Knowledge is a necessary and critically important factor in generating growth and increased prosperity. The extent to which such effects are materialized depends however on its diffusion and how it transcends into innovation, entrepreneurship and growing firms. This doctoral thesis consists of four papers that examine how labor mobility and innovation strategies influence the performance at the firm level with respect to new ventures, firm level growth and innovativeness.   The first paper provides empirical support of the validity of the knowledge-based spillover theory of entrepreneurship by employing a detailed database. The results indicate that both inter-regional labor inflows and intra-regional labor mobility exert a strong positive effect on entrepreneurship, while inter-regional outflows negatively affect entrepreneurial entry.   The second paper examines the influence of the labor mobility of knowledge workers on innovation at the firm level. New evidence are provided that reveals a positive and significant impact of labor mobility on firms’ innovations measured as patent applications.   In the third paper the influence of labor mobility between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and other firms on innovation is investigated. Looking at firms having different owner structures, empirical evidence are provided that particularly domestically owned MNEs generate strong knowledge spillovers to non-MNEs that translates into innovations.   The fourth paper examines the relationship between innovation and firm growth. We implement a classification of innovations based on whether they are explorative or exploitative. The more radical explorative innovations are shown to have a persistent growth effect in the long term, while exploitative innovation increases the labor demand predominantly in the short term. / <p>QC 20160401</p>

För att öka bland annat trivsel och säkerhet inom ett bostadsområde är det av av stor fördel att anlägga bostadsparkering i utkanten och på sätt minska trafikflödet inom området. En sådan parkeringslösning förutsätter dock att viss markyta inom området avsätts för att kunna ställa upp sin bil under en kortare period för att hämta eller lämna passagerare samt lasta i eller ur gods. Detta kallas för att korttidsangöra. Examensarbetet har kartlagt hur korttidsangöring används samt undersökt om behovet att angöra påverkas av avstånd till parkering och socioekonomiska faktorer inom ett område.

This research examines experiences of Latvian students pursuing undergraduate degrees at universities in England. Working with this population positions this research in the subject area of International Student Mobility (ISM). As a relatively new subject ISM is still developing suitable concepts, methodological practices and scientific terminology. This presents a challenge but also calls for more in-depth work in the area. As an exploratory study this research answers this call and proposes new directions in the development of ISM as a research field. ISM is particularly interesting in the context of contemporary Europe where student mobility is considered as a vehicle of human capital across national borders. As such student mobility contributes to further internationalization of the European labour force and facilitates development of the knowledge-based economy. Finding out what students gain from university education abroad remains a topic of scientific debate. This research focuses on the practical but complicated part of Higher Education: competence development. The review of the literature reveals that the topic of competence development in Higher Education has been in and out of researchers’ favour, but it has not been examined in the international context. This consideration is timely as more and more students seek education abroad and competences developed at foreign universities are transferred across borders. This research is based on in-depth interviews with Latvian students in England, their family members and friends both in Latvia and in England. Interviewing family and friends enriched the self-reporting accounts of the students, thus capturing a more holistic representation of the students’ experiences. In addition, accounts of the students’ network representatives from England and from Latvia positioned this research in the international social networks of the students. This research finds that international social networks are the natural and necessary environments in which mobility of students takes place and argues that it needs to be studied with consideration to these under-researched environments. This study also proposes a longitudinal focus. The main participants of this research, the students, were interviewed three times over three years, which goes beyond most research studies on student mobility. The analysis of the interview responses relies on multiple iterations between the literature and the data. The findings demonstrate that degree-seeking students develop competences that can be grouped in three main areas: gaining access to university education in England, socio-cultural acculturation and academic acculturation. In each of these areas students develop specific skills and abilities that support the three areas of competences. The development of the skills, abilities and competences is explained through a model created by Noel Burch for Gordon Training International (GTI). The model outlines four stages of development that progress from the level of unconscious incompetence, to conscious incompetence, to conscious competence and to unconscious competence.

