Browse by: "2006"

The idea of an entrepreneurial university caught on fast after the American sociologist Burton R. Clark published his books on entrepreneurship in universities (Creating Entrepreneurial Universities, 1998; Sustaining Changes in Universities, 2004). Inspired by the alluring of the notion of an entrepreneurial university, and by decreasing levels of state funding for universities, we undertook a study on four very active ECIU universities (ECIU = European Consortium of Innovative Universities, www.eciu.org). To evaluate and quantify their level of entrepreneurship, we extracted from Burton Clark’s case studies twenty organisational practices against which a University’s entrepreneurship can be measured. These twenty practices or factors in effect formed the basis for an entrepreneurship audit. During a series of interviews, the extent to which the universities are seen as entrepreneurial by the interviewees was surveyed. We showed that the practices have been implemented only to various degrees and rather unsystematically. There are important differences among the universities, to some extent depending on the level of ambition that each university has regarding each practice. There are also important similarities; especially that entrepreneurship within universities has to be welcomed and facilitated top-down, but organically occurs and develops bottom-up. Implementing entrepreneurship at universities is thus about stimulating a culture of organic intrapreneurship and we provide practical recommendations and further research options to that effect.

L'idée d'une université entrepreneuriale s'est imposée rapidement dès la publication par le sociologue américain Burton R. Clark d'une série d'ouvrages sur l'esprit d’entreprise à l'université (Creating Entrepreneurial Universities, 1998, Sustaining Changes in Universities, 2004). Inspirés par la notion séduisante d'une université entrepreneuriale et conscients de la baisse de niveau des financements publics, nous avons entrepris d'étudier quatre universités très actives membres de l'ECIU (European Consortium of Innovative Universities, www.eciu.org). Pour évaluer et quantifier leur degré d’entrepreneuriat, nous avons relevé dans les études de Burton Clark vingt pratiques au regard desquelles il est possible de mesurer l'esprit d’entreprise d'une université. En fait, ces vingt pratiques ont constitué le fondement d'un audit de l'entrepreneuriat. Une série d'entretiens a permis de déceler dans quelle mesure les personnes interrogées assimilaient les universités à des entreprises. Nous avons démontré que les pratiques n’ont été adoptées qu’à des degrés divers et de façon assez peu systématique. Il existe entre les universités d'importantes différences qui dans une certaine mesure sont fonction de l'ambition avec laquelle chaque université a recours à telle ou telle pratique. On observe aussi d'importantes similitudes : il faut en particulier que l'esprit d’entreprise soit bien accueilli dans l’université et son adoption facilitée selon une approche descendante, or, dans l’organisation proprement dite, il émerge et se développe de bas en haut. Par conséquent, insuffler un esprit d’entreprise dans les universités revient à stimuler une culture d'intrapreneuriat organique, et c'est dans cette optique que nous proposons des recommandations pratiques et des pistes de recherche.

This study resulted from a discussion at the June 2002 meeting of the OECD/NEA Nuclear Science Committee, at which it was first suggested to set up a project to address very high burn-ups (specifically average discharge burn-ups in the range 60-100 GWd/t). The outcome was the setting-up in 2003 of the Expert Group on Very High Burn-ups in LWRs, which was charged with the single task of delivering a state-of-the-art report on high burn-ups in LWRs. It was felt that the report should concentrate on LWRs because that is where the bulk of experience and knowledge resides, but much of the analysis will also be applicable to other reactor types, even if not all the details are transferable.

Many chemicals are used to produce hundreds of thousands of different goods, from cars and computers to synthetic fabrics, kitchen appliances and paints. Through green procurement (GP) it is possible to reduce risks that arise from the use of chemical products by encouraging the use of chemical products which have low impact on human health and the environment throughout their life cycle, and discouraging the use of chemical products with a high impact. However, given the large number and variety of available chemical products and the differing priorities of product users, it is challenging to compare and select products for green procurement...

In the recent past, the analysis of plant transients and the analysis of reactor core behaviour were performed separately. Usually, the core was represented by a point kinetics model to analyse plant transients and, for the core physics calculations, boundary conditions were imposed at the inlet and the outlet of the core. In reality, these boundary conditions depend on the power generation in the core. To ensure a realistic description of the physical phenomena in an accident analysis, the application of coupled codes is required. In recent years code developers began coupling three-dimensional (3-D) neutron kinetics codes with advanced thermal-hydraulics system codes. Such complex computer codes allow modelling of the entire reactor system, including a 3-D neutronics core. When reactivity initiated accidents with an asymmetric neutron flux distribution in the core are analysed, only such coupled codes are capable of estimating the real feedback effects. These codes can perform safety analyses in order to replace the conservative estimations with best-estimate calculations.

