Public Funding for Science and the Value of Corporate R&D Projects; Evidence from Project Initiation and Termination Decisions in Cell Therapy

How do firms decide which R&D projects to pursue and which ones to cast aside? We use a real options approach to advance our understanding of how firms manage uncertainties in R&D project management, in particular uncertainties linked to the external scientific environment. Our findings highlight how these uncertainties have an impact on the initiation and discontinuation of R&D projects. We examine these effects in the context of shifts in US science policy in the cell therapy field, using a dataset on 570 R&D projects in the global cell therapy sector, initiated over the period 1986–2011. We find decreased R&D project initiation rates and higher discontinuation rates for projects initiated by US firms in the aftermath of policy shifts that increased uncertainties about public funding support for US cell therapy research. We also highlight how this effect was reversed as the US public funding outlook for such research recovered.     

基于知识图谱分析干细胞研究现状及发展方向

本文以2000—2011年作为时间范围,对外文数据库(ISI)的Web of science数据库进行检索,获取有关干细胞研究的多篇论文,对其进行引文分析、共现分析,运用国际知名绘图软件Pajek,利用被引频次较高的文献绘制出干细胞研究的国家与机构分布、热点及其变化趋势的知识图谱,在可视化知识图谱的基础上对干细胞的发展现状及发展趋势进行分析,为中国的干细胞研究提出建议。     

Private Regulation to Appropriate Value from Design Innovations: Implications for Anti-trust Policy

Co-operative ventures among rivals are looked upon in general with suspicion by antitrust authorities. In this paper, we position ourselves in the school of thought that evaluates collusive behavior among rivals with the Schumpeterian concept of dynamic competition in mind rather than the concept of Neoclassical perfect competition. We argue that whenever firms have difficulty in appropriating sufficient returns from their innovations, certain forms of apparently collusive behavior--or, more precisely, 'private regulation'--may actually stimulate investment in innovation and thereby Schumpeterian competition. A study of firms' strategies to appropriate value from design innovations in the Dutch and Italian furniture industry illustrates our arguments.     

Technological change in niches: Auxiliary Power Units and the hydrogen economy

In studies of large scale systems innovations or technological transitions, niches have been given a prominent role as incubators for the seeds of future technological systems. It is often argued that immature technologies rely on niches for their development, before they are able to compete in mainstream markets. This paper combines insights from economic theory and from technology studies to formulate a framework for understanding the dynamics of technological change in niches, and applies this framework to the case of fuel cell Auxiliary Power Units (APUs). We conclude that the choice of technology for APUs will be of critical importance in determining the role this market could have in shaping future developments in hydrogen and fuel cells. However, a number of factors are not strictly dependent on the technology used in fuel cell APUs. These comprise factors influencing external economies of scale, network effects, the behaviour of users and expectations.     

Detecting emerging research fronts in regenerative medicine by the citation network analysis of scientific publications

In this paper, we detect emerging research fronts in a huge number of academic papers related to regenerative medicine, a field of radically innovative research. We divide citation networks into clusters using the topological clustering method, track the positions of papers in each cluster, and visualize citation networks with characteristic terms for each cluster. Analyzing the clustering results with the average published year and parent-child relationship of each cluster could be helpful in detecting recent trends. In addition, tracking topological measures, within-cluster degree z and participation coefficient P, enables us to determine whether there are emerging knowledge clusters. Our results show the success of our method in detecting emerging research fronts in regenerative medicine, and these results are confirmed as reasonable by experts. Finally, we predict the future core papers, with the potential of many citations, via the betweenness centralities in the citation network of the research into adult and somatic stem cells.     

