Innovation and network structural dynamics: Study of the alliance network of a major sector of the biotechnology industry

We study the large-scale topology and dynamics of maps of alliances in a major segment of the biotechnology industry. The results point to the joint dynamics of network and innovation. The study demonstrates that the network is scale-free. Competition for links translates into a dynamic exponent that seems to follow the fitter-get-richer model of network growth, with preferential attachment to firms holding key technologies. This network also shows a small-world effect. This work highlights the strategic importance of understanding the growth dynamics and structure of collaboration networks for the building of leading positions in industries led by sustained radical change.     

Flaunting one's academic pedigree? Self‐presentation of students from elite French schools

This article starts from the puzzle that although French elite institutions enjoy extremely positive and attractive images, students from these schools generally choose to conceal their academic pedigree in their daily interactions. We show that, in a context of growing inequalities of access to grandes écoles, the strategy of hiding one's student identity may be understood as the desire to avoid six core threats associated with declaring one's association with an elite school: not conforming to group norms, confirming a negative reputation, not living up to a positive reputation, reducing one's identity, losing control of one's identity, and threatening the identity of the other. The conclusions highlight the implications of this microsociological study on a host of much wider questions useful in better understanding the ambivalent relations that exist between French society and its elites issued from the grandes écoles.     

Academic careers for graduate students: a strong attractor in a changed environment

Professorship has traditionally been the single most valued career path for graduates of PhD programs. Policies now encourage graduate students to directly or indirectly engage with non-academic organizations to encourage the next generation of researchers to explore alternative careers, including opportunities in industry and government. In this article, we use data from a survey of Quebec science and engineering graduate students to examine the impact of their participation in university-industry-government research partnerships on their professional preferences. We assess the degree to which exposure to non-academic realities through different training arrangements relates to career preferences, and how these preferences evolve over time. We show that the proportion of students who did not change their preferred career path over time is high, indicating that by the time students engage in a research-training program they already, for the most part, know what career they want to pursue. However, and although students with close ties to non-academic partners may initially be more interested in non-academic career paths, over time all categories of students become more attracted to academic careers. We conclude that faculty positions continue to dominate the professional dreams of fledgling researchers, a power of attraction that increases as students advance in their program, even when it involves industrial contacts.     

Modellierung und kartographische Visualisierung von Geodaten mit XML-basierten Sprachen

Mit den XML-basierten Sprachen GML, XSLT und SVG lassen sich Geodaten nicht nur anwendungsorientiert modellieren, sondern auch karten?hnlich visualisieren. In dieser Fallstudie zeigen wir das, indem wir realistische Geodatenbest?nde der Landesvermessungs?mter zun?chst mit der Geography Markup Language (GML) nachmodellieren. So mit GML strukturierte Daten werden dann mit der Extensible Stylesheet Language for Transformation (XSLT) auf Elemente der Sprache Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) abgebildet. Dabei wird der Prozess der kartografischen Visualisierung durch XSLT-Konstrukte modelliert und auch gleichzeitig implementiert. Als Ergebnis erhalten wir Grafiken, die den entsprechenden Karten der Landes?mter zumindest nicht un?hnlich sind.     

How to Support and to Bring About the Shift from Teaching to Learning through Academic Staff Development Programmes: Examples and Perspectives

This article opens with a survey of developments indicative of the shift from teaching to learning. It then surveys the situation in the 1990s and answers questions relevant to the encouragement of effective teaching. It continues by dealing with the question of how to encourage the shift from teaching to learning by means of staff development programmes for higher education teaching personnel. The author presents successful concepts that she developed in the context of a pilot study undertaken between 1975 and 1979. She applied them within workshops not only in her own university but in numerous eastern European and African universities and at the University of the Philippines in 1997 and 1998. A final section summarizes some perspectives for the UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education: Higher Education in the Twenty‐First Century‐‐"Vision and Action' that was held in Paris from 5 to 9 October 1998.     

Evaluation of a numeracy intervention program focusing on basic numerical knowledge and conceptual knowledge: a pilot study

The preliminary results of this study suggested that children with developmental dyscalculia benefit from a numeracy intervention program that focuses on basic numerical knowledge and conceptual knowledge. All children in the experimental group showed considerable and partly significant performance increases on all calculation components. Six children with developmental dyscalculia were trained individually and in small-group settings for a relatively short duration (one school semester). We argue that the positive intervention effects to a large extent are attributable to the explicit teaching of numerical domains that often have been found to be neglected in school mathematics.