Super-Nernstian Shifts of Interfacial Proton-Coupled Electron Transfers: Origin and Effect of Noncovalent Interactions

Peer reviewed

A socio-technological approach to sharing knowledge across disciplines

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Technological capability development in China's energy service company industry

Technological capability (TC) plays a strategic role in the competitive advantage of not only individual corporate entities but also entire industries. This paper investigates the crucial factors that affect technological capability development by Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) in China. It identifies how differently sized ESCOs make progress in developing TCs. Through looking at the successes achieved by developed countries in the field of energy conservation, ESCOs are able to improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions and are deemed to provide an effective means of conserving energy in China. Existing literature indicates that limited TC levels of are one of the crucial barriers facing Chinese ESCOs. Through investigating three different sizes of Chinese ESCO - small, medium-sized and large - this paper provides a framework to present the idea that Chinese ESCOs' TC development is affected by four key internal and external capabilities: management capability, investment capability, innovation capability and linkage capability. Through comparative analysis, the paper establishes that small and medium-sized private ESCOs are mainly affected by investment and linkage capabilities. Large state-owned ESCOs are mainly affected by innovation and management capability. In addition, all three types of ESCO exhibit a strong desire to develop their technological capability, but small and medium-sized ESCOs exhibit a stronger desire to conduct research and development (R&D) than large ESCOs, whilst large ESCOs prefer to increase their technical reserves through acquisition. This paper identifies factors that affect Chinese ESCOs' TC, but it does intend to address the problem of how to reduce the negative effects of limited TC or the question of how to improve the TC development of Chinese ESCOs effectively. This paper contributes to the field of TC development in the ESCO industry.

Beyond local search:bridging platforms and inter-sectoral technological integration

This paper explores the dynamics of inter-sectoral technological integration by introducing the concept of bridging platform as a node of pervasive technologies, whose collective broad applicability may enhance the connection between ‘distant’ knowledge by offering a technological coupling. Using data on patents obtained from the CRIOS-PATSTAT database for four EU countries (Germany, UK, France and Italy), we provide empirical evidence that bridging platforms are likely to connect more effectively innovations across distant technological domains, fostering inter-sectoral technological integration and the development of original innovation. Public research organisations are also found to play a crucial role in terms of technological integration and original innovation due to their higher capacity to access and use bridging platforms within their innovation activities.

State Political Parties in American Politics: Innovation and Integration in the Party System

What role do state party organizations play in twenty-first century American politics? What is the nature of the relationship between the state and national party organizations in contemporary elections? These questions frame the three studies presented in this dissertation. More specifically, I examine the organizational development of the state party organizations and the strategic interactions and connections between the state and national party organizations in contemporary elections.

In the first empirical chapter, I argue that the Internet Age represents a significant transitional period for state party organizations. Using data collected from surveys of state party leaders, this chapter reevaluates and updates existing theories of party organizational strength and demonstrates the importance of new indicators of party technological capacity to our understanding of party organizational development in the early twenty-first century. In the second chapter, I ask whether the national parties utilize different strategies in deciding how to allocate resources to state parties through fund transfers and through the 50-state-strategy party-building programs that both the Democratic and Republican National Committees advertised during the 2010 elections. Analyzing data collected from my 2011 state party survey and party-fund-transfer data collected from the Federal Election Commission, I find that the national parties considered a combination of state and national electoral concerns in directing assistance to the state parties through their 50-state strategies, as opposed to the strict battleground-state strategy that explains party fund transfers. In my last chapter, I examine the relationships between platforms issued by Democratic and Republican state and national parties and the strategic considerations that explain why state platforms vary in their degree of similarity to the national platform. I analyze an extensive platform dataset, using cluster analysis and document similarity measures to compare platform content across the 1952 to 2014 period. The analysis shows that, as a group, Democratic and Republican state platforms exhibit greater intra-party homogeneity and inter-party heterogeneity starting in the early 1990s, and state-national platform similarity is higher in states that are key players in presidential elections, among other factors. Together, these three studies demonstrate the significance of the state party organizations and the state-national party partnership in contemporary politics.

Behavioral Perspectives on Organizational Change: Practice Adoption, Product Culling, and Technological Search

