordinate and link chronic disease public health programs. Salinsky and Gursky discuss the role of public health in biodefense (1) and define program integration as strategic alignment of resources for meaningful change. Another definition of program integration is state of combination or the process of combining into completeness and harmony (2). Integration of chronic disease programs and the linking of resources can result in efficiency and improved communication and coordination among clients, providers, and government funding agencies (3). This essay describes guiding principles for successful chronic disease program integration initiatives and makes specific recommendations for chronic disease programs within state health agencies (SHAs); the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors (NACDD); and the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).