Public Policy and Emerging Sources of Technology and Technical Information Available to Industry

As technologies grow in complexity, firms often target their internal R&D resources on core competencies and utilize outside sources for supporting knowledge and technology. Where do firms turn to find such resources? This paper reports the perceptions of technology transfer managers in United States manufacturing firms toward federal and university labs and identifies the types of farms that are better positioned to utilize externally available technological resources. Based on replies from research-intensive companies within the United States, the authors find that larger firms with high research and development (R&D) budgets tend to ascribe greater significance to external sources than do smaller ones. Also, companies spending over $500 million in R&D rank universities the most significant external source of knowledge, followed by V S.-based firms, and then foreign firms.     

Patterns of exchange and the social production of pigs in highland new guinea: Their relevance to questions about the origins and evolution of agriculture

In recent years, cultural anthropologists have made notable progress in understanding the bewildering variety of material exchange transactions found among the aboriginal populations of highland New Guinea. One of the major findings of this work is that competitive exchange behavior may bring in its wake alterations in agronomic practices involving an intensification of production. That intensification is primarily a product of social behavior, rather than an adaptation to climate change or population pressure, is a significant conclusion that should influence the thinking of archaeologists as they investigate past episodes of agronomic change, including the origins of agriculture.     

Representing Structural Change in U.S. Migration Patterns

This paper focuses on the identification of three sets of relationships exhibited by a time series of age-specific national migration rates and multiregional transition probability matrices: the relationship across time for the same age group, as defined by period (temporal) transformation coefficients or matrices; the relationships across age at a particular moment in time, as defined by age transformation coefficients or matrices; and the relationships across time and age, as defined by cohort transformation coefficients or matrices. Given any two of these relationships one can solve for the third. This feature of age-period-cohort relationships has a practical application in the development of improved methods for representing structural change in migration patterns over time and for indirectly estimating migration patterns using inadequate data.     

A Tamed Brown Bear (Ursus arctosL.) of the Late Mesolithic from La Grande-Rivoire (Isère, France)?

A pair of mandibular rami from a brown bear (Ursus arctosL.) was found at the rock shelter of the Grande-Rivoire in the Castelnovian level. Both exhibit a peculiar deformation affecting the bone between the first and second molars and the roots of these teeth.The perfect symmetry of this deformation, the absence of pathological features, and the misplacement of the teeth suggest that a thong had been placed around the mandible while the animal was young; the mandible then grew around the thong.The interest of this find is that it both demonstrates the taming of a bear and the complexity of the relationships between humans and animals during the late Mesolithic.     

A modern Bodhisattva: How U Nu sees his life

U Nu—Saturday's Son: The Memoirs of the Former Prime Minister of Burma, by U Nu, translated by U Law Yone, edited by U Kyaw Win. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975. 358 pp., illustrated, index, US$15.00. ISBN 0–300–01776–6.     

Extreme weather events in northeastern New Brunswick (Canada) for the period 1950–2012: Comparison of newspaper archive and weather station data

In the context of global warming, changes in extreme weather and climate events are expected, particularly those associated with changes in temperature and precipitation regimes and those that will affect coastal areas. The main objectives of this study were to establish the number of extreme events that have occurred in northeastern New Brunswick, Canada in recent history, and to determine whether their occurrence has increased. By using archived regional newspapers and data from three meteorological stations in a national network, the frequency of extreme events in the study area was established for the time period 1950–2012. Of the 282 extreme weather events recorded in the newspaper archives, 70% were also identified in the meteorological time series analysis. The discrepancy might be explained by the synergistic effect of co‐occurring non‐extreme events, and increased vulnerability over time, resulting from more people and infrastructure being located in coastal hazard zones. The Mann Kendall and Pettitt statistical tests were used to identify trends and the presence of break points in the weather data time series. Results indicate a statistically significant increase in average temperatures and in the number of extreme events, such as extreme hot days, as well as an increase in total annual and extreme precipitation. A significant decrease in the number of frost‐free days and extreme cold days was also found, in addition to a decline in the number of dry days.     

A Comparison of Spatially Varying Regression Coefficient Estimates Using Geographically Weighted and Spatial‐Filter‐Based Techniques

Geographically weighted regression (GWR) is a technique that explores spatial nonstationarity in data‐generating processes by allowing regression coefficients to vary spatially. It is a widely applied technique across domains because it is intuitive and conforms to the well‐understood framework of regression. An alternative method to GWR that has been suggested is spatial filtering, which it has been argued provides a superior alternative to GWR by producing spatially varying regression coefficients that are not correlated with each other and which display less spatial autocorrelation. It is, therefore, worthwhile to examine these claims by comparing the output from both methods. We do this by using simulated data that represent two sets of spatially varying processes and examining how well both techniques replicate the known local parameter values. The article finds no support that spatial filtering produces local parameter estimates with superior properties. The results indicate that the original spatial filtering specification is prone to overfitting and is generally inferior to GWR, while an alternative specification that minimizes the mean square error (MSE) of coefficient estimates produces results that are similar to GWR. However, since we generally do not know the true coefficients, the MSE minimizing specification is impractical for applied research.