Canadian doctors have historically been an extremely powerful interest group. While there are many variables that account for their political influence, it is widely accepted that much of their power is due to their control over specialized knowledge. To determine whether or not physicians’ control over knowledge is changing, I examine doctors’ position relative to the state, the public and other health professionals. This research finds that, in all three relationships, physicians’ control over knowledge is weakening. Moreover, organized medicine’s response to these developments has largely been a strategy of co-optation, demonstrating that doctors are aware that these changes often cannot be openly fought. This strategy signals that the medical profession recognizes that some changes in its control over knowledge are bound to occur. This study concludes that these changes could contribute to a ‘critical juncture’ signalling the potential for significant change in the physician-state relationship.

The EU has been promoting unbundling of the transmission grid from other stages of the electricity supply chain with the aim of fostering competition in the upstream stage of electricity generation. At presence, ownership unbundling is the predominant form of unbundling in Europe. However, the benefits of increased competition from ownership unbundling of the transmission grid may come at the cost of lost vertical synergies between the formerly integrated stages of electricity supply. The policy debate generally neglects such potential costs of unbundling, yet concentrates on its benefits. Therefore European crosscountry evidence may shed some light on this issue. This study helps fill this void by empirically estimating the magnitude of economies of vertical integration (EVI) between electricity generation and transmission based on a quadratic cost function. For this purpose we employ novel firm-level panel data of major European electricity utilities. Our results confirm the presence of substantial EVI, which put the policy measure of transmission ownership unbundling into question. (authors' abstract) / Series: Working Papers / Research Institute for Regulatory Economics

Il lavoro affronta il tema dell’oggetto e dell’ambito di tutela del brevetto biotecnologico, con particolare riferimento al brevetto di sequenze di DNA. L’importanza crescente delle biotecnologie, in settori come quello agroalimentare, e il peso notevole degli investimenti che la ricerca in questo ambito richiede, impongono il ricorso ad un efficace modello di tutela che incentivi il progresso tecnologico, senza, tuttavia, ostacolare la ricerca derivata. A partire da questa premessa, il lavoro mette in luce, in primo luogo, le problematiche fondamentali poste dalla disciplina del brevetto per invenzione industriale. Successivamente, in una prospettiva comparata, lo studio si occupa dell’oggetto del brevetto biotecnologico e dei requisiti di brevettabilità, attraverso un esame della disciplina, della dottrina e della più recente giurisprudenza europea e statunitense. Con riferimento all’Europa, in particolare, l’analisi si concentra attorno alla disciplina posta dalla direttiva 98/44/CE sulla tutela delle invenzioni biotecnologiche. Il lavoro si articola, quindi, attorno al tema dell’estensione del brevetto biotecnologico, attraverso l’esame dei diversi paradigmi di tutela possibili e ponendo l’accento sulle strategie per un efficace contemperamento dei diversi interessi coinvolti. / This work relates to biotechnological inventions, specifically concerning patentability and scope of protection of DNA sequences. Biotechnology is of utmost importance in many sectors, not least in the agro food one. Moreover, this is a high capital intensive field of study, where downstream research is mainly based on upstream results. Consequently, it is extremely important to provide a system of protection aimed at spurring innovation without preventing subsequent research. This considered, the work highlights the general legal framework on patents. It then focuses on the object of biotech patents and patentability requirements, through a comparative study of the US and the European legal system and on the most recent case law. Specifically concerning Europe, an in depth analysis of the 98/44/CE directive is carried out. The research work then focuses on the main models of patent protection, with the aim of emphasizing strategies to collect the different and diverging interests arising over the issue. ​

The purpose of this study is to, based on qualitative interviews with managers and group interviews with care providers, understand their interpretation of integrity and also their scope for action to satisfy disable people’s integrity at sheltered housing for adults. The questions of this study are: How do the managers and the care providers interpret the concept of integrity? Which scope for action do they have to satisfy the integrity of disabled people? Method: Individual – and group interviews have been used as methods to gather empirical data. Theory: The theories of scope for action and integrity as a theoretical conception have been used to analyze the empirical material. Results: The informants of this study found it difficult to give a specific definition of integrity. The main aspects we could distinguish were that integrity was interpreted as a personal sphere and self-determination. The result of this study shows that the scope for action to satisfy the integrity of disabled people is affected by many factors. First of all the scope for action is affected by the Swedish law LSS and the assignment within the organization. The scope for action is also affected by individual adaption for each person. This study shows the importance of the relationship between the managers, care providers and the persons. At last the informants emphasize some dilemmas in their scope for action to satisfy the integrity.

