What do patent examiner inserted citations indicate for a region with low absorptive capacity?

Most studies of patents citations focus on national or international contexts, especially contexts of high absorptive capacity, and employ examiner citations. We argue that results can vary if we take the region as the context of analysis, especially if it is a region with low absorptive capacity, and if we study applicant citations and examiner-inserted citations separately. Using a sample from the Valencian Community (Spain), we conclude that (i) the use of examiner-inserted citations as a proxy for applicant citations, (ii) the interpretation of non-patent references as indicators of science-industry links, and (iii) the traditional results for geographical localization are not generalizable to all regions with low absorptive capacity.     

The route to a defect tolerant LUT through artificial evolution

Evolutionary techniques may be applied to search for specific structures or functions, as specified in the fitness function. This paper addresses the challenge of finding an appropriate fitness function when searching for generic rather than specific structures which, when combined wiacteristic of defect tolerance on the circuit. Production defects for integrated circuits are expected to increase considerably. To avoid a corresponding drop in yield, improved defect tolerance solutions are needed. In the case of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), the pre-designed gate array provides a bridge between production and the application designers. Thus, introduction of defect tolerant techniques to the FPGA itself could provide a defect free gate array to the application designer, despite production defects. The search for defect tolerance presented herein is directed at finding defect tolerant structures for an important building block of FPGAs: Look-Up Tables (LUTs). Two key approaches are presented: (1) applying evolved generic building blocks to a traditional LUT design and (2) evolving the LUT design directly. The results highlight the fact that evolved generic defect tolerant structures can contribute to highly reliable circuit designs at the expense of area usage. Further, they show that applying such a technique, rather than direct evolution, has benefits with respect to evolvability of larger circuits, again at the expense of area usage.     

Hydrothermal fabrication and analysis of piezotronic-related properties of BiFeO3 nanorods

This paper reports the fabrication of vertically oriented BiFeO₃ (BFO) nanorods on indium tin oxide/glass substrates through hydrothermal synthesis. Further, their piezotronic, piezophototronic, and piezophotocatalytic properties were analyzed. Various synthesis parameters were examined to modulate the morphology and alignment of BFO nanorods, including the ratios of precursors, the pH values, types of complex agents, and reaction times and temperatures. Transmission electron microscopy results demonstrated single crystallinity of the BFO nanorods. A band gap of approximately 2.3?eV was determined. The piezotronic and piezophototronic properties were observed through facile current–voltage measurement. The extended application of piezophotocatalysis under alternating external stress and visible-light irradiation, to decompose methylene blue solutions, was also ascertained. The piezophotocatalytic efficiency was improved by approximately 30% over photocatalysis in the first 30?min. Both O₂^?□and□·OH radicals were crucial for these activities.     

Challenges and solutions for recruiting pregnant smokers into a nicotine replacement therapy trial.

Improvements in smoking cessation interventions for pregnant smokers are needed. One major step is to examine the potential effectiveness of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). The potential benefits of providing pregnant women with NRT to help them quit smoking are still unknown; early interventions to test the effectiveness and efficacy are vital to advancing the field. This paper describes recruitment efforts for a multiclinic trial to test the effectiveness of NRT use in addition to behavioral therapy in promoting cessation during pregnancy. The biggest challenge is recruiting sufficient numbers of pregnant women. This paper discusses specific obstacles for recruitment and solutions. Knowing the potential pitfalls to recruiting pregnant women into these trials can lead to better studies and thus improved outcomes.     

Using Boolean factors for the construction of an artificial neural networks

ABSTRACT

We propose a novel approach to define Artificial Neural Network(ANN) architecture from Boolean factors. ANNs are a subfield of machine learning applicable to several areas of life. However, defining its architecture for solving a given problem is not formalized and remains an open research problem. Since it is difficult to look into the network and figure out exactly what it has learnt, the complexity of such a technique makes its interpretation more tedious. We propose in this paper to build feedforward ANNs using the optimal factors obtained from the Boolean context representing a data. Since optimal factors completely cover the data and therefore give an explanation to these data, We could give an interpretation to the neurons activation and justify the presence of a neuron in our proposed neural network. We show through experiments and comparisons on the use data sets that this approach provides relatively better results for some key performance measures.