Whois & Analysis for rand.org

RAND Corporation ("Research and development") is an American nonprofit global policy think tank originally formed by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces.

It is financed by the U.S. government and private endowment, corporations including the health care industry, universities and private individuals.

The organization has expanded to work with other governments, private foundations, international organizations, and commercial organizations on a host of non-defense issues.

RAND aims for interdisciplinary and quantitative problem solving via translating theoretical concepts from formal economics and the physical sciences into novel applications in other areas, that is, via applied science and operations research.

Michael D. Rich is president and chief executive officer of the RAND Corporation.

Knowledge is a familiarity, awareness or understanding of someone or something, such as facts, information, descriptions, or skills, which is acquired through experience or education by perceiving, discovering, or learning.

Research comprises "creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of humans, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications." It is used to establish or confirm facts, reaffirm the results of previous work, solve new or existing problems, support theorems, or develop new theories.

A research project may also be an expansion on past work in the field.

Research projects can be used to develop further knowledge on a topic, or in the example of a school research project, they can be used to further a student's research prowess to prepare them for future jobs or reports.

To test the validity of instruments, procedures, or experiments, research may replicate elements of prior projects or the project as a whole.

The primary purposes of basic research (as opposed to applied research) are documentation, discovery, interpretation, or the research and development (R&D) of methods and systems for the advancement of human knowledge.

Approaches to research depend on epistemologies, which vary considerably both within and between humanities and sciences.

There are several forms of research: scientific, humanities, artistic, economic, social, business, marketing, practitioner research, life, technological,etc.

Employment is a relationship between two parties, usually based on a contract where work is paid for, where one party, which may be a corporation, for profit, not-for-profit organization, co-operative or other entity is the employer and the other is the employee.

Employees work in return for payment, which may be in the form of an hourly wage, by piecework or an annual salary, depending on the type of work an employee does or which sector she or he is working in.

Employees in some fields or sectors may receive gratuities, bonus payment or stock options.

In some types of employment, employees may receive benefits in addition to payment.

Benefits can include health insurance, housing, disability insurance or use of a gym.

Employment is typically governed by employment laws or regulations or legal contracts.

International relations (IR) or international affairs, depending on academic institution, is either a field of political science, an interdisciplinary academic field similar to global studies, or an entirely independent academic discipline in which students take a variety of internationally focused courses in social science and humanities disciplines.

In both cases, the field studies relationships between political entities (polities) such as states, sovereign states, empires, inter-governmental organizations (IGOs), international non-governmental organizations (INs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and multinational corporations (MNCs), and the wider world-systems produced by this interaction.

International relations is an academic and a public policy field, and so can be positive and normative, because it analyzes and formulates the foreign policy of a given State.