Innovation and regional development: constructing regional advantage

As a point of departure it is important that the contemporary phase of globalization, which can best be described as a globalizing knowledge economy, is recognized. The picture is not any longer only characterized by outsourcing/offshoring to developing economies such as China and India of labour intensive production of manufacturing goods and services but increasingly also by offshoring of R&D and innovation. Adding to this situation of an emerging global knowledge economy is investments in R&D organizations in Europe and North America by TNCs from India and China

Identity and community structure in Neolithic Man Bac, Northern Vietnam

FUNDING This research was supported by JSPS fund 16H02527 and Australian Research Council grant DP0774079. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many people have been involved in the excavation and post-excavation work associated with Man Bac over the years. Here we wish to pay special thanks to Nguyen Kim Dung (then of the Institute of Archaeology, Hanoi) who co-directed the excavations in 2004/5 and 2007. The following were involved in either one or several ways between 2004/5 and 2007 (facilitation of land access, excavation, post-excavation analysis, and ublication): Nguyen Hann Khang and Nguyen Cao Tan (Ninh Binh Provincial Museum, Vietnam), the landowner of Man Bac Nguyen Van Sai, the Chung Village community, Peter Bellwood and Lorna Tilley (Australian National University), Nguyen Giang Hai (former Director, Institute of Archaeology, Hanoi), Nguyen Kim Thuy, Nguyen An Tuan, Vu The Long, Tran Thi Thuy Ha, Bui Thu Phuong, Ha Manh Thang, Nguyen Ngoc Quy, Vo Thanh Huong, Nguyen Chi Tan, Nguyen Thi Mai Huong (Institute of Archaeology, Hanoi), Mariko Yamagata (Okayama Science University, Japan), Ken-ichi Shidoda (National Museum of Nature and Science, Japan), Yukio Dodo (formerly of Tohoku University, Japan), Takeji Toizumi (Meiji University, Japan), Junmei Sawada (Nigata University of Health and Welfare, Japan), Mark Lipson (Harvard Medical School, USA), Anna Willis (James Cook University, Australia). Many thanks to Jeff Oliver for reading and commenting on an earlier draft.Peer reviewedPostprin

Living scores: a portfolio of orally-transmitted experimental music compositions

This commentary reflects on a portfolio containing five of my recent orally-transmitted experimental music compositions created between fall 2013 and fall 2016. These living scores investigate transmission, community, orality and forgetting, which are the major themes of my original work. This commentary relates particularly to two main research questions: 1) what happens to the traditional practices and relationships surrounding composers and performers if the material aspect of the musical score is removed; and 2) what musical materials and processes are particularly suited to an orally-transmitted compositional method? After a brief introduction in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 provides context to the portfolio, exploring the terms experimental music and living scores. The term living scores has been used by a variety of artists in contexts ranging from dance collaborations to digital media. A new definition of living scores is proposed based on a synthesis of these existing uses to mean contexts in which all compositional instructions are transmitted, rather than fixed. Living scores are essentially participatory -- they foreground collaboration and encourage the formation of micro-communities. Because they eschew written notation, living scores allow the act of forgetting to become a vital part of the creative process. Composers such as Eliane Radigue, Meredith Monk, and Yoko Ono are discussed in this new context. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss my work within the paradigm of living scores. In Chapter 3, after a typical transmission of my work is outlined, aspects of oral and digital transmission are detailed, including the media, length, density and frequency of transmissions. Many of these aspects are discussed in relation to the act of forgetting, which through this creative work can be seen as a productive feature of artistic creation. In Chapter 4, the musical material of the portfolio is discussed, with an emphasis on the use and transformation of borrowed musical source material. A solution for the integration of the collaborative process into performances of these works is proposed: partial transmissions overlapping with the performances. A brief conclusion outlines the possibility for future research that explores other modes of transmission, further musical explorations and repeated use of this compositional method

Britain's new industrial space? A case study of high technology Hertfordshire'