No description available.

The aim of this thesis is to design and develop a polyphonic reanalysis instrument for analysis of school cultures, as a part of the efforts to understand and develop schools as organizations. The purpose of the new instrument is to achieve an extended possibility to highlight the values and motives underlying a school´s everyday work from the actors´ micro-oriented perspective. The concept of school culture refers to Gunnar Berg and his school development strategy of scope for action, which in turn can be understood as an empirically grounded development of Gerhard Arfwedson´s concept of school codex.  The new instrument is intended to complement these two existing and long-established analytical instruments. School development is an ambiguous concept, open to different explanation and interpretation, depending on the choice of perspectives and approaches. Christopher Hodgkinson emphasizes the difficulty in conceptualizing a discussion of the motives and values held by members of an organization. It is all about subjective concepts, the meanings of which vary, depending on the situation and the context in which they are observed. A central issue in organizations is how to reconcile the organization’s nomothetic and idiographic aspirations and structures. In school organizations the problem can be understood as the dialectical interaction between institutional and organizational values. In order to provide the kind of empirical knowledge of school development that is called for, an analytical tool is required that can capture both individual and organizational and institutional aspects of the school's everyday work. My empirical evidence is drawn from cultural analysis of schools in three municipalities and municipal districts. In the reanalysis, the emerging common features were lack of continuity in school leadership and the expectations of school leaders as educational leaders to participate more actively in the everyday work. The frequent changes of directors, was by many perceived as an inhibiting and counterproductive obstacle to sustainable school improvement. The results also showed significant differences in the schools' organizational structures of formal and informal decision-making. Knowledge of the underlying patterns that affect the school's everyday work can probably be used to make the organization more transparent and malleable. The dialectical interplay between the organization and its nomothetic-idiographic aspirations differs from school to school. The driving forces in the members’ collective action clarify the relationship between the organization and its members' goals. In-depth knowledge of actors' behavior and attitudes in the context of this interaction increases the possibility of real school development on pedagogical terms to the pupils' benefit. In conclusion: The polyphonic culture assay is still an underdeveloped area. Access to the polyphonic school culture will hopefully be the starting-point for the challenge to increase new and exciting empirical knowledge of the daily work at school.

This qualitative interview based essay aims to examine how managers perceive their management role in an organization and more specified to what extent management is shaped by the individual’s personal attributes versus how much is controlled by the organization. The essay’s second central aspect is how scope for action is perceived by managers in their profession, as well as their reasoning concerning their and other managers’ exchangeability. To examine this, we used semi structured interviews with four managers active in different lines of business. Our theoretical framework aimes to enlighten the relationship between organizational and individual. Our results and thereby the conclusion of the essay is that the management role is affected by a correlation between organization and individual. The organization gives the manager space to act/scope for action under the preresquisite that the organization’s goals and demands are achieved. These demands from the organization create a sense of duty in the manager, which results in them tempering their personal values to benefit the organization. The managers’ scope for action also makes it possible for them to put their own stamp on the profession, which in turn leads to them being harder to replace (as a manager). We have found that the personal attributes, in organizations where the manager has been given a lot of scope for action, then have greater significance in shaping the profession. Despite this we found that the organization affects the profession in a greater extent than the individual’s attributes, since the scope for action is given only if the organizations’ goals and demands are achieved.

