Most of the policy discussion about stimulating innovation has focused on the federal level. This study focuses on the significant activity at the state level, with the goal of improving the public's understanding of key policy strategies and exemplary practices. Based on a series of workshops and conferences that brought together policymakers along with leaders of industry and academia in a select number of states, the study highlights a rich variety of policy initiatives underway at the state and regional level to foster knowledge based growth and employment. Perhaps what distinguishes this effort at the state level is most of all the high degree of pragmatism. Operating out of necessity, innovation policies at the state level often involve taking advantage of existing resources and recombining them in new ways, forging innovative partnerships among universities, industry and government organizations, growing the skill base, and investing in the infrastructure to develop new technologies and new industries. Many of these initiatives are being guided by leaders from the private sector and universities. The objective of Best Practices in State and Regional Innovation Initiatives: Competing in the 21st Century is not to do an empirical review of the inputs and outputs of various state programs. Nor is it to evaluate which programs are superior. Indeed, some of the notable successes, such as the Albany nanotechnology cluster, represent a leap of leadership, investment, and sustained commitment that has had remarkable results in an industry that is actively pursued by many countries. The study's goal is to illustrate the approaches taken by a variety of highly diverse states as they confront the increasing challenges of global competition for the industries and jobs of today and tomorrow.

Beginning in the 1950s, a group of academics, businesspeople, and politicians set out on an ambitious project to remake North Carolina’s low-wage economy. They pitched the universities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill as the kernel of a tech hub, Research Triangle Park, which would lure a new class of highly educated workers. In the process, they created a blueprint for what would become known as the knowledge economy: a future built on intellectual labor and the production of intellectual property. In Brain Magnet, Alex Sayf Cummings reveals the significance of Research Triangle Park to the emergence of the high-tech economy in a postindustrial United States. She analyzes the use of ideas of culture and creativity to fuel economic development, how workers experienced life in the Triangle, and the role of the federal government in bringing the modern technology industry into being. As Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill were transformed by high-tech development, the old South gave way to a distinctly new one, which welded the intellectual power of universities to a vision of the suburban good life. Cummings pinpoints how the story of the Research Triangle sheds new light on the origins of today’s urban landscape, in which innovation, as exemplified by the tech industry, is lauded as the engine of economic growth against a backdrop of gentrification and inequality. Placing the knowledge economy in a broader cultural and intellectual context, Brain Magnet offers vital insight into how tech-driven development occurs and the people and places left in its wake.

The North Carolina barrier islands, a 325-mile-long string of narrow sand islands that forms the coast of North Carolina, are one of the most beloved areas to live and visit in the United States. However, extensive barrier island segments and their associated wetlands are in jeopardy. In The Battle for North Carolina's Coast, four experts on coastal dynamics examine issues that threaten this national treasure. According to the authors, the North Carolina barrier islands are not permanent. Rather, they are highly mobile piles of sand that are impacted by sea-level rise and major storms and hurricanes. Our present development and management policies for these changing islands are in direct conflict with their natural dynamics. Revealing the urgency of the environmental and economic problems facing coastal North Carolina, this essential book offers a hopeful vision for the coast's future if we are willing to adapt to the barriers' ongoing and natural processes. This will require a radical change in our thinking about development and new approaches to the way we visit and use the coast. Ultimately, we cannot afford to lose these unique and valuable islands of opportunity. This book is an urgent call to protect our coastal resources and preserve our coastal economy.

More than half of the 116 research parks now operating in the United States were established during the 1980s, with the aim of boosting regional economic growth. But until now no one has systematically analyzed whether research parks do in fact generate new businesses and jobs. Using their own surveys of all existing parks and case studies of three of the most successful--Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, Stanford Research Park in California, and the University of Utah Research Park--Michael Luger and Harvey Goldstein examine the economic impact of such facilities. As the name suggests, a research park is typically meant to provide a spacious setting where basic and applied technological research can be quietly pursued. Because of the experience of a few older and prominent research parks, new parks are expected to generate economic growth for their regions. New or old, most parks have close ties to universities, which join in such ventures to enhance their capabilities as centers of research, provide outlets for entrepreneurial faculty members, and increase job opportunities for graduate students. Too often, the authors say, the vision of "incubating" economic growth in a gardenlike preserve of research and development has failed because of poor planning, lack of firm leadership, and bad luck. Although the longest-lasting parks have met their original goals, the newer ones have enjoyed at best only slight success. Luger and Goldstein conclude that the older facilities have captured much of the market for concentrations of research and development firms, and they discuss alternative strategies that could achieve some of the same goals as research parks, but in a less costly way. Many of these alternatives continue to include a role for universities, and Luger and Goldstein shed fresh light on the linkage between higher education and the use of knowledge for profit.

