The Clustering of Organizational Innovation: Developing Governance Models for Vertical Integration

This case explores a cluster of firms that emerged sharing a particular ownership structure. Typically, clusters are thought of as interrelated firms that produce similar products and services. However, we document the emergence and evolution of a cluster of entrepreneurial ventures that developed using a unique governance structure. We explore the deviant case of Renville, MN because of its notable success in developing a series of entrepreneurial ventures that provided producers with the opportunity to vertically integrate.collective entrepreneurship, organizational innovation, joint vertical innovation, cluster, Agribusiness, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Q10, Q13, Q16,

Analytical modeling of micelle growth. 2. Molecular thermodynamics of mixed aggregates and scission energy in wormlike micelles

Hypotheses: Quantitative molecular-thermodynamic theory of the growth of giant wormlike micelles in mixed nonionic surfactant solutions can be developed on the basis of a generalized model, which includes the classical phase separation and mass action models as special cases. The generalized model describes spherocylindrical micelles, which are simultaneously multicomponent and polydisperse in size. Theory: The model is based on explicit analytical expressions for the four components of the free energy of mixed nonionic micelles: interfacial-tension, headgroup-steric, chain-conformation components and free energy of mixing. The radii of the cylindrical part and the spherical endcaps, as well as the chemical composition of the endcaps, are determined by minimization of the free energy. Findings: In the case of multicomponent micelles, an additional term appears in the expression for the micelle growth parameter (scission free energy), which takes into account the fact that the micelle endcaps and cylindrical part have different compositions. The model accurately predicts the mean mass aggregation number of wormlike micelles in mixed nonionic surfactant solutions without using any adjustable parameters. The endcaps are enriched in the surfactant with smaller packing parameter that is better accommodated in regions of higher mean surface curvature. The model can be further extended to mixed solutions of nonionic, ionic and zwitterionic surfactants used in personal-care and house-hold detergency

T.W. Schultz and the Human-Capital Approach to Entrepreneurship

This paper was presented at the Principal Paper session, “AAEA Invited Paper Session in Memory of T.W. Schultz,” Allied Social Sciences Association annual meeting, Boston, January 6-8, 2006.Includes bibliographical references.T.W. Schultz's theory of entrepreneurship is among his least known, but most interesting, contributions. While entrepreneurship is increasingly recognized as important for economic organization and development, it is not a major component of the economist's day-to-day toolkit. This paper describes Schultz's approach and compares it to other concepts of entrepreneurship in economics and management

Unoccupied states in Cu and Zn octaethyl-porphyrin and phthalocyanine

Copper and zinc phthalocyanines and porphyrins are used in organic light emitting diodes and dye-sensitized solar cells. Using near edge x-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) spectroscopy at the Cu 2p and Zn 2p edges, the unoccupied valence states at the Cu and Zn atoms are probed and decomposed into 3d and 4s contributions with the help of density functional calculations. A comparison with the N 1s edge provides the 2p states of the N atoms surrounding the metal, and a comparison with inverse photoemission provides a combined density of states.This work was supported by the NSF (Award Nos. CHE-1026245 and DMR-0537588 (SRC)) and by the DOE (Contract Nos. DE-FG02-01ER45917 (end station) and DE-AC03-76SF00098 (ALS)). J.M.G.L. and A.R. acknowledge financial support from Spanish MEC (FIS2007-65702-C02-01), ACI-Promociona (ACI2009-1036), Grupos Consolidados UPV/EHU del Gobierno Vasco (IT-319-07), the European Union through the FP7 e-I3 ETSF (Contract No. 211956), and THEMA (Contract No. 228539) projects.Peer Reviewe

The Clustering of Organizational Innovation: Developing Governance Models for Vertical Integration

This case explores a cluster of firms that emerged sharing a particular ownership structure. Typically, clusters are thought of as interrelated firms that produce similar products and services. However, we document the emergence and evolution of a cluster of entrepreneurial ventures that developed using a unique governance structure. We explore the deviant case of Renville, MN because of its notable success in developing a series of entrepreneurial ventures that provided producers with the opportunity to vertically integrate

Universality of Entanglement and Quantum Computation Complexity

We study the universality of scaling of entanglement in Shor's factoring algorithm and in adiabatic quantum algorithms across a quantum phase transition for both the NP-complete Exact Cover problem as well as the Grover's problem. The analytic result for Shor's algorithm shows a linear scaling of the entropy in terms of the number of qubits, therefore difficulting the possibility of an efficient classical simulation protocol. A similar result is obtained numerically for the quantum adiabatic evolution Exact Cover algorithm, which also shows universality of the quantum phase transition the system evolves nearby. On the other hand, entanglement in Grover's adiabatic algorithm remains a bounded quantity even at the critical point. A classification of scaling of entanglement appears as a natural grading of the computational complexity of simulating quantum phase transitions.Comment: 30 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in PR

Genomic and phenotypic analysis of Vavilov's historic landraces reveals the impact of environment and genomic islands of agronomic traits.

The Vavilov Institute of Plant Genetic Resources (VIR), in St. Petersburg, Russia, houses a unique genebank, with historical collections of landraces. When they were collected, the geographical distribution and genetic diversity of most crops closely reflected their historical patterns of cultivation established over the preceding millennia. We employed a combination of genomics, computational biology and phenotyping to characterize VIR's 147 chickpea accessions from Turkey and Ethiopia, representing chickpea's center of origin and a major location of secondary diversity. Genotyping by sequencing identified 14,059 segregating polymorphisms and genome-wide association studies revealed 28 GWAS hits in potential candidate genes likely to affect traits of agricultural importance. The proportion of polymorphisms shared among accessions is a strong predictor of phenotypic resemblance, and of environmental similarity between historical sampling sites. We found that 20 out of 28 polymorphisms, associated with multiple traits, including days to maturity, plant phenology, and yield-related traits such as pod number, localized to chromosome 4. We hypothesize that selection and introgression via inadvertent hybridization between more and less advanced morphotypes might have resulted in agricultural improvement genes being aggregated to genomic 'agro islands', and in genotype-to-phenotype relationships resembling widespread pleiotropy

Structural racism and odds for infant mortality among infants born in the United States 2010

Abstract OBJECTIVES: While ecological studies indicate that high levels of structural racism within US states are associated with elevated infant mortality rates, studies using individual-level data are needed. To determine whether indicators of structural racism are associated with the individual odds for infant mortality among white and black infants in the US. METHODS: We used data on 2,163,096 white and 590,081 black infants from the 2010 US Cohort Linked Birth/Infant Death Data Files. Structural racism indicators were ratios of relative proportions of blacks to whites for these domains: electoral (registered to vote and voted; state legislature representation), employment (civilian labor force; employed; in management; with a bachelor\u27s degree), and justice system (sentenced to death; incarcerated). Multilevel logistic regression was used to determine whether structural racism indicators were risk factors of infant mortality. RESULTS: Compared to the lowest tertile ratio of relative proportions of blacks to whites with a bachelor\u27s degree or higher-indicative of low structural racism-black infants, but not whites, in states with moderate (OR = 1.12, 95% CI = 0.94, 1.32) and high tertiles (OR = 1.25, 95% CI = 1.03, 1.51) had higher odds of infant mortality. CONCLUSIONS: Educational and judicial indicators of structural racism were associated with infant mortality among blacks. Decreasing structural racism could prevent black infant deaths