Abstract:As innovation becomes an ever more central issue for the development of firms and world economies, so the need for improved assessments of innovative performance grows more urgent. This paper suggests that trademark analysis can contribute in capturing relevant aspects of innovation phenomena and the process of industrial change. We propose trademarks as a complementary indicator in the portfolio of available empirical tools of innovation studies and industrial dynamics. Our empirical exploration is based on a study of Community Trade Marks, an intellectual property right granted in the European Union, and draws on recent research on trademarking trends in Portugal. Quantitative as well as qualitative data, including survey data from a representative sample of Portuguese manufacturing and services firms, are used to identify the advantages and limitations of this indicator.

Firms interact with universities through a variety of channels, ranging from collaborative research projects, patents, spin-off creation, consultancy and specialized training, to informal relationships. This article explores the combination of mechanisms used by firms in Andalusia, a peripheral region in Spain and Europe, when interacting with universities. Using information from a survey of 737 innovative firms, the empirical study found evidence that university-industry links can be grouped into five latent dimensions (knowledge generation and adaptation, involvement in new organisations, training and exchange of human resources, intellectual property rights, and facilities and equipment) which are mainly based on exploitation or exploration activities. A typology of firms was created, highlighting the large number of firms with no interactions, and six clusters that specialize in specific mechanisms (IPR exploiters, Institutionalized interactors, University facility users, Training and education beneficiaries, Tacit knowledge users, and R&D interactors). The study also presents the determinants for engaging in each type of channel, concluding that whilst firms developing exploitation activities also develop parallel exploration activities, the reverse is not significant. The absorptive capacity of firms is important in determining the type of interaction, but is not fully conclusive about the range of exploration and exploitation activities. The article ends by discussing the policy implications associated with incentives to adapt knowledge transfer mechanisms to the industrial fabric of peripheral innovation systems.

Several evidences suggest that glutamate may be involved in retinal neurodegeneration in diabetic retinopathy (DR). For that reason, we investigated whether high glucose or diabetes affect the accumulation and the release of [(3)H]-D-aspartate, which was used as a marker of the glutamate transmitter pool. The accumulation of [(3)H]-D-aspartate did not change in cultured retinal neural cells treated with high glucose (30 mM) for 7 days. However, the release of [(3)H]-D-aspartate, evoked by 50 mM KCl, significantly increased in retinal cells exposed to high glucose. Mannitol, which was used as an osmotic control, did not cause any significant changes in both accumulation and release of [(3)H]-D-aspartate. In the retinas, 1 week after the onset of diabetes, both the accumulation and release of [(3)H]-D-aspartate were unchanged comparing to the retinas of age-matched controls. However, after 4 weeks of diabetes, the accumulation of [(3)H]-D-aspartate in diabetic retinas decreased and the release of [(3)H]-D-aspartate increased, compared to age-matched control retinas. These results suggest that high glucose and diabetes increase the evoked release of D-aspartate in the retina, which may be correlated with the hypothesis of glutamate-induced retinal neurodegeneration in DR.

There is an interest in understanding the effect of economic crises such as the one that hit the financial markets in the late 2000s, on the innovation performance of countries and regions. This paper introduces the concept of "resilience of innovation" to illustrate how the economic slowdown affects firms' behaviour in terms of their ability to maintain and develop innovative activities and deploy product and process innovation. Using Portugal as a case

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