The role of accessibility for regional innovation systems

The link between proximity and innovation has been dwelled upon extensively in the literature. A regional economic milieu characterized by proximity between relevant actors is maintained to be suitable for establishing and maintaining successful regional innovation system. In this paper it is proposed that the relevant link to be studied is rather that between accessibility and innovation. Although accessibility is a key factor in facilitating the processes stressed to be important for innovations, the relationship between accessibility and innovation is surprisingly unexploited. Scrutinization of the relationship between accessibility and innovation is necessary in order to fully comprehend regional innovative capacity. Furthermore, such scrutinization will shed further light in the issue of the importance of knolwedge spillovers.

Company R&D and University R&D - How Are They Related?

At the same time as we can observe strong tendencies of a globalisation of R&D, we also can observe a strong spatial clustering of R&D and related innovative activities. The standard explanation in the literature of the clustering of innovative activities is that such clusters offer external knowledge economies to innovative companies, since they are dependent upon knowledge flows and that knowledge flows are spatially bounded. Obviously, location is crucial in understanding knowledge flows and knowledge production, since knowledge sources have been found to be geographically concentrated. There are two major performers of R&D: industry and universities. It seems rather straight-forward to assume that industrial R&D might be attracted to locate near research universities doing R&D in fields relevant to industry. Already as far back as in the 1960s a number of case studies confirmed the important roles played by Stanford University and MIT for commercial innovation and entrepreneurship. During the years a large number of formal studies have presented evidences of a positive impact of university R&D on firm performance. The question is, does it also work the other way around? Does industrial R&D function as an attractor for university R&D? We may actually think of several reasons why university R&D may grow close to industry R&D. First of all political decision-makers may decide to start or expand university R&D at locations where industry already is doing R&D. Secondly, we can imagine that industry doing R&D in a region might use part of their R&D funds to finance university R&D. Thirdly, universities in regions with industrial R&D might find it easier to attract R&D funds from national and international sources due to co-operation with industry. Obviously, not all types of university R&D attract industrial R&D. There are reasons to believe that, in particular, university R&D in natural, technical and medical sciences attracts industrial R&D but that there are also strong reasons to believe that there are variations between different sectors of industry regarding how dependent their R&D is to be located close to university R&D. The above implies that there are behavioural relationships between industrial R&D and university R&D and vice versa. However, the litrature contains few studies dealing with this problem. Most studies have concentrated on the one-directional effect from university R&D to industrial R&D and the outputs of industrial R&D in most cases measured in terms of the number of patents and neglected the possible mutual interaction. However, if there is a mutual interaction between university and industry R&D, and if there are knowledge externalities involved, then we can develop a dynamic explanation to the clustering of innovative activities based on positive feedback loops. This would imply strong tendencies to path dependency and that policy initiatives to transfer non-innovative regions to innovative regions would have small chances to succeed. The fact that knowledge flows seem to be spatially bounded implies that proximity matters. Most contributions analysing spatial knowledge flows have used very crude measures of proximity. However, there are some authors that have argued that proximity could be measured using accessibility measures. Accessibility measures can be used to model interaction opportunities at different spatial scales: local, intra-regional and inter-regional. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the locational relationship between industry R&D and university R&D in Sweden using a simultaneous equation approach and to analyse existing differences between different science areas and different industry sectors.

Comparing Simple Quasar Demographics Models

This paper explores several simple model variations for the connections among quasars, galaxies, and dark matter halos for redshifts 1 < z < 6. A key component of these models is that we enforce a self-consistent black hole (BH) history by tracking both BH mass and BH growth rate at all redshifts. We connect objects across redshift with a simple constant-number-density procedure, and choose a fiducial model with a relationship between BH and galaxy growth rates that is linear and evolves in a simple way with redshift. Within this fiducial model, we find the quasar luminosity function (QLF) by calculating an "intrinsic" luminosity based on either the BH mass or BH growth rate, and then choosing a model of quasar variability with either a lognormal or truncated power-law distribution of instantaneous luminosities. This gives four model variations, which we fit to the observed QLF at each redshift. With the best-fit models in hand, we undertake a detailed comparison of the four fiducial models, and explore changes to our fiducial model of the BH-galaxy relationship. Each model variation can successfully fit the observed QLF, the shape of which is generally set by the "intrinsic" luminosity at the faint end and by the scatter due to variability at the bright end. We focus on accounting for the reasons that physically different models can make such similar predictions, and on identifying what observational data or physical arguments are most essential in breaking the degeneracies among models.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl

3.46 Ga Apex chert 'microfossils' reinterpreted as mineral artefacts produced during phyllosilicate exfoliation

We acknowledge the facilities, scientific and technical assistance of the Australian Microscopy & Microanalysis Research Facility at: Centre for Microscopy Characterisation and Analysis, The University of Western Australia; Electron Microscopy Unit, The University of New South Wales. These facilities are funded by the Universities, State and Commonwealth Governments. DW was funded by the European Commission and the Australian Research Council (FT140100321). This is ARC CCFS paper number XXX. We acknowledge Martin van Kranendonk, Owen Green, Cris Stoakes, Nicola McLoughlin, the late John Lindsay and the Geological Survey of Western Australia for fieldwork assistance, Thomas Becker for assistance with Raman microspectroscopy, Anthony Burgess from FEI for the preparation of one of the TEM wafers, and Russell Garwood, Tom Davies, Imran Rahman & Stephan Lautenschlager for training and advice on the SPIERS and AVIZO software suites. We thank Chris Fedo and an anonymous reviewer for comments that improved the manuscript.Peer reviewedPostprin

