This research develops a theoretical framework explaining how University-Industry Linkages (UILs) affect the performance of tourism clusters in Thailand. Significant external and internal factors affecting Thai tourism industry are examined. The research questions are significant given the importance of successful tourism cluster through University-Industry Linkages (UIL). These questions recognized tourism clusters, the role of university, the linkages between university and industry, influential factors are contextual, and as a result, the author explores four tourism clusters in Thailand and using multiple case studies explains the nature and character of tourism cluster and University-Industry Linkages (UILs) between tourism cluster and its universities. The findings demonstrated that UILs, strategic entrepreneurship and leadership play key role to successful tourism cluster in developing countries.

The potential relationship between riparian arachnids and aquatic insect productivity was assessed in forest streams throughout the central South Island of New Zealand. Initially, a survey was conducted of thirty seven, first-third order forest streams. Streams were selected to represent a range of benthic invertebrate standing crops (as a surrogate measure of "productivity") from Banks Peninsula streams with relatively high benthic invertebrate densities to acid mine drainage streams near Reefton that were almost devoid of aquatic life. At each site benthic invertebrate densities and biomass were measured in riffle habitats and adjacent gravel bars were sampled for terrestrial invertebrates. At a sub-set of 16 sites, a 20 metre longitudinal web-building spider survey was conducted along each bank of the stream. As an additional component, a 20 metre transect starting at the stream margin and running perpendicularly into the forest was used to survey the density of web-building spiders with increasing distance from the stream. Results from the survey of in-situ stream insect biomass and gravel bar invertebrates showed a strong relationship between aquatic insect biomass and the biomass of riparian arachnids (R2 = 0.42, P < 0.001) having accounted for potentially confounding factors such as stream size, elevation, substrate and disturbance. The 20 metre longitudinal survey showed that streams with the highest in-situ insect biomass had significantly higher densities of web-building spiders along their banks (R2 = 0.28, P < 0.05), having accounted for potential confounding variables of elevation, habitat architecture and stream and channel width. The stream to forest survey showed a strong exponential decay in web-building spider densities with increasing distance from the stream (R2 = 0.96, P < 0.0001). Regardless of stream productivity web-building spiders were most abundant at the stream margins and rapidly declined to very low densities 20 metres from the stream. In order to further test the relationship between riparian web-building spider densities and stream insect productivity, a stream fertilization experiment was conducted on six first-second order streams in the Maimai experimental catchment, Reefton. Three streams were enriched by the addition of a fertiliser solution mainly consisting of sodium nitrate for seven months, and the other three streams were used as controls. Water chemistry, benthic invertebrate communities, emerging aquatic adults, and the densities of web-building spiders along the stream corridor and in the forest were monitored in three seasons (spring, summer and autumn) over the course of the nutrient-addition. By the end of the experiment, conductivity was significantly higher in nutrient-addition streams than in the control streams (F = 80.5, P < 0.001), but chlorophyll concentrations showed no significant differences between treatments. Both benthic mayfly densities (F = 6.15, P < 0.05) and the biomass of adult aquatic dipterans (Chironomidae, Simuliidae) (F = 9.25, P < 0.01) were significantly higher in nutrient-addition streams in the last sampling round. Spiders recorded from intercept traps indicated that by the end of the experiment spider activity was significantly higher within 2.5 metres of the nutrient-addition streams (F = 5.70, P < 0.01). However, seasonal densities of web-building spiders along the stream margin and in the forest decreased with no significant differences observed between nutrient-addition and control streams. The results from these studies indicate that adult insects emerging from streams represent an important source of prey that could influence the biomass and abundance of riparian arachnids. Additionally, the results imply that stream productivity and size could mediate the strength of the interaction between riparian and stream habitats. Moreover, feedback