Biotechnology Megacentres: Montreal and Toronto Regional Systems of Innovation

Canada hosts two major diversified biotechnology regional systems of innovation in its two largest cities. Similar in many respects, they display some particular characteristics. We review here the main theories on regional innovation systems and innovative clusters and proceed to analyse these two regional systems before concluding on the usefulness of several theories to study biotechnology regional innovation systems.|spagf|ro|epagf|     

MAN-MADE LANDSCAPES FROM THE THIRD–SECOND MILLENNIA BC: THE EXAMPLE OF CASTELO VELHO (FREIXO DE NUMÃO, NORTH-EAST PORTUGAL)

Summary.   The analysis of charred plant material from Castelo Velho (north-eastern Portugal) yields information about the environmental background of a long-term architectural project. Work focuses on the physical characteristics of this sui generis site and on the interrelationships between human communities and their vegetal environment. Important vegetation changes are recorded despite the fact that site 'occupation' is considered to be sporadic and therefore causing only minor anthropogenic impact. Evergreen oaks (Quercus, evergreen) dominate during the first two stratigraphic layers but are replaced by the tree-strawberry (Arbutus unedo) during a third layer. This change may result from a premeditated woodland management, ensuring that the site remained visible in the distance. Special attention is given to the plant assemblage and broken pottery found in a sealed structure (layer 3) and thought to have served a 'ritual' purpose. Seeds of Triticum aestivum/compactum are largely predominant.     

Changes in Chilean identity: thirty years after the military coup

ABSTRACT. The objective of this article is to explore whether events, starting with the 1973 military coup and ocurring during the seventeen‐year‐long dictatorship, have caused or influenced important changes in the Chilean national identity. After a brief theoretical discussion, an analysis is made of the upheavals that occurred in Chile during the last thirty years seeking to assess what tensions they have introduced within Chilean identity. As a consequence some changes are detected which can be seen at the level of public discourses on Chilean identity with the emergence or rekindling of military‐racial, Catholic and entrepreneurial narratives. But the most important change that Chilean identity has suffered has to do with the development of an internal fracture stemming from the division introduced by the military regime. In so far as the contents of identity are concerned, the article focuses on the decline in acknowledgement of shared symbols of the nation, the persistence of a pervasive collective anxiety, a recurrence of belief in Chilean exceptionalism, and fading respect for politicians and democracy. These aspects are oddly coupled with rising belief in voluntarism and the possibility of sustained economic growth, increased resort to the market rather than political life as the site of recognition, acceptance of malaise as the price of economic progress and a remarkable centrality of human rights issues.     

PLAIN POTTERY AND SOCIAL LANDSCAPES: REINTERPRETING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CERAMIC PROVENANCE IN THE NEOLITHIC

This paper focuses on plain, stylistically unvaried pottery from three Late Neolithic sites from the Mondego Plateau, Portugal, and investigates ceramic production and exchange among small‐scale prehistoric societies by means of thin‐section petrography and chemical analysis (INAA). The results show that the majority of the pottery was made with widely available, granite‐derived sedimentary clays, but petrographic differences between fabrics indicate collection at multiple locations within these deposits. Variation in chemical composition is consistent with site‐specific sourcing areas, while comparison with data from earlier sites in the Mondego and surrounding mountains suggests that such sources were geographically restricted within the plateau. In contrast, the small percentage of vessels produced with residual clays of metamorphic and intermediate igneous origin, which outcrop over 10 km and 30 km from the archaeological sites, demonstrates that plain pottery did circulate during the Neolithic beyond the funerary sphere. This is the product of the routines of mobility and social networks of Neolithic groups across the wider landscape, which involved the exchange of ‘mundane’ vessels. Finally, the study demonstrates that micro‐regional provenance studies can provide significant insights into prehistoric social landscapes if the data are interrogated beyond simplistic classifications of local and non‐local.