Queering Dominant Modes of Writing and Identity Formation in Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

As part of a historical formation of marginalized authors who interrogate dominant modes of writing and identity formation in their work, self-described “Black lesbian mother warrior poet” Audre Lorde remakes and reimagines dominant conventions of identity and literary genres in her novel Zami: A New Spelling of My Name to articulate her unique subjectivity as a Black American lesbian writer. Drawing on the work of scholars and activists in the fields of queer theory and feminism, including Cheryl Wall, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Audre Lorde herself, Charlie Martin uses textual and contextual analysis to examine the indelible link between Lorde’s intersecting identity as a Black feminist lesbian and the work that she does to subvert or “queer” dominant modes of storytelling and reductive conceptions of identity in Zami and her other work. Martin contends that through the deployment of both traditional narrative forms and poetic techniques in tandem with each other, Zami presents an alternative mode to the traditional novel that refuses to confine itself to one rigid way of being by insisting upon a hybrid approach to writing and an intersectional conception of identity. In doing so, Zami as an emergent text is able to convey moments of deep affect and erotic knowledge about self-identity and identity formation

Comparison of Machine Learning Models: Gesture Recognition Using a Multimodal Wrist Orthosis for Tetraplegics

Many tetraplegics must wear wrist braces to support paralyzed wrists and hands. However, current wrist orthoses have limited functionality to assist a person’s ability to perform typical activities of daily living other than a small pocket to hold utensils. To enhance the functionality of wrist orthoses, gesture recognition technology can be applied to control mechatronic tools attached to a novel fabricated wrist brace. Gesture recognition is a growing technology for providing touchless human-computer interaction that can be particularly useful for tetraplegics with limited upper-extremity mobility. In this study, three gesture recognition models were compared—two dynamic time-warping models and a hidden Markov model—in terms of their classification accuracy of gestures from a gesture lexicon known to be accessible to tetraplegics. Gesture data from participants with and without spinal cord injuries was collected using a prototype wrist orthosis. Leave-one-subject-out cross-validation was used to develop a user-independent gesture recognition library. The trained models were then tested using a combination of data from both populations and data separated by population. The classification accuracy and classification time were computed and compared to determine the optimal gesture recognition model

Knowledge Accessibility and Regional Economic Growth

This paper analyzes the role of knowledge accessibility in re¬gional economic growth. The research question is the following: can the variation in knowledge accessibility between regions in a given period explain the variation in their growth performance in subsequent periods? As knowledge measures, we use company R&D, university R&D and patents. A main assumption in the paper is that knowledge accessibilities as a measure of knowledge potentials transform into potential knowledge flows. Our regression results indicate that the intra-municipal and intra-regional knowledge accessibilities of municipalities are significant and capable of ex¬plaining a significant share of the variation in growth of value added per employee between Swedish municipalities. However, the inter-regional knowledge accessibility of municipalities turned out to be insignificant. This is interpreted as a clear indication of spatial dependence in the sense that the knowledge resources in a given municipality tend to have a positive effect on the growth of another municipality, conditional on that the municipalities belongs to the same functional region. Thus, the results of the analysis indicate that knowledge flows transcend municipal borders, but that they tend to be bounded within functional regions. Also, the analysis shows that there is no remaining spatial correlation among the residuals of the spatial units (municipalities) when using accessibility measures in the model, which confirms that the spatial dependence is captured by the accessibility variables.

Finding Sanctuary: Australian Foxes and Dingoes and the challenges of rescue

In Australia the term ‘sanctuary’ is used to define a very broad range of animal/human shared spaces, with no regulation as to who can and can’t use the term ‘sanctuary’ to describe their practices. On one hand the term ‘sanctuary’ is often used in Australia to describe the growing number of refuges for ‘domestic’ and ‘livestock’ animals rescued from agricultural industries. However, there are animal breeding facilities in Australia, (that breed, sell and exhibit animals for money) that also describe themselves as ‘sanctuaries’. For the last decade I have been running the “Sydney Fox and Dingo Rescue” and in this thesis I examine what it means to provide sanctuary to the foxes and dingoes we look after. My analysis is informed and shaped by Animal Studies literature on animal sanctuaries and the ethics of captivity. I highlight what it means to be a ‘true sanctuary’ and outline the ethical obligations sanctuaries like mine have towards both humans and non-human animals. The thesis also explores physical, psychological and legal forms of captivity for animals and how the cultural and historic significance of specific animals manifests in their need for sanctuary from persecution by humans. My own experiences running Sydney Fox and Dingo Rescue are an important aspect of this research, and I draw on these to contextualise the ethical dilemmas and challenges facing animal sanctuaries today