70,488 research outputs found
"Closing the R&D Gap, Evaluating the Sources of R&D Spending"
No full textBoth spending and tax policies have been implemented in the United States with the goal of stimulating private sector research and development (R&D). Karier questions whether current R&D policy, especially the research and experimentation tax credit, can contribute to closing the gap between nondefense expenditures on R&D in the United States and such expenditures in other countries, such as Japan and Germany. He also explores possible changes to our current R&D policy to make it more effective.
The reduction of metaphysics and the play of violence in the poetry of Wallace Stevens
No full textPhDThe thesis demonstrates how Wallace Stevens' poetry utilises pre-Socratic philosophy in overcoming post-Kantian dislocation from the 'thing-in-itself'. I initially consider Stevens’ poetry in terms of Hans-Georg Gadamer's ontological conception of the 'play' of art, an interactive existence overlooked by Kant. Through the ‘play’ of Stevens’ poems the reading audience are implicated in their reduction to being. The origin of this conception leads Gadamer back to Parmenides who Stevens had read. I argue that Stevens’ poetry ‘plays’ its audience into an ontological ground in an effort to show that his ‘reduction of metaphysics’ is not dry philosophical imposition, but is enacted by our encounter with the poems themselves. Through an analysis of how the language and form of Stevens’ poems attempt to reduce mind and world to concepts that parallel Parmenides’ poetic sense of being, and Heraclitus’ notion of becoming, the thesis uncovers the ground in which Stevens attempts a reconnection with the ‘thing-in-itself’. It is through the experience of reconnecting to an ontological centre, which his poetry presents as the human project, that Stevens’ poetry also presents itself as a means of replacing religion.From here we turn to Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida for an exposition of how such a reduction reduces the ‘Other’ to ‘otherness’ and their worry that this reduction legitimates violence within the thought of Martin Heidegger and Parmenides. From this I make a case for how such reductions are connected to what I refer to as 'the play of violence' in Stevens' poetry, and to refer this violence back to the mythology Stevens' poetry shares with certain pre-Socratics and with Greek tragedy. This shows how such mythic rhythms are apparent within the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Heidegger and Gadamer, and how these rhythms release a poetic understanding of the violence of a ‘reduction of metaphysics’
The R&D Tax Incentives
No full textThis article sets out some background information and reflections of the author on the R&D tax incentive schemes included in the Common Corporate Tax Base (CCTB) Proposal. In particular the author analyzes the stimulus to private R&D through ad hoc tax incentives included in the CCTB Proposal and dives into the actual provisions included in the Proposal highlighting the most relevant issues connected with their design and interpretation. Moreover, the author explores the interaction between the CCTB Proposal and the granting by Member States of domestic R&D tax incentives
Churning of R&D personnel and innovation
No full textThis paper explores the role of R&D worker mobility on innovation performance. As one main novelty, we employ churning as a measure for worker mobility. Churning depicts the number of workers which are replaced by new ones. It is a very informative indicator since a firm may be exposed to simultaneous leave and inflow of R&D workers even if the size of R&D employment remains unchanged. Hence, we can separate the effect of replacement from net change in R&D workforce. Our results from estimating various knowledge production functions suggest an inverse u-shaped relationship. The exchange of R&D personnel fosters innovation through inter-firm knowledge spillovers and improved job-match quality up to certain threshold. The point when costs of churning exceed the benefits is reached faster if the R&D knowledge is non-duplicative. --innovation,churning,mobility
Using strategic ambiguity as management practice in academic R&D : An ethnographic study of MIT SENSEable City Lab
No full textThis article explores the role of strategic ambiguity (Eisenberg, 2007; March & Olsen, 1976) as a management practice, as used in SENSEable City Lab - a R&D-oriented lab located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA.
Although literature has already explored strategic ambiguity in various organizational settings, studies focusing on how academic institutions use strategic ambiguity in the context of R&D are quite sparse.
