Economic policy from an evolutionary perspective: the case of Finland

In the last decade, the Finnish economy has shown an unprecedented recovery, after being hit by a deep crisis in the early 1990s. The paper views and interprets this successful transformation process based on ICT from an evolutionary perspective. Although the rapid pace of the restructuring of the Finnish economy suggests a break with the past, this remarkable recovery was firmly rooted in its economic history. In addition, Finnish public policy played its role in turning Finland into a knowledge economy. Although a master plan for the Finnish economy was lacking, many policies worked out quite well together over an extended period. Building on education, research and technology policy initiatives taken in the 1970s and 1980s, the deep economic crisis in the early 1990s paved the way for new policy directions, with a focus on network-facilitating innovation policies.evolutionary economics, economic geography, innovation policy, Finnish economy, Finnish policy, ICT cluster

Micro/Nano Manufacturing

Micro manufacturing involves dealing with the fabrication of structures in the size range of 0.1 to 1000 µm. The scope of nano manufacturing extends the size range of manufactured features to even smaller length scales—below 100 nm. A strict borderline between micro and nano manufacturing can hardly be drawn, such that both domains are treated as complementary and mutually beneficial within a closely interconnected scientific community. Both micro and nano manufacturing can be considered as important enablers for high-end products. This Special Issue of Applied Sciences is dedicated to recent advances in research and development within the field of micro and nano manufacturing. The included papers report recent findings and advances in manufacturing technologies for producing products with micro and nano scale features and structures as well as applications underpinned by the advances in these technologies

The Symbiotic Match of AVT & Tech Industry State-Of-The-Art and Way Forward

The Audiovisual Translation (AVT) sector and the Tech industry have been inseparable, a symbiotic match. In the AVT field, the introduction of the DVD in 1995 was the most significant development in the field of AVT, profoundly influencing the nature of professional practices. It had «repercussions not only in the way audiovisual programmes started to be packaged, marketed and consumed, but also from a quantitative perspective» (Díaz-Cintas 2013: 119). Yet, the greatest catalyst of changes in communications and AVT has always been the Internet (Díaz-Cintas 2013: 119). In the last decade, the world around us has radically altered. On a daily basis, we are immersed in an audiovisual reality, surrounded by Video Streaming on Demand (SVoD) systems, where players like Netflix spend billions of dollars in new productions reaching volumes of content that were impossible only a decade ago. New experiments with advanced technologies applied to AVT have been consistently carried out since 2000 to meet the demands of SVoD systems: automatic speech recognition (ASR) able to ‘understand’ the voices in a dialogue, and neural machine translation (NMT) processes have been applied to the production of subtitled versions of films and TV shows to a large extent, generating new roles in the industry and creating new debates about the ethics of technology in the AVT industry

A contextual analysis of cycling environment assessment tools in a Cape Town mobility corridor

Building on recent research on barriers to cycling mobility in low-income South African contexts, this study explored the role of the built environment as a determinant of cycling practices along a mobility corridor in Cape Town, South Africa. The communities surveyed reflect the demographic and income disparities of the city, and their attitudes to cycling and the cycling environment both corroborate existing findings and pose new research questions. In particular, respondents of all income levels showed that they distorted their own journeys by bicycle to avoid areas perceived to have a high risk of criminal activity, even where this meant using routes perceived to present a high risk of physical injury. A second finding was that all road users engage in informal road behaviour, including motorists, and that this is an integral aspect of the study area's mobility culture. The methods used in this study were a series of interviews with three community bicycle-shop owners, supported by focus groups held in each community, and accompanied by a mapping exercise. Fieldwork took the form of accompaniment of youth cycling initiatives and observation of commuting practices by the author. The data obtained in fieldwork were then used to evaluate a selection of cycling environment assessment tools from the USA, UK and Australia, and a pedestrian environment assessment tool from South Africa, in order to evaluate their contextual appropriateness for the local determinants of cycling. The study concludes with recommendations towards a South African cycling environment assessment tool that would capacitate local government and civil society to deliver improvements to the cycling environment and capitalise on existing pro-cycling policies

System engineering for radio frequency communication consolidation with parabolic antenna stacking

2020 Fall.Includes bibliographical references.This dissertation implements System Engineering (SE) practices while utilizing Model Based System Engineering (MBSE) methods through software applications for the design and development of a parabolic stacked antenna. Parabolic antenna stacking provides communication system consolidation by having multiple antennas on a single pedestal which reduces the number of U.S. Navy shipboard topside antennas. The dissertation begins with defining early phase system lifecycle processes and the correlation of these early processes to activities performed when the system is being developed. Performing SE practices with the assistance of MBSE, Agile, Lean methodologies and SE / engineering software applications reduces the likelihood of system failure, rework, schedule delays, and cost overruns. Using this approach, antenna system consolidation via parabolic antenna stacking is investigated while applying SE principles and utilizing SE software applications. SE / engineering software such as IBM Rational Software, Innoslate, Antenna Magus, ExtendSim, and CST Microwave Studio were used to perform SE activities denoted in ISO, IEC, and IEEE standards. A method to achieve multi-band capabilities on a single antenna pedestal in order to reduce the amount of U.S. Navy topside antennas is researched. An innovative approach of parabolic antenna stacking is presented to reduce the amount of antennas that take up physical space on shipboard platforms. Process simulation is presented to provide an approach to improve predicting delay times for operational availability measures and to identify process improvements through lean methodologies. Finally, this work concludes with a summary and suggestions for future work

ASSESSING THE TURKISH MODEL: THE MODERNISATION TRAJECTORY OF TURKEY THROUGH THE LENS OF THE MULTIPLE MODERNITIES PARADIGM

With the Arab uprisings of 2011, the so-called ‘Turkish model’ emerged as central to a number of debates within academia about the significance of the modernisation experience of Turkey and its alleged applicability for developing countries of the Middle East and North Africa region. This thesis explores the concept of the Turkish model through the lens of modernisation studies. There are two mainstream conceptualisations of the Turkish model within the scholarly literature, namely what this thesis terms the ‘structural model’ and the ‘societal model’. While the structural model emphasises the value of the Kemalist secularisation program and the pre-1980 period of state-led development for the alleged success of Turkey in modernisation, the societal model highlights the role of social forces, particularly focusing on the post-1980 period of economic liberalisation and the rise of the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) after 2002. The methodology of the structural model is based on hypotheses of ‘classical modernisation theory’, whereas the societal model is inspired by ‘neo-modernisation theory’. Nevertheless, there is a gap in the existing literature on the Turkish model in terms of holistically examining this country case with a rising approach within modernisation studies in recent years – the ‘multiple modernities paradigm’. This thesis offers an alternative approach to the study of the Turkish model by applying the multiple modernities paradigm. This theorem challenges Eurocentric and deterministic conceptualisations of modernity by arguing that the processes of secularisation and economic development do not necessarily result in the consolidation of liberal democratic regimes. The thesis argues that the conceptual frameworks used by the structural and societal models within Turkish studies are based on the historical Western European experience of development, which prevents the two schools from fully accounting for the nuances of the unique process of transformation in Turkey. While expecting Turkey to replicate the Western experience, both approaches neglect the significance of historical contingency, path dependency and international context for the socio economic and political history of this country. By contrast, the multiple modernities paradigm acknowledges the profound impact these factors had on Turkey’s modernisation experience. Based on this framework, the thesis analyses the economic, social and political development trajectories of Turkey, showing that modernisation in this non-Western society has been a complex phenomenon that produced a divergent ‘modernity’ rather than converging towards Western values such as liberal democracy