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The importance attached to preparing graduates for a role on an international stage has become increasingly recognised by U.K. higher education institutions and by successive U.K. governments in recent years. At the same time, the contribution that enterprising individuals make to an economy has also gained in importance, but the answer to the question of what makes an 'enterprising individual' is still uncertain. This thesis investigates whether internationally mobile students develop or enhance certain entrepreneurial attitudes through a study or work placement period abroad and, if so, why certain attitudes may have developed or been positively enhanced by a prolonged exposure abroad. I have also considered the impact that such a sojourn has on the entrepreneurial intent and behaviour of graduates. I have followed a concurrent mixed method approach using a group of mobile students and, as a control group, students who do not undertake mobility during their degree. The results indicate that there is little difference in certain entrepreneurial attitudes between the two groups before mobility, but that the mobile students show a higher degree of (positive) change in some entrepreneurial attitudes than the non-mobile students after mobility. There are a range of factors from the international sojourn that could account for this change. The results imply that, along with other benefits of international education, an international sojourn contributes to developing potential entrepreneurial behaviour, as evidenced by the careers and activities of internationally mobile graduates. This thesis contributes to the existing body of knowledge in the fields of international education and entrepreneurship in a number of ways. Firstly it provides more insight into the entrepreneurial behaviour of graduates who have studied abroad. Secondly, my results add to the debate about what differentiates a mobile student from a non-mobile student. Thirdly, my research findings support the assertion that student mobility brings benefits (both to an individual and to the economy) by turning anecdotal indicators and suppositions about the benefits into more concrete and substantial evidence. Fourthly, and finally, through using a mixed method approach I have extended the to-date narrow focus of much of the research into the area of student mobility to provide an atypical approach to investigating international education benefits.

For proteins the link between their structure and their function is a central tenet of biology. A common approach to understanding protein function is to ‘solve’ its structure and subsequently probe interactions between the protein and its binding partners. The first part of this approach is non-trivial for proteins where localised regions or even their entire structure fail to fold into a three-dimensional structure and yet they possess function. These so called intrinsically or inherently disordered proteins (IDP’s) or intrinsically disordered regions (IDR’s) constitute up to 40% of all expressed proteins. IDPs which have crucial roles in molecular recognition, assembly, protein modification and entropic chain activities, are often dynamic with respect to both conformation and interaction, so in the course of a protein’s ‘lifespan’ it will sample many configurations and bind to several targets. For these proteins, there is a need to develop new methods for structure characterization which exploit their biophysical properties. The solvent free environment of a mass spectrometer is ideally suited to the study of intrinsic interactions and how they contribute to structure. Ion mobility mass spectrometry is uniquely able to observe the range of structures an IDP can occupy, and also the effect of selected binding partners on altering this conformational space. This thesis details the technique of ion mobility mass spectrometry and illustrates its use in assessing the relative disorder of p53 protein. The tumour suppressor p53 is at the hub of a plethora of signalling pathways that maintain the integrity of the human genome and regulate the cell cycle. Deregulation of this protein has a great effect on carcinogenesis as mutated p53 can induce an amplified epigenetic instability of tumour cells, facilitating and accelerating the evolution of the tumour. Herein mass spectrometry provides a compelling, detailed insight into the conformational flexibility of the p53 DNA-binding domain. The plasticity of the p53 DNA-binding domain is reflected in the existence of more than one conformation, independent of any conformational changes prompted by binding. The in vacuo conformational phenotypes exhibited by common cancer-associated mutations are determined and the second-site suppressor mutation from loop L1, H115N, is probed whether it could trigger conformational changes in p53 hotspot cancer mutations. The structural basis of the binding promiscuity of p53 protein is investigated; of particular interest is the molecular interaction of the p53 N-terminus with the oncoprotein murine double minute 2, as well as with the antiapoptotic factor B-cell lymphoma-extralarge.