This report presents numerous examples of the variety of tools for presenting and illustrating PRTR data and the types of uses of PRTR data in OECD member countries. It presents examples of uses for the purposes of the public, community groups, industry, the government, and academic and independent research institutions. The intent of this report is not to describe all of the many programmes, activities, and tools that use PRTR data, but to present examples in each category to illustrate the wide variety of current and evolving uses of such data.

A review has been conducted of the documentation developed by Andra, collectively known as the Dossier 2005 Argile, by an international review team (IRT) of independent specialists covering all relevant aspects of research, safety assessment, and the geological sciences. As described below, the Dossier represents a key milestone in the programme of work, for which Andra is responsible, to assess the feasibility of the deep geological disposal of high-level and long-lived radioactive waste in France. This report presents the consensus view of the IRT. It is based on the documentation of the Dossier 2005 Argile, but it also draws importantly on information exchanged in writing with Andra in answers to questions raised by the review team, and on direct interactions with staff from Andra during two working seminars in France. Also, in order to fulfil its mandate, the IRT reviewed materials external to the Dossier, namely the document concerning the R&D Programme for a potential new phase of work in the period 2006-2010, in a draft, provisional version.

The main purpose of this workshop was to take the first steps in considering whether the general approaches which have been used in the past by the Working Group, primarily to address the safety/ risk assessment of transgenic plants, could be applicable to similar work on the safety/ risk assessment of transgenic fish.The objective of the workshop was to identify and review the kinds of (and availability of) baseline information of (non-transgenic) from traditional fish farming or breeding, and to determine what information might be relevant to risk/ safety assessment; and what information might be needed for the development of a biology document. The overall approach used by the Workshop was similar to that done to first identify and circumscribe the issues about crop species that would inform a risk/safety assessment of the same species after it had been transformed.

This document serves as a summary of the work of Subgroup 20 (SG20) on covariance matrix evaluation and processing in the resolved/unresolved resonance regions, organised under the auspices of the Nuclear Energy Agency’s Nuclear Science Committee Working Party on International Evaluation Co-operation (WPEC). The work described in this report focuses on:
- summarising the issues related to covariance evaluation in the resonance region;
- discussing the retroactive method used in the SAMMY code [1];
- describing the compact format for storing huge covariance matrices in ENDF-6 files;
- recent developments and upgrades of processing codes to generate a multi-group covariance matrix from resonance parameter covariance data.

Le rapport sur la séparation structurelle a été préparé par le Comité de la concurrence de l’OCDE pour examiner la mise en oeuvre de la Recommandation de 2001 du Conseil de l’OCDE concernant la séparation structurelle dans les secteurs réglementés. Il ressort de ce rapport que beaucoup de pays ont mis en oeuvre une législation visant à promouvoir un accès non discriminatoire aux infrastructures non ouvertes à la concurrence.

Ce rapport a servi de support pour un examen par les pairs à l’occasion du Forum mondial de l’OCDE sur la concurrence de 2005. Il conclut que l’Autorité de la Concurrence Turque a réalisé des progrès notables depuis sa mise en place en 1997. Il souligne les atouts dont elle dispose et salue les efforts qu’elle déploie pour mettre en oeuvre les recommandations de 2002 de l’OCDE, notamment les initiatives de sensibilisation à la concurrence conduites au sein de l’administration turque. En même temps, le rapport 2005 propose une large gamme de recommandations destinées à résoudre les multiples difficultés qui subsistent en Turquie dans le domaine du droit et de la politique de la concurrence. Ces recommandations devraient contribuer à améliorer l’efficacité de l’application du droit et de la politique de la concurrence en Turquie.

Les données qui ont été examinées lors d’une table ronde principalement consacrée à la séparation infrastructure-exploitation dans les services ferroviaires donnent à penser que l’intérêt de la séparation structurelle dans ce secteur pourrait être moindre qu’on ne le pensait. L’intégration peut certes procurer des avantages pour un certain nombre de raisons, à savoir notamment des externalités entre l’exploitation des services et l’entretien du réseau ferré et des difficultés de suivi du trafic compte tenu des retards et des carences de l’information transmise au régulateur de la circulation des trains.