Knowledge flows between universities and industry: the impact of distance,technological compatibility,and the ability to diffuse knowledge

The Journal of Technology Transfer - This paper uses citations to university-issued patents to investigate the knowledge flow from 91 US research universities to businesses assigned to...     

sexuality,caste, governmentality: contests over ‘gender’ in India

This article tracks the journeys made by the term ‘gender’ in India. From its beginnings in the 1970s as a feminist contribution to public discourse, destabilizing the biological category of ‘sex’, we find that gender has taken two distinct forms since the 1990s. On the one hand, gender as an analytical category is being used to challenge the notion of ‘woman’ as the subject of feminist politics. This challenge comes from the politics of caste and sexuality. On the other hand, gender is mobilized by the state to perform a role in discourses of development, to achieve exactly the opposite effect; that is, gender becomes a synonym for ‘women’. Thus, the first trend threatens to dissolve, and the second to domesticate, the subject of feminist politics. This article explores the implications of both journeys in terms of a feminist horizon.     

Calling Local/Talking Global: the cosmo-politics of the call-center industry

In 2015, pioneering Saudi vlogger Juju Sajer revealed her face on YouTube after three years of performing in relative invisibility. She used her beauty vlog for small family dramas as well as beauty advice, translating the global genre to stage Saudi womanhood in modest and modern ways. This article analyses Juju’s use of digital frames as material for building a representational apparatus for young Saudi women. It takes a posthumanist approach to media roles as materially entangled with apparatuses of production, attending to the performer’s construction of networks and her onscreen performances. Juju’s evolving role from beauty vlogger to proto-talk show host, accompanied her increasing control over means of digital production after she gained corporate sponsorship and put her face on her brand. In contrast to theorists of communicative capitalism, I examine Juju’s self-branding as a networked performance of self, which enlivened and extended representational repertoires for young Saudi women. As a niche YouTube channel, it shows the potential of digital performance repertoires to develop within a framework of gendered modesty.     

Idea generation: the performance of U.S. States 1997–2007

Regional prosperity increasingly depends on a region’s capacity to have command over the production of ideas. Measuring the production of ideas with patents, the objective of this paper is to analyze how the number of utility patents granted to inventors in U.S. States in different technologies changed between 1997 and 2007 and how States took advantage of the new opportunities and adapted to the changing technology landscape. The paper uses shift-share analysis, traditionally used in employment studies, for analyzing change in patents by technology categories developed by the NBER. The shift-share results show that only a few states were able to take advantage of the information technology driven increases in patents. California dominates in patent production and may be providing spillover benefits to neighboring states. The shift-share decompositions are used as variables in a fixed-effect panel-regression model of state economic growth. The regression results show that the shift-share decompositions provide statistically significant information in explaining growth after accounting for a State’s stock of patents, suggesting that States should concentrate on effective ways to boost their stock of knowledge in rapidly growing technologies to improve state economic growth.     

Transnational Legitimacy in a Globalising World: How the European Union Rescues its States

This article addresses claims regarding the limited legitimacy of international institutions. It argues that the two original appointed supranational institutions of the European Union play a crucial, if systematically underestimated, role not merely in providing legitimacy for the Union itself, but also in shoring up that of its constituent member states. We illustrate that supranationalism enhances national legitimacy in functional, political and administrative terms. It does so by helping member states produce outputs they otherwise could not (particularly by enabling them to deal with transboundary policy problems they would struggle to confront if acting in isolation) and by embedding within national political and administrative systems legally enforceable obligations to respect the interests of actors whose voice is excluded or muffled (de jure or de facto) within purely national political processes. The article contends that the claims to legitimacy made by the EU and its member states are of distinctive character but interdependent and mutually reinforcing.     

Politics like any other? Comparative politics,international relations and the study of the EU

This article disputes the claim made by Simon Hix (WEP January 1994) that ‘politics in the EC is not inherently different to the practice of government in any democratic system’ and argues against a rigid division between international relations and comparative politics. It contends first, that EU politics cannot be broken up into two categories: ‘politics’ and ‘integration'; second, that the nature of the EU system, the centrality of states and the continued importance of power considerations precludes explanations of EU ‘politics’ through the use of comparative government approaches alone; and third, that public policy cannot in general be studied without reference to international factors.     

Methods of Choice in Completed Suicides: Gender Differences and Review of Literature

Abstract:  Suicide is an important public health hazard worldwide. A 4-year retrospective study from January 2000 to December 2003 was conducted to identify the favored methods in realized suicides among males and females in the west coastal region of India. During the study period, a total of 539 cases of suicidal deaths were autopsied. Males were predominantly affected (male: female—1.9:1). The age of the victims ranged from 13 to 90 years in males (mean = 40.1 years, median = 37.0 years) and 15 to 85 years in females (mean = 36.6 years, median = 32.0 years). Most favored method of suicide amongst males and females was hanging (36.9%, n  = 199) followed by poisoning (34.7%, n  = 187). Male dominance was apparent for each method of suicide except for self-immolation. Males were relatively more likely to use hanging and poisoning while females were more likely to prefer drowning and self-immolation as methods of suicide. Relatively younger females (mean   = 33.0 years, median = 32.0 years) preferred hanging as a method of suicide when compared to males (mean = 42.4 years, median = 40.0 years). Among females, significantly younger females resorted to hanging when compared to older females who preferred drowning. On investigating the various theories proposed for choice of suicide methods in males and females in different regions we conclude that preference of method of suicide in men and women is complexly determined. In this region, availability, accessibility, popularity, and socioacceptability seem to be the major determinants in the choice of methods among males and females rather than violence associated and lethality of the method. Females were as likely to use lethal and violent methods as males in this region.