The article aims at filling this gap by reporting on a study conducted by the author across 2011 and 2014 in a R&D-oriented academic lab and reflecting on the potential of strategic ambiguity as an effective dialogic strategy to appreciate differences among internal organization members and with external partners. The article also examines some shortcomings of strategic ambiguity, such as the level of anxiety reported by some members of the lab
Preemptive Search and R&D Clustering Revisited
No full textThe results obtained by Cardon and Sasaki (1998) on R&D clustering are derived under the specific assumption that firms only can own one patent. When multiple patents are allowed, R&D clustering will come about more frequently if search costs are substantial.R&D clustering; persistence of monopoly
A Novel Behavioral Fish Model of Nociception for Testing Analgesics
No full textPain is a major symptom in many medical conditions, and often interferes significantly with a person’s quality of life. Although a priority topic in medical research for many years, there are still few analgesic drugs approved for clinical use. One reason is the lack of appropriate animal models that faithfully represent relevant hallmarks associated with human pain. Here we propose zebrafish (Danio rerio) as a novel short-term behavioral model of nociception, and analyse its sensitivity and robustness. Firstly, we injected two different doses of acetic acid as the noxious stimulus. We studied individual locomotor responses of fish to a threshold level of nociception using two recording systems: a video tracking system and an electric biosensor (the MOBS system). We showed that an injection dose of 10% acetic acid resulted in a change in behavior that could be used to study nociception. Secondly, we validated our behavioral model by investigating the effect of the analgesic morphine. In time-course studies, first we looked at the dose-response relationship of morphine and then tested whether the effect of morphine could be modulated by naloxone, an opioid antagonist. Our results suggest that a change in behavioral responses of zebrafish to acetic acid is a reasonable model to test analgesics. The response scales with stimulus intensity, is attenuated by morphine, and the analgesic effect of morphine is blocked with naloxone. The change in behavior of zebrafish associated with the noxious stimulus can be monitored with an electric biosensor that measures changes in water impedance
Direct numerical simulations of Taylor-Couette turbulence: The effects of sand grain roughness
No full textProgress in roughness research, mapping any given roughness geometry to its fluid dynamic behaviour, has been hampered by the lack of accurate and direct measurements of skin-friction drag, especially in open systems. The Taylor-Couette (TC) system has the benefit of being a closed system, but its potential for characterizing irregular, realistic, three-dimensional (3-D) roughness has not been previously considered in depth. Here, we present direct numerical simulations (DNSs) of TC turbulence with sand grain roughness mounted on the inner cylinder. The model proposed by Scotti (Phys. Fluids, vol. 18, 031701, 2006) has been modified to simulate a random rough surface of monodisperse sand grains. Taylor numbers range from (corresponding to Re-{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}=82) to (Re-{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}=635). We focus on the influence of the roughness height in the transitionally rough regime, through simulations of TC with rough surfaces, ranging from up to . We analyse the global response of the system, expressed both by the dimensionless angular velocity transport Nu-{\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}} and by the friction factor . An increase in friction with increasing roughness height is accompanied with enhanced plume ejection from the inner cylinder. Subsequently, we investigate the local response of the fluid flow over the rough surface. The equivalent sand grain roughness is calculated to be , where is the size of the sand grains. We find that the downwards shift of the logarithmic layer, due to transitionally rough sand grains exhibits remarkably similar behaviour to that of the Nikuradse (VDI-Forsch., vol. 361, 1933) data of sand grain roughness in pipe flow, regardless of the Taylor number dependent constants of the logarithmic layer. Furthermore, we find that the dynamical effects of the sand grains are contained to the roughness sublayer with
Measuring the Returns to R&D: The Depreciation Problem
No full textMeasuring the private returns to R&D requires knowledge of its private depreciation or obsolescence rate, which is inherently variable and responds to competitive pressure. Nevertheless, most of the previous literature has used a constant depreciation rate to construct R&D capital stocks and measure the returns to R&D, a rate usually equal to 15 per cent. In this paper I review the implications of this assumption for the measurement of returns using two different methodologies: one based on the production function and another that uses firm market value to infer returns. Under the assumption that firms choose their R&D investment optimally, that is, marginal expected benefit equals marginal cost, I show that both estimates of returns can be inverted to derive an implied depreciation rate for R&D capital. I then test these ideas on a large unbalanced panel of U.S. manufacturing firms for the years 1974 to 2003. The two methods do not agree, in that the production function approach suggests depreciation rates near zero (or even appreciation) whereas the market value approach implies depreciation rates ranging from 20 to 40 per cent, depending on the period. The concluding section discusses the possible reasons for this funding.
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