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The emergence and evolution of engineering biology, and its potential to address multiple global challenges is associated with the rise of biofoundries. These innovation intermediaries are facilities that employ advanced automation and computational analytics to accelerate engineering biology applications. Yet, for biofoundries to fully achieve their promise of generating applications that address grand societal challenges, they need to meet three key challenges: translation of research technology and its commercialization, attention to sustainability, and responsible innovation. Using web content analysis and interviews, this paper explores the functions and capabilities undertaken by existing public biofoundries, the extent to which they address these three challenges, and opportunities and models for enhancement. We also probe the roles undertaken by three other contrasting types of innovation intermediaries to identify practices and opportunities for integration and partnering with public biofoundries. We find that public biofoundries exhibit relatively strong capabilities for research translation, whereas efforts toward sustainability and responsibility are generally less prominent. For biofoundry enhancement, we propose an organisational model based on external partnering where public biofoundries are positioned as intermediaries within regional innovation systems. The framework put forward is reproducible and could be used in other contexts for assessing innovation intermediary organisational functions and capabilities toward meeting societal challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the potential of OpenStreetMap (OSM) data in predicting local well-being and resilience in Italy. The linear Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) is used to handle multicollinearity problems and select the most influential OSM features. The data-driven approach provides evidence that OSM information is highly correlated with several socioeconomic metrics at a provincial scale (NUTS-3 level). Moreover, it claims that some specific points of interest—e.g., bookmakers—can be used for a rapid territorial appraisal of vulnerable territories, i.e., areas that are affected by economic backwardness, poor institutions, low human capital and that, for these adverse conditions, deserve special attention by policymakers concerned with a reduction of regional disparities. While OSM can become a powerful source for policy planning, monitoring and evaluation, future works in the field should explore the scalability of the approach, its use for forecasting purposes, and the adoption of various models and tools such as machine learning techniques to grasp even non-linear relationships between variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis uses a difference-in-differences approach to examine the impact of the Regional Cities Initiative (RCI) on economic development outcomes in counties that participated in the program relative to those that did not participate. The RCI was a place-based economic development program that was implemented in Indiana beginning in 2015. Through a competitive process, this program provided funding for projects meant to improve the quality of life in three regions of the state. The results indicate that participating counties had higher gross domestic product growth and higher employment growth than nonparticipating counties. There is limited evidence that the program had a positive impact on population growth. There were no discernable effects on house prices or earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article combines unconditional quantile regressions with difference-in-differences to study the distributive effects of a foreign buyer tax (FBT) on home prices in New South Wales (NSW). The main results reveal that the FBT reduces house prices in NSW but only among the more expensive houses located in desirable neighborhoods of Sydney and with a relatively high share of foreign-born population. We find evidence that the FBT reduces transaction volumes in the same expensive Sydney neighborhoods and immigrant enclaves where house prices are observed to decline, in support of a direct mechanism that the FBT curbs foreign demand. Additional results suggest that more expensive homes are not substituted with less expensive housing, and that some foreign buyers respond to the FBT by divesting away from NSW locations. The main policy implication is that the FBT may help deter foreign buyers from accumulating higher-priced and luxury assets, but may fail to address broader housing affordability concerns facing the local population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing urbanization, population growth and the social, economic and environmental problems resulting from them, along with the growth and expansion of information and communication technology - as the main axis of transformation in the world - is the main feature of the 21st century. To deal with the challenge of cities, the concept of smart city has been presented. Good urban governance is presented as a prerequisite for a smart city by national and international organizations. Therefore, the idea of urban management and governance has been removed from its traditional state and improved. In other words, good and smart governance involves an open dialogue between citizens and city officials through an active ICT platform. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to answer the question that with the new changes in the field of technology in the cities of the country, especially the metropolises, what is the state of good governance indicators in the studied metropolis? And is the urban management in Tabriz metropolis able to improve the desirable urban governance indicators in line with the smart city indicators? The answers to the research questions have been done by using a combination of quantitative and qualitative models. The indicators of smart city and good urban governance have been extracted using questionnaire tools and statistics available in statistical yearbooks and analyzed in Python programming environment. The results show that the overall score of good governance in Tabriz metropolis is 0.436. Among the five indicators introduced by the United Nations, the effectiveness index is the most favorable and the equality index is the most unfavorable among other indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The East–West imbalance in China’s economic development has profoundly affected all aspects of society, but the emergence of digital financial inclusion offers potential opportunities to address this issue. This study examines 31 provinces in China from 2011 to 2020, and Exploratory Space–time Data Analysis is employed to specify the temporal and spatial changes in the East–West disparity in economic development and digital financial inclusion. The main findings are: First, inequality in economic development is associated with a decline in spatial autocorrelation. With the acute exacerbation of inequalities after the pandemic, enhancing spatial dependence through regional cooperation would be conducive to reducing disparities. Second, economic development, digital financial inclusion, and its components (usage and coverage) have hot spots in the East and cold spots in the West. Before the pandemic, significant advancements in the West mitigated the East–West gap, but the East–West divergence in economic development worsened after the COVID-19 explosion. Third, distinct from economic development, digital financial inclusion and its key elements (usage) not only have a growing regional dependence, but also that the pandemic has not disrupted improvements in the West. More importantly, there is a significant regional overlap between digital financial inclusion, usage, and economic development, implying spatial and attributable connections among them. Consequently, governments should consider digital financial inclusion as a policy tool to relieve the worsening inequality in economic development between the East and West during the post-pandemic stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural areas in developing countries often grapple with energy shortages, low energy efficiency, and significant environmental pollution, all of which are interconnected with the issues of rural poverty. Policies geared toward rural green development are closely linked to energy transformation and economic growth. China's “Beautiful Countryside Construction” initiative prioritizes the enhancement of rural living conditions, the promotion of rural economic progress, energy transformation, and environmental amelioration through rural–urban integration. This study utilizes panel data encompassing 1,787 Chinese counties spanning from 2008 to 2015, employing the difference-in-difference (DID) method to analyze the economic, social, and environmental impacts of the “Beautiful Countryside Construction” program. The findings indicate that this initiative has contributed to the enhancement of the rural environment, the promotion of environmentally friendly economic development, and the advancement of rural energy transformation. These outcomes hold significant implications for how developing nations can design policies that achieve a harmonious balance between economic advancement and environmental preservation, fostering sustainable economic growth worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the article is to present the creation of Regional Development Funds (Regionalne Fundusze Rozwoju - RFR) in Poland, their organisational models and factors influencing their development and choice of model. The research is also focused on the analysis of the variety of RFRs and their sources.

