Technology Transfer and the Federal Laboratories

Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) are at the heart of recent federal efforts to increase United States technological competitiveness through the commercialization of public technologies. CRADAs are comprehensive legal agreements for the sharing of research personnel, equipment, and intellectual property rights in joint government-industry research. Since 1986, over 2200 CRADAs have been entered into. This study provides a midterm evaluation of the CRADA process. It finds that important legal obstacles remain in the use of CRADAs. Progress is also impeded by a lack of industry familiarity with research in the federal laboratories, as well as inadequate federal funding for research collaboration.     

Lead isotope and metal source of Shang bronzes: a response to Sun et al.’s comments

In this brief response to Sun et al.’s ( 2018 ) comments on our paper, we re‐emphasize that archaeological, chemical and isotopic evidence are all relevant to the discussion about the metal source of the Shang period with highly radiogenic lead isotope ratios. The southern African bronzes have much lower lead contents and quite different lead isotopic signatures than the Shang bronzes. More importantly, there was no metallurgy of any kind in southern Africa before c.200 ce , so southern Africa cannot possibly be the source of Shang bronze, which date to about 1500 to 1000 bce .     

Applied Zooarchaeology of Freshwater Mussel (Bivalvia: Unionidae) Shell from Golson (22HU508), A Deasonville-Period Site on the Yazoo River,Mississippi

Excavations at Golson (22HU508), an archaeological site on the Yazoo River in western Mississippi, USA, produced an assemblage of over 4000 freshwater mussel shells, 77 percent of which were identifiable to species. Although limited spatial sampling of the deposits limits what can be said about past mussel community characteristics, twelve new river records for mussel species are derived from the assemblage. This typical result emphasises the value of archaeological shell assemblages for conservation biology and provides a rationale for why sites containing shell may be considered significant based upon their potential contributions to environmental history.