The Role of University Spinout Companies in an Emerging Technology: The Case of Nanotechnology

This study examines the role of university spin-out (USO) companies in the emergence of a new technology, in our case nanotechnology. Three unique data-sets based on patents, co-publications, and firm data pertaining to the unfolding field of nanotechnology in the UK were developed. Subsequent analysis suggests that USOs play an important though not a dominant role. Furthermore, the results indicate that USOs in certain subfields of nanotechnology do not have a strong and growing proprietary technology base, raising questions about the commercial sustainability of these ventures. Overall, we observed that USOs are important contributors to technological change in specific subfields of nanotechnology, but that other actors, notably, large firms and (non-university affiliated) new technology-based firms are even more significant agents of technological change.     

Symposium: The Contribution of Laclau’s Discourse Theory to International Relations and International Political EconomyIntroduction

This symposium explores the value of Poststructuralist (or Political) Discourse Theory (PDT) for the analysis of world politics. PDT was originally developed by the late Argentine political theorist Ernesto Laclau, in early works together with Chantal Mouffe, and has entered the margins of International Relations (IR) in recent years, mainly by bringing in poststructuralist concepts that had previously been ignored by the more critical strands of theorizing. Against this background, the introduction (1) discusses the disconnect between PDT and research on world politics, primarily in IR, as well as PDT’s potential contribution, (2) provides an overview of PDT’s central theoretical tenets, in particular with respect to its social ontology and its theoretical concept of change, and (3) introduces the contributions to the symposium.     

Discursive Dislocation: Toward a Poststructuralist Theory of Crisis in Global Politics

In the discipline of International Relations (IR) and beyond, the concept of crisis is essentially contested, and one specific usage, it seems, is called into question by alternative uses of the term. The article develops the argument that crisis must not be misunderstood as exogenous to social construction; indeed, the very notion of crisis only makes sense if understood as produced entirely in what we will later specify as discourse. In this way, it can be illustrated how allegedly objective crises are expressions of particular configurations of social forms of power. The discourse theoretical notion of dislocation will be introduced in order to develop an understanding of crisis as a qualitative as well as constitutive feature of the social crisis. Crisis can in this sense be seen as a permanent attribute of the social, not some transitory condition that appears from time to time.     

Examination of live victims of violent crimes at the Institutes of Legal Medicine of Hanover, Cologne and Leipzig

During the last few years the importance of clinical forensic medicine has increased within the field itself, but also in interdisciplinary cooperation. Although examinations of live victims play a substantial role in the every-day work of most German forensic scientists, the number of data published on their frequency and the type of offence for which they were performed is small. For this reason a comparison of the data from the Institutes of Legal Medicine in Hanover, Cologne and Leipzig was carried out. Most of the examinations performed by all the three institutes were ordered by courts, the prosecution or the police. Only in a few cases did private persons or hospitals ask for a forensic expert opinion on injuries. During the study period the total number of examined violence victims per annum increased noticeably from 252 in 1999 to 507 in 2003. The total number of examinations during the five-year study period amounted to 1181 in Hanover, 393 in Leipzig and 198 in Cologne, which all have a similar number of inhabitants in the respective catchment area of the institutes. Most of the examinations were carried out in victims of bodily harm, sexual assault and child abuse, but also in traffic offences, for age determination, in self-inflicted injuries and in suspects of homicide. On the one hand the remarkable rise of the number of physical examinations shows that the importance of forensic expert opinions is increasingly recognized. On the other hand the considerable regional differences demonstrate that the competence offered by the Institutes of Legal Medicine in the documentation and interpretation of violence is by far not yet sufficiently used.     

An unusual case of double death

The report presents the case of an alleged double homicide or a homicide followed by suicide of a couple, in which the court-ordered autopsy of both victims revealed that the homicide had been committed by the husband immediately before he died himself from cardiac failure. The article gives a short summary of the pathophysiological relations between emotional tension (stress) and physical strain and the effects on the cardiovascular system. The case report describes a homicide by strangulation immediately followed by the perpetuator's death from a natural cause.