Public communication by research institutes compared across countries and sciences: building capacity for engagement or competing for visibility?

Leading academic institutions, governments, and funders of research across the world have spent the last few decades fretting publicly about the need for scientists and research organisations to engage more widely with the public and be open about their research. While a global literature asserts that public communication has changed from a virtue to a duty for scientists in many countries and disciplines, our knowledge about what research institutions are doing and what factors drive their 'going public' is very limited. Here we present the first cross-national study of N = 2,030 research institutes within universities and large scientific organisations in Brazil, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. We find that institutes embrace communication with non-peers and do so through a variety of public events and traditional news media-less so through new media channels-and we find variation across countries and sciences, yet these are less evident than we expected. Country and disciplinary cultures contribute to the level of this communication, as do the resources that institutes make available for the effort; institutes with professionalised staff show higher activity online. Future research should examine whether a real change in the organisational culture is happening or whether this activity and resource allocation is merely a means to increase institutional visibility

The Measurement of CO2 Embodiments in International Trade: Evidence from the Harmonised Input-Output and Bilateral Trade Database

Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions which are linked to the global climate system such as the Kyoto Protocol might fail, if emission-restricted states relocate their carbon-intensive production activities to non-restricted countries where the primary production factors depend on more GHG-intensive sources. Such a relocation process and increased ‘carbon trade’ appear to be contrary to the GHG reductions envisioned in international agreements. This study addresses the issue of carbon embodiments in trade using internationally-comparable OECD data sources (Input-Output, Bilateral Goods Trade and CO2 emissions) for 41 countries/regions by 17 industries. Simulation results under base case scenarios for the mid-1990s and the early 2000s suggest that “trade deficits” of CO2 emissions are observed in 21 OECD countries in the early 2000s and that for 16 countries, the magnitude of the trade deficit increased in the late 1990s. While a third (860 Mt CO2) of the global increase in production-based emissions took place within the non-OECD economies in the late 1990s, more than half of the consumption-based emission (1550 Mt CO2) is still attributable to OECD consumption. The sensitivity simulations imply that an increase in global trade intensity has an increasing impact on embodied emissions while technology transfers from carbon-intensive countries to high carbon-intensive countries reduce global emissions and carbon trade gaps. Les efforts visant à réduire les émissions de gaz à effet de serre (GES) liées au système climatique mondial, notamment dans le cadre du Protocole de Kyoto, risquent d’échouer si les États où s’appliquent des limitations des émissions délocalisent leurs activités de production à forte intensité de carbone vers des pays où ces restrictions ne sont pas imposées et où les facteurs de production primaire sont tributaires de sources qui émettent plus de GES. Ce processus de délocalisation et l’augmentation des ‘échanges de carbone’ vont à l’encontre des réductions des GES envisagées dans les accords internationaux. Cette étude aborde la question des quantités de carbone incorporées dans les échanges en utilisant des sources de données de l’OCDE comparables au plan international (entrées-sorties, commerce bilatéral et émissions de CO2) concernant 41 pays/régions et 17 branches d’activité. Dans les résultats des simulations effectuées avec des scénarios de référence couvrant le milieu des années 1990 et le début des années 2000, on observe des “déficits des échanges” d’émissions de CO2 dans 21 pays de l’OCDE au début des années 2000 et, s’agissant de 16 pays, un accroissement du solde négatif de ces échanges à la fin des années 1990. Si un tiers (860 Mt de CO2) de l’augmentation mondiale des émissions dues à la production a été produit dans des économies non membres de l’OCDE à la fin des années 1990, plus de la moitié des émissions associées à la consommation (1550 Mt de CO2) sont encore imputables à la consommation de la zone OCDE. Les simulations des sensibilités laissent supposer qu’un accroissement de l’intensité des échanges mondiaux a un effet à la hausse sur les émissions incorporées, tandis que les transferts de technologie des pays moins émetteurs de carbone vers les pays gros émetteurs réduisent les émissions mondiales et les soldes négatifs des échanges de carbone.

Correction: Public communication by research institutes compared across countries and sciences: Building capacity for engagement or competing for visibility?

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0235191.]

Public communication by research institutes compared across countries and sciences: Building capacity for engagement or competing for visibility?

Leading academic institutions, governments, and funders of research across the world have spent the last few decades fretting publicly about the need for scientists and research organisations to engage more widely with the public and be open about their research. While a global literature asserts that public communication has changed from a virtue to a duty for scientists in many countries and disciplines, our knowledge about what research institutions are doing and what factors drive their ‘going public’ is very limited. Here we present the first cross-national study of N = 2,030 research institutes within universities and large scientific organisations in Brazil, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. We find that institutes embrace communication with non-peers and do so through a variety of public events and traditional news media–less so through new media channels–and we find variation across countries and sciences, yet these are less evident than we expected. Country and disciplinary cultures contribute to the level of this communication, as do the resources that institutes make available for the effort; institutes with professionalised staff show higher activity online. Future research should examine whether a real change in the organisational culture is happening or whether this activity and resource allocation is merely a means to increase institutional visibility.</p

Reliability of plasma polar metabolite concentrations in a large-scale cohort study using capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry.

Cohort studies with metabolomics data are becoming more widespread, however, large-scale studies involving 10,000s of participants are still limited, especially in Asian populations. Therefore, we started the Tsuruoka Metabolomics Cohort Study enrolling 11,002 community-dwelling adults in Japan, and using capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry (CE-MS) and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. The CE-MS method is highly amenable to absolute quantification of polar metabolites, however, its reliability for large-scale measurement is unclear. The aim of this study is to examine reproducibility and validity of large-scale CE-MS measurements. In addition, the study presents absolute concentrations of polar metabolites in human plasma, which can be used in future as reference ranges in a Japanese population.Metabolomic profiling of 8,413 fasting plasma samples were completed using CE-MS, and 94 polar metabolites were structurally identified and quantified. Quality control (QC) samples were injected every ten samples and assessed throughout the analysis. Inter- and intra-batch coefficients of variation of QC and participant samples, and technical intraclass correlation coefficients were estimated. Passing-Bablok regression of plasma concentrations by CE-MS on serum concentrations by standard clinical chemistry assays was conducted for creatinine and uric acid.In QC samples, coefficient of variation was less than 20% for 64 metabolites, and less than 30% for 80 metabolites out of the 94 metabolites. Inter-batch coefficient of variation was less than 20% for 81 metabolites. Estimated technical intraclass correlation coefficient was above 0.75 for 67 metabolites. The slope of Passing-Bablok regression was estimated as 0.97 (95% confidence interval: 0.95, 0.98) for creatinine and 0.95 (0.92, 0.96) for uric acid. Compared to published data from other large cohort measurement platforms, reproducibility of metabolites common to the platforms was similar to or better than in the other studies. These results show that our CE-MS platform is suitable for conducting large-scale epidemiological studies

Correlation matrix for plasma metabolite levels: Pearson correlation coefficients for 13 metabolite concentrations (log-transferred) associated with TPA in the original dataset.

<p>Correlation matrix for plasma metabolite levels: Pearson correlation coefficients for 13 metabolite concentrations (log-transferred) associated with TPA in the original dataset.</p