With more than 11,000 entries, this volume is the first extensive bibliography of North Carolina to incorporate books, pamphlets, articles from hundreds of journals, and theses and dissertations from scores of universities. Using the incomparable holdings of the North Carolina Collection as well as other libraries and institutions, Jones includes entries dating from the first written description of North Carolina in 1524 through 1992. Entries are arranged by chronological period, then by subject, with author and subject indexes providing further access. Entries are arranged by chronological period, then by subject, with author and subject indexes providing further access. Among the sources included are some that are seldom found in state bibliographies, such as soil surveys of the counties and articles in small journals, such as The North Carolina Booklet. A separate chapter features more then 3,000 entries by county. Another chapter identifies libraries, archives and manuscript repositories, museums, and historic sites.

Genomics and Society; Ethical, Legal-Cultural, and Socioeconomic Implications is the first book to address the vast and thorny web of ELSI topics identified as core priorities of the NHGRI in 2011. The work addresses fundamental issues of biosociety and bioeconomy as the revolution in biology moves from research lab to healthcare system. Of particular interest to healthcare practitioners, bioethicists, and health economists, and of tangential interest to the gamut of applied social scientists investigating the societal impact of new medical paradigms, the work describes a myriad of issues around consent, confidentiality, rights, patenting, regulation, and legality in the new era of genomic medicine. - Addresses the vast and thorny web of ELSI topics identified as core priorities of the NHGRI in 2011 - Presents the core fundamental issues of biosociety and bioeconomy as the revolution in biology moves from research lab to healthcare system - Describes a myriad of issues around consent, including confidentiality, rights, patenting, regulation, and more

In North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715–1885, Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. examines the lives of free persons categorized by their communities as “negroes,” “mulattoes,” “mustees,” “Indians,” “mixed-bloods,” or simply “free people of color.” From the colonial period through Reconstruction, lawmakers passed legislation that curbed the rights and privileges of these non-enslaved residents, from prohibiting their testimony against whites to barring them from the ballot box. While such laws suggest that most white North Carolinians desired to limit the freedoms and civil liberties enjoyed by free people of color, Milteer reveals that the two groups often interacted—praying together, working the same land, and occasionally sharing households and starting families. Some free people of color also rose to prominence in their communities, becoming successful businesspeople and winning the respect of their white neighbors. Milteer’s innovative study moves beyond depictions of the American South as a region controlled by a strict racial hierarchy. He contends that although North Carolinians frequently sorted themselves into races imbued with legal and social entitlements—with whites placing themselves above persons of color—those efforts regularly clashed with their concurrent recognition of class, gender, kinship, and occupational distinctions. Whites often determined the position of free nonwhites by designating them as either valuable or expendable members of society. In early North Carolina, free people of color of certain statuses enjoyed access to institutions unavailable even to some whites. Prior to 1835, for instance, some free men of color possessed the right to vote while the law disenfranchised all women, white and nonwhite included. North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715–1885 demonstrates that conceptions of race were complex and fluid, defying easy characterization. Despite the reductive labels often assigned to them by whites, free people of color in the state emerged from an array of backgrounds, lived widely varied lives, and created distinct cultures—all of which, Milteer suggests, allowed them to adjust to and counter ever-evolving forms of racial discrimination.

This collection of nineteen original essays on selected topics and epochs in North Carolina history offers a broad survey of the state from its discovery and colonization to the present. Each chapter consists of an interpretive essay on a specific aspect of North Carolina's history, a collection of supporting documents, and a brief bibliography. Selections cover historical periods ranging from Elizabethan to contemporary times and examine such issues as slavery, populism, civil rights, and the status of women. Essays address the tragedy of North Carolina's Indians, the state's role in the Revolutionary War and the Confederacy, and the impact of the Great Depression. North Carolina's place in the New South and evangelical culture in the state are also discussed. Designed as a supplementary reader for the study and teaching of North Carolina history, The North Carolina Experience will introduce college students to the process of historical research and writing. It will also be a valuable resource in secondary schools, public libraries, and the homes of those interested in North Carolina history.