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To date, understanding and empirical investigation of the internationalisation processes of university spin-outs (USOs) have been limited. Few studies have explored the role of the specific characteristics of their core technology, in particular their innovativeness, as a determinant of their early internationalisation. This is also an issue which is under-explored within the general international business field. To address this gap, the purpose of our paper is to examine how the innovativeness of USOs influence the pace of their internationalisation. To achieve this, we explore how innovativeness is nurtured and cumulatively developed during born global (BG) and non-born global (NBG) USOs' pre-foundation technology development trajectory. BGs represent a category of young, usually, high-technology firms that internationalise within 3 years of inception. By exploring the pre-foundation technology development process of Italian USOs across two research-intensive universities, we found that BG and NBG USOs differed in aspects around their "innovative proclivity," "firm innovativeness" and "the nature of the innovation." Specifically, we found that BG USOs had a longer pre-foundation period, focused on a specific invention with limited fields of application, and offered 'really new' innovations. BG USOs' products or services were also developed and largely standardised before market entry, which accelerated their internationalisation. In contrast, NBG USOs were characterised by short pre-foundation periods, relied on incremental innovation and a wide spectrum of innovative competencies. They also relied on technologies with a broad scope of market application and customised their offerings based on client needs, which slowed their market entry and internationalisation.

The literature on academic entrepreneurship within business schools is limited and fragmented. The purpose of this systematic literature review is to address this deficit and to identify what business schools do to support academic entrepreneurship and to outline a future research agenda. Based on our systematic literature review we identified three main themes that business schools do to support academic entrepreneurship namely: "entrepreneurial education;" "entrepreneurial networks;" and "entrepreneurial ecosystems." Furthermore, we identified two further embryonic themes, "individual level factors" and "obstacles to entrepreneurship." Based on our review and analysis we present some future avenues for research.

Over the past 20 years, universities have been faced with sustained change, driven by external factors. This has led to the evolution of the teaching and research mission and the creation and rise of the third mission. Such mission extension has led to the emergence of entrepreneurial universities which has seen a move from traditional research and teaching business models, to business models which incorporate a much wider range of activities, to meet stakeholder demands as well as sustaining and growing universities in the era of intense national and international competition. This special issue extends knowledge by providing novel insights into the multidimensional antecedent contextual influences, consequences and implications of university mission expansion. We also provide a foundational research agenda which will help guide future research exploring the changing and expanding university missions and business models.

Background : Opioid therapy is critical for pain relief for most hospice patients but may be limited by adverse side effects. Combining medical cannabis with opioids may help mitigate adverse effects while maintaining effective pain relief. Aim : This single-arm study investigated the impact of combined medical cannabis/opioid therapy on pain relief, opioid dose, appetite, respiratory function, well-being, nausea, and adverse events in hospice inpatients. Design : Adult hospice inpatients using scheduled oral, parenteral, or transdermal opioids for pain were administered standardized oral medical cannabis, 40 mg CBD/1.5 mg THC or 80 mg CBD/3 mg THC. Descriptive statistics detailed demographic and clinical baseline characteristics, the Mann-Whitney test compared outcomes, and the longitudinal mixed effects regression model analyzed longitudinal effects of combined therapy. Setting/Participants : Sixty-six inpatients at The Connecticut Hospital, Inc. were assessed over 996 treatment days; average age was 68.2 ± 12.9 years, 90.9% were white. Cancer was the most common diagnosis. Results : The medical cannabis/opioid combination showed a significant longitudinal reduction in pain intensity (P =.0029) and a non-significant trend toward lower opioid doses. Well-being, appetite, nausea, and respiratory function showed non-statistically significant changes. Three patients (4.5%) experienced minor, reversible adverse events potentially related to medical cannabis. No serious or life-threatening adverse events were seen. Conclusion : Combination medical cannabis/opioid therapy showed statistically significant pain relief and may have the potential for reducing opioid dose and mitigating opioid toxicity, offering a safe pain management alternative to opioids alone for patients in end-of-life care settings, and warrants further investigation in larger controlled trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Readability systems have once more become prominent in policy and practice because of recommendations in the Common Core State Standards. This study revisited two features of current text analysis (readability) systems: their generalizability to all grade levels and to all content areas. A database that encompassed texts across the grade bands and content areas and included aggregate comprehension performance on the texts was used to: (a) describe how the text features (i.e., word frequency, word length, sentence length) varied at different grade levels and within different subject areas and (b) examine if the prediction of comprehension with the text features was moderated by the grade or content area of the text. Results indicated that texts did having differing levels of various word features along both grade and content lines especially in the area of sentence length. In addition, content and grade moderated the relationship between sentence length and comprehension.