SSTI Digest

Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack announced that the Director of the Iowa Department of Economic Development, C.J. Niles, will be stepping down effective December 31.  Mary Lawyer, the department's chief of staff, will serve as interim director.

The Senate unanimously confirmed Anne B. Pope of Tennessee as Federal Co-Chairwoman of the Appalachian Regional Commission. Pope currently serves as Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance.

Lewis D. "Luke" Rich, a vice president and Western New York regional director for Empire State Development Corp., is taking early retirement at the end of the year.

Ellis Rubinstein, former editor of the magazine Science, has been appointed to serve as Chief Executive Officer of the New York Academy of Sciences.

At the University of New Mexico, Avi Shama has been named Special Advisor to the President on Economic Development. The new position will encourage, coordinate and promote economic development activities of various UNM units.

Jack Spencer is the new president of the Georgia Biomedical Partnership.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) is joining Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN) as co-chair of the monthly Congressional Forum on Technology and Innovation.

More than 100 technology clusters may exist in the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) area, but challenges to exploit and nurture the clusters still exist. A new report analyzes the ARC region's concentration of technology resources at a sub-regional level and uncovers localized technology strengths that might be promoted through concentrated economic development policy.

Regional Technology Assets and Opportunities: The Geographic Clustering of High-Tech Industry, Science and Innovation in Appalachia, written by Edward Feser, Harvey Goldstein, Henry Renski and Catherine Renault, shows the technology sector of the Appalachian region is small, yet expanding. In 1998, more than one million technology workers belonged to the 406-county ARC area. This represents an 11.2 percent increase since 1989 when 959,000 technology workers were present in the area.

Economic growth in a regional economy can be positively linked to an increase in intensity of industry R&D, according to recent research by Marios Zachariadis of Louisiana State University. R&D, Innovation, and Technological Progress: A Test of the Schumpeterian Framework without Scale Effects, released in September 2002, establishes a connection among R&D intensity, patenting, technological change and economic growth.

Zachariadis uses 2-digit SIC code industry data from U.S. manufacturing between 1963-1988. Defining R&D intensity as the fraction of output that is devoted to R&D expenditures, the research supports the position for a growth model in which policy decisions can have a positive impact on economic growth. Zachariadis' work also supports a direct and indirect relationship between R&D intensity and productivity growth.

Manufacturing jobs in rural Minnesota numbered almost 120,000 in 2000, a 25 percent increase since 1990, according to a recent study by the Center for Rural Policy and Development and Minnesota Technology Inc., two agencies dedicated to helping industry in Greater Minnesota. Meanwhile, manufacturing jobs in the state's metro area increased only 1.7 percent during the same period, the study shows.

The study was the third part of the 2002 Rural Minnesota Internet Study, an annual collection of surveys designed to monitor computer, Internet and broadband use. Part III examines the telecommunications needs of the state's rural manufacturing firms. A survey of 300 of these firms revealed factors contributing to why some use the technology and others do not.

Universities should revamp how they evaluate S&T teaching, report says

Because advances in science and technology have done much to fuel U.S. economic growth over the past 50 years, both the public and private sectors have invested heavily in university research. However, the evaluation of teaching in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics has been haphazard and less exacting, says a new report from the National Academies' National Research Council.

Two independent surveys of venture capital investments made during the third quarter of FY 2002 suggest the downward trends in the flow of money and number of VC placements will continue.

MoneyTree™ Survey

Venture capital continued its downward trend in the third quarter of 2002 with total investments of $4.5 billion into entrepreneurial companies, a decrease of 26 percent from the prior quarter, according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers/Venture Economics/National Venture Capital Association MoneyTree™ Survey. Venture capitalists invested $6 billion in the second quarter and $6.4 billion in the first quarter. The last time quarterly venture capital investments were below $5 billion was the first quarter of 1998, when it totaled $4.2 billion.