Opportunities For Future Innovation Research Articles

Opportunities for membrane technology in controlled environment agriculture

Controlled environment agriculture has the potential to enhance agriculture sustainability, a United Nations sustainable development goal. Enclosed agricultural facilities can be used in locations that cannot support field agriculture while reducing water usage and increasing productivity relative to open field agriculture. The primary challenges with operation arise from energy consumption to maintain the proper growth conditions. Membrane processes can reduce energy consumption by controlling temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide concentration. Membrane processes also can minimize water consumption by enabling the use of non-conventional water resources and reducing wastewater production. The literature describing these applications is reviewed and opportunities for future innovation are discussed.

Enhanced Performance of Nickel–Cobalt Oxides as Selective Coatings for Flat-Plate Solar Thermal Collector Applications

Solar thermal collectors represent a practical option to capture energy from the sun, providing low-cost domestic and industrial heating and decreasing the dependency on fossil fuels. Spinel-type metal oxides show interesting physicochemical properties and so can be used as active materials for converting solar energy to electrical, chemical, and heat energy. We report the synthesis and characterization of nickel–cobalt mixed metal oxides used as an active phase in selective paints for solar absorber coatings applied to a domestic flat collector. The nickel–cobalt mixed oxides crystallized in the cubic phase related to the spinel structure, exhibiting good thermal stability and reproducibility. These mixed oxides presented oxidation states (2+ and 3+) for both nickel and cobalt. The coatings fabricated from the selective paints based on nickel–cobalt mixed oxides showed a solar absorptance value of 94%, while for the commercial paint Solkote®, the value was 93%. A representative coating based on the NiCo2O4 composition was evaluated for the first time in a domestic-type flat solar collector for water heating under real operating conditions, achieving an outstanding performance that competes with that of commercial collectors. The potential application of nickel–cobalt mixed oxides in solar collectors opens up new opportunities for future innovations and developments in functional absorber coatings.

An Intelligence Architecture for Grounded Language Communication with Field Robots

For humans and robots to collaborate effectively as teammates in unstructured environments, robots must be able to construct semantically rich models of the environment, communicate efficiently with teammates, and perform sequences of tasks robustly with minimal human intervention, as direct human guidance may be infrequent and/or intermittent. Contemporary architectures for human-robot interaction often rely on engineered human-interface devices or structured languages that require extensive prior training and inherently limit the kinds of information that humans and robots can communicate. Natural language, particularly when situated with a visual representation of the robot’s environment, allows humans and robots to exchange information about abstract goals, specific actions, and/or properties of the environment quickly and effectively. In addition, it serves as a mechanism to resolve inconsistencies in the mental models of the environment across the human-robot team. This article details a novel intelligence architecture that exploits a centralized representation of the environment to perform complex tasks in unstructured environments. The centralized environment model is informed by a visual perception pipeline, declarative knowledge, deliberate interactive estimation, and a multimodal interface. The language pipeline also exploits proactive symbol grounding to resolve uncertainty in ambiguous statements through inverse semantics. A series of experiments on three different, unmanned ground vehicles demonstrates the utility of this architecture through its robust ability to perform language-guided spatial navigation, mobile manipulation, and bidirectional communication with human operators. Experimental results give examples of component-level behaviors and overall system performance that guide a discussion on observed performance and opportunities for future innovation.

Contributions and Blind Spots of Constructivist Norms Research in International Relations, 1980–2018: A Systematic Evidence and Gap Analysis

Abstract The study of international norms from a social constructivist perspective has been one of the major conceptual innovations to the discipline of international relations (IR) over the past forty years. However, despite the concept's ubiquity, there is only a limited understanding of the large-scale trends in research associated with its rise. This analytic essay interrogates conventional wisdom, using a dataset of 7,795 mainstream, English-language journal articles from the Teaching, Research and International Policy Journal Article Database, supplemented with data from Web of Science. How have international norms been studied substantively and methodologically, what are major contributions and blind spots, and which opportunities for future innovation might exist? Although norms research has historically helped expand the scope of issues covered in IR (e.g., gender issues and public health), others have evidence gaps relative to the broader discipline of IR (e.g., terrorism and public opinion). Over the years, the proportion of empirical studies has increased, while purely theoretical, epistemological, and methodological work and innovation have decreased. Despite calls for methodological pluralism, norms research is significantly more qualitative and conceptual than mainstream IR in general and far less multi-method. While more international and less US-based than IR in general, norms research in mainstream journals seems to be no closer to a “Global IR,” measured by regional focus and author affiliation. This suggests three promising avenues for future innovation: greater attention to specific substantive blind spots, more multi-method research, and increased attention to the agenda of Global IR. Beyond these individual insights, this review illustrates the general utility of complementing narrative literature reviews with ones based on quantitative data. It also provides a case study on conceptual proliferation and innovation in IR.

