Sharif Digital Repository

It is beyond dispute that technological change acts as a driver of economic growth. In developing countries where highly suffer from lack of this process, incremental innovation is considered as main source of technology capability building and development In moving toward this pass and to meet with time pressure of catching up, developing countries acquire the initial required knowledge base through technology absorption from outside sources; On the other hand as development is a lengthy process, it is important that the absorbed knowledge still has the potential of more advancement in future. Therefore a selection instrument with ability of assessing different knowledge base or... 

Despite the importance of well-being, few studies have been conducted on the relationship between well-being and technology. In this paper, the development of technology from the perspective of well-being studies are divided into three generations. In higher generations, the main criterion of technology development becomes more comprehensive, in order to decrease the side effects of technology. We introduce the fourth generation in which well-being is the main criterion of the design process. Although it may not seem necessary to say that the purpose of most technologies is implicitly well-being, we show that the domination of physical pleasure in terms of “use and convenience” in the modern... 

The abrupt development of technology has confronted different industries' managers with crucial decision points. The scope of their decisions' impact goes beyond their companies' borders. Sustainable assessment of technology investigates the economic, environmental, and social effects of technologies on firms and their environment. Nonetheless, the technology management process includes different steps (such as technology acquisition and exploitation) which need a comprehensive decision-making tool toward sustainable development targets. This paper aims to propose an integrated decision-making model to investigate the social sustainability of the technology management process. Considering... 

In this paper the process of knowledge accumulation for a particular technology is studied. Two countries, say the technology follower and the technology frontier, are considered. The frontier's knowledge growth is determined by its R&D efforts on the technology. The level of knowledge stock for the follower country is augmented by its R&D activities for the technology and absorbing some of the external knowledge through spillover from the frontier. The extent to which the follower is able to exploit the external knowledge depends on technological gap, absorptive capacity, absorption time and degree of spillover. New concepts such as natural and enhanced degree of spillover, background and... 

The new generations of bioenhancement technologies and traditional Virtue Theory both try to make a meaningful connection between the improvement of human states and characteristics on one hand, and attainment to the good life, on the other. Considering the main elements of virtuousness in Farabi’s thought—namely rational inquiry and deliberative insights, alongside volitional discipline within various social contexts, one can conclude that although the trajectories of enhancement technologies—be they in the field of genetic engineering, neurostimulation technologies, or pharmacology—do not in themselves satisfy the constitutive determinants of virtuousness, they function as having both... 

After the emergence of modern technologies in recent years, learning methods have attained a new form. Using game consoles as educational tools is a new idea which is gained attracted by some researchers. This paper proposes a new method for improving English lab classes using Sony PSP (PlayStation Portable) handheld game consoles especially for Iranian schools. © 2008 IEEE  

This paper presents the effect of robotics assisted language learning (RALL) on the vocabulary learning and retention of Iranian English as foreign language (EFL) junior high school students in Tehran, Iran. After taking a vocabulary pre-test, 46 beginner level female students at the age of 12, studying in their first year of junior-high participated in two groups of RALL (30 students) and non-RALL (16 students) in this study. The textbook used was the English book (Prospect-1) devised by the Iranian Ministry of Education for 7th graders, and the vocabulary taught and tested (pre-test and post-test) were taken from this book. Moreover, the treatment given by a teacher accompanied by a... 

In this paper, three critical issues with the paper "A fuzzy set approach for R&D portfolio selection using a real options valuation model", coauthored by Wang and Hwang and published in Omega 2007 are addressed. Shortcomings of the original work are highlighted and corrective measures to improve the approach are proposed  

Technology Identification involves developing a list of technologies which are, or may be, incorporated into products or processes. After reviewing Technology Assessment, Technology Strategy, Management of Technology and New Product Development in literature, four methods of Technology Identification are investigated: Value Chain of Technologies, Process-based Approach, Quality Function Deployment and Technology Mapping. A model facilitating decision making process is then proposed by which the most appropriate method to be employed is identified. The proposed model is examined in specific case of fuel cell technologies while preparing the Fuel cell Development Strategic Plan of Iran. 1... 

This paper presents a low complexity while accurate Heart Rate (HR) estimation technique from signals captured by Photoplethysmographic (PPG) sensors worn on the wrist during intensive physical exercise. Wrist-type PPG signals experience severe Motion Artifacts (MA) that hinder efficient HR estimation especially during intensive physical exercises. To suppress the motion artifacts efficiently, simultaneous 3 dimensional acceleration signals are used as reference MAs. The proposed method achieves an Average Absolute Error (AAE) of 1.19 Beats Per Minute (BPM) on the 12 benchmark PPG recordings in which subjects run at speeds of up to 15 km/h. This method also achieves an AAE of 2.17 BPM on the... 

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the barriers that constrain the venture capital (VC) financing in Iran based on the institutional theory. Design/methodology/approach: To answer the question, “How institutional barriers constrain the VC financing in Iran?”, 31 detailed interviews were conducted, and the interviewed data were analysed by using the grounded theory method. Findings: There exist several institutional barriers (formal and informal) in different stages of the VC investment process in Iran. Major formal institutional deficiencies include lack of appropriate financial regulations, inefficacy in tax, labour, property rights, financial disclosure, bankruptcy, investor’s protection... 

Energy innovation is essential for tackling climate change. However, an established set of indicators, that can support policy makers in their design of policy mixes, has not been developed for evaluating the performance of energy innovation systems. The purpose of this study is, therefore, to list and classify a large set of indicators of the performance of energy innovation systems at sectoral and technological levels. 120 listed indicators are evaluated using four usefulness criteria, demonstrating significant weaknesses in the available indicators. The indicators are also classified according to an innovation process categorization to see if they cover all aspects of an innovation system... 

The present study seeks to investigate the effects of technology spillover on the performance of automobile companies. In short, technology spillover is an opportunity to transfer and exploit and obtain information, technology or technical know-how, without prior planning. One of the most important indicators in evaluation of cars' manufacturing companies' performance is sales; hence, this study focused on sales variable and took it as a representative of Technology spillover. To this aim, the sales data were collected fromthe domestic car manufacturing companies. For this mean, sales' pattern during ten years is recognized using Seasonal ARIMA (S-ARIMA) model. Akaike Information Criterion... 

The capital intensive network industries such as electricity and gas delivery infrastructures exhibit natural monopoly characteristics because of their high economy of scale relative to the size of the market. Due to the absence of direct competition in these regulated industries, infrastructure providers hardly undertake the appropriate level of innovation activities to optimise the operation and continuity of their services; a review is provided to show how different countries support innovation in the network industries. As innovation activities are costly and risky undertakings, a relevant query is how to incentivise innovation through economic regulations. This paper models three...