TEMPORAL and SPATIAL VARIABILITY OF CANADIAN INVENTIVE COMPANIES and THEIR INVENTIONS: AN ISSUE OF OWNERSHIP

Inventing is an important prerequisite for industrial economies to remain technologically competitive. Yet it is not well known how inventive companies of domestic or foreign ownership can affect a nation's technological base and, ultimately, its spatial-economic system. The present study examines this relationship in Canada by investigating the performance of its indigenous and foreign-owned inventive companies at the national, subnational, and urban levels. The results indicate that: (1) Canada's indigenous inventive companies are distinct from their foreign-owned counterparts in that they are generally smaller, are more apt to have teams of inventors, are more likely to develop product inventions, have come to manage a greater share of this nation's inventions, and are increasing their role in key Canadian industries; and (2) geographically, Canada's two largest cities and its core region were adversely affected by the declining inventiveness of American-controlled companies during the 1980s. L'esprit ?invention est une nécessité pour que les économies industrielles restent en conditions de concurrence technologique. Cependant, on connaît très peu de la manière que les entreprises inventives de propriété domestique ou étrangère affectent la base technologique ?un pays et, enfin, affectent son système spatio-écono-mique. La présente étude considère ces rapports au Canada au niveau national, sous-national et local, en exminant les performances des entreprises inventives indigènes et étrangères. Les résultats indiquent (1) qu'au Canada les entreprises indigènes et inventives diffèrent de leurs analogues étrangers: en général elles sont plus petites, ont plus tendance à consister en équipes ?inven-teurs, sont plus susceptibles de développer les inventions produites, produisent une plus grande part des inventions canadiennes, et sont en train ?augmenter leur rôle dans les industries canadiennes; et (2) que le déclin de ?esprit ?invention dans les entreprises dirigées par les américains a affecté défavorablement les deux villes les plus grandes au Canada, ainsi que la partie centrale du pays, pendant les années 1980. Mots-clés: invention, Canada, propriétéétrangère, technologie, produit     

Fostering place-based innovation and internationalization – the new turn in German technology policy

Since the mid-1990s German technology policy has experienced a paradigmatic shift from standard grant schemes towards a region-oriented and competition-based R&D policy. Currently, a new policy experiment, the InterClust contest, is under way, trying to simultaneously foster place-based innovation, R&D internationalization and the internationalization of innovative places. The current paper analyses the new policy, relating it to the recent literatures on heterogeneous firms and on cluster-life cycles, and presents results from a firm survey performed in 21 winner regions of InterClust. Findings show that the new funding scheme takes insights from recent theoretical developments into account and addresses important impediments to firm and cluster internationalization. Although it is too early for an overall assessment, it is argued that the long-term impact will critically depend on the inflow of heterogeneous knowledge and the strength of intra-regional mobilization effects.     

现代测绘技术在古建烫样数字化项目中的应用

烫样是研究清代皇家建筑的珍贵文物,为配合文物信息数字化工作的开展,针对烫样数据的采集和处理方法进行了深入研究。在综合考虑多种数据采集方法的特点及烫样数字化记录的难点后,选择使用手持式三维扫描仪与多视角三维重建技术相结合的方式来进行烫样的基础数据采集,并通过实践总结出了一套完整的数据采集和处理工作流程。与此同时,针对成果可能的应用方式做了些许尝试,且为数据的后期维护与进一步利用拟定了数据管理系统的建设方案。     

从创新成果管窥文物科技保护发展趋势

中国文物科技保护工作起步于20世纪50年代,始终紧跟我国社会经济和科学技术的发展,以应对文物保护及其保存和开放展示环境面临着的诸多挑战为导向,聚焦基础研究、保护技术与装备研发、保护制度与规范标准研究、保护技术平台建设等展开多项科技攻关,取得了一系列成果。本文着重从文物保护科学和技术创新成果进行梳理,阐述了我国文物科技工作的发展趋势。结果表明,我国的文物保护科学研究从闭门研究、各自为战到资源开放、互相合作、凝练共性、共克难关;从随意性到标准化,建立共同话语体系;以问题为导向,支撑作用日益显著;由抢救性保护向抢救性保护与预防性保护并重转变,基本实现了“十三五”规划提出的在理论、技术、装备、标准建设等方面取得系统突破的目标。     

我国旅游业技术创新水平的区域空间分布特征——基于专利数据的统计分析

本文基于专利的统计数据,分别采用绝对指标、相对指标和特化系数来评价我国旅游业技术创新水平的空间分布特征。研究结果表明,采用绝对指标评价的旅游业技术创新水平呈现“东高西低”的格局;而采用相对指标（单位人口的旅游业专利申请数量）评价的结果表明,东部地区仍处于领先地位,但与绝对指标评价结果相比,西部地区的排序明显升高;东部地区旅游业发明专利特化系数较高,如北京、天津、上海、广东、海南均在1．1以上,但是全国大多数省市的旅游业专利还属于实用新型和外观设计特化类,说明我国旅游业技术创新结构并不完善。     

