De Novo Genesis of Enhancers in Vertebrates

Whole genome duplication in teleost fish reveals that a few changes in non-regulatory genomic sequences are a source for generating new enhancers

Drivers and Effects of Internationalising Innovation by SMEs

This paper investigates the drivers and the effects of the internationalisation of innovation activities in SMEs based on a large data set of German firms covering the period 2002-2007. We look at different stages of the innovation process (R&D, design, production and sales of new products, and implementation of new processes) and explore the role of internal resources, home market competition and innovationrelated location advantages for an SME’s decision to engage in innovation activities abroad. By linking international innovation activities to firm growth in the home market we try to identify likely internationalisation effects at the firm level. The results show that export experience and experience in knowledge protection are highly important for international innovation activities of SMEs. Fierce home market competition turns out to be rather an obstacle than a driver. High innovation costs stimulate internationalisation of non-R&D innovation activities, and shortage of qualified labour expels production of new products. R&D activities abroad and exports of new products spur firm growth in the home market while there are no negative effects on home market growth from shifting production of new products abroad

Combining Computational Prediction of Cis-Regulatory Elements with a New Enhancer Assay to Efficiently Label Neuronal Structures in the Medaka Fish

The developing vertebrate nervous system contains a remarkable array of neural cells organized into complex, evolutionarily conserved structures. The labeling of living cells in these structures is key for the understanding of brain development and function, yet the generation of stable lines expressing reporter genes in specific spatio-temporal patterns remains a limiting step. In this study we present a fast and reliable pipeline to efficiently generate a set of stable lines expressing a reporter gene in multiple neuronal structures in the developing nervous system in medaka. The pipeline combines both the accurate computational genome-wide prediction of neuronal specific cis-regulatory modules (CRMs) and a newly developed experimental setup to rapidly obtain transgenic lines in a cost-effective and highly reproducible manner. 95% of the CRMs tested in our experimental setup show enhancer activity in various and numerous neuronal structures belonging to all major brain subdivisions. This pipeline represents a significant step towards the dissection of embryonic neuronal development in vertebrates

Employment Effects of Different Innovation Activities: Microeconometric Evidence

Using the model recently developed by Jaumandreu (2003) this paper reports new results on the relationship between innovation and employment growth in Germany. The model is tailor-made for analysing firm-level employment effects of innovations using specific information provided by CIS data. It establishes a theoretical link between employment growth and innovation output. The econometric analysis confirms that product innovations have a positive impact on employment. In contrast to previous studies, this effect is independent of the novelty degree. Moreover, different employment effects between manufacturing and service firms regarding process innovations were found. Finally, from a cross country perspective the results for Germany are similar to those found for Spain and the UK

Access to post-compulsory education and training: economic, sociological and political determinants and remaining research gaps

This paper presents a review and assessment of existing theoretical accounts to explain differentials in access to education and training in advanced economies. These theories tend to focus on the analysis of the influence of a set of economic, sociological and political variables on access to education. Existing theories are criticized on two grounds. Firstly, they seldom take into consideration the crucial role of political‐institutional factors, and in particular, welfare states’ actions through direct investment and regulation in shaping access levels. Secondly, they focus narrowly on the analysis of different stages of education and training, and this does not reflect the current policy emphasis on lifelong learning. The paper concludes with an outline of a future research agenda to address these gaps, and also calls for a more rigorous analysis of the weight of the different factors affecting access