A hybrid approach to detecting technological recombination based on text mining and patent network analysis

Detecting promising technology groups for recombination holds the promise of great value for R&D managers and technology policymakers, especially if the technologies in question can be detected before they have been combined. However, predicting the future is always easier said than done. In this regard, Arthur’s theory (The nature of technology: what it is and how it evolves, Free Press, New York, 2009) on the nature of technologies and how science evolves, coupled with Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions (Kuhn in The structure of scientific revolutions, 1st edn, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, p 3, 1962), may serve as the basis of a shrewd methodological framework for forecasting recombinative innovation. These theories help us to set out quantifiable criteria and decomposable steps to identify research patterns at each stage of a scientific revolution. The first step in the framework is to construct a conceptual model of the target technology domain, which helps to refine a reasonable search strategy. With the model built, the landscape of a field—its communities, its technologies, and their interactions—is fleshed out through community detection and network analysis based on a set of quantifiable criteria. The aim is to map normal patterns of research in the domain under study so as to highlight which technologies might contribute to a structural deepening of technological recombinations. Probability analysis helps to detect and group candidate technologies for possible recombination and further manual analysis by experts. To demonstrate how the framework works in practice, we conducted an empirical study on AI research in China. We explored the development potential of recombinative technologies by zooming in on the top patent assignees in the field and their innovations. In conjunction with expert analysis, the results reveal the cooperative and competitive relationships among these technology holders and opportunities for future innovation through technological recombinations.

Simulation and Mitigation of Pattern and Process Dependencies in Nanoimprint Lithography

In this paper we review the most important known sources of defects in nanoimprint lithography (NIL). The review encompasses the thermal, ultraviolet-curing and step-and-repeat variants of NIL, and addresses both systematic and random sources of residual layer thickness (RLT) variation, incomplete stamp cavity filling, and other defects. Approaches to simulating these NIL processes are surveyed. Strategies are analyzed for reducing RLT variation as well as the number and severity of defects, and opportunities for future innovations are highlighted.

Overview: Production Operations (March 2006)

A strong global demand currently exists for readily useable energy in the form of petroleum and natural gas, and demand has been projected to increase steadily for the foreseeable future. Developed consumer nations are expected to increase consumption of oil and natural gas as their economies continue to improve and expand. Similarly, the energy appetite of developing nations also is expected to increase the demand for petroleum and natural gas, as long as that energy source remains a convenient, economically viable, and environmentally acceptable alternative. The strong demand in global energy needs therefore presents both welcome challenges and boundless opportunities for the petroleum industry. Therefore, the major challenge facing the petroleum industry in satisfying this demand may be the development and application of new or improved methods of finding and producing the required hydrocarbons. As a result, opportunities for the development and implementation of new or improved pro-duction technologies abound in this environment. Some excellent examples of the opportunities that exist in the industry for novel or improved production technologies are presented in the summaries of the selected technical papers that follow. These examples are but a small sample of the extremely important production-operations issues addressed by the petroleum industry recently, many of which pertain to the modeling and assessment of the production performance of wells. I hope that you find the issues addressed in these technical summaries and the full-length papers, as well as in the additional technical references cited, as interesting and inspiring as I do. With the petroleum industry's efforts to address modern production-operations problems, such as those illustrated by these examples, the challenges presented by increasing demand will invariably present many opportunities for future innovation. Production Operations additional reading available at the SPE eLibrary: www.spe.org SPE 95685 "Waterflood Surveillance and Control: Incorporating Hall Plot and Slope Analysis," by D.B. Silin, SPE, U. of California, Berkeley, et al. SPE 96697 "Modeling Permeability Reduction Caused by Asphaltene Deposition," by A.A. Garrouch, SPE, Kuwait U., et al. available at the OTC Library: www.otcnet.org OTC 17152 "Characterization of Hydrate Formation in Black Oil Using NMR," by S. Gao, Rice U., et al.

An empirical evaluation of option pricing in intellectual capital

The investments in intellectual capital by firms in the knowledge economy are a critical driver for growth, profitability and competitiveness. This paper reviews the basic option‐pricing models for pricing financial instruments and evaluates their characteristics in relation to their applicability to intellectual property, focusing on two distinct characteristics, i.e. past decisions that influence future technological options, and the inherent uncertainty over future innovation opportunities. The findings in this study include the discovery and confirmation of certain financial characteristics that are important for the successful implementation of the option‐pricing methodology in high technology financial planning and management. This paper attempts to summarise the current strand of literature pertaining to the use of option pricing in the intellectual capital‐intensive sector by evaluating their strengths and weaknesses, and make recommendations as to how they can be effectively addressed to produce better results in the valuation process.