Sub-National Capabilities to Perform a Strategic Innovation-Policy, the Example of Biotech in Munich

In this paper we argue that sub-national public units do have a wide range of innovation policy related tools and thus the opportunity to conduct a proper and effective innovation policy, independently from superior policy levels. However, as the following example of Bavarian technology and innovation policy in the field of biotechnology discloses, several crucial particularities have to be taken into account. These are on the one hand organisational specifications of the promoted industry, on the other hand the connectivity to policy programmes on higher policy levels. To examine that kind of policy measures, the authors have applied a new biographical method on the firm level. In so doing we thoroughly examined knowledge and financial flows of biotechnology companies in the Munich area and were hence able to soundly qualify the impact of sub-national policy measures. As a consequence the authors were enabled to identify key institutional arrangements, as the focus on one specific location (clustering), the setting up of public support organizations as well as public Venture Capital (VC), and others. The surprising result of our survey: Munich firms benefited much more from sub-national policies than from any other policy level.Regional economies; knowledge economy; biotechnology; Germany, sub-national innovation pol

The"resource curse"in MENA ? political transitions, resource wealth, economic shocks, and conflict risk

The recent political upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa region have exposed growing concerns about conflict risk, political stability, and reform prospects across its societies. Given the prevalence of oil and gas resource endowments in the region, which a voluminous literature suggests can be associated with adverse development consequences, this paper examines the interplay between their associated rents and political economy trajectories. The contribution of the paper is threefold: first, to examine the quantitative evidence of violent conflict in the region since 1960; second, to provide a nuanced review of the regional case study literature on the relationship between resource endowments, political stability, and conflict risk; and third, to assess how prospective political transitions have implications for the World Bank Group's work in the region on public sector management and private sector development. The authors find that resources and regimes have intersected to provide stability and limited violent conflict in the region, but that these development patterns have yielded a set of policy choices and development patterns that are proving increasingly brittle and unsustainable. A major institutional challenge for reforms will be to consolidate a requisite degree of inter-temporal credibility and stability in these regimes, while expanding inclusiveness in state-society relations.Environmental Economics&Policies,Post Conflict Reconstruction,Economic Theory&Research,Labor Policies,Emerging Markets

Quantum Phase Dynamics in an LC shunted Josephson Junction

We have studied both theoretically and experimentally how an LC series circuit connected in parallel to a Josephson junction influences the Josephson dynamics. The presence of the shell circuit introduces two energy scales, which in specific cases can strongly differ from the plasma frequency of the isolated junction. Josephson junctions were manufactured using Nb/Al-AlOx/Nb fabrication technology with various on-chip LC shunt circuits. Spectroscopic measurements in the quantum limit show an excellent agreement with theory taking into account the shunt inductance and capacitance in the Resistively and Capacitively Shunted Junction model. The results clearly show that the dynamics of the system are two-dimensional, resulting in two resonant modes of the system. These findings have important implications for the design and operation of Josephson junctions based quantum bits

Degrees of Lookahead in Regular Infinite Games

We study variants of regular infinite games where the strict alternation of moves between the two players is subject to modifications. The second player may postpone a move for a finite number of steps, or, in other words, exploit in his strategy some lookahead on the moves of the opponent. This captures situations in distributed systems, e.g. when buffers are present in communication or when signal transmission between components is deferred. We distinguish strategies with different degrees of lookahead, among them being the continuous and the bounded lookahead strategies. In the first case the lookahead is of finite possibly unbounded size, whereas in the second case it is of bounded size. We show that for regular infinite games the solvability by continuous strategies is decidable, and that a continuous strategy can always be reduced to one of bounded lookahead. Moreover, this lookahead is at most doubly exponential in the size of a given parity automaton recognizing the winning condition. We also show that the result fails for non-regular gamesxwhere the winning condition is given by a context-free omega-language.Comment: LMCS submissio

Achieving intelligence in mobility

This paper presents an integrated approach to the application of machine learning tasks that can be observed throughout a number of typical applications of mobile robots and puts those tasks into persepective with respect to both existing and newly developed learning techniques. The actual realization of the approach has been carried out on the two mobile robots PRIAMOS and TESEO, which are both operating in a real office environment. In this context, several experimental results are presented. This paper appeared in: IEEE-Expert: Special Track on Intelligent Robotic Systems, Vol. 10, No. 2, April 1995

Analyzing the impact different teaching strategies on student learning outcomes for the online graduate class Soil Chemistry & Mineralogy (AGRO/NRES/SOIL 455/855)

In this portfolio teaching materials, activities, and assessments applied in a Soil Chemistry & Mineralogy” online graduate class are analyzed towards their suitability to achieve learning objectives and class goals. For this, data from class surveys, a decision matrix, and individual student feedback are the main sources of information. The survey revealed that the learning objectives are successfully addressed. Lecture videos, quizzes, exams, scientific paper reading assignments, and a review paper assignment were evaluated to be suitable in achieving these objectives. The developed matrix and individual student feedback suggest that the overall student learning satisfaction would benefit from more activities that center on working on applied problems and thinking questions in groups. Especially weekly zoom meetings but also group assignments could be used to provide more opportunities for interactive learning in an online environment. Based on the identified need to increase overall student satisfaction due to more interactive group work on applied problems it is concluded that the class goal of better enable students to contribute to propose and implement solutions to complex problems by working in teams is less successfully achieved. Here, dedicating more time towards activities that center on solving applied problems or discussion thinking questions will be beneficial. This will also help in better achievement of the class goal that centers on improved demonstration of problem solving based on the sciences in their area of study. Strengthening the strengths and improvements of specific components should help in maximizing the learning outcome for future students in this class