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This paper aims to research literature to describe the business processes used when planning IT infrastructure refreshes.

The paper uses analytical hierarchical process (AHP) and pairwise comparisons to model and quantify the decision process for IT infrastructure refreshes.

The research found that most companies keep their refresh processes private and very little academic research is available on this topic. While supportability, manageability, compatibility, cost, and scalability are important factors to large organizations, performance and availability of the systems are important for smaller organizations.

AHP was not ever used to evaluate the refresh planning. The paper demonstrates that it would be a very useful tool.

In this paper, an analysis is presented of the research funding towards nanotechnology at the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) and its relationship to the research output in Nanoscope, an application area of nanotechnology.

The paper analyzes the data collected from 1997 till 2006 and derives a definitive time lag between the allocation of research funds and issued patents and published journals. This assessment is achieved by identifying growth trends in patents, funds and publications and doing a curve‐fit analysis using the Fisher‐Pry model. Linear regression analysis is used to show the correlation between the funding and research outputs. Alongside, non‐linear programming objective function optimization technique is used to derive the time lag in years for each of the research outputs from the year of funds granted.

This paper demonstrated that there is a strong correlation between research funding and different research outputs. The time lag between funding and patents issued is evident from the patent trend analysis and Bibliometric analysis. In the case of Nanoscope, the patent time lag was found to be approximately five to six years, for journal article it was approximately two to three years and conference presentations happened right after the funding. The research outputs showed similar trends and were found to be interdependent as evident from our mathematical analysis.

While this study has shown that lag times exist within the chosen example of Nanoscope, and furthermore can be calculated to a precise degree, further data points in terms of additional emerging technologies would support the hypothesis in a more general term. A future study can look at developing technology roadmaps of the future based on the funding happening today.

The work takes bibliometric analysis to a further intelligence and establishes key linkages between these indicators.