The suggestion is now widespread that fundamental changes within the advanced Western economies are part of the transition to a new era of capitalist development. The geographical repercussions of this change, the form of the new geography of production, has become the subject of much conjecture. The question has become one of explaining how the present period of economic restructuring is being translated into a period of spatial restructuring. A key element of such theories of change has been the "high technologies", defined both as a process of change and as the basis of new industries encapsulating new forms of production. Indeed, for the proponents of the New Industrial Spaces theory, the rise of "high technology" industry is the harbinger of structural change and its spatial development indicative of the new geography of production we may expect throughout North America and Western Europe (Scott and Storper, 1986; Scott, 1988a; 1988b). This thesis outlines a theoretical and empirical investigation of the New Industrial Spaces theory, an investigation framed by the principal claim of the theory to explain the processes structuring the emergent geography of production. Firstly, a critique of this claim argues that whilst the explanation provided (based on transaction costs) is plausible, it rests upon a particular and deficient conceptualisation of the firm. Secondly, allowing for such reservations, it is argued that the explanation of the New Industrial Spaces' theorists has yet to be shown as empirically valid. Thus, in the search for this evidence, an empirical investigation of Britain's own prominent candidate for the title New Industrial Space, namely "high technology Hertfordshire", is undertaken. Whilst this empirical investigation provides evidence for the New Industrial Spaces theory, it also highlights the theory's failure to explain fully the growth of "high technology Hertfordshire". In contrast, the thesis develops an alternative conceptualisation of contemporary agglomerations of production

Dichotomous Musical Worlds: Interactions between the Musical Lives of Adolescents and School Music-Learning Culture

This ethnographic study investigated the interactions between the musical lives of adolescents and school music-learning culture in a suburban high school. Participants included two music teachers and seven adolescents. Framed within a symbolic interactionist perspective (Blumer, 1969), data were collected via methods consistent with qualitative inquiry, including an innovative data collection technique utilizing music elicitation interviews with adolescents. Findings emerged from the data via thematic analysis (Grbich, 2007). Findings indicate limited interactions between the musical lives of adolescents and school music-learning culture because participants portrayed and experienced a dichotomy between the musical assumptions and practices inside and outside of school. Interactions occurred when participants engaged in sharing musical capital that overcame segmentation among music learning, out-of-school experience, and elective participation in secondary school music programs. Supporting findings indicate that the school music-learning culture derived from teachers\u27 negotiating between two major influences: 1) their own musical values, which were based on their musical backgrounds and the long-established professional tradition of formal performance emphases in school music programs; and 2) the musical values of their students. Adolescents self-defined their musical lives as largely informal musical activities commonly experienced outside of school. They expressed a wealth of personal musical knowledge and described their affinity for music across four dimensions: 1) expression and feeling, 2) relevance, 3) quality in artistry and craftsmanship, and 4) diversity. Three themes describe how adolescents’ personal relationships with music influenced their beliefs and choices regarding music participation and learning: 1) musical roots: nurturing personal and social connections with music, 2) motivated learning: seeking relevance and challenge, and 3) finding a voice: striving toward musical independence. Findings indicate that music teachers may enhance interactions between adolescents’ musical lives and school music-learning culture by acknowledging students’ musical engagement outside of school, honoring their personal musical knowledge and interests, and making them collaborators in developing music-learning models rooted in their affinity for, and personal relationships with, music

Code and the Transduction of Space

The effects of software (code) on the spatial formation of everyday life are best understood through a theoretical framework that utilizes the concepts of technicity (the productive power of technology to make things happen) and transduction (the constant making anew of a domain in reiterative and transformative practices). Examples from the lives of three Londoners illustrate that code makes a difference to everyday life because its technicity alternatively modulates space through processes of transduction. Space needs to be theorized as ontogenetic, that is, understood as continually being brought into existence through transductive practices (practices that change the conditions under which space is (re)made). The nature of space transduced by code is detailed and illustrated with respect to domestic living, work, communication, transport, and consumption

Code and the Transduction of Space

The effects of software (code) on the spatial formation of everyday life are best understood through a theoretical framework that utilizes the concepts of technicity (the productive power of technology to make things happen) and transduction (the constant making anew of a domain in reiterative and transformative practices). Examples from the lives of three Londoners illustrate that code makes a difference to everyday life because its technicity alternatively modulates space through processes of transduction. Space needs to be theorized as ontogenetic, that is, understood as continually being brought into existence through transductive practices (practices that change the conditions under which space is (re)made). The nature of space transduced by code is detailed and illustrated with respect to domestic living, work, communication, transport, and consumption

