Cross-border Entrepreneurial Education, Development and Knowledge and Technology Transfer: Experiences with the Cambridge–Riga Venture Camp Programme—A Reflective Report

Over a 6-year period, a collaboration has been developed between a group in Cambridge, UK, and two Latvian Universities, Stockholm School of Economics in Riga and other organisations, including Riga City Council, supported by the British Embassy Riga and the Latvian Embassy in London, enabling structured processes to be developed to identify aspiring entrepreneurs based in Latvia and Estonia and provide education, coaching, mentoring and encouragement first in the home territory, leading to an intense whole-week development venture camp in Cambridge for selected candidates. The programme was extended to provide ongoing business development support for a number of entrepreneurial companies with global potential, and the developing venture camp activities attracted, supported and helped accelerate the evolution in Riga of an innovative ecosystem providing leadership in the Baltics. Practical examples of cross-border knowledge and technology transfers have been recorded as part of the Cambridge–Riga Venture Camp process. This report presents the development, content and outcomes of this innovative project aimed at supporting the emergence of entrepreneurial and innovative capabilities of Latvian delegates to the project. Detailed appendices including data and narrative based survey of outcomes and assessments containing structured feedback from delegates participating in the 2020 Cambridge-Riga Venture Camp are available as the Supplementary material online. This is an interim report, since the activity is ongoing and continuously developing

The degree of acute descending control of spinal nociception in an area of primary hyperalgesia is dependent on the peripheral domain of afferent input

Descending controls of spinal nociceptive processing play a critical role in the development of inflammatory hyperalgesia. Acute peripheral nociceptor sensitization drives spinal sensitization and activates spino–supraspinal–spinal loops leading to descending inhibitory and facilitatory controls of spinal neuronal activity that further modify the extent and degree of the pain state. The afferent inputs from hairy and glabrous skin are distinct with respect to both the profile of primary afferent classes and the degree of their peripheral sensitization. It is not known whether these differences in afferent input differentially engage descending control systems to different extents or in different ways. Injection of complete Freund's adjuvant resulted in inflammation and swelling of hairy hind foot skin in rats, a transient thermal hyperalgesia lasting 72 h). In hairy skin, transient hyperalgesia was associated with sensitization of withdrawal reflexes to thermal activation of either A- or C-nociceptors. The transience of the hyperalgesia was attributable to a rapidly engaged descending inhibitory noradrenergic mechanism, which affected withdrawal responses to both A- and C-nociceptor activation and this could be reversed by intrathecal administration of yohimbine (α-2-adrenoceptor antagonist). In glabrous skin, yohimbine had no effect on an equivalent thermal inflammatory hyperalgesia. We conclude that acute inflammation and peripheral nociceptor sensitization in hind foot hairy skin, but not glabrous skin, rapidly activates a descending inhibitory noradrenergic system. This may result from differences in the engagement of descending control systems following sensitization of different primary afferent classes that innervate glabrous and hairy skin