A transnational approach to understanding and analyzing knowledge circulation. The contributors to this collection focus on what happens to knowledge and know-how at national borders. Rather than treating it as flowing like currents across them, or diffusing out from center to periphery, they stress the human intervention that shapes how knowledge is processed, mobilized, and repurposed in transnational transactions to serve diverse interests, constraints, and environments. The chapters consider both what knowledge travels and how it travels across borders of varying permeability that impede or facilitate its movement. They look closely at a variety of platforms and objects of knowledge, from tangible commodities—like hybrid wheat seeds, penicillin, Robusta coffee, naval weaponry, seed banks, satellites and high-performance computers—to the more conceptual apparatuses of plant phenotype data and statistics. Moreover, this volume decenters the Global North, tracking how knowledge moves along multiple paths across the borders of Mexico, India, Portugal, Guinea-Bissau, the Soviet Union, China, Angola, Palestine and the West Bank, as well as the United States and the United Kingdom. An important new work of transnational history, this collection recasts the way we understand and analyze knowledge circulation.

A gripping history that spans law, international affairs, and top-secret technology to unmask the tension between intellectual property rights and national security. At the beginning of the twentieth century, two British inventors, Arthur Pollen and Harold Isherwood, became fascinated by a major military question: how to aim the big guns of battleships. These warships—of enormous geopolitical import before the advent of intercontinental missiles or drones—had to shoot in poor light and choppy seas at distant moving targets, conditions that impeded accurate gunfire. Seeing the need to account for a plethora of variables, Pollen and Isherwood built an integrated system for gathering data, calculating predictions, and transmitting the results to the gunners. At the heart of their invention was the most advanced analog computer of the day, a technological breakthrough that anticipated the famous Norden bombsight of World War II, the inertial guidance systems of nuclear missiles, and the networked “smart” systems that dominate combat today. Recognizing the value of Pollen and Isherwood’s invention, the British Royal Navy and the United States Navy pirated it, one after the other. When the inventors sued, both the British and US governments invoked secrecy, citing national security concerns. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence, Analog Superpowers analyzes these and related legal battles over naval technology, exploring how national defense tested the two countries’ commitment to individual rights and the free market. Katherine C. Epstein deftly sets out Pollen’s and Isherwood’s pioneering achievements, the patent questions raised, the geopolitical rivalry between Britain and the United States, and the legal precedents each country developed to control military tools built by private contractors. Epstein’s account reveals that long before the US national security state sought to restrict information about atomic energy, it was already embroiled in another contest between innovation and secrecy. The America portrayed in this sweeping and accessible history isn’t yet a global hegemon but a rising superpower ready to acquire foreign technology by fair means or foul—much as it accuses China of doing today.

This open access book provides the first systematic overview of existing challenges and opportunities for responsible data linkage, and a cutting-edge assessment of which steps need to be taken to ensure that plant data are ethically shared and used for the benefit of ensuring global food security – one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The volume focuses on the contemporary contours of such challenges through sustained engagement with current and historical initiatives and discussion of best practices and prospective future directions for ensuring responsible plant data linkage. The volume is divided into four sections that include case studies of plant data use and linkage in the context of particular research projects, breeding programs, and historical research. It address technical challenges of data linkage in developing key tools, standards and infrastructures, and examines governance challenges of data linkage in relation to socioeconomic and environmental research and data collection. Finally, the last section addresses issues raised by new data production and linkage methods for the inclusion of agriculture’s diverse stakeholders. This book brings together leading experts in data curation, data governance and data studies from a variety of fields, including data science, plant science, agricultural research, science policy, data ethics and the philosophy, history and social studies of plant science.

This is an open access book available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Following the centenary of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, this volume features contributions from leading science historians from around the world on the changing roles of the institution in international affairs from its foundation in 1922 to the present. The case studies presented in this volume show the multitude of functions that IUPAP had and how these were related to the changing international political contexts. The book is divided into three parts. The first discusses the interwar period demonstrating how the exclusion of communities of the Central Powers from international scientific institutions imposed by victorious allied countries made IUPAP ineffective until the end of World War II. The second part analyzes the changing roles assumed by IUPAP starting from its complete renovation after World War II. Case studies covering the role of IUPAP in physics education, in metrology, in joint commissions with other unions and in defining the complex relations between pure and applied physics provide examples of IUPAP's impact on the world of science. Part III squarely addresses the science diplomacy aspects of IUPAP during the Cold War highlighting the importance of IUPAP in furthering diplomatic goals and explaining the origin of the pursuit of the free circulation of scientists as the activity that characterized the main function of international unions during the Cold War. Highlighting how often scientific agendas and political imperatives were entangled in the activities of IUPAP, the book analyzes the work of the Union as exercises of science diplomacy, thus contributing to the current debate on the use of science and technology in international relations.

This book argues that interests are actively forged through processes of politics. It develops an analytic framework for understanding how representation takes place - based on processes of identification, mobilization, and adjudication - and explores how these processes have evolved over time.

This Element proposes to frame openness in the Open Science [OS] movement as the effort to establish judicious connections among systems of practice, predicated on a process-oriented view of research as a tool for effective and responsible agency. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Discussions on globalization now routinely focus on the economic impact of developing countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the former Soviet Union and Latin America. Only twenty-five years ago, many developing countries were largely closed societies. Today, the growing power of “emerging markets” is reordering the geopolitical landscape. On a purchasing power parity basis, emerging economies now constitute half of the world’s economic activity. Financial markets too are seeing growing integration: Asia now accounts for 1/3 of world stock markets, more than double that of just 15 years ago. Given current trajectories, most economists predict that China and India alone will account for half of global output by 2050 (almost a complete return to their positions prior to the Industrial Revolution). How is higher education shaping and being shaped by these massive tectonic shifts? As education rises as a geopolitical priority, it has converged with discussions on economic policy and a global labor market. As part of the Routledge Studies in Emerging Societies series, this edited collection focuses on the globalization of higher education, particularly the increasing symbiosis between advanced and developing countries. Bringing together senior scholars, journalists, and practitioners from around the world, this collection explores the relatively new and changing higher education landscape.

Global knowledge flows can be a key driver of economic development, by encouraging the inflow of new ideas. This publication considers how countries can develop effective policies that governments and development agencies at national and regional levels can adopt in order to stimulate the participation of firms and research organisations. Issues highlighted include: promoting cross-border alliances involving firms and universities; stimulating knowledge transfers from foreign direct investment ventures; attracting highly-skilled workers from overseas; and creating vibrant national and regional innovation systems. Examples are given from leading programmes in Scotland and other countries in Europe, North America and the Pacific region.

This book presents international experiences in urban network learning. It is vital for cities to learn as it is necessary to constantly adapt and improve public performance and address complex challenges in a constantly changing environment. It is therefore highly relevant to gain more insight into how cities can learn. Cities address problems and challenges in networks of co-operation between existing and new actors, such as state actors, market players and civil society. This book presents various learning environments and methods for urban network learning, and aims to learn from experiences across the globe. How does learning take place in these urban networks? What factors and situations help or hinder these learning practices? Can we move from intuition to a strategy to improve urban network learning?