Effectiveness Of Scientific Research Research Articles

Blinking brains, corporate spectacle, and the Atom Man

In 2011, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in the Netherlands presented the Beauty in Science (Schoonheid in de Wetenschap) exhibition, a show that aimed to foster interest in the natural sciences among the general public. It did so not by focusing on the economic or social effects of scientific research, but by emphasizing the “pleasing” aesthetic experience of looking at scientific images. Impressive pictures of cells, fungi, fetuses, and stars were framed as wonderful (by-)products of scientific missions, and as attractive signboards for an important quest to “make the invisible visible.”[2] Staged within the walls of the white cube, over seven hundred scientific images thus became purged from their individual histories of production and argumentation, and arranged to foreground the formal qualities of the visualizations, some of which could be viewed from lounge chairs, supplemented with ambient sound. The framework of the art museum was understood as the perfect context for the intended discursive emphasis on formal aesthetics. As such, Beauty in Science reminds us that, still today, art museums have not ceased to play a role in the presentation of a particular “image of science” to large audiences, and that the discursive space of the art museum offers opportunities for constructing, subverting, advertising, and obscuring narratives of science. While the exhibiting of images of science within the walls of art museums has a long history, this article turns to one particular historical exhibit in the Stedelijk Museum to offer insights in the way such presentations are embedded within historically situated ideas about the public understanding of science, exhibition strategies, and the role of art vis-à-vis science.

Страны БРИКС: направления научной кооперации

The article evaluates science sectors and effectiveness of scientific research in the countries forming the BRICS group, as well as the current state of scientific and technological cooperation among the group members. The science sectors of the countries under consideration differ markedly, while facing similar problems relating to government regulations and external environments. The differences exist in total expenditures on research and development (as a share of GNP), in the scope of governmental funding (large in Russia and India, but small in China), and in the distribution of allocations among various areas and types of R&D activities. China appears to have the most well-adjusted science sector among the BRICS members. It includes not only strong universities but also high-tech companies that invest actively into research and development. The overall impact (inferred from citation indexes) of fundamental and exploratory research performed in BRICS countries remains low. BRICS's scientists prefer to collaborate with their colleagues from the world-leading countries rather than with their fellows from BRICS. Yet, in contrast to the world trend, in all BRICS countries, except Russia, a share of internationally co-authored publications is now decreasing. BRICS members have more similar interests and priorities in technological development, including infrastructural and large technological projects, than in science. Currently, bilateral cooperation in technology prevails, while the projects involving all members of the group still remain at the stage of preliminary evaluation and discussion. Russia cooperates most closely with China and India, including joint projects in such high-priority directions as new materials, photonics, biomedical, space and information technologies. For Russia, cooperation in technological development appears to be of most interest because it can lead not only to introduction of new technologies but also help to create large Russian innovative companies. Development of successful multilateral cooperation in science and technology among the BRICS members is the key for this group, originally formed for geopolitical reasons, to evolve into an effective economic union.

Integration ideas in modern medicine

In modern conditions, the integration of scientific knowledge is becoming an integral part of the progress and effectiveness of scientific research. In medicine, the progress of integration is of particular importance. It develops according to the dialectical laws of evolution, reflecting its logical essence. The interdependence of the structural and functional components of the integral system of the organism lies in the fact that each component of the phenomenon acts as a condition for the other and is conditioned by it.

Methods and Criteria for Evaluating Scientific Activity

Higher quality and the increased effectiveness of scientific research play an important part in solving problems in the further development of the socialist economy. The "Basic Directions of the Development of the National Economy of the USSR between 1976 and 1980" - confirmed by the Twenty-fifth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union — note the need to improve the organization of the labor of scientific workers and to increase its effectiveness: "To increase the responsibility of scientific collectives and their supervisors for the level and quality of research and for the substantiation of recommendations made. To increase the motivation of collectives and personnel in scientific institutions to raise the effectiveness of their activity."

Coordination and Information

A radical improvement in the management of science and the organization of scientific research is very important to the successful resolution of the task of continually increasing the effectiveness of scientific research, a task posed by the Twenty-fourth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). In the area of organization, the coordination of scientific research work holds an important place. Improving coordination, among other things, in pedagogical science depends largely on regularizing and developing a functionally component part of pedagogical science - information. The indissoluble bond between these two elements determines the many-sidedness of coordination as well as the system of coordination.

Forecasting and the Effectiveness of Scientific Research at Higher-Education Institutions

The present development of the economics of higher education is devoted to the elaboration of the following problems: the formation of the aggregate of research methods; determination of rational size and structure of higher-education institutions; determination of the optimal size of teaching staffs; investigation of the effectiveness of various forms of education in higher -education institutions and their optimal proportions; investigation of the scientific potential of higher-education institutions, of norms for allocations, for the material and technological foundation of higher-education institutions and the system for the organization of science in higher education; the forecasting and planning of the training of specialists with higher education and increased effectiveness in their use; forecasting, planning, and the effectiveness of scientific research in higher-education institutions.

Scientific policy in Yugoslavia

The need for a well defined science policy is often asserted in countries undergoing economic and social development as a matter of great urgency, but in most of them this need has not yet in fact been fully recognised and appreciated. Even where efforts are made to create a science policy, however, it is much simpler to identify the problem than to find a satisfactory solution for it. But however difficult, there is no doubt that any country, regardless of the size of its population and of its present economic and social situation, must give a high priority to research and education in science if the aim of increasing the economic and social welfare of its people is to be achieved. Particular features of scientific policy, being strongly affected by particular situations, are bound to differ markedly from one country to the other; they will call for particular decisions relating to the quantity and quality of available economic, social and cultural resources. But although every country might have a policy which is particular to its situation and problems, it is important that there should be an international exchange of experience in the organisation and planning of research. The widened perspective which this exchange will make possible will yield a better insight into essential problems of science policy and the diverse ways in which they are dealt with in countries with different economic and social structures. Science policy is one of the novelties of the modern world and it is no wonder that most of the intricate interrelationships between science and economic growth or general social development still lie far beyond the frontier of our knowledge. Even in the most advanced countries much additional knowledge is needed to deal with the exact assessment of the effects of scientific research on economic and social progress, as well as with respect to every other aspect of scientific policy. Small and less developed countries, which suffer the disadvantages of scarcity of resources in scientific personnel and of a more intense competition of many urgent alternative uses for their rather limited financial resources, should in their own interest promote research into science policy and encourage a wider international exchange of information on this matter. In order to further the understanding of the problems of science policy in a small and less developed country, the author would like, in what follows, to portray the problems encountered in the effort to develop a policy for science in Yugoslavia.