The probability of detecting technosignatures (i.e., evidence of technological activity beyond Earth) increases with their longevity, or the time interval over which they manifest. Therefore, the assumed distribution of longevities has some bearing on the ...
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used in an ever larger number of industries. Alongside this development, however, abundant works argue that AI-driven systems are lacking in terms of safety, ethics and transparency. As a direct consequence, the ...
Zoning reform is a crucial tool for cities to adapt to contemporary challenges. However, its implementation remains challenging. Property owners, with a vested interest in the value of their neighborhoods, are sensitive to local developments and the potent ...
Founders benefit from identifying with their founding teams because identification facilitates cooperation in the team, aligns founders' actions with the norms and interests of the team, and, ultimately, enhances team performance. High identification with ...
Understanding mobility behaviour in cross-border regions is a major challenge for transport policies and the wellbeing of people living near national borders. However, the available relevant information is often limited to a collection of unharmonized nati ...
Dynamical flow networks serve as macroscopic models for, e.g., transportation networks, queuing networks, and distribution networks. While the flow dynamics in such networks follow the conservation of mass on the links, the outflow from each link is often ...
Formally verifying the correctness of software is necessary to merit the trust people put in software systems. Currently, formal verification requires human effort to prove that a piece of code matches its specification and code changes to improve verifiab ...
This thesis investigates the economic effect of patents and the patent system through the lens of patent commercialisation. The thesis is composed of four chapters, where each chapter is an independent scientific paper.In the first chapter, we present a ...
Description (through texts, images, models or samples) played a central role in the patent regimes that emerged in the eighteenth century, first in England, later in the United States and in France. Description ensured that the contract—protection in excha ...
By the end of the 19th century, an international order had emerged for patents, allowing business actors to use patents in many countries concurrently, and thus supporting a new phase in the development of industrial capitalism. Centered on Europe in spite ...
We study socio-political systems in representative democracies. Motivated by problems that affect the proper functioning of the system, we build computational methods to answer research questions regarding the phenomena occurring in them. For each phenomen ...
This paper assesses the extent to which the international migration of inventors affects innovation in the receiving country. Drawing on a novel database that maps the migratory patterns of inventors, we exploit the end of the Soviet Union and the conseque ...
According to physicalism, everything is physical or metaphysically connected to the physical. If physicalism were true, it seems that we should - in principle - be able to reduce the descriptions and explanations of special sciences to physical ones, for e ...
Cross-border regions are seen as specific spaces where both cosmopolitanism and nationalistic attitudes can spread. It is commonly argued that due to the physical proximity to a neighbouring country, the development of cross-border encounters and interacti ...
The rise of neurotechnologies, especially in combination with artificial intelligence (AI)-based methods for brain data analytics, has given rise to concerns around the protection of mental privacy, mental integrity and cognitive liberty - often framed as ...
A vehicle's steering is a particular system in that it is exposed to individual subjective reviews based on criteria that are hard to assess quantitatively. Haptic design of such systems is a prime concern that has been at the center of industrial developm ...
The presurgical window of opportunity trial (WOT) MIPRA provides evidence that neoadjuvant treatment with the prog-esterone receptor (PR) antagonist mifepristone (RU486) may benefit patients with estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer characterized ...
The reduction of energy consumption in the residential building stock and cement industry is a substantial component of the Swiss Energy Strategy 2050. Therefore, it is vital to identify the potential for EEI in these two sectors. In this study, a new meth ...
At the crossroads of transportation engineering and urban sociology, the dissertation deciphers the interactions between daily mobility and social inequalities, what I call the "social mechanics of mobility". To do so, I draw on a twofold survey, both quan ...
This chapter takes stock of contemporary migration by breaking with a few myths and by distinguishing between interregional and international migration. It shows how new research paradigms have relativized the importance of the state as the preferred frame ...
