R&D Production Team Composition and Firm-Level Innovation

We examine the relationship between firms’ within- and across-inventor team composition and firm-level innovation. An empirical regularity in the prior literature on inventor teams is that diversity, as measured by factors such as prior technology experience, can positively influence a team’s innovative performance. The literature has remained silent, however, on the issue of how an inventor team’s presence within the broader context of the firm influences the firm’s aggregate innovative output. This question has implications for understanding the optimal allocation of production-related human capital, particularly in resource-constrained start-up environments. We assemble a panel dataset of start-up biotechnology firms founded between 1980 and 2000, tracked from founding through 2009, to develop and test hypotheses regarding the link between team structure and firm-level forward patent citations. We find that innovation is best promoted with greater across-team diversity and lower within-team diversity. This result is moderated by the firm’s product development stage, the complexity of its technology environment, joint experience among the firm’s inventors, and the degree to which production team structure is modulated over time. We find important differences in the results when running a parallel analysis at the patent team-level, which provides further evidence in support of the idea that within- firm production team organization structure influences firm-level innovation output. An implication is that prior results in the literature regarding knowledge production teams may not generalize to the firm-level of analysis

Are the immuno-stimulatory properties of Lenalidomide extinguished by co-administration of Dexamethasone?

Dexamethasone has been a mainstay of anti-myeloma therapy for 20 years. However, it is intensely immunosuppressive and may limit the efficacy of the immune system to control myeloma, and limit the exciting opportunities to use immune stimulating drug therapies such as Lenalidomide to maximize the fight against this disease

Taipei apartment

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2013.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 85).To accommodate the rapid modernization and urbanization between 1960s and 1980s, a large number of mid-rise apartments has been built in Taipei. Today, these poorly designed apartments represent about 40 percent of the total residential buildings in the city, as much as 3,000,000 housing units. It has become a city-scale social issue, since these apartments no longer !t the needs of aging and wealthier inhabitants. People have been finding ways to modify and improve their living space. However, generally, these building improvements are limited to a relatively small scale due to the in"influence of the "floating real estate market and the high owner-occupied rate in the city. With limited legislation for apartment maintenance, it is di#cult for the existing communities to reach a consensuses that achieves the building improvements on a larger scale, such as creating more space for public amenities. Today, the local government is promoting a series of city renewal policies to rebuild these aging apartments. In this situation, architects have a chance to create a new housing system with well-established regulations. $e new system will help to well distribute the levels of control and provide greater adaptability to !t the living culture in Taipei City.by Andy Chien-Che Hsu.M.Arch

Low Dopamine D2/D3 Receptor Availability is Associated with Steep Discounting of Delayed Rewards in Methamphetamine Dependence.

BackgroundIndividuals with substance use disorders typically exhibit a predilection toward instant gratification with apparent disregard for the future consequences of their actions. Indirect evidence suggests that low dopamine D2-type receptor availability in the striatum contributes to the propensity of these individuals to sacrifice long-term goals for short-term gain; however, this possibility has not been tested directly. We investigated whether striatal D2/D3 receptor availability is negatively correlated with the preference for smaller, more immediate rewards over larger, delayed alternatives among research participants who met DSM-IV criteria for methamphetamine (MA) dependence.MethodsFifty-four adults (n = 27 each: MA-dependent, non-user controls) completed the Kirby Monetary Choice Questionnaire, and underwent positron emission tomography scanning with [(18)F]fallypride.ResultsMA users displayed steeper temporal discounting (p = 0.030) and lower striatal D2/D3 receptor availability (p < 0.0005) than controls. Discount rate was negatively correlated with striatal D2/D3 receptor availability, with the relationship reaching statistical significance in the combined sample (r = -0.291, p = 0.016) and among MA users alone (r = -0.342, p = 0.041), but not among controls alone (r = -0.179, p = 0.185); the slopes did not differ significantly between MA users and controls (p = 0.5).ConclusionsThese results provide the first direct evidence of a link between deficient D2/D3 receptor availability and steep temporal discounting. This finding fits with reports that low striatal D2/D3 receptor availability is associated with a higher risk of relapse among stimulant users, and may help to explain why some individuals choose to continue using drugs despite knowledge of their eventual negative consequences. Future research directions and therapeutic implications are discussed