The European molecular biology laboratory

The need for collaborative ventures in Europe has long been stressed in the editorial pages of this journal, and more than ten years ago (Endeavour, 28, 54, 1969) we gave strong support for a proposal to establish a European Laboratory of Molecular Biology. For this we then incurred some criticism, on the ground that such a laboratory would weaken national academic institutes striving to establish themselves in this rapidly developing field. Nevertheless, we continued to maintain (30, 2, '71) ‘the great political and scientific importance of this [concept]—and of other such collaborative enterprises—if Europe is to maintain the initiative in fields where the great institutions of the United States have established a dominant position.’ In the event, the Laboratory was established at Heidelberg in 1974, though not formally opened until 1978. The Director-General, Sir John Kendrew, here surveys the policy and achievements of this important new institute.     

A re-examination of relevance: toward a dynamic, situational definition*

Although relevance judgments are fundamental to the design and evaluation of all information retrieval systems, information scientists have not reached a consensus in defining the central concept of relevance. In this paper we ask two questions: What is the meaning of relevance? and What role does relevance play in information behavior? We attempt to address these questions by reviewing literature over the last 30 years that presents various views of relevance as topical, user-oriented, multidimensional, cognitive, and dynamic. We then discuss traditional assumptions on which most research in the field has been based and begin building a case for an approach to the problem of definition based on alternative assumptions. The dynamic, situational approach we suggest views the user — regardless of system — as the central and active determinant of the dimensions of relevance. We believe that relevance is a multidimensional concept; that it is dependent on both internal (cognitive) and external (situational) factors; that it is based on a dynamic human judgment process; and that it is a complex but systematic and measurable phenomenon.     

Chemiluminescence detection in analytical chemistry

Chemiluminescence as a consequence of biological processes and — more recently — in organic chemical reactions has long been known, though the mechanisms involved are still not fully understood. In recent years chemiluminescence has become the basis of a number of fast and exceedingly sensitive artificial techniques: it is, for example, the preferred method for ATP determination.     

广东专业镇产业变动趋势分析

以2001—2016年广东新增认定的省级专业镇为研究对象,运用特征分析与描述统计分析方法,从发展轨迹上分析广东专业镇产业演变和区域分布变化情况。研究表明,(1)专业镇发展有着4个明显的阶段性特征;(2)农业专业镇以种植业、养殖业为主,主要分布在粤北山区;(3)珠三角地区占据工业专业镇半壁江山,电子信息产业优势突出;(4)第三产业专业镇主要分布在珠三角地区,且以旅游服务业为主。     

Tilted post arrays for separating long DNA

Recent simulations by Chen and Dorfman [Electrophoresis 35, 405–411 (2014)] suggested that “tilting” the electric field with respect to the lattice vectors of a hexagonal post array would lead to a substantial improvement in electrophoretic DNA separations therein. We constructed such an array where the electric field is applied at an angle equidistant between the two lattice vectors. This tilted array leads to (i) baseline resolution of 20 kbp DNA and λ DNA (48.5 kbp) in a 4 mm channel and (ii) measurable separation resolutions for electric fields up to 50 V/cm, both of which are improvements over untilted post arrays of the same post density. The predicted time required to reach a resolution of unity is approximately 5 min, independent of electric field. The separations are more reproducible at higher fields.     

Vitamins: essential dietary constituents discovered

Until a century or more ago disease was generally attributed to the presence of some undesirable feature. The realization that disease could be due to the absence of a desirable factor was revolutionary. During the 18th and 19th centuries, however, foundations were laid for the recognition in the 20th century that to prevent some diseases certain ‘accessory substances’—the vitamins—were essential in the diet. This article tells the story of their discovery, their current significance, and future trends in vitamin research.     

Task-based evaluation of text summarization using Relevance Prediction

This article introduces a new task-based evaluation measure called Relevance Prediction that is a more intuitive measure of an individual’s performance on a real-world task than interannotator agreement. Relevance Prediction parallels what a user does in the real world task of browsing a set of documents using standard search tools, i.e., the user judges relevance based on a short summary and then that same user—not an independent user—decides whether to open (and judge) the corresponding document. This measure is shown to be a more reliable measure of task performance than LDC Agreement, a current gold-standard based measure used in the summarization evaluation community. Our goal is to provide a stable framework within which developers of new automatic measures may make stronger statistical statements about the effectiveness of their measures in predicting summary usefulness. We demonstrate—as a proof-of-concept methodology for automatic metric developers—that a current automatic evaluation measure has a better correlation with Relevance Prediction than with LDC Agreement and that the significance level for detected differences is higher for the former than for the latter.     

