Towards a Transfer Model of Scientific and Technological Knowledge: the Case of Mexico

This paper shows the development of a science-technological knowledge transfer model in Mexico, as a means to boost the limited relations between the scientific and industrial environments. The proposal is based on the analysis of eight organizations (research centers and firms) with varying degrees of skill in the practice of science-technological knowledge transfer, and carried out by the case study approach. The analysis highlights the synergistic use of the organizational and technological capabilities of each organization, as a means to identification of the knowledge transfer mechanisms best suited to enabling the establishment of cooperative processes, and achieve the R&D and innovation activities results.

Educational Activities to Help Transferring Knowledge in Nuclear: The Seminars of Spanish Young Generation in Nuclear (Jóvenes Nucleares)

From its creation, Spanish Young Generation in Nuclear (Jóvenes Nucleares, JJNN), a non-profit organization that depends on the Spanish Nuclear Society (SNE), has as an important scope to help transferring the knowledge between those generations in the way that it can be possible.

The Key Role Transferring Knowledge of Nuclear España, The Spanish Nuclear Society Magazine

The magazine of the Spanish Nuclear Society (SNE), “Nuclear España” is a scientific-technical publication with almost thirty years of uninterrupted edition and more than 300 numbers published. Their pages approach technical subjects related to the nuclear energy, as well as the activities developed by the SNE, especially in national and international meetings. The main part of the magazine is composed by articles written by known specialist of the energy industry. One of the top goals of the magazine is to help on transferring the knowledge from the generation that built the nuclear power plants in Spain and the new generation of professionals that have started its nuclear career in the last years. Each number is monographic, trying to cover as many aspects on an issue as it is possible, with collaborations from the companies, the research centers and universities that helps to have complementary points of view. On the other hand the articles help to deep in the issue´s topic, broadening the view of the readers about the nuclear field and helping to share knowledge across the industry. The news section of the Magazine picks up the actuality of the sector as a whole. The editorial section reflects the opinion of the SNE Governing Board and the Magazine Committee on the subjects of interest in this field. On the other hand, the monthly interview sets out the professional outstanding opinions. With a total of eleven numbers per year, three of them have a noticeable international character: the one dedicated to the operative experiences on the Spanish and European nuclear power plants, the monographic issue devoted tothe Annual Meeting of the SNE and the international issue, which covers the last activities of the Spanish industry in international projects. Both first are bilingual issues (Spanish-English), whereas the international edition is published completely in English. Besides its diffusion through all the members of the SNE, the Magazine is distributed, in the national scope, to companies and organisms related to the nuclear power, universities, research centers, representatives of the Central, Autonomic and Local Administrations, mass media and communication professionals. It is also sent to the utilities and research centers in Europe, United States, South America and Asia.

Knowledge Extraction for Question Titling.

This article describes the work performed over the database of questions belonging to the different opinion polls carried during the last 50 years in Spain. Approximately half of the questions are provided with a title while the other half remain untitled. The work and implemented techniques in order to automatically generate the titles for untitled questions are described. This process is performed over very short texts and generated titles are subject to strong stylistic conventions and should be fully grammatical pieces of Spanish

Knowledge pipeline in freight pipeline industry: competence- based model for open innovation

There is growing concern over the challenges for innovation in Freight Pipeline industry. Since the early works of Chesbrough a decade ago, we have learned a lot about the content, context and process of open innovation. However, much more research is needed in Freight Pipeline Industry. The reality is that few corporations have institutionalized open innovation practices in ways that have enabled substantial growth or industry leadership. Based on this, we pursue the following question: How does a firm’s integration into knowledge networks depend on its ability to manage knowledge? A competence-based model for freight pipeline organizations is analysed, this model should be understood by any organization in order to be successful in motivating professionals who carry out innovations and play a main role in collaborative knowledge creation processes. This paper aims to explain how can open innovation achieve its potential in most Freight Pipeline Industries.

Exploiting Structured Linked Data in Enterprise Knowledge Management Systems: An Idea Management Case Study

In parallel to the effort of creating Open Linked Data for the World Wide Web there is a number of projects aimed for developing the same technologies but in the context of their usage in closed environments such as private enterprises. In the paper, we present results of research on interlinking structured data for use in Idea Management Systems - a still rare breed of knowledge management systems dedicated to innovation management. In our study, we show the process of extending an ontology that initially covers only the Idea Management System structure towards the concept of linking with distributed enterprise data and public data using Semantic Web technologies. Furthermore we point out how the established links can help to solve the key problems of contemporary Idea Management Systems

Knowledge Management and Leadership in the Higher Education: A First Approach

Today, it is more and more important to develop competences in the learning process of the university students (that is to say, to acquire knowledge but also skills, abilities, attitudes and values). This is because professional practice requires that the future graduates design and market products, defend the interests of their clients, be introduced in the Administration or, even, in the Politics. Universities must form professionals that become social and opinion leaders, consultants, advisory, entrepreneurs and, in short, people with capacity to solve problems. This paper offers a tool to evaluate the application for the professor of different styles of management in the process of the student’s learning. Its main contribution consists on advancing toward the setting in practice of a model that overcomes the limitations of the traditional practices based on the masterful class, and that it has been applied in Portugal and Spain.