Rethinking the place of emotions in the field through social laboratories

The insights of feminist science and technology studies (STS) into the constructed and situated nature of knowledge have proved crucial to informing feminist geography. Since the rise of emotional geographies, feminist methodologies no longer simply reflect on questions of positionality, partiality, and power relations, but also on the role of emotions in the field. In this article, we argue that a feminist STS perspective has much to offer when thinking about the way emotions are engineered, controlled, and negotiated in research processes. Our engagement with what we call ‘social laboratories’ – i.e., spaces in everyday life where (experimental) research is conducted with human beings – advances debates in feminist geography, as these laboratories crystallize the emotional entanglements feminists encounter in the field. Looking at economic experiments in Ghana and fertility clinics in Mexico, we discuss the difficulties of doing feminist fieldwork in these experimental research spaces. We argue that the constant negotiation of emotions and ethics is crucial to access, assess, and do fieldwork in research settings that do not adhere to feminist ideals, but nevertheless have gendered effects on women's and men's lives. Rethinking ‘the place of emotions in research’ (Bondi 2005, in Emotional Geographies, edited by Joyce Davidson, Liz Bondi, and Mick Smith, 231–246, Aldershot: Ashgate) through social laboratories forges instructive links across feminist/emotional geographies and social studies of science.     

Re‐sewing the Sewn: An Ethnographic Record of Repair and Reuse of Sewn‐plank River Boats in Goa,India

The tradition of fastening planked boats using sewing is characteristic of the Indian Ocean region. Despite known disadvantages of sewn boats, including that perishable materials need regular maintenance and repair, operators of boats used in the sand‐mining industry of Goa still see potential in discarded sewn boats. The problems, raw materials used, technology, and process of re‐sewing and repairing these boats to give them a second life are reported and discussed here.     

Tailored polities in the shadow of the state’s hierarchy. The CLLD implementation and a future research agenda

The paper provides a theoretical contribution to the multi-level governance debate, discussing the role of the policy instruments in tailoring polities for local development strategies. To this purpose, it examines the Community-Led Local Development (CLLD), a policy tool of the EU Cohesion Policy 2014–2020, which has generated more than 3000 local initiatives across the EU. An institutionalist perspective enables a reflection on the multi-level normative dimensions of these local initiatives. A combination of the post-functionalist governance theory, the soft space debate, state-theory and strategic-relational approach provides an interpretative framework to be deployed for a dedicated research agenda. The interpretative challenge is about whether the CLLD enables spatial-temporal fixes in which a deliberative polity pursues a spatial imaginary for an ad-hoc territory. The consequent analytical dimensions can be found in (a) the relationship between attendant ad-hoc polity, policy agenda, territorial design and societal processes; and (b) the meta-governance dimensions that locate the bottom-up constituency of this institutional technology in the shadow of state’s hierarchy. An overview of the CLLD implementation across the EU provides evidence on the latter.     

The technology and production of glazed ceramics from Middle Islamic Jerash,Jordan

Jerash in northern Jordan was, despite a focus on its classical heritage, also active in the Middle Islamic period, but little is known about actual developments during this period. This study represents the first study on the Middle Islamic glazed pottery from the site using scanning electron microscopy energy‐dispersive spectrometry (SEM‐EDS) and thin‐section petrography. The results show that two production traditions existed, each with different provenances. The local production is characterized by a non‐calcareous ceramic body and the use of a high‐lead glaze coloured with iron and copper oxides, whereas the turquoise‐glazed samples, likely imported from Mesopotamia, have a calcareous ceramic body and alkali or alkali‐lead glaze.     

On the Origins of Pottery

Renewed research interest in the origins of pottery has illuminated an array of possible precipitating causes and environmental contexts in which pottery began to be made and used. This article is an attempt at synthesizing some of these data in hopes of stimulating further research into this intriguing topic. Following a review of theories on the origins of pottery, discussion proceeds to a survey of geographic and cultural contexts of low-fired or unfired pottery, highlighting the role(s) of pottery among contemporary hunter-gatherers and summarizing data pertaining to varied uses of pottery containers. It is argued that objects of unfired and low-fired clay were created as part of early prestige technologies of material representations beginning in the Upper Paleolithic and are part of an early software horizon. Clay began to be more widely manipulated by nonsedentary, complex hunter-gatherers in the very Late Pleistocene and early Holocene in areas of resource abundance, especially in tropical/subtropical coastal/riverine zones, as part of more general processes of resource and social intensification (such as competitive feasting or communal ritual). Knowledge of making and using pottery containers spread widely as prestige technology and as practical technology, the kind and timing of its adoption or reinvention varying from location to location depending on specific needs and circumstances.