Disordered Proteins: Connecting Sequences to Emergent Properties

Many IDPs participate in coupled folding and binding reactions and form alpha helical structures in their bound complexes. Alanine, glycine, or proline scanning mutagenesis approaches are often used to dissect the contributions of intrinsic helicities to coupled folding and binding. These experiments can yield confounding results because the mutagenesis strategy changes the amino acid compositions of IDPs. Therefore, an important next step in mutagenesis-based approaches to mechanistic studies of coupled folding and binding is the design of sequences that satisfy three major constraints. These are (i) achieving a target intrinsic alpha helicity profile; (ii) fixing the positions of residues corresponding to the binding interface; and (iii) maintaining the native amino acid composition. Here, we report the development of a Genetic Algorithm for Design of Intrinsic secondary Structure (GADIS) for designing sequences that satisfy the specified constraints. We describe the algorithm and present results to demonstrate the applicability of GADIS by designing sequence variants of the intrinsically disordered PUMA system that undergoes coupled folding and binding to Mcl-1. Our sequence designs span a range of intrinsic helicity profiles. The predicted variations in sequence-encoded mean helicities are tested against experimental measurements.There is a significant collection of proteins with repeating blocks of oppositely charged residues where the consensus sequence is a block of four Glu residues followed by a block of four Lys or Arg residues, (Glu4(Lys/Arg)4)n. These proteins have been experimentally shown to form long single alpha helices (SAHs) under biologically relevant conditions. However, these results are confounding to disorder predictors and to certain atomistic simulations in that both predict these sequences to be strongly disordered. The current working hypothesis is that SAHs are stabilized by i:i+4 salt bridges between opposite charges in consecutive helical turns. We test the merits of this hypothesis to understand the sequence-encoded preference for SAHs and the logic behind the failure of certain atomistic simulations in anticipating the preference for stable SAHs.In simulations with fixed charges the favorable free energy of solvation of charged residues and the associated loss of sidechain entropy hinders the formation of SAHs. We proposed that alterations to charge states induced by sequence context might play an important role in stabilizing SAHs. We tested this hypothesis using a (Glu4Lys4)n repeat protein and a simulation strategy that permits the substitution of charged residues with neutralized protonated or deprotonated variants of Glu / Lys. Our results predict that stable SAH structures derive from the neutralization of approximately half the Glu residues. These findings explain experimental observations and also provide a coherent rationale for the failure of simulations based on fixed charge models. Large-scale sequence analysis reveals that naturally occurring sequences often include defects in charge patterns such as Gln or Ala substitutions. This sequence-encoded incorporation of uncharged residues combined with neutralization of charged residues might tilt the balance toward alpha helical conformations.Micron-sized, non-membrane bound cellular bodies can form as the result of collective interactions between modules of distinct multidomain proteins. Li et al. have examined the phase diagrams that result for polymers of SH3 domains and proline-rich modules (PRMs) while varying the number of interacting domains. It is noteworthy that flexible, intrinsically disordered linkers connect the interacting units within each polymer. Conventional wisdom holds that linkers play a passive role in determining the phase behavior of multidomain proteins that undergo phase separations. Here, we ask if this view is accurate. The motivation for our work comes from recent studies that have uncovered a rich diversity of composition-to-conformation and sequence-to-conformation relationships for intrinsically disordered proteins. The central finding is that disordered regions of proteins have distinct sequence-encoded conformational preferences. Accordingly, we reasoned that the conformational properties of linkers might be a contributing factor, in addition to polyvalency, to the phase behavior of multidomain proteins.We have developed and deployed a three-dimensional lattice model to arrive at a predictive framework to query the effects of linkers on the phase diagrams of polyvalent systems. We find that the critical concentration for phase transition can be influenced by the conformational properties of linkers. Specifically, our results show that linkers modulate the cooperative binding between domains of polymers that are already bound together. Depending on their conformational properties, linkers can also block access to the binding domains via excluded volume effects. Additionally, we find that the properties of the linkers can lead to controls over the mixing of proteins in these bodies. Specifically, we find that there are large ranges of parameters for three protein systems where the bodies isolate specific proteins to different regions of the bodies instead of uniformly mixing them. This result is validated by recent findings of organization inside some observed bodies