Based on the externality theory, this paper estimates the city size threshold of specialized agglomeration and diversified agglomeration. We find that when the urban population is below 1.25 million, specialized agglomeration is more advantageous for improving urban labor productivity. When the urban population exceeds 0.9 million, diversified agglomeration is more advantageous for improving urban labor productivity. Moreover, Specialized agglomeration of small and medium-sized cities is more likely to play the role of Marshall-Arrow-Romer externality within the spillover radius of regional central cities. One important policy suggestion is that for areas with small administrative regions and small population, it is better to increase the level of specialized agglomeration through industrial transfer, and for areas with large administrative regions and large population, it is better to increase the level of diversified agglomeration through industrial introduction, so as to further improve the urban economic efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persistent racial inequality in socioeconomic status within urban areas has been a significant concern in both the US and European countries. Differences across racial groups in intergenerational mobility (IM) have been identified as a key source of this persistence. However, efforts to understand racial inequality in IM have rarely considered the role of urban sprawl. This article argues that urban sprawl affects differences in IM between racial groups directly and indirectly through racial segregation, racial bias, and social capital. We analyze data from 874 metropolitan counties in the US using structural equation models to test these direct and indirect effects of sprawl on racial inequality in IM. We found that urban sprawl was negatively associated with racial inequality in IM. The direct effect, which we partially attribute to higher racial disparities in social capital in more compact counties, was statistically significant. For the indirect effects, racial segregation had the largest mediating effects between urban sprawl and racial inequality in IM, followed by economic connectedness (EC) and racial bias. The net indirect effect of sprawl on racial inequality in IM was negative because negative indirect effects through racial segregation and EC outweigh positive indirect effects through racial bias. Our findings demonstrate the significant role of urban form in racial inequality in IM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are there regional differences in the determinants of financial knowledge in the Spanish adult population? To answer this question, we use data from the Spanish Survey of Financial Competences to estimate qualitative response models in which each of the "big three" of financial knowledge (inflation, compound interest, and risk diversification) acts as a dependent variable on a set of explanatory variables concerning the particularities of individuals. We find that, while some factors determine financial knowledge in a generalized way in most regions and in the same direction (e.g., gender, education, self-confidence), others do so in different ways depending on the region analyzed. Among the latter are health status and financial fragility (where, in both, the different degree of social protection between regions may play an important role), as well as birthplace and age, among others. Rurality also stands out as having different implications in Navarra than in the rest of the regions. We conclude by proposing to use both longitudinal and aggregate indicators of financial knowledge in Spanish regions in order to analyze in the future related issues that are beyond the possibilities offered by microdata bases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACTThis paper proposes a new interpretation of place brand as a multilevel threshold public good (MTPG) produced by the interaction of narratives from different geographical levels. Using an original dataset of Google trends and tweets from Italian provinces and regions, we test the hypothesis that place branding has a multilevel structure. We further test the MTPG framework applied to place branding, showing that place branding is influenced by different geographical levels which can trigger a spillover in terms of attractiveness if they contribute to crossing a threshold point. The results confirm the presence of a provision point in place branding, showing that the proposed MTPG framework fits the phenomenon. This article contributes to the literature on place branding and brands by providing a new lens through which to interpret the phenomenon, which may be useful for a better understanding and measuring of the interaction of branding strategies operating at different spatial scales.

