New Technology, Innovation and Space

The new geography of the R&D activities As a rule, new technologies in today’s world are the result of a long R&D process. This includes basic theoretical and applied research, as well as repeated testing which ensures that the new techniques coming out of the previous processes are ready to be applied in production and/or to enrich the output-mix with new products. In a broader sense, R&D generates also new ideas and techniques that contribute to the introduction of more efficient methods in the organization of production. In that part in which the non-marketable results are significant, the R&D activity is primarily state funded or financed by international organizations. It manifests a wide spatial distribution, spreading practically to all countries, and includes mainly research aiming to improve public health and security conditions, and to raise agricultural efficiency. It aims also to increase environmental protection and to create positive external economies that promote the public interest. In many big countries a considerable amount of state funded research serves military purposes and the exploration of space, with some of it having spillover effects for peaceful purposes. In the remaining part of the R&D that is conducted in the private sector of the economy, the Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) are the dominant players. In the era of globalization they have emerged as principal economic actors and are even more important in the application of new technologies. They dispose of large material resources and can recruit scientific and engineering talent from all over the world. It matters therefore where they locate their R&D. Given that the developed countries spend on R&D 2-3% of their GDP, amounting to the largest part of the world research expenditure, the traditional view has been that those countries account also for nearly all research activity. According to the UN World Investment Report 2005, however, the view of more complex production activities being undertaken in the North and simpler ones in the South is less and less a true reflection of reality. In some developing countries like China, India, Pakistan and North Korea, the state budget allocations for R&D expenses, including those for military research, has been high. The actual research output per unit of expense may be even higher, in comparison to that of the developed countries, because their wage levels and the cost of the basic infrastructure (building and various kinds of materials) are lower. Many of their researchers, however, are not less efficient and inventive than their homologues in the more developed countries. Further, MNEs now view parts of the developing world not only as key sources of cheap labour, but also of growth, skills and even new technologies. They have accelerated the pace of their direct investment in overseas R&D and the delocation of R&D activities in other countries, acquiring or establishing new laboratories abroad and integrating them into global R&D networks. They have many reasons to implement those policies: Their purpose is to source foreign technology, gain access to the local science base, hire foreign skilled engineers and benefit from local expertise and scientific excellence. They also want first, to utilize their subsidiaries in adapting the local market products to those developed in the research laboratories of the mother multinational company; and second, to adjust their own products to the local market and manufacturing processes. R&D activities of acquired subsidiaries are more concerned with applied research and scanning of local technologies, while new established subsidiaries generally focus on the suitable for the local market development of products based on technologies applied in the mother company. All told, small and less developed countries contribute now substantially to the world research output in three main ways: By running their own public and private research centers; as partners and employees of the subsidiaries of the MNEs established in them; and through their nationals doing research work in foreign universities and research centers. Despite its alleged detrimental effects, globalization, whatever its definition, appears to be reducing at a quick pace the spatial inequalities in research activities. The ways and means of those developments and their actual effects will be analyzed in the proposed paper. Policy implications Exploring the spatial allocation of the R&D activity may lead to useful conclusions for rational policy decisions. The establishment of MNEs in any country has overall positive labour market affects. It may, however, cause unemployment to the less qualified workers, in the usual cases that labour intensive processes are introduced in production lines carried out with traditional techniques. R&D activities established by the MNEs in a host country generate also positive spillovers in it, by strengthening its policies designed to attract FDI in research and innovation, as well as through an increase in the local demand for highly qualified persons. The more pronounced the presence of foreign R&D subsidiaries in a host country, the higher the demand for domestic researchers. It follows that well trained and with appropriate work attitudes graduates of tertiary education in any country can find satisfactory employment, at home or abroad. The national borders are also open for the highly skilled. Far from causing a brain drain, their emigration develops, as a rule, into a brain gain because it creates incentives for more and better training in the sending country. Eventually, it develops also into a brain exchange between sending and receiving countries, for their mutual benefit. In the last fifteen years, for example, the Chinese and Indian researchers in the universities and the technological parks of many developed countries have contributed considerably to the economic development of their respective countries. Up until very recently, in Greece as well about nine out of ten persons with responsible positions in the academia, the research centers and practically in all walks of life had some research experience abroad. The hypothesis which will also be tested in the proposed paper is that, higher degrees of R&D internalization are associated with minimal negative effects of any brain drain Main Bibliography Bein M. and Docquier Fr 2004 “Skilled Migrationâ€, Brussels Economic Review, Vol. 47-No1, Spring, Special Issue Cornelius W., EspenshadeT. J. and Salehyan I. 2001 “The International Migration of the Highly Skilled: Demand, Supply, and Development Consequences in Sending and Receiving Countries†La Jolla, Uni. of California, San Diego United Nations 2005 “World Investment Report 2005. Transnational Corporations and the Internationalization of R&Dâ€, New York and Geneva Various publications in English and Greek by Lambrianidis L., Liargovas P., Liberaki Ant., Petrakos G., Pournarakis M. and Thardanidis Ch.

