Distance Artist: Building the Skills of Future Creatives. Developing Evidence‐Based Criteria for Global Virtual Team Tutoring and Management in Art and Design Education

This article reflects on six years of research activities in the field of long‐distance collaboration and more specifically on how creative virtual teams operate and respond to challenges set by emerging and developing technologies. Furthermore, it considers how to build, manage and shape a more inclusive virtual team, documenting the methodologies applied in each activity, the experiences of both tutors and students and the educational context in which the international study took place. The project set out with a methodology for observing, managing and developing the interaction dynamics between each creative team member involved in the design of activities and practice of delocalized teams. The project is positioned within the field of educational technology and identifies a set of operative recommendations aimed at educators so that remote creative collaborative work can result most effective. The article explores the potential of virtual teams supporting communication and design.     

Skilled migration and innovation in European industries

This paper studies the effects of skilled migration on innovation –proxied by patent citations- in European industries between 1994 and 2005, using the French and the UK Labour Force Surveys and the German Microcensus. Highly-educated migrants have a positive effect on innovation, but the effect differs across industries. It is stronger in industries with low levels of overeducation, high levels of FDIs and openness to trade and, finally, in industries with higher ethnic diversity. The aggregate effect of the skilled immigrant is about one third the one of the skilled natives. We tackle the endogeneity of migrants with a set of external and internal instruments.     

The association between financial aid availability and the college dropout rates in Colombia

The main objective of this study is to estimate the association between financial aid and college dropout rates of postsecondary students in Colombia. We use a unique dataset from the Colombian Ministry of Education that includes all enrolled college students in the country between 1998 and 2008. Logistic regression is used to identify the correlation between receiving different forms of financial aid on the dropout rates of the students. The main results of the study suggest that the probability of dropping out decrease between 25 and 29% according to the type of financial aid received. There is also evidence that the financial aid is more effective in reducing dropout rates at the beginning of the student’s college careers. This result holds after controlling by type of postsecondary institution attended. These findings suggest that financial aid is an effective tool to reduce dropout rates, and therefore increase persistence and expand access in Colombia.     

Dribbling speed along curved paths predicts attacking performance in match-realistic one vs. one soccer games

This study assessed whether a new, closed-skill dribbling or sprinting task could predict attacking performance in soccer. Twenty-five male players were recruited from the Londrina Junior Team Football Academy in Brazil and asked to either dribble the ball or sprint through five custom circuits that varied in average curvature (0–1.37 radians.m^?1). These measures were then validated using a realistic one vs. one competition in which each player acted as attacker or defender in turn (N = 1330 bouts). Sprinting (ICC = 0.96) and dribbling (ICC = 0.97) performances were highly repeatable for individual players. Average dribbling speed decreased non-linearly with increasing circuit curvature (F = 239.5; P < 0.001) from 5.19 ± 0.11 ms^?1 on the straightest path to 2.13 ± 0.03 ms^?1 on the curviest. Overall, dribbling but not sprinting performance predicted attacking success in the one vs. one competition, explaining more than 50% of the variation in attacking success alone (r_p = 0.70; P < 0.001). In conclusion, our new closed-skill dribbling assessment is a valid and reliable protocol to predict a soccer player’s success in attacking performance in one vs. one situation, and can be used to identify talented players.     

Education for Integrated Rural Development: transformative learning in a complex and uncertain world

A key question addressed in this article is: How does the increased pressure for expertise in IRD translate itself into the demand for educational services and the design of appropriate curricula on a European-wide basis? This article examines these issues and generates a number of stepping stones for the development of Education and Training for Integrated Rural Development (ETIRD) in tertiary education, based on a two-year inter-institutional curriculum development project carried out under the umbrella of the AFANetⁱ.     

Multispectral data cube acquisition of aligned images for document analysis by means of a filter-wheel camera provided with focus control

Multispectral imaging techniques are widely used to analyse and restore digital images of ancient documents degraded over time. In particular, acquisitions in infrared and ultraviolet bands can reveal information invisible by naked eye, which is not captured by conventional RGB imaging. Multispectral acquisitions are usually performed with filter-wheel cameras that mount a series of interference filters in front of the sensor to select the spectral band in which the document has to be acquired. Due to the use of different filters, the focus of the lens changes and it is necessary to adjust it manually for each filter, because such imaging systems are devoid of automatic focusing. Thus the acquired images may not be perfectly in-focus and have misalignments. In this work we present an automatic solution to acquire a multispectral data cube of aligned images that can be used in document analysis to extract and/or separate information through enhancement techniques. A custom-made motorized autofocus system controlled by software has been installed on a filter-wheel camera, which allows us to acquire in-focus images automatically at each filter changing, and a registration method based on Fourier-Mellin transform aligns these images. A preliminary calibration is performed to set the focusing of each filter with the working distance. As a result, the camera can capture images independently from the contrast of the scene, also in presence of documents with homogeneous texture. The proposed solution reduces considerably the acquisition time and offers a tool to acquire automatically the data cube to be used in further image analysis techniques. The results of experimentations are hereby presented and discussed.     

Venture capital financing and the growth of high-tech start-ups: Disentangling treatment from selection effects

The financial and innovation literature generally claims that venture capital (VC) investments spur the growth of new technology-based firms (NTBFs). However, it has proved difficult so far to separate the “treatment” effect of the VC investment from the “selection” effect attributable to the ability of the VC investor to screen high growth NTBFs. The aim of this work is to test whether VC investments have a positive treatment effect on the growth of employment and sales of NTBFs. For this purpose we consider a 10-year longitudinal data set for 538 Italian NTBFs, most of which are privately held. The sample includes both VC-backed and non-VC-backed firms. We estimate Gibrat-law-type dynamic panel-data models augmented with time-varying variables that capture the VC status of firms. To control for the endogeneity of VC investments we use several GMM estimators. The econometric results strongly support the view that VC investments positively influence firm growth. The treatment effect of VC investments is of large economic magnitude, especially on growth of employment. Most of it is obtained immediately after the first round of VC finance. Conversely, the selection effect of VC appears to be negligible in the Italian context.