Investigating the structure of proteins and their interactions with other biomolecules or drug molecules, coupled with the consideration of conformational change upon binding, is essential to better understand their functions. Mass spectrometry (MS) is emerging as a powerful tool to study protein and peptide structure and interactions due to the high dynamic range, low sample consumption and high sensitivity of this technique, providing insight into the stoichiometry, intensity and stability of interactions. The hybrid technique of ion mobility-mass spectrometry (IM-MS) can provide insight into the conformations adopted by protein and peptide monomers and multimers, in addition to complexes resulting from interactions, which when coupled with molecular modelling can suggest candidate conformations for these in vacuo species and by inference their conformations in solution prior to ionisation and desolvation. The work presented in this thesis considers a number of different peptide and protein systems, highlighting how the combination of MS and IM-MS based techniques, in conjunction with other biophysical techniques such as circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) can provide insight into these dynamic systems. First a case study into the ability of MS and IM-MS to study disorder-to-order transitions is presented. The transcription factor c-MYC can only perform its function upon binding with its binding partner MAX; deregulation of c-MYC is, however, implicated in a number of human cancers. c-MYC and MAX comprise intrinsically disordered regions which form a leucine zipper upon binding. The work presented here focuses on the leucine zipper regions of both c-MYC and MAX, their individual conformations and changes upon binding. Inhibiting the c-MYC:MAX interaction is a current target for drug therapy and hence the inhibition of this interaction with a previously identified small drug-like molecule was also examined using these techniques, to determine if such an approach may be appropriate for investigation of future therapeutics. Next the ability of MS-based techniques to preserve, transmit and distinguish between multiple conformations of a metamorphic protein was examined. The chemokine lymphotactin has been shown to exist in two distinct conformations in equilibrium in a ligand-free state. The existence of such metamorphic proteins has called into question whether traditional structural elucidation tools have been inadvertently biased towards consideration of single conformations. Here, the potential of gas-phase techniques in the study of conformationally dynamic systems is examined through the study of wild type lymphotactin and a number of constructs designed either as a minimum model of fold or to mimic one of the distinct folds. Interactions between chemokines and glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) are thought to be essential for the in vivo activity of these proteins. The interactions between the distinctive chemokine lymphotactin and a model GAG were hence probed. As with the structural studies, additional protein constructs were considered either to represent the minimum model of fold, one distinct fold of the metamorphic protein or designed to diminish its GAG binding propensity. The ability of each construct to bind GAGs, the stoichiometry of the interactions and conformations adopted by the resulting complexes in addition to aggregation occurring upon the introduction of the GAG is considered. Finally, the similarities, with respect to structure and function, between the chemokine superfamily of proteins and the human β-defensin subfamily of antimicrobial peptides are considered. The tendency of human β-defensins 2 and 3 to bind a model GAG is examined; the stoichiometry of binding and conformations adopted and aggregation occurring here are considered and compared with that of chemokines.

This quantitative study investigates on how the attitudes amongst people in Tampa are towards the use of public transportation and also analyse which factors they consider vital for its development. The data is collected with the help of an online questionnaire and later compared with the current comprehensive plan and transportation plan in Tampa, after a qualitative literature review, in order to analyse and compare if there are any differences between the respondents and the planners. In other word’s compare theory to what is happening in reality. The results show that both the planners and the respondents acknowledge the dominance and negative effects of car use and that an expansion of public transportation is necessary in order to enhance the overall quality of life but also sustainability. The biggest difference was the attitude toward and belief in Mobility Management and soft measures. As the plan documents do not put any emphasis on the importance of changing attitudes with the help of soft measures, the respondents showed that Mobility Management and services linked to it could be a vital factor to change overall attitude towards public transportation if it were implemented.

Field-effect transistors (FET) based on graphene as channel has extraordinaryproperties in terms of charge mobility, charge carrier density etc. However, there aremany challenges to graphene based FET due to the fact graphene is a monolayer ofatoms in 2-dimentional space that is strongly influenced by the operating conditions.One issue is that the Dirac point, or K-point, shifts to higher gate voltage whengraphene is exposed to atmosphere. In this study graphene field-effect transistors(GFET) based on commercially available CVD graphene are electrically characterizedthrough field effect gated measurements. The Dirac point is initially unobservable andlocated at higher gate voltages (&gt;+42 V), indicating high p-doping in graphene.Different treatments are tried to enhance the properties of GFET devices, such astransconductance, mobility and a decrease of the Dirac point to lower voltages, thatincludes current annealing, vacuum annealing, hot plate annealing, ionized water bathand UV-ozone cleaning. Vacuum annealing and annealing on a hot plate affect thegated response; they might have decreased the overall p-doping, but also introducedDirac points and non-linear features. These are thought to be explained by localp-doping of the graphene under the electrodes. Thus the Dirac point of CVDgraphene is still at higher gate voltages. Finally, the charge carrier mobility decreasedin all treatments except current – and hot plate annealing, and it is also observed that charge carrier mobilities after fabrication are lower than the manufacturer estimatesfor raw graphene on SiO2/Si substrate.

We were unable to verify the existence of ion mobility discontinuities in either superfluid helium at 1 K or liquid nitrogen. The velocity-field dependence in helium was described by an increased interaction with the normal fluid, due to an increase in the roton number density close to the ion surface. The mobility results in nitrogen were interpreted as being due to liquid motion, following a theory by Kopylov. The D.C. results showed that the effect of a grid on the transmission of an ion beam could be described by a field dependent grid transmission coefficient, independent of the ion velocity. The vortex ring transmission through a grid was a complex function of vorticity being captured by the grid, the capture and escape probabilities of the bare ions by vorticity, and the onset for vorticity propagating throughout the ion cell.