Rutgers University

About: Rutgers University is a education organization based out in New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 68736 authors who have published 159418 publications receiving 6713860 citations. The organization is also known as: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey & Rutgers.

Boundary Organizations in Environmental Policy and Science: An Introduction

Abstract: Scholarship in the social studies of science has argued convincingly that what demarcates science from nonscience is not some set of essential or transcendent characteristics or methods but rather an array of contingent circumstances and strategic behavior known as "boundary work" (Gieryn 1995, 1999). Although initially formulated to explain how scientists maintain the boundaries of their community against threats to its cognitive authority from within (e.g., fraud and pseudo-science), boundary work has found useful, policy-relevant applications-for example, in studying the strategic demarcation between political and scientific tasks in the advisory relationship between scientists and regulatory agencies (Jasanoff 1990). This work finds that the blurring of boundaries between science and politics, rather than the intentional separation often advocated and practiced, can lead to more productive policy making. If it is the case, however, that the robustness of scientific concepts such as causation and representation are important components of liberal-democratic thought and practice (Ezrahi 1990), one can imagine how the flexibility of boundary work might lead to confusion or even dangerous instabilities between science and nonscience. These risks could be conceived, perhaps, as the politicization of science or the reciprocal scientification of politics. Neither risk should here be understood to mean the importation to one enterprise from the other elements that are entirely foreign; that is, science is not devoid of values prior to some politicization, nor politics of rationality, prior to any scientification. Rather, both should be understood to mean the rendering of norms and practices in one enterprise in a way that unreflexively mimics norms and practices in the other. These concerns have been central to the socalled science wars, and to the extent that they are implicated in public discussions of such policy issues as health and safety regulation, climate change, or genetically modified organisms, they are real problems for policy makers and publics alike.'

Communication with Employees Following a Merger: A Longitudinal Field Experiment

Abstract: This study examined the impact of a realistic merger preview, a program of realistic communications, on employees of an organization that had just announced a merger. Employees in one plant received the preview and those in another received limited information. Results based on four collections of data indicated that the preview reduced dysfunctional outcomes of the merger. Those effects continued over the duration of the study and, in some cases, measured attributes returned to levels comparable to their levels before the merger was announced. We discuss implications for organizations contemplating mergers or acquisitions and for researchers interested in such activities.

Information filtering and information retrieval: two sides of the same coin?

Abstract: Information filtering systems are designed for unstructured or semistructured data, as opposed to database applications, which use very structured data. The systems also deal primarily with textual information, but they may also entail images, voice, video or other data types that are part of multimedia information systems. Information filtering systems also involve a large amount of data and streams of incoming data, whether broadcast from a remote source or sent directly by other sources. Filtering is based on descriptions of individual or group information preferences, or profiles, that typically represent long-term interests. Filtering also implies removal of data from an incoming stream rather than finding data in the stream; users see only the data that is extracted. Models of information retrieval and filtering, and lessons for filtering from retrieval research are presented.

Forest transitions: towards a global understanding of land use change

Abstract: Places experience forest transitions when declines in forest cover cease and recoveries in forest cover begin. Forest transitions have occurred in two, sometimes overlapping circumstances. In some places economic development has created enough non-farm jobs to pull farmers off of the land, thereby inducing the spontaneous regeneration of forests in old fields. In other places a scarcity of forest products has prompted governments and landowners to plant trees in some fields. The transitions do little to conserve biodiversity, but they do sequester carbon and conserve soil, so governments should place a high priority on promoting them. C 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.