Geographic proximity and firm-university innovation linkages: evidence from Great Britain

We investigate evidence for spatially mediated knowledge transfer from university research. We examine whether firms locate their R&D labs near universities, and whether those that do are more likely to co-operate with, or source knowledge from universities. We find that pharmaceutical firms locate R&D near to frontier chemistry research departments, consistent with accessing localised knowledge spillovers, but also linked to the presence of science parks. In industries such as chemicals and vehicles there is less evidence of immediate co-location, but those innovative firms that do locate near to relevant research departments are more likely to engage with universities

Experimental measurements of unsteady turbulent boundary layers near separation

Investigations conducted to document the behavior of turbulent boundary layers on flat surfaces that separate due to adverse pressure gradients are reported. Laser and hot wire anemometers measured turbulence and flow structure of a steady free stream separating turbulent boundary layer produced on the flow of a wind tunnel section. The effects of sinusoidal and unsteadiness of the free stream velocity on this separating turbulent boundary layer at a reduced frequency were determined. A friction gage and a thermal tuft were developed and used to measure the surface skin friction and the near wall fraction of time the flow moves downstream for several cases. Abstracts are provided of several articles which discuss the effects of the periodic free stream unsteadiness on the structure or separating turbulent boundary layers

An experimental study of the properties of surface pressure fluctuations for separating turbulent boundary layers

Noise generated by helicopter and turbomachine rotors is a nuisance that designers would like to predict and to minimize within other design constraints. A key element for the noise calculation procedure is knowledge relating the flowfield structure to the surface pressure fluctuation structure. Surface pressure fluctuation data for zero-pressure-gradient and accelerating turbulent boundary layers were obtained. The zero-pressure-gradient turbulent boundary layers were examined with freestream velocities of 72 and 105 fps. Mean and fluctuation velocity profiles and streamwise velocity spectra and wavespeeds were obtained for momentum thickness Reynolds numbers up to 18000 for the zero-pressure-gradient case and up to 4000 for the favorable-pressure-gradient case. The wall shearing stress was estimated from a Clauser plot of the near wall data. It is clear that turbulent pressure fluctuations are produced by turbulent velocity fluctuations. Detailed simultaneous measurements of all of these fluctuations are needed to determine in more detail the structural relationships between velocity and pressure fields. Although some measurements were made for unseparated flows, none were made for separated flows

An experimental study of the properties of surface pressure fluctuations in strong adverse pressure gradient turbulent boundary layers

Experimental data were obtained on blade self-noise generation by strong adverse-pressure-gradient attached boundary layers and by separated turbulent boundary layers that accompany stall. Two microphones were calibrated, placed in plastic housing, and installed in a wind tunnel where observations of acoustic and turbulent signals permitted decomposition of the surface pressure fluctuation signals into the propagated acoustic part and the turbulent-flow generated portion. To determine the convective wave speed of the turbulent contributions, the microphones were spaced a small distance apart in the streamwise direction and correlations were obtained. The turbulent surface pressure spectra upstream of detachment and downstream of the beginning of separation are discussed as well as measurements of turbulent velocity spectra and wavespeeds

Analogue Methods in Palaeoecology: Using the analogue Package

Palaeoecology is an important branch of ecology that uses the subfossil remains of organisms preserved in lake, ocean and bog sediments to inform on changes in ecosystems and the environment through time. The analogue package contains functions to perform modern analogue technique (MAT) transfer functions, which can be used to predict past changes in the environment, such as climate or lake-water pH from species data. A related technique is that of analogue matching, which is concerned with identifying modern sites that are floristically and faunistically similar to fossil samples. These techniques, and others, are increasingly being used to inform public policy on environmental pollution and conservation practices. These methods and other functionality in analogue are illustrated using the Surface Waters Acidification Project diatom:pH training set and diatom counts on samples of a sediment core from the Round Loch of Glenhead, Galloway, Scotland. The paper is aimed at palaeoecologists who are familiar with the techniques described but not with R.

