Entrepreneurial Innovation

This paper constructs an equilibrium model of entrepreneurial innovation where individuals differ in their attitude toward uncertainty.Unlike previous models of innovation, the firm-formation process is endogenous.An entrepreneur, who owns residual profits, utilizes an uncertain technology and hires a worker who may only be partially isolated from uncertainty.While the available production technologies are exogenously specified, the technologies that operate in equilibrium are endogenous, depending on both the entrepreneur's prior beliefs about the profitability of the technology, as well as the worker's willingness to work with the uncertain technology.The general equilibrium setting allows us to explore the impact of innovation on the nature of the firm. The relationship between technological uncertainty and the nature of the firm is able to explain the commonly observed S-shaped diffusion profile.As uncertainty falls, firms evolve from being entrepreneurial to corporate, finally becoming bureaucratic.entrepreneurship;uncertainty;innovation

The Consequences of Polyandry for Sibship Structures, Distributions of Relationships and Relatedness, and Potential for Inbreeding in a Wild Population

We thank the Tsawout and Tseycum First Nations for access to Mandarte Island, Pirmin Nietlisbach, Lukas Keller, Greta Bocedi, Brad Duthie, and Matthew Wolak for helpful discussions, and the European Research Council, National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and Swiss National Science Foundation for funding. Field data collected following UBC Animal Care Committee (A07-0309) and Environment Canada (Master banding permit 10596) guidelines.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Three path interference using nuclear magnetic resonance: a test of the consistency of Born's rule

The Born rule is at the foundation of quantum mechanics and transforms our classical way of understanding probabilities by predicting that interference occurs between pairs of independent paths of a single object. One consequence of the Born rule is that three way (or three paths) quantum interference does not exist. In order to test the consistency of the Born rule, we examine detection probabilities in three path intereference using an ensemble of spin-1/2 quantum registers in liquid state nuclear magnetic resonance (LSNMR). As a measure of the consistency, we evaluate the ratio of three way interference to two way interference. Our experiment bounded the ratio to the order of $10^{-3} \pm 10^{-3}$, and hence it is consistent with Born's rule.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures; Improved presentation of figures 1 and 4, changes made in section 2 to better describe the experiment, minor changes throughout, and added several reference

SONTRAC—a scintillating plastic fiber tracking detector for neutron and proton imaging spectroscopy

SONTRAC (SOlar Neutron TRACking imager and spectrometer) is a conceptual instrument intended to measure the energy and incident direction of 20–150 MeV neutrons produced in solar flares. The intense neutron background in a low-Earth orbit requires that imaging techniques be employed to maximize an instrument’s signal-to-noise ratio. The instrument is comprised of mutually perpendicular, alternating layers of parallel, scintillating, plastic fibers that are viewed by optoelectronic devices. Two stereoscopic views of recoil proton tracks are necessary to determine the incident neutron’s direction and energy. The instrument can also be used as a powerful energetic proton imager. Data from a fully functional 3-d prototype are presented. Early results indicate that the instrument’s neutron energy resolution is approximately 10% with the neutron incident direction determined to within a few degrees