A review of the distribution of particulate trace elements in urban terrestrial environments and its application to considerations of risk

We review the evolution, state of the art and future lines of research on the sources, transport pathways, and sinks of particulate trace elements in urban terrestrial environments to include the atmosphere, soils, and street and indoor dusts. Such studies reveal reductions in the emissions of some elements of historical concern such as Pb, with interest consequently focusing on other toxic trace elements such as As, Cd, Hg, Zn, and Cu. While establishment of levels of these elements is important in assessing the potential impacts of human society on the urban environment, it is also necessary to apply this knowledge in conjunction with information on the toxicity of those trace elements and the degree of exposure of human receptors to an assessment of whether such contamination represents a real risk to the city’s inhabitants and therefore how this risk can be addressed.

A knowledge-based method for generating summaries of spatial movement in geographic areas

In this article we describe a method for automatically generating text summaries of data corresponding to traces of spatial movement in geographical areas. The method can help humans to understand large data streams, such as the amounts of GPS data recorded by a variety of sensors in mobile phones, cars, etc. We describe the knowledge representations we designed for our method and the main components of our method for generating the summaries: a discourse planner, an abstraction module and a text generator. We also present evaluation results that show the ability of our method to generate certain types of geospatial and temporal descriptions.

Reusable Knowledge-based Components for Building Software Applications: A Knowledge Modelling Approach

In computer science, different types of reusable components for building software applications were proposed as a direct consequence of the emergence of new software programming paradigms. The success of these components for building applications depends on factors such as the flexibility in their combination or the facility for their selection in centralised or distributed environments such as internet. In this article, we propose a general type of reusable component, called primitive of representation, inspired by a knowledge-based approach that can promote reusability. The proposal can be understood as a generalisation of existing partial solutions that is applicable to both software and knowledge engineering for the development of hybrid applications that integrate conventional and knowledge based techniques. The article presents the structure and use of the component and describes our recent experience in the development of real-world applications based on this approach.

Novel application for exergy and thermoeconomic analysis of processes simulated with Aspen Plus

A visual basic application for Microsoft® Excel 2007 has been developed as a helpful tool to perform mass, energy, exergy and thermoeconomic (MHBT) calculations during the systematic analysis of energy processes simulated with Aspen Plus®. The application reads an Excel workbook containing three sheets with the matter, work and heat streams results of an Aspen Plus® simulation. The required information from the Aspen Plus® simulation and the algorithm/calculations of the application are described and applied to an Air Separation Unit (ASU). This application helps the designer when MHBT analyses are performed, as it increases the knowledge of the process simulated with Aspen Plus®. It’s a valuable tool not only because of the calculations performed, but also because it creates a new Excel workbook where the results and the formulae written on the cells are fully visible and editable. There is free access to the application and it has no protection allowing changes and improvements to be done.

A Language to Formalize and to Operationalize Problem-solving Strategies of Structured Knowledge Models

This paper describes a proposal of a language called Link which has been designed to formalize and operationalize problem solving strategies. This language is used within a software environment called KSM (Knowledge Structure Manager) which helps developers in formulating and operationalizing structured knowledge models. The paper presents both its syntax and dynamics, and gives examples of well-known problem-solving strategies of reasoning formulated using this language.

Cooperation between expert knowledge and data mining discovered knowledge: Lessons learned

Expert systems are built from knowledge traditionally elicited from the human expert. It is precisely knowledge elicitation from the expert that is the bottleneck in expert system construction. On the other hand, a data mining system, which automatically extracts knowledge, needs expert guidance on the successive decisions to be made in each of the system phases. In this context, expert knowledge and data mining discovered knowledge can cooperate, maximizing their individual capabilities: data mining discovered knowledge can be used as a complementary source of knowledge for the expert system, whereas expert knowledge can be used to guide the data mining process. This article summarizes different examples of systems where there is cooperation between expert knowledge and data mining discovered knowledge and reports our experience of such cooperation gathered from a medical diagnosis project called Intelligent Interpretation of Isokinetics Data, which we developed. From that experience, a series of lessons were learned throughout project development. Some of these lessons are generally applicable and others pertain exclusively to certain project types.

Integration of design tools and knowledge capture into a CAD system: a case study

onceptual design phase is partially supported by product lifecycle management/computer-aided design (PLM/CAD) systems causing discontinuity of the design information flow: customer needs — functional requirements — key characteristics — design parameters (DPs) — geometric DPs. Aiming to address this issue, it is proposed a knowledge-based approach is proposed to integrate quality function deployment, failure mode and effects analysis, and axiomatic design into a commercial PLM/CAD system. A case study, main subject of this article, was carried out to validate the proposed process, to evaluate, by a pilot development, how the commercial PLM/CAD modules and application programming interface could support the information flow, and based on the pilot scheme results to propose a full development framework.

Impact of knowledge brokering on performance heterogeneity among business models

Purpose – The strategic management literature lacks a comprehensive explanation as to why seemingly similar business models in the same industry perform differently. This paper strives to explain this phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach – The model is conceptualized and accompanied by a case study on the airline industry to explain knowledge brokerage that creates value from the effective utilization of knowledge resources acquired from intra- and inter-firm environments. Findings – The model explains a cyclical view of business model flexibility in which the knowledge-based resource accumulation of the business model is spread across the intra- and inter-firm environments. Knowledge brokerage strategies from the inter- and intra-firm environments result in improved performance of the business model. The flexibility that the business model acquires is determined by how efficiently resource accumulation is aligned with its external environment. Originality/value – The paper effectively integrates the concepts of knowledge brokerage and business models from a resource accumulation-based view and simultaneously arrives at the performance heterogeneity of seemingly similar business models within the same industry. It has performance implications for firms that start out without any distinct resources of their own, or that use an imitated business model, to attain better performance through business model evolution aligned with successful knowledge brokerage strategies. It adds to the resource accumulation literature by explaining how resources can be effectively acquired to create value.