mechanisms present in both systems could have implications for such interactions. The elevated densities of web-building spiders observed at the stream margin led to the proposal of the "Highway Robber" hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that such higher densities of spiders are the result of increased insect activity along the stream corridor: the emergence of adult aquatic insects was predicted to vary less over temporal and spatial scales than that of terrestrial insects due to the poorly synchronized life histories in many New Zealand stream insects. I conclude by suggesting that there are numerous anthropocentric perturbations such as loss of heterogeneity, introduced species, pollution and habitat degradation that could undermine and decouple the intimate linkages between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the impact of various channels of technology spillovers on local innovative capacity at national and firm level. At national level, the thesis investigates the drivers of Malaysia‟s innovative capacity and the effect of international external sources on innovative capacity. At firm level, this thesis examines the impact of FDI on the innovation progress and studies whether multinational corporations (MNCs) can act as catalysts to stimulate local firms‟ innovation activities in Malaysia. Via a case study analysis at firm level, this thesis focuses on knowledge transfer through backward linkages established between MNCs and their local suppliers. Time series data analysis is conducted to provide empirical evidence of the effect of FDI spillovers on Malaysia‟s innovative capacity at national level. Additionally, a case-study approach is adopted to investigate the impact of vertical FDI spillovers on the innovation performance of local Malaysian firms. The key findings of the study reveal that export-related spillovers are positively associated with Malaysia‟s innovative capacity, whereas importrelated spillovers play a minor role in local innovation. The findings also indicate that there is no significant correlation between economic development and local innovation, which suggests that strong economic growth is not a necessary condition in order for Malaysia to enhance its local innovative capacity. The results suggest that there is strong evidence of the importance of foreign innovation activities to local innovative capacity at national level. In contrast, knowledge spillovers measured by FDI inflows have no significant impact on local innovative capacity. The results showed that FDI might be constrained by the fact that spillovers are more likely to take place through vertical relationships than horizontal relationships. At firm level, the study suggests that knowledge and technology can be diffused through high-quality and standard requirements imposed by MNCs, the assessment and feedback and training programmes offered by MNCs to local suppliers, as well as the production process itself. These results extend ii the existing literature on national innovative capacity and validate earlier theoretical and empirical research on vertical spillovers. The findings from the thesis also have important policy and managerial implications with regard to the impact of FDI on host developing countries.

Im Vortrag geht es um die Erstellung von Berechnungsmodellen zur Simulation ebener Koppelgetriebe in SimulationX. Der Fokus liegt hierbei auf der vollparametrischen Modellsteuerung während der Getriebesynthese in SimulationX. Neben Möglichkeiten zur Steuerung und Variation der Simulationsmodelle während der Berechnung wird die Entwicklung von Berechnungsmodulen zur Individualisierung des Berechnungsprozesses vorgestellt. Möglichkeiten zur Steuerung der Simulation und Co-Simulation bei anderen Programmen ist ebenfalls Thema weiterer Ansätze zur domänenübergreifenden Gesamtsimulation von Koppelgetrieben.

In this thesis we study the regional and global linkages as evidence of markets integration of the stock markets in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Prague the U.S. and the dynamics of volatility transmission of related foreign exchange rates using multivariate GARCH approach. For each of the model classes, a theoretical review, basic properties and estimation procedure are provided. We illustrate approach by applying the models to daily market data. Our two main aims are discussing and report the existence of regional and global stock markets linkages and provide comparison of such multivariate GARCH models on the data sample. We find out that the estimated time-varying conditional correlations indicate limited integration among the markets which implies that investors can benefit from the risk reduction by investigating in the different stock markets especially during the crisis.