Hecke algebras and the Lusztig isomorphism

Let G be a Chevalley group over a finite field with q elements and let B be a Borel subgroup of G. Let H(G,B) be the Hecke algebra of the pair (G,B). J. Tits showed that the Hecke algebra over C is isomorphic to the group algebra over C of the Weyl group. N. Iwahori conjectured that the Hecke algebra over Q of the pair (G,B) is isomorphic to the group algebra over Q of the Weyl group. Benson and Curtis proved that this conjecture is true whenever G is simple of type different from E₇, E₈. With the help of Springer they proved that the conjecture is no longer true when G is of type E₇, E₈. G. Lusztig constructed an explicit isomorphism from the Hecke algebra over Q(q*) to the group algebra over Q(q*) of the Weyl group. The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate the general properties of this isomorphism. As a consequence of our investigation we introduce a way of obtaining orthogonal primitive idempotents inside the Hecke algebra. This thesis has been divided into six chapters. In Chapter 1 we recall some auxiliarly results about the structure of Coxeter groups and their associated Hecke algebras. We also recall the Kazhdan-Lusztig decomposition of a Coxeter group into left, right and two sided cells and we explain how the cells give rise to representations of the Coxeter groups and of the corresponding Hecke algebras. Let W be a finite indecomposable Coxeter group satisfying a certain property (property (A)) for the structure of its two sided cells. We recall an explicit isomorphism from HQ (u*) (W) to Q(u*)(W) constructed by G. Lusztig, where Q(u*) 1c the field of fractions of the polynomial ring Q[u*]. The subsequent chapters are our own work. In Chapter 2 we find an explicit formula for Lusztig's Isomorphism 1n the case where W - D₂n the dihedral groups. It turns out that these groups satisfy the required property (A). Here we achieve our results using classical properties of the Chebyshev polynomials of the second kind. In Chapter 3 we investigate the centre of the Hecke algebra over the polynomial ring Q[u], following some ideas of R.W. Carter. These ideas give a natural basis for the centre of the Hecke algebras of dihedral groups and they lead to an interesting conjecture for the form of a basis of the centre of the Hecke algebra in the general case. In Chapter 4 we find the images of the central basis elements of the Hecke algebra of dihedral type determined in the previous chapter, under Lusztig's isomorphism. Here we show that the images of these elements no longer involve u*. In Chapter 5 we prove results valid for arbitrary Hecke algebras. Here we show that the images of the generators Ts of the Hecke algebra under Lusztig's isomorphism θ are given by θ (Ts) – u-1/2.1 + u+1/2.s + (u*-1)²Fs for some Fs E QW. We give two independent proofs of this result. The second one 1s based on some conjectures made by R.W. Carter and uses the results of A. Gyoja for the irreducible representations of Coxeter groups and Hecke algebras. We also show that if c – wεw Σ awTw is an element in the centre of the Hecke algebra with aw ε Q[u], then in most of the cases the image of c under Lusztig's isomorphism θ, belongs to Q[u](W). In Chapter 6 we deal with the construction of orthogonal primitive idempotents Inside the Hecke algebra. These ide mpotents are obtained naturally from the decomposition of a maximal commutative subalgebra Inside the Hecke algebra. We shall achieve this decomposition in some special cases. Finally we discuss some open questions which arise naturally from our work, and we make some conjectures which would allow these questions to be settled

Domestic Sources of Russias Resurgence as a Global Great Power

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia being its legitimate heir lost most of its greatness. In recent years, coincided as they have been with Vladimir Putin holding office, Russia appears to have been on the way to recover and reemerge as a first tier great power in world politics. Holding constant the shaping influence of the international system and geopolitics, this development also owes much to the legacy of Czarism, the Soviet Union and Putins two-term presidency

Hecke algebras of finite type are cellular

Let \cH be the one-parameter Hecke algebra associated to a finite Weyl group $W$, defined over a ground ring in which ``bad'' primes for $W$ are invertible. Using deep properties of the Kazhdan--Lusztig basis of \cH and Lusztig's \ba-function, we show that \cH has a natural cellular structure in the sense of Graham and Lehrer. Thus, we obtain a general theory of ``Specht modules'' for Hecke algebras of finite type. Previously, a general cellular structure was only known to exist in types $A_n$ and $B_n$.Comment: 14 pages; added reference

Translation, Adaptation and Validation of the Coronary Revascularization Outcome Questionnaire (CROQ) into Greek

Date of Acceptance: 31/05/2015Evaluating the impact of coronary revascularization on patients’ health related quality of life with a patient-based and disease-specific tool is important for drawing conclusions about treatment and outcomes. This study reports on the translation, adaptation and psychometric evaluation of a Greek version of the Coronary Revascularization Outcome Questionnaire (CROQ-Gr)Peer reviewe

Neighbourliness, conviviality, and the sacred in Athens’ refugee squats

To better understand the range of possibilities and opportunities for (co)existence available to displacement‐affected people, attention must be given to the thick webs of sociality shaping interactions in situations of mass displacement. This paper makes the case that refugee squats in Athens are distinct spaces wherein different understandings of (co)existence converge – spaces whose production is contingent on support from neighbourly relations and networks that are mediated in moments through conceptions of conviviality informed by religion. Based on ethnographic work carried out in 2016 and a spatial analysis of refugee squats in Athens, this paper emphasises neighbourliness and conviviality as they relate to sacred understandings of coexistence. This helps highlight the limits built in to thinking about the movement of refugees from the global South through Euro‐centric ontologies of the social. More than this, following postcolonial debates on the decentring of knowledge production, the research makes manifest how Islamic socio‐cultural memories of jiwār or a right of neighbourliness complicate geographies of humanitarianism that make stark binary assumptions between religious and secular space. In turn, the evidence from Athens indicates that refugee perspectives on neighbourliness are imperfectly translated by migrant rights activists as solidarity, obscuring the different ways Muslim structures of feeling contribute to the production of refugee squats