What’s in a moment? using creative practices to capture emotion and experience in career turning points. an autoethnographic exploration

This thesis considers career turning points in the lives of four women who work in educational guidance. I am one of these women. As a practising Career Guidance Counsellor, I have seen people struggle to make career-related decisions, yet in their pasts they seemingly made autonomous decisions with little thought other than it seemed right at the time. My own understanding of decision making, influenced by my cultural heritage, appeared to be informed by intuitive responses and chance occurrences. I wanted to explore if others had similar experiences, to satisfy a personal curiosity and a professional desire to see if creative practices could capture the emotion and experience of past career turning points. Perhaps they can draw upon the knowledge gained in times of uncertainty to aid future decision-making. The study is also the story of my doctoral voyage and utilising an autoethnographic approach, enabled me to position myself in the work. Autoethnography, is both method and methodology, exploring the writer’s experience of life. The tensions between the distinct roles of researcher, participant and observer of both, were explored. I wrote my story and initial, loosely-structured interviews captured the life-career stories of the other participants. Following the first interview, they were given time and space to create artefacts of their own choosing. Second interviews used questions, but allowed for the natural voicing of thoughts to maintain the informality of casual conversation. All interviews were personally transcribed and shared with co-participants to ensure transparency and accuracy. Transcriptions were utilised to create case studies and my narrative of each interview was also recorded in a personal journal. As such, there was a layering to each experience, different ‘truths’ of the same event. Creativity flowed through this work in the form of poetic text, imaginative prose, journal excerpts and a fictionalised chapter. The aim was to provide genuineness and trustworthiness as verification. Adopting a holistic approach to analysis enabled thoughts to emerge prior to, during and after interactions. A proforma (Merrill and West, 2009) provided the vehicle to capture the process and emerging themes. Additionally, writing on the transcripts in coloured ink, added a playful quality to investigations. Writing as inquiry (Richardson, 2000, 2008), encouraged an openness to analysis as I displayed both the writing process and product. In addition to Richardson, my theoretical framework was supported by the work of Jarvis (2006), and his notion of ‘disjuncture’, when something happens which makes us stop and reconsider our positioning in the world, was illuminating. Rogers’ (1961, 1980) inclusive consideration of the whole person, rather than a separation of the various characteristics of a life, has informed my practice to accept that occupation is but one life role. A person can have many roles which can influence a life-career. Throughout the work I have attempted to use rich textual descriptions to show rather than tell the narrative. This is pertinent to evocative autoethnography as extolled by Ellis (2004) and in doing so, I hoped to draw others into the text. Kahneman’s (2011) discussions on rational and intuitive thinking and Krumboltz and Levin’s (2004) understanding of happenstance or chance, have also been a main consideration in this work. Such experiences can be reflected on as we construct our working stories (Savickas, 2011). These theoretical ‘friends’ and others, made me review my positioning in the study and as a result, I gained new knowledge about myself and my place in the world. I have discovered that creative practices appeared to help participants to learn something about themselves; they gained personal insight by engaging with deep reflective and reflexive processes. Knowledge which could be used to inform their future career decision-making when they are feeling uncertain. As such, creative practices could help individuals think again, with a new perspective

Modelling & Improving Flow Establishment in RSVP

RSVP has developed as a key component for the evolving Internet, and in particular for the Integrated Services Architecture. Therefore, RSVP performance is crucially important; yet this has been little studied up till now. In this paper, we target one of the most important aspects of RSVP: its ability to establish flows. We first identify the factors influencing the performance of the protocol by modelling the establishment mechanism. Then, we propose a Fast Establishment Mechanism (FEM) aimed at speeding up the set-up procedure in RSVP. We analyse FEM by means of simulation, and show that it offers improvements to the performance of RSVP over a range of likely circumstances

Density of monodromy actions on non-abelian cohomology

In this paper we study the monodromy action on the first Betti and de Rham non-abelian cohomology arising from a family of smooth curves. We describe sufficient conditions for the existence of a Zariski dense monodromy orbit. In particular we show that for a Lefschetz pencil of sufficiently high degree the monodromy action is dense.Comment: LaTeX2e, 48 pages, Version substantially revised for publication. A gap in the proof of the density for Lefschetz pencils is fixed. The case of hyperelliptic monodromy is also treated in detai