Herman Daly's view of the economy as an "inverted pyramid" sitting on top of essential raw material inputs is compelling, but not readily visible in monetary data, as the contribution of primary sectors to value added is typically low. This article argues that "forward linkages", a classical development theory concept capturing the relevance of a sector for downstream activities, is a more appropriate measure to identify key sectors. Using Input-Output (IO) data from eighteen European countries, we identify mining as the sector with the highest average forward linkages, and confirm the consistency of this result across countries via cluster analysis. By treating IO tables as the adjacency matrix of a directed network, we then build and visualise national inverted pyramid networks, and analyse their structure. Our approach highlights the key importance of natural resources in providing the necessary inputs to modern European economies. / Series: Ecological Economic Papers

Este trabalho examina relações de preço e volatilidades entre os contratos futuros de soja em grão negociados nos Estados Unidos, China, Brasil e Argentina ao longo do período delimitado entre 2002 e 2011. Os principais resultados mostram que os preços norteamericanos ainda possuem um papel dominante para explicar as variações de preço nos mercados internacionais. Outros resultados também indicam conexões mais fortes entre os preços na bolsa chinesa de Dalian e nos demais mercados, especialmente após 2006. Esta constatação sugere que o mercado chinês se tornou mais integrado ao mercado global de soja em grão em anos recentes, o que reflete a crescente participação da China no comércio internacional da commodity e o desenvolvimento de seu contrato futuro. Em termos de transmissão de volatilidade, o contrato futuro norte-americano teve papel de referência ao promover o contágio para os mercados futuros de Brasil e Argentina em praticamente todos os intervalos de tempo definidos na pesquisa; além disso, movimentos de volatility spillover do mercado dos Estados Unidos para a bolsa chinesa de Dalian ocorreram somente entre 2009 e 2011, ratificando a maior conexão do mercado asiático nos últimos anos. Ainda, Brasil e Argentina mostraram fortes relações com o mercado chinês, fruto do estreitamento comercial, e ao mesmo tempo foram nitidamente impactados pela estrutura de preços e por choques ocorridos na bolsa norte-americana. A despeito da caracterização do contrato futuro dos Estados Unidos como líder na precificação da soja em âmbito mundial, o presente trabalho expõe a grande parcela de importância da bolsa chinesa na definição do preço eficiente de longo prazo da soja em grão, e confirma Brasil e Argentina como seguidores no sistema internacional de ajuste de preços. Através da comparação entre modelos com diferenças acerca da utilização de preços de fechamento ou de abertura da China, o conjunto com cotações de fechamento apresentou maior número de relações de preço e processos de transmissão de volatilidade significativos. A grande contribuição deste estudo corresponde ao resultado sintético de que os principais players do mercado internacional de soja em grão são bastante conectados através de movimentos de preços, volatilidades e fluxos de informação, e que as conexões entre eles se tornaram mais fortes com o passar dos últimos anos. Em termos de aplicação prática, o estudo apontou que os agentes do mercado internacional de soja em grão que acompanharem os movimentos do contrato futuro da China diariamente tendem a realizar transações mais eficientes e lucrativas. / This thesis examines price and volatility linkages between soybean futures contracts traded in United States, China, Brazil and Argentina for the period ranging from 2002 to 2011. The main findings show that U.S. prices still appear to have a dominant role to explain price changes in international markets. Results also indicate stronger linkages between prices in China and in other three markets, especially after 2006. This result suggests the Chinese market has become more integrated with soybean international markets in recent years, which might reflect the growing participation of China in international trade and the development of its soybean futures contract. Regarding volatility spillover, U.S. futures contract had reference position by promoting price contagion to the futures markets in Brazil and Argentina in almost all time intervals defined; moreover, volatility spillovers from U.S. market to Dalian futures market have been observed only from 2009 to 2011, confirming a stronger linkage between U.S. and Chinese markets in the last years. Besides, Brazil and Argentina have shown strong linkages with Chinese market, due to the trade relationship, and at the same time these countries have been impacted sharply by price structure and shocks from U.S. market. Despite the role of U.S. futures contract as a global leader in the soybean pricing process, this study presents the great importance of Chinese market to define the soybean efficient price in the long run, and it confirms Brazil and Argentina as followers in the international system of price adjustment. By comparing models with differences on the use of closing prices or opening prices from Chinese futures market, the set of closing prices presented the largest number of significant price linkages and volatility spillovers. According to the main contribution of this study, the major players in the soybean international market are highly linked through price movements, volatilities and information flow. Results also indicate that linkages between the soybean futures markets have become stronger over the last years. Regarding the practical application, the study pointed that the players of the soybean international market have to observe the movements in the Chinese futures contract daily to perform more efficient and profitable transactions.

