Cluster requiem and the rise of cumulative growth theory

Industry cluster theory has been the predominant model guiding economic development policy throughout the world for nearly two decades. As appealing as the cluster approach has been to regional scientists and policy makers it suffers from a number of theoretical and empirical shortcomings, including an inability to explain economic dispersion and the presence of high-growing firms that thrive in non-clustered industries and locations. This dissertation tracks the growth and survival of a cohort of more than 300,000 establishments operating in Pennsylvania during the 1997-2007 period. It reveals that firm characteristics are 10-times more powerful than industry and cluster characteristics, and 50-times more powerful than location characteristics, in explaining and predicting establishment-level growth and survival. It also finds a Power Law is present in the distribution of establishment growth, indicating that a sub- set of businesses systematically accumulate a disproportionate share of employment growth. Roughly 1% of establishments created 169% of all net new jobs added in the state over a ten- year period. Growth is further concentrated among businesses that are able to sustain growth over multiple years. This suggests that the principal driver of regional growth is cumulative firm growth – the accumulation of a disproportionate amount of growth among a small number of firms through sustained expansion over multiple years. I conclude that the path to building better theory and more effective development policies is one that explicitly links regional growth to the growth of firms. Such an approach should focus on endogenous firm dynamics rather than exogenous heuristics such as industry and location

Bringing People Back into Public Health Data: Community Feedback on a Set of Visualization Tools - Summary Report

This course-based study is a product of the University of Denver’s Spring 2022 The Social Determination of Health (ANTH 2424) class. The study aimed to understand how well a set of public health visualization tools tells the data stories about people in Colorado, and about important public health problems. For this, a team of almost sixty undergraduate students taking the class, coordinated by three graduate teaching assistants, and directed by the course instructor interviewed a total of fifty-six people from Colorado, qualitatively analyzed those interviews, and wrote reports that draw conclusions and recommendations

The elusive archaeology of Kongo urbanism: the case of Kindoki, Mbanza Nsundi (Lower Congo, DRC)

We present here results, analyses and an in-depth historical contextualisation of the fieldwork undertaken in 2012 and 2013 at the Kindoki site in the Lower Congo (DRC). This site is linked with Mbanza Nsundi, one of the Kongo Kingdom's provincial capitals, which turns out to be archaeologically 'elusive'. Pinpointing its location proved to be particularly challenging. To this end, a historically-informed excavation methodology was developed that was never implemented in Central Africa before. We combined a strategy of systematic test pits with a large-scale 50 m grid approach. A cemetery was identified on Kindoki Hill with distinct but contemporaneous quarters of a 16th-17thcenturies settlement on both sides. The cemetery itself contains mainly 18th-century burials, in all likelihood of successive Nsundi rulers. The foreign, especially Portuguese, ceramics excavated on the hilltop and the hundreds of Venetian and likely Bavarian beads found in the graves are indicative of Mbanza Nsundi's connection to trade routes linking the Atlantic coast with the Pool region. The most striking discovery is that of a previously unknown type of comb-impressed pottery, from a pit with a calibrated radiocarbon date AD 1294-1393 (2 sigma). This suggests that a settlement had been developing at Kindoki since at least the 14th century, which allows us, for the very first time, to spatially bridge Kongo history and 'prehistory'. For the entire Lower Congo region only three 14C dates posterior to AD 1000 were available before the start of the KongoKing project, twelve have been added for just Kindoki

2020 roadmap on solid-state batteries

Li-ion batteries have revolutionized the portable electronics industry and empowered the electric vehicle (EV) revolution. Unfortunately, traditional Li-ion chemistry is approaching its physicochemical limit. The demand for higher density (longer range), high power (fast charging), and safer EVs has recently created a resurgence of interest in solid state batteries (SSB). Historically, research has focused on improving the ionic conductivity of solid electrolytes, yet ceramic solids now deliver sufficient ionic conductivity. The barriers lie within the interfaces between the electrolyte and the two electrodes, in the mechanical properties throughout the device, and in processing scalability. In 2017 the Faraday Institution, the UK's independent institute for electrochemical energy storage research, launched the SOLBAT (solid-state lithium metal anode battery) project, aimed at understanding the fundamental science underpinning the problems of SSBs, and recognising that the paucity of such understanding is the major barrier to progress. The purpose of this Roadmap is to present an overview of the fundamental challenges impeding the development of SSBs, the advances in science and technology necessary to understand the underlying science, and the multidisciplinary approach being taken by SOLBAT researchers in facing these challenges. It is our hope that this Roadmap will guide academia, industry, and funding agencies towards the further development of these batteries in the future

New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution.

Body fat distribution is a heritable trait and a well-established predictor of adverse metabolic outcomes, independent of overall adiposity. To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of body fat distribution and its molecular links to cardiometabolic traits, here we conduct genome-wide association meta-analyses of traits related to waist and hip circumferences in up to 224,459 individuals. We identify 49 loci (33 new) associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI), and an additional 19 loci newly associated with related waist and hip circumference measures (P < 5 × 10(-8)). In total, 20 of the 49 waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI loci show significant sexual dimorphism, 19 of which display a stronger effect in women. The identified loci were enriched for genes expressed in adipose tissue and for putative regulatory elements in adipocytes. Pathway analyses implicated adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution, providing insight into potential pathophysiological mechanisms