The COVID-19 and 2021-2022 energy crises shed new light on urban resilience. Cities face many more challenges and external shocks. This study aims to measure urban resilience.

Methodological approaches to assessing the level of innovation and investment attractiveness of the Western Ukrainian market of tourist services (WUMTS) substantiated the dependence of WUMTS on investment factors analyzed the level of competitiveness of WUMTS. In order to determine the level of dependence (independence) of WUMTS on investment and innovation factors, a paired linear regression was built for each of the regions (regions) included in the WUMTS, Volyn, Rivne, Lviv, Ternopil, Khmelnytsky, Zakarpattia, I. Frankivsk, Chernivtsi). In order to eliminate the disproportionate impact of the size of the impact of tourist services (the so-called effect of scale), the studied absolute indicators were converted into relative (growth rate). To assess the innovation and investment attractiveness of WUMTS, it was decided to apply methodological approaches to implement and evaluate the effectiveness of state and regional policy with further improvement in several groups of indicators, monitoring and evaluation of innovation, investment, and social development of the studied areas. Data, information of central executive bodies, regional state administrations, etc. The assessment of WUMTS development indicators was carried out by calculating the rating for each area and the overall rating for all areas. The rating assessment was performed by comparing the deviations of the values of indicators for each specific region under the conditions of the best values for the relevant (reporting) period and the corresponding ranking of regions from 1st to 8th position. As a result of calculations, the integrated rating was determined as the arithmetic means of the sum of ratings in all areas using the formula. The competitiveness of regional tourism markets should be assessed comprehensively, where two groups of indicators should be used to determine the competitiveness of an individual region: indicators of the tourism market and indicators of development of the region as a whole.

Each type of administrative unit, including cities, towns and villages, plays a different role in the regional economy. In the case of rural areas, their most important function is agricultural production.

Abstract Background Bacterial epidemiology needs to understand the spread and dissemination of strains in a One Health context. This is important for highly pathogenic bacteria such as Bacillus anthracis, Brucella species, and Francisella tularensis. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) has paved the way for genetic marker detection and high-resolution genotyping. While such tasks are established for Illumina short-read sequencing, Oxford Nanopore Technology (ONT) long-read sequencing has yet to be evaluated for such highly pathogenic bacteria with little genomic variations between strains. In this study, three independent sequencing runs were performed using Illumina, ONT flow cell version 9.4.1, and 10.4 for six strains of each of Ba. anthracis, Br. suis and F. tularensis. Data from ONT sequencing alone, Illumina sequencing alone and two hybrid assembly approaches were compared. Results As previously shown, ONT produces ultra-long reads, while Illumina produces short reads with higher sequencing accuracy. Flow cell version 10.4 improved sequencing accuracy over version 9.4.1. The correct (sub-)species were inferred from all tested technologies, individually. Moreover, the sets of genetic markers for virulence, were almost identical for the respective species. The long reads of ONT allowed to assemble not only chromosomes of all species to near closure, but also virulence plasmids of Ba. anthracis. Assemblies based on nanopore data alone, Illumina data alone, and both hybrid assemblies correctly detected canonical (sub-)clades for Ba. anthracis and F. tularensis as well as multilocus sequence types for Br. suis. For F. tularensis, high-resolution genotyping using core-genome MLST (cgMLST) and core-genome Single-Nucleotide-Polymorphism (cgSNP) typing produced highly comparable results between data from Illumina and both ONT flow cell versions. For Ba. anthracis, only data from flow cell version 10.4 produced similar results to Illumina for both high-resolution typing methods. However, for Br. suis, high-resolution genotyping yielded larger differences comparing Illumina data to data from both ONT flow cell versions. Conclusions In summary, combining data from ONT and Illumina for high-resolution genotyping might be feasible for F. tularensis and Ba. anthracis, but not yet for Br. suis. The ongoing improvement of nanopore technology and subsequent data analysis may facilitate high-resolution genotyping for all bacteria with highly stable genomes in future.

In this article, we adopt a task approach to measure the local pool of capabilities which can more effectively spur innovation. By focusing on the core activities that workers undertake in their jobs, we build an abstract task intensity measure of occupations to proxy the ability in analysing and solving complex problems, as well as in coordinating and integrating people with different knowledge endowments, that should be especially relevant for the process of invention and innovation. We thus estimate the relationship between the local abstract intensity and the inventive performance, proxied by granted patents, of US Commuting Zones (CZs) during the period 2000–2015. The evidence provided, robust to a wide array of sensitivity checks, points to the extent of workers' engagement in abstract tasks across CZs as a crucial determinant of the local inventive activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]