[pt] O objetivo central desta tese é investigar a aglomeração industrial de petróleo e gás da região produtora da Bacia de Campos (BC) e a possibilidade desta concentração geográfica de firmas, independente de suas diversas nomenclaturas (cluster, milieu, redes, distritos industriais, arranjos, sistemas locais, entre outras), consistir em fator que contribui para as atividades inovadoras das empresas ali situadas. Os fundamentos desta pesquisa baseiam-se em duas vertentes distintas: uma vertente teórica e uma vertente empírica. A vertente teórica consiste em um modelo analítico híbrido que combina elementos das abordagens de clusters e de sistemas de inovação. A vertente empírica está baseada em dez estudos de caso em firmas localizadas na aglomeração, cujos bens e serviços são de alta complexidade tecnológica e que atuam em áreas de intenso dinamismo tecnológico. Duas dimensões-chave, originadas do modelo híbrido, formam a base do modelo de análise empírico: as conexões de conhecimento entre os atores (proveniente da abordagem de cluster) e a postura das firmas em relação à tecnologia (proveniente da abordagem de sistema de inovação). As contribuições deste trabalho estão centradas na caracterização da aglomeração industrial, sob o prisma da complexidade e do dinamismo tecnológico, e nos resultados do estudo empírico que apontam para a existência de grupos de firmas nos quais a aglomeração industrial exerce papel fundamental para as atividades inovadoras das firmas. / [en] The main objective of this thesis is to investigate the oil and gas industrial agglomeration in the Campos Basin (BC) production region verifying the possibility of this geographical cluster of firms, independent of its nomenclatures (cluster, milieus, network, industrial district, arrangements, local systems, and others), to consist in a feature that contributes to the innovative activities of the firms localized there. The fundaments of this research are based on two different paths: a theoretical and an empirical one. The theoretical path consists in a hybrid analytical model combining elements from the cluster and innovation systems approach. The empirical path is based on ten case studies with firms localized in the agglomeration, supplying goods and services which are technologically complex, and acting in areas with intense technological dynamism. Two keydimensions, originated from the hybrid model, are the base of the empirical analytical model: the knowledge linkages between actors (from the cluster approach) and the posture of the firms in relation to technology (from the innovation systems approach). The main contributions of this work are centred on the industrial agglomeration characterization, under the technological complexity and dynamism features, and on the results of the empirical study showing evidences for the existence of some groups of firms where the industrial agglomeration plays a fundamental role for their innovative activities.

As the international community takes increasing action to mitigate the effects of climate change, increased focus has been placed on the topic of energy transitions in developing countries. This paper uses the multi-level perspective (MLP) framework to analyze the ongoing energy transition in Mongolia, specifically the integration of large-scale wind and solar energy systems. Attention is paid to the presence of transnational linkages and intermediaries that have substantially contributed to Mongolia’s success in diffusing renewable energy technology, as well as challenges Mongolia has faced as a result of limited technological and institutional capacity. The paper concludes that Mongolia’s transition shares many similarities with other developing countries’ transitions, in that transition dynamics are highly influenced by exogenous actors and interests, rather than traditional factors as described by the MLP.