离体CD4＋CD25＋调节性T细胞的扩增和混合淋巴细胞反应研究

为研究健康人外周血CD4＋CD25＋调节性T细胞（CD4＋CD25＋regulatory Tcells,CD4＋CD25＋Tregs）在协同刺激信号作用下的扩增反应及与CD4＋CD25-T细胞混合淋巴细胞反应,采用免疫磁珠法分离CD4＋CD25＋Tregs和CD4＋CD25-T细胞,在抗CD3-mAbs和抗CD28-mAbs的刺激下行CD4＋CD25＋Tregs培养和CD4＋CD25＋Tregs＋CD4＋CD25-T细胞混合淋巴细胞培养72h。然后加入CCK-8溶液孵育1h,用酶标仪检测OD4so值。结果为：CIM＋CD25＋Tregs组OD。50值极显著性地低于CI）4＋CD25-T细胞组（P〈0．01）。CIM＋CD25＋Tregs与CD4＋CD25-T细胞混合组0D450值也极显著性地低于CIM＋CD25-T细胞组（P〈0．01）。CD4＋CD25＋Tregs表现出无反应性特征,还可抑制CD4＋CD25-T细胞扩增,因此,CD4＋CD25＋Tregs不只是很惰性的免疫细胞,而是对保持免疫耐受发挥了积极的调节作用。     

印刷技术在染料敏化太阳能电池制造中的应用

染料敏化太阳能电池（DSSC）的研究是太阳能电池研究中的前沿领域。低成本、光电转换效率及制备工艺简单化是染料敏化太阳能电池得以推广应用的关键。本文分析了目前DSSC常用制备方法,重点介绍了DSSC的丝网印刷方法,并对喷墨印刷、移印、柔印等其他印刷工艺方法进行了简单介绍,提出随印刷电子技术的发展,丝网印刷、喷墨印刷等印刷工艺应用于染料敏化太阳能电池的制备,是降低生产成本,并使其得到进一步发展的一个有效途径。     

Analyzing prospects of portable fuel cells with an expert opinion study

Fuel cell technology is becoming a significant option as an energy technology. Attracting significant research funding, industry research and development (R&D), and commercial anticipation different fuel cell technologies are indicating potential as viable products. One of the anticipated applications of the technology is portable fuel cells. Ranging from small back-up power systems to small micro watt solutions portable fuel cells have been widely demonstrated but lacking widespread commercial exploitation. This paper presents the prospects of portable fuel cells which resulted from a Delphi study.     

Quantized Hopfield networks and tabu search for manufacturing cell formation problems

The use of neural networks in the design of cellular manufacturing system is not new. This paper presents an application of modified Hopfield neural networks in order to solve cell formation problems: the quantized and fluctuated Hopfield neural networks (QFHN). This kind of Hopfield network combined with the “tabu search” approach were primarily used in a hybrid procedure in order to solve the cell formation for big sizes industrial data set. The problem is formulated as a 0/1 linear and integer programming model in order to minimize the dissimilarities between machines and/or parts. Our hybrid approach allows us to obtain optimal or nearly optimal solutions very frequently and much more quickly than traditional Hopfield networks. It is also illustrated that the fluctuation associated with this quantization may enable the network to escape from local minima, to converge to global minima, and consequently to obtain optimal solutions very frequently and much more quickly than pure quantized Hopfield networks (QHN). The effectiveness of the proposed approach is flexibility it gives us, for example, in time problem-solving for large-scale and speed of execution when we apply it.     

Bloody infrastructures!: Exploring challenges in cord blood collection maintenance

The collection of umbilical cord blood, a source of stem cells for cancer treatment, has become a highly strategised process. STS scholarship has explored the moral/economic tensions of this case but focuses less on questions of infrastructure. This paper aims to flesh out our understanding of how stem cell collections maintain usefulness whilst clinical requirements change. It borrows from literature on studying ‘infrastructure’ to analyse qualitative data on the UK context, exploring how it might help to think of these collections not simply as banks, but as infrastructures. It attends to how maintenance relies on alertness to the shifting standards of ‘users’, and demonstrates that infrastructural thinking offers the heuristic richness needed to explore these important aspects of maintaining collections of biological material and sustaining them into the future. It thus provides a contribution to the STS literature on tissue banking and the growing interdisciplinary corpus on issues of infrastructure.