Are Technoparks High Tech Fantasies? Lessons from the Tunisian Experience

The objective of this article is to contribute to the debate on the effectiveness of Technoparks (TP) in developing and emerging economies using the example of Tunisia. This article is based on a thorough desk review and informal interviews with TP entrepreneurs and managers in Tunisia. Setting up “ex-nihilo” ten TPs in Tunisia in the mid-1990s was a political decision. Having signed the Treaty of Marrakesh to enter in a Free Trade Zone with Arab Countries in 1989, and being the first Mediterranean country to enter in a free trade area with the EU in 1995, Tunisia needed to boost its productivity and competitiveness both within the EU and with other Arab states. As a response Technoparks started burgeoning in an attempt to address new economic challenges such as demand for highly skilled labour, jobs for youth, economic diversification, capturing the dividend of new technologies, and boosting regional development. In 1997, Tunisia set up El Ghazela -a competitive Technopark in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Six other TPs followed suit in various priority areas like biotechnology, energy, and agri-business which are still in progress. Tunisia’s eleventh development plan programmed for an additional three TPs in the south and in the west of the country. Of the ten TPs only El-Ghazala is effective. A key success factor was the interaction between government, higher education institutions and multinationals as well as the diaspora which played a crucial role in attracting multinationals. They also effectively linked Tunisian start-up companies to the international value chain of production. El-Ghazala had access to a critical mass of highly skilled researchers and a local labour market. The other TPs failed to put in place some of these necessary prerequisites. This article shows that setting up ten TPs in a small developing country like Tunisia was quite unrealistic. A better strategy would have been to concentrate on three or four specific centres of excellence such as performing universities or industrial zones and leverage the diaspora more effectively

Are Technoparks High Tech Fantasies? Lessons from the Tunisian Experience

The objective of this article is to contribute to the debate on the effectiveness of Technoparks (TP) in developing and emerging economies using the example of Tunisia. This article is based on a thorough desk review and informal interviews with TP entrepreneurs and managers in Tunisia. Setting up “ex-nihilo” ten TPs in Tunisia in the mid-1990s was a political decision. Having signed the Treaty of Marrakesh to enter in a Free Trade Zone with Arab Countries in 1989, and being the first Mediterranean country to enter in a free trade area with the EU in 1995, Tunisia needed to boost its productivity and competitiveness both within the EU and with other Arab states. As a response Technoparks started burgeoning in an attempt to address new economic challenges such as demand for highly skilled labour, jobs for youth, economic diversification, capturing the dividend of new technologies, and boosting regional development. In 1997, Tunisia set up El Ghazela -a competitive Technopark in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Six other TPs followed suit in various priority areas like biotechnology, energy, and agri-business which are still in progress. Tunisia’s eleventh development plan programmed for an additional three TPs in the south and in the west of the country. Of the ten TPs only El-Ghazala is effective. A key success factor was the interaction between government, higher education institutions and multinationals as well as the diaspora which played a crucial role in attracting multinationals. They also effectively linked Tunisian start-up companies to the international value chain of production. El-Ghazala had access to a critical mass of highly skilled researchers and a local labour market. The other TPs failed to put in place some of these necessary prerequisites. This article shows that setting up ten TPs in a small developing country like Tunisia was quite unrealistic. A better strategy would have been to concentrate on three or four specific centres of excellence such as performing universities or industrial zones and leverage the diaspora more effectively

Are Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells a Step towards Modeling Pediatric Leukemias?

Despite enormous improvements in pre-clinical and clinical research, acute leukemia still represents an open challenge for pediatric hematologists; both for a significant relapse rate and for long term therapy-related sequelae. In this context, the use of an innovative technology, such as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), allows to finely reproduce the primary features of the malignancy and can be exploited as a model to study the onset and development of leukemia in vitro. The aim of this review is to explore the recent literature describing iPSCs as a key tool to study different types of hematological malignancies, comprising acute myeloid leukemia, non-down syndrome acute megakaryoblastic leukemia, B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia. This model demonstrates a positive impact on pediatric hematological diseases, especially in those affecting infants whose onsets is found in fetal hematopoiesis. This evidence highlights the importance of achieving an in vitro representation of the human embryonic hematopoietic development and timing-specific modifications, either genetic or epigenetic. Moreover, further insights into clonal evolution studies shed light in the way of a new precision medicine era, where patient-oriented decisions and therapies could further improve the outcome of pediatric cases. Nonetheless, we will also discuss here the difficulties and limitations of this model

Algebraic Properties of Qualitative Spatio-Temporal Calculi

Qualitative spatial and temporal reasoning is based on so-called qualitative calculi. Algebraic properties of these calculi have several implications on reasoning algorithms. But what exactly is a qualitative calculus? And to which extent do the qualitative calculi proposed meet these demands? The literature provides various answers to the first question but only few facts about the second. In this paper we identify the minimal requirements to binary spatio-temporal calculi and we discuss the relevance of the according axioms for representation and reasoning. We also analyze existing qualitative calculi and provide a classification involving different notions of a relation algebra.Comment: COSIT 2013 paper including supplementary materia

Eficiência de armadilhas adesivas reutilizáveis no monitoramento de Diaphorina citri Kuwayama, 1908 (Hemiptera: Liviidae)

Manejo das principais doenças e insetos-prag