During spermiogenesis, somatic chromatin is remodeled and a vast majority (> 90%) of DNA histones are replaced by short arginine-rich peptides called protamines. This compaction is immense, with protamine-DNA self-assembly in sperm chromatin resulting in a final volume roughly 1/6th of a somatic nucleus. This near crystalline organization of the DNA in sperm is thought crucial both for the transport of the paternal genes as well as for the protection of genetic information as sperm chromatin is transcriptionally inactive and all DNA repair mechanisms are shut down. Chapter 1 will include an overview of the topics discussed in this document, including: sperm chromatin, Sperm chromatin remodeling, DNA damage, and the effect of DNA damage to sperm DNA. Chapter 2 will contain a brief overview of the techniques used within this study. This includes: Small-angle X-ray Scattering, gel electrophoresis, DNA precipitation assays, and ethidium bromide dissociation assays. In chapter 3, we will discuss the effect of DNA packaging on the accessibility of free radicals to damage condensed DNA. A variety of polycations were used to condense plasmid DNA in reconstituted samples. After condensation, the DNA-polycation condensates were exposed to 2,2'-Azobis(2-amidinopropane) dihydrochloride (AAPH) for 1 hour, decondensed, and the plasmid DNA examined by gel electrophoresis. By comparing the intensities of the supercoiled, open coiled and linear bands, we were able to identify the presence of single-strand nicks and double-strand breaks in DNA. DNA packaging densities for all polycation-DNA systems were determined by small-angle X-Ray scattering (SAXS). Our results show that for similar length polycations, the amount of oxidative damage scales directly with the DNA packaging with more tightly condensed DNA being damaged less. However, our results also show that DNA damage is also dependent on polycation length, with DNA condensed by shorter polycations being damaged more than DNA condensed with longer polycations even at similar packaging densities. Protamine has long been thought to play a role in protecting spermatic DNA from damaging agents in vivo. However, the relationship between the hypercondensation of sperm chromatin, the DNA integrity, and the transfer of epigenetic information from sperm to oocyte and potential to alter gene expression in the early embryo are poorly understood. In Chapter 4, we examine how underprotamination affects free radical accessibility and DNA stability in reconstituted sperm chromatin. Specifically, reconstituted salmon protamine- plasmid DNA condensates (polyplexes) were formed at precise protamine/DNA ratios and subsequently subjected to exposure to AAPH free radicals. Agarose gel electrophoresis was then used to assess DNA damage by observing topology alternations in the decondensed polyplexes. FPG-DNA glycosylase has also been used to more accurately determine oxidative damage beyond just nicks and double-strand breaks in the various condensed states. We show that higher levels of protamination correlate to greater levels of protection to the DNA from oxidative damage up until full charge compensation. Furthermore, we also demonstrate that poorly compacted chromatin could be recovered by the introduction of small cationic peptides in underprotaminated condensates as well as actual sperm nuclei. SAXS studies were performed to show that the introduction of cationic peptides resulted in tighter DNA packaging densities in the underprotaminated sperm chromatin. In Chapter 5, we examine the role of disulfide bonds on DNA packaging in mammalian sperm chromatin. Mammalian protamine, unlike fish, are known to have cysteine residues capable of forming inter- and intra-protamine disulfide bonds. In bull, prior work had shown evidence for the formation of a unique hairpin secondary structure due to the folding of the ends of the protamine molecule by intramolecular disulfide linkages. Between folds is an arginine-rich region known as the DNA binding region. The DNA binding region has a local arginine fraction (~60-75%) that is much higher than the arginine fraction within the full bull protamine sequence (~50%). Previous work by the DeRouchey lab has shown that the percent arginine was crucial for DNA condensation in small arginine-rich peptides. We hypothesize that the fraction of arginine is also critical to DNA remodeling in sperm chromatin. SAXS studies showed that disulfide bond reduction resulted in complete decondensation of bull sperm nuclei. Here, we have used cysteine alkylation chemistry to add neutral or charged functional groups to the protamine cysteine, thereby inhibiting the formation of these disulfide bonds. This chemistry both prevents the formation of the hairpin as well as modifies the overall charge of the protamine. Through ethidium bromide exclusion assays, we measured binding of these altered protamines to calf thymus DNA and determined that a percent cationic charge of above 50% is necessary for the protamine to effectively condense DNA. In addition, we show that DNA condensation of bull protamine with the hairpin is nearly identical to piscine protamines which have no disulfide linkages but a net arginine fraction of 60-75%. Upon disruption of the hairpin, however, complete condensation does not occur despite a net charge on the protamine of +26.