R&D and innovation policy in the Western Balkans: are there additionality effects?

This article examines three types of additionality—input, output, and behavioural—in a cross-country framework. Besides conducting a systemic evaluation, which is scarce even in developed economies, this is among the first studies to investigate the effectiveness of R&D and innovation policy in transition economies. We estimate treatment effects for small and medium-sized firms in six Western Balkan countries. Empirical findings from matching estimators indicate no input and output additionality, while we find evidence of behavioural additionality. These results highlight the importance of conducting a systemic evaluation of innovation public support. We discuss theoretical and policy implications stemming from our empirical findings

SUM’20: State-based user modelling

Capturing and effectively utilising user states and goals is becoming a timely challenge for successfully leveraging intelligent and usercentric systems in differentweb search and data mining applications. Examples of such systems are conversational agents, intelligent assistants, educational and contextual information retrieval systems, recommender/match-making systems and advertising systems, all of which rely on identifying the user state in order to provide the most relevant information and assist users in achieving their goals. There has been, however, limited work towards building such state-aware intelligent learning mechanisms. Hence, devising information systems that can keep track of the user's state has been listed as one of the grand challenges to be tackled in the next few years [1]. It is thus timely to organize a workshop that re-visits the problem of designing and evaluating state-aware and user-centric systems, ensuring that the community (spanning academic and industrial backgrounds) works together to tackle these challenges

Guidelines for the functional annotation of microRNAs using the Gene Ontology

MicroRNA regulation of developmental and cellular processes is a relatively new field of study, and the available research data have not been organized to enable its inclusion in pathway and network analysis tools. The association of gene products with terms from the Gene Ontology is an effective method to analyze functional data, but until recently there has been no substantial effort dedicated to applying Gene Ontology terms to microRNAs. Consequently, when performing functional analysis of microRNA data sets, researchers have had to rely instead on the functional annotations associated with the genes encoding microRNA targets. In consultation with experts in the field of microRNA research, we have created comprehensive recommendations for the Gene Ontology curation of microRNAs. This curation manual will enable provision of a high-quality, reliable set of functional annotations for the advancement of microRNA research. Here we describe the key aspects of the work, including development of the Gene Ontology to represent this data, standards for describing the data, and guidelines to support curators making these annotations. The full microRNA curation guidelines are available on the GO Consortium wiki (http://wiki.geneontology.org/index.php/MicroRNA_GO_annotation_manual)

Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Development: Synthesis Report, Mobile Learning Week 2019

(First paragraph) 2019’s Mobile Learning Week (MLW), UNESCO’s flagship event for information and communication technology (ICT) in education, focused on the theme ‘Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Development’. Held over five days in Paris, it comprised a sequence of high-profile events (a global conference, a policy forum and workshops, a symposium and strategy labs), and involved more than 1,500 participants from 140 countries (including Ministers of Education and ICT, other representatives from Member States, the private sector, academia and international organizations)

Cardiomyocyte Formation by Skeletal Muscle-Derived Multi-Myogenic Stem Cells after Transplantation into Infarcted Myocardium

BACKGROUND: Cellular cardiomyoplasty for myocardial infarction has been developed using various cell types. However, complete differentiation and/or trans-differentiation into cardiomyocytes have never occurred in these transplant studies, whereas functional contributions were reported. METHODS AND RESULTS: Skeletal muscle interstitium-derived CD34(+)/CD45(-) (Sk-34) cells were purified from green fluorescent protein transgenic mice by flowcytometory. Cardiac differentiation of Sk-34 cells was examined by in vitro clonal culture and co-culture with embryonic cardiomyocytes, and in vivo transplantation into a nude rat myocardial infarction (MI) model (left ventricle). Lower relative expression of cardiomyogenic transcription factors, such as GATA-4, Nkx2-5, Isl-1, Mef2 and Hand2, was seen in clonal cell culture. However, vigorous expression of these factors was seen on co-culture with embryonic cardiomyocytes, together with formation of gap-junctions and synchronous contraction following sphere-like colony formation. At 4 weeks after transplantation of freshly isolated Sk-34 cells, donor cells exhibited typical cardiomyocyte structure with formation of gap-junctions, as well as intercalated discs and desmosomes, between donor and recipient and/or donor and donor cells. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis detecting the rat and mouse genomic DNA and immunoelectron microscopy using anti-GFP revealed donor-derived cells. Transplanted Sk-34 cells were incorporated into infarcted portions of recipient muscles and contributed to cardiac reconstitution. Significant improvement in left ventricular function, as evaluated by transthoracic echocardiography and micro-tip conductance catheter, was also observed. CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: Skeletal muscle-derived multipotent Sk-34 cells that can give rise to skeletal and smooth muscle cells as reported previously, also give rise to cardiac muscle cells as multi-myogenic stem cells, and thus are a potential source for practical cellular cardiomyoplasty