This thesis examines the effectiveness of the competition regime in Hong Kong (HK), which is one of the few remaining developed economies to yet implement a competition law. In its search for the optimal dynamics of the regime, the thesis offers a tripartite examination on its objectives, institutions and scope of application, and how these three distinct internal dimensions individually and jointly influence the effectiveness of the regime. Furthermore, a critical review is offered on two significant external factors, land hegemony and the political regime, both of which exert a strong force on the competition regime. This interdisciplinary research project encompasses legal, political, economic, and market-contextualized analysis. Given that HK has a new competition regime, and is an international financial, communication, and transportation centre, it is appropriate and apposite to evaluate it by international standards. The thesis begins with an examination of three internal dimensions. As a preliminary, it considers the extent to which HK benefits from a free economy with a sound competitive environment. It then moves on to investigate the first dimension, which is that of the objectives of the competition law in terms of its clarity, prioritization and consistency. Following this, the thesis investigates the second dimension, the institutions of the Competition Commission and the Competition Tribunal, by asking how the structure shapes the substance of enforcement. It explores the limitations and virtues of major institutional models and which model is the most appropriate for HK. In its third dimension, the thesis questions the adequacy of the scope of competition law, with a focus on the near blanket exclusion of public entities. Commentary is offered on how to achieve a level playing field between private and public sectors. Following the evaluation of the three internal dimensions, the thesis focuses on their correlations. The discussion reviews the challenges and puts forward a wide range of measures to manage them. Finally, the thesis explores the significance of two external powers, land hegemony and political regime, and suggests several long-term solutions which the author believes would lead to the steady optimization of the competition regime.

The fluorinase enzyme, originally isolated from Streptomyces cattleya, has the unique ability to generate a C–F bond from aqueous fluoride ion and S-adenosylmethionine, making the fluorinase an attractive biochemical tool for radiolabelling biomolecules with fluorine-18 for application to positron emission tomography (PET). The inherent substrate specificity of the enzyme is, however, limiting, as only small modifications to the natural nucleoside substrate were known to be tolerated. This thesis describes an exploration and expansion of the substrate scope of the fluorinase enzyme, and its application to radiolabelling biomolecules for PET. The design and synthesis of a novel acetylene bearing substrate for the fluorinase, 5'-chloro-5'-deoxy-2-ethynyladenosine (ClDEA) is described. ClDEA proved an excellent substrate for the fluorinase, and the kinetics of the transformation and binding affinities of the new substrate and product were investigated. The fluorinated acetylenic product was demonstrated to undergo a copper-catalysed azide-alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC) reaction with an azide bearing RGD peptide, and this methodology was investigated for the synthesis of a novel fluorine-18-bearing prosthetic group for the synthesis of a radiolabelled RGD peptide, which was assessed in vivo in a rat. After the demonstration that the fluorinase can be used for “last step” radiolabelling of bioactive peptides, the synthesis of dimeric and tetrameric RGD-bearing substrates for the fluorinase was investigated. These large constructs underwent efficient enzymatic fluorination, and the fluorinated products showed increased binding affinity to their targets, compared to monomeric analogues. The challenges encountered during radiolabelling of these multimers with fluorine-18 using the fluorinase are discussed. A difluoromethyl-bearing nucleoside substrate (F₂DA) was synthesised as a potential substrate in the reverse direction for the fluorinase, to further probe the substrate specificity if the fluorinase. Upon incubation with the enzyme, F₂DA did not appear to undergo reaction, despite the demonstration that F₂DA binds to the enzyme. Finally, the optimisation of a fluorinase-based protocol for the synthesis of the PET radiotracer [¹⁸F]fluoroacetate is described. The enzymatic method proved unsuitable for a small animal study due to contamination of the final product, and a chemical method was investigated and optimised as an alternative approach. [¹⁸F]Fluoroacetate synthesised using the developed chemical method was employed in an in vivo evaluation of acetyl CoA synthetase (ACSS2) activity in healthy and tumour-bearing mouse models, in an study to assess the activity of ACSS2 in breast and colon cancer models in mice.

abstract: Front End Planning (FEP) is a critical process for uncovering project unknowns, while developing adequate scope definition following a structured approach for the project execution process. FEP for infrastructure projects assists in identifying and mitigating issues such as right-of-way concerns, utility adjustments, environmental hazards, logistic problems, and permitting requirements. This thesis describes a novel and effective risk management tool that has been developed by the Construction Industry Institute (CII) called the Project Definition Rating Index (PDRI) for infrastructure projects. Input from industry professionals from over 30 companies was used in the tool development which is specifically focused on FEP. Data from actual projects are given showing the efficacy of the tool. Critical success factors for FEP of infrastructure projects are shared. The research shows that a finite and specific list of issues related to scope definition of infrastructure projects can be developed. The thesis also concludes that the PDRI score indicates the current level of scope definition and corresponds to project performance. Infrastructure projects with low PDRI scores outperform projects with high PDRI scores. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Built Environment 2010