|
The Pacific Rim Research Program was conceived as a response to the booming Pacific economy, part of an expansive thrust that characterized the University of California's mid-1980s vision. But instead of becoming still another new institute or center, the program put all of its resources into faculty-initiated research, supporting both established area experts and newcomers to the region. The result has been an array of successful projects and the growth of intricate networks of collaboration well suited to address the challenges arising from California's complex integration into the Pacific region. Pacific Rim Research Program projects address questions as varied as how to re-engineer-industry to compete in a multi-national regionwide economy, how to control infectious disease transmitted across vast distances and cultural gulfs, and how to comprehend the cultural fusion taking place in the arts. From basic research on plant parasites or tectonic plates to policy studies of the most effective government approaches to information technology, international teams of researchers are tackling new questions and defining new areas of concern that were not obvious when the program began. Research sponsored by the program has contributed to the resolution of international resource management disputes and to the design of culturally appropriate methods of providing health care among immigrant elderly. It has provided the basis for recommendations on reforms in elementary and middle school mathematics education and generated material that is included in undergraduate statistics classes. |
Analyzing Pacific Growth Economies Industry Studies International Laboratories Migration Studies Pioneering Research in Vietnam Artistic Vision Math Education and Achievement Science-Based Resource Policy Overcoming Cultural Barriers in Health Care |
|
To a substantial degree, the success of the Pacific Rim Research Program rests on the unprecedented mobility of scholars and students in the half century following World War II. By the mid-1980s, the University of California was uniquely situated to incorporate the consequences of this mobility into its research capability. Students who had completed graduate work at UC occupied important professional posts in home countries on both sides of the Pacific, while international faculty within the University maintained regular ties with mentors and peers at home. Cooperative research based on shared theoretical understandings and scholarly standards was already underway, ready to grow with the infusion of new funds not restricted to traditional "area studies" fields, to single disciplines, or to domestic researchers. Unlike traditional regionally bound funding, Pacific Rim funds are available for work in any field so long as the research targets a regionally specific issue. The following capsules illustrate the range of projects and the results they have produced. |
|
ANALYZING PACIFIC GROWTH ECONOMIES
Nearly half of Pacific Rim Research Program grants have been for analysis of some aspect of the booming Pacific economy. Topics such as optimal exchange rates, the causes and potential limits of NIC growth, or the impact of market reforms in socialist economies have led researchers to unpack the once monolithic conception of Asian dynamism. Economist Nirvikar Singh, working with colleagues at Santa Cruz, closely analyzed the correlation between state policies and growth patterns in newly developed Asian economies and found that sustained growth effects could be attributed to moderate government direction within a market context. Taking his research to Washington during two years at the Council of Economic Advisors, Santa Cruz economist Kwok-Chiu Fung examined the way U.S. and Japanese firms adapt to external economic changes. He discovered that U.S. and Japanese firms organize production differently when trade is only in goods but move toward the American model when labor and capital are included in the trade flow. At Riverside, engineer Ping Liang has teamed with a Chinese economist to develop a neural network model that will eventually predict capital flow between the United States and "greater China." It provides dynamic feedback to adjust its own calculations in response to structural change and in its first stage is accurate within 5% for the U.S. economy.
INDUSTRY STUDIES
With immediate policy implications, some Pacific Rim projects focus on single industries. These studies always rest on close collaboration between the UC researcher and colleagues in other Pacific Rim countries as well as with industry. Results are published in the economics journals that policy makers consult. Irvine management scholar Kenneth Kraemer's multi-year, multinational study of the relationship between state efforts to promote the diffusion of information technology and its actual adoption has produced a series of studies covering 12 countries and built a team of collaborating experts that extends from Beijing to Delhi. Recent findings have documented a significant correlation between growth in information technology investment and growth in productivity and GDP over a seven-year period. UCLA sociologist Lynne Zucker and economist Michael Darby's comparison of U.S. and Japanese biotechnology industries found that the Japanese pattern of incorporating new biotechnologies within existing firms - in contrast to the U.S. pattern of entrepreneurial startups - is related to the character of Japan's higher education system and its lack of competitive research funding, among other factors.
INTERNATIONAL LABORATORIES
For graduate students entering fields as varied as agriculture, public health, architecture, linguistics, and economics, participation in Pacific Rim projects develops mentor relationships across national boundaries that encourage them to focus their studies on Pacific problems. Using Pacific Rim funds to carry out genetic probes of nitrogen-fixing bacteria that live in symbiosis with ironwood trees, UCLA geneticist Ann Hirsch identified distinct species of Frankia bacteria in the roots of trees in California and Mexico and began work on species identification in Thailand. Precise identification of the bacteria, which contribute to the trees' health, will enable development of an easy-to-use kit for assessing the bacteria's presence in soil without expensive laboratory analysis. The kits will aid in the cultivation of hardwoods as a preferable alternative to eucalyptus and acacia in timber plantations. The research brought Hirsch's lab-bound students into an international research team. Mexican and Thai scientists spent several months in the UCLA lab, and one of Hirsch's students worked in the Mexican lab for several weeks. Hirsch also got a close-up view of practical obstacles to research in the Thai lab, where hot and humid conditions and airborne molds made it almost impossible to maintain pure bacterial cultures.
Page 1 of 3 ..... Next >