This dissertation explores the complex process of organizational change, applying a behavioral lens to understand change in processes, products, and search behaviors. Chapter 1 examines new practice adoption, exploring factors that predict the extent to which routines are adopted “as designed” within the organization. Using medical record data obtained from the hospital’s Electronic Health Record (EHR) system I develop a novel measure of the “gap” between routine “as designed” and routine “as realized.” I link this to a survey administered to the hospital’s professional staff following the adoption of a new EHR system and find that beliefs about the expected impact of the change shape fidelity of the adopted practice to its design. This relationship is more pronounced in care units with experienced professionals and less pronounced when the care unit includes departmental leadership. This research offers new insights into the determinants of routine change in organizations, in particular suggesting the beliefs held by rank-and-file members of an organization are critical in new routine adoption. Chapter 2 explores changes to products, specifically examining culling behaviors in the mobile device industry. Using a panel of quarterly mobile device sales in Germany from 2004-2009, this chapter suggests that the organization’s response to performance feedback is conditional upon the degree to which decisions are centralized. While much of the research on product exit has pointed to economic drivers or prior experience, these central finding of this chapter—that performance below aspirations decreases the rate of phase-out—suggests that firms seek local solutions when doing poorly, which is consistent with behavioral explanations of organizational action. Chapter 3 uses a novel text analysis approach to examine how the allocation of attention within organizational subunits shapes adaptation in the form of search behaviors in Motorola from 1974-1997. It develops a theory that links organizational attention to search, and the results suggest a trade-off between both attentional specialization and coupling on search scope and depth. Specifically, specialized unit attention to a more narrow set of problems increases search scope but reduces search depth; increased attentional coupling also increases search scope at the cost of depth. This novel approach and these findings help clarify extant research on the behavioral outcomes of attention allocation, which have offered mixed results.

Perpetuating sales: enabling incumbent survival of radical technological shifts

This paper examines an industry whose incumbents’ specialised complimentary assets were their operations management and distribution channels. This advantage was seriously undermined by the advent of digital distribution. Radical technological change theories dictate that if incumbents in an industry without specialised complimentary assets will be replaced by entrants. This did not happen, and extant theories of incumbent survival do not explain why the incumbents remained dominant in the industry. We propose that survival is due to the unique industry characteristic of perpetuating sales. This paper will explain what is a perpetuating sales model and why does it enable incumbent survival?

A socio-technological approach to sharing knowledge across disciplines

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Modeling the impact of large-scale solid mass transfers on the gravity field

The focus of this thesis is to explore and quantify the response of large-scale solid mass transfer events on satellite-based gravity observations. The gravity signature of large-scale solid mass transfers has not been deeply explored yet; mainly due to the lack of significant events during dedicated satellite gravity missions‘ lifespans. In light of the next generation of gravity missions, the feasibility of employing satellite gravity observations to detect submarine and surface mass transfers is of importance for geoscience (improves the understanding of geodynamic processes) and for geodesy (improves the understanding of the dynamic gravity field). The aim of this thesis is twofold and focuses on assessing the feasibility of using satellite gravity observations for detecting large-scale solid mass transfers and on modeling the impact on the gravity field caused by these events. A methodology that employs 3D forward modeling simulations and 2D wavelet multiresolution analysis is suggested to estimate the impact of solid mass transfers on satellite gravity observations. The gravity signature of various submarine and subaerial events that occurred in the past was estimated. Case studies were conducted to assess the sensitivity and resolvability required in order to observe gravity differences caused by solid mass transfers. Simulation studies were also employed in order to assess the expected contribution of the Next Generation of Gravity Missions for this application.

Intergenerational Transfers over the Life Course: Addressing Temporal and Gendered Complexities via a Human Well-being Approach

Research on intergenerational transmissions of poverty and inequality has tended to focus on material transfers. This paper refocuses attention on the intersection of material and psychosocial transfers, which reveals temporal and gendered complexities. It examines three key ideas emerging from the life course literature (relationality, intersectionality and intergenerationality) to shed light on how these complexities might be addressed. It is argued that a human wellbeing lens is potentially useful as a unifying framework to integrate these ideas as it interrogates what living well means over the life course and how it is constructed relationally.

Tissue engineering: technological advances to improve its applications in reconstructive surgery

Background. Tremendous advances in biomaterials science and nanotechnologies, together with thorough research on stem cells, have recently promoted an intriguing development of regenerative medicine/tissue engineering. The nanotechnology represents a wide interdisciplinary field that implies the manipulation of different materials at nanometer level to achieve the creation of constructs that mimic the nanoscale-based architecture of native tissues. Aim. The purpose of this article is to highlight the significant new knowledges regarding this matter. Emerging acquisitions. To widen the range of scaffold materials resort has been carried out to either recombinant DNA technology-generated materials, such as a collagen-like protein, or the incorporation of bioactive molecules, such as RDG (arginine-glycine-aspartic acid), into synthetic products. Both the bottom-up and the top-down fabrication approaches may be properly used to respectively obtain sopramolecular architectures or, instead, micro-/nanostructures to incorporate them within a preexisting complex scaffold construct. Computer-aided design/manufacturing (CAD/CAM) scaffold technique allows to achieve patient-tailored organs. Stem cells, because of their peculiar properties - ability to proliferate, self-renew and specific cell-lineage differentiate under appropriate conditions - represent an attractive source for intriguing tissue engineering/regenerative medicine applications. Future research activities. New developments in the realization of different organs tissue engineering will depend on further progress of both the science of nanoscale-based materials and the knowledge of stem cell biology. Moreover the in vivo tissue engineering appears to be the logical step of the current research.