Data-driven estimates of global nitrous oxide emissions from croplands

Croplands are the single largest anthropogenic source of nitrous oxide (N₂O) globally, yet their estimates remain difficult to verify when using Tier 1 and 3 methods of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Here, we re-evaluate global cropland-N₂O emissions in 1961–2014, using N-rate-dependent emission factors (EFs) upscaled from 1206 field observations in 180 global distributed sites and high-resolution N inputs disaggregated from sub-national surveys covering 15593 administrative units. Our results confirm IPCC Tier 1 default EFs for upland crops in 1990–2014, but give a ∼15% lower EF in 1961–1989 and a ∼67% larger EF for paddy rice over the full period. Associated emissions (0.82 ± 0.34 Tg N yr^–1) are probably one-quarter lower than IPCC Tier 1 global inventories but close to Tier 3 estimates. The use of survey-based gridded N-input data contributes 58% of this emission reduction, the rest being explained by the use of observation-based non-linear EFs. We conclude that upscaling N₂O emissions from site-level observations to global croplands provides a new benchmark for constraining IPCC Tier 1 and 3 methods. The detailed spatial distribution of emission data is expected to inform advancement towards more realistic and effective mitigation pathways.     

The processes involved in the solid-to-liquid phase transition

The detailed study of crystals and the dynamics of the melting process in two and three dimensions is a fundamental and interesting research topic, which is important for increasing our knowledge of solid state physics. In natural crystals, structure information can be obtained principally by Bragg-scattering of neutrons, electrons or photons on the crystal, followed by an analysis in Fourier space. Dynamical aspects cannot be investigated in these systems. Recently, a new crystalline system was discovered whose properties are such that the melting transition can be investigated in great detail — the ‘plasma crystal’. This article presents the results of such an investigation and shows evidence for the existence of intermediate phases between the solid, liquid and gaseous phases. The observed ‘structured’ phase transition may be specific for plasma crystals but, alternatively, it may indicate the existence of intermediate stages in the melting transition more generally.     

Technological learning and entrepreneurial behaviour: A taxonomy of the chemical industry in Venezuela

This paper presents a taxonomy of entrepreneurial behaviour vis-à-vis technology, derived from empirical research on a specific sector, that of the chemicals industry in Venezuela. The research focuses heavily on the accumulation of minor innovations through which enterprises acquire their technical knowledge and know how, their technological learning. We have tried to give a precise empirical meaning to that notion in order to understand which are the most important variables that affect the technical learning process. Both the process of technological learning and the technical external linkages — in particular with foreign firms — of Venezuelan companies seem to be the fundamental factors in understanding the development of a new competitive industry which adopts a new products-oriented strategy. But not all firms do respond to such a scheme and it is thus necessary to develop a taxonomy of the industrial sector both for scholarly reasons as well as a policy guide.     

Innovation as co-evolution of scientific and technological networks: exploring tissue engineering

The question of exactly how science is commercialized is an important one. While the social structures of “science” and “technology” are distinctive, recent work suggests that scientific and technological ideas in fact co-evolve. This paper addresses the dynamics of such co-evolution: are scientific networks deeply co-mingled with networks through which technology is created and if so how? It does so in a study of an emerging area of biomedicine—tissue engineering. The research is based on a novel methodology that takes advantage of the fact that an idea is often inscribed in both a patent and paper, thus forming a patent–paper pair. Starting with the pair, it is possible to trace the citation network of patents, papers, inventors and authors, combining traditional bibliometric analysis with in-depth interviews to provide new insights. The results show that for this case there exist distinctive scientific and technological networks. Furthermore, while there is evidence of overlap, it is neither co-publishing nor citation as might be predicted from current literature. Rather co-mingling exists through founding, licensing, consulting and advising. This has implications for our understanding of the processes through which spillovers arise, the way in which commercialization and technology transfer should be structured and for recent debates on conflict of interest in biomedicine.     

Technological innovations and sectoral change: Transformative capacity, adaptability, patterns of change: An analytical framework

Following up on recent debates about sectoral systems of innovation and production, the paper introduces a heuristic framework for analyzing and explaining distinct patterns of technology-based sectoral change. The concept is based on two interrelated influencing factors. The first is the sectoral-specific transformative capacity of new technologies themselves, that is, their substantial or incremental impact on socioeconomic and institutional change in a given sectoral system. The second is the sectoral adaptability of socioeconomic structures, institutions, and actors confronted with the opportunities presented by new technologies. The first factor—the sectoral transformative capacity of new technologies—enables us to identify the technology-based pressure to change and adjust the structural, institutional, and organizational architectures of the sectoral system. The second, complementary factor—sectoral adaptability—helps us to discern the distinct social patterns of anticipating and adopting this technology-based pressure. The specific interplay between the two influencing factors creates distinguishable modes of sectoral transformation, ranging from anticipative and smooth adjustments to reactive and crisis-ridden patterns of change. Even processes of radical sectoral change continue over longer periods of mismatch and are characterized by numerous and mostly gradual organizational, structural and institutional transformations.     

Concerted breeding in fungi and its biotechnological application

The biotechnological exploitation of fungi is becoming more and more important both for industrial purposes and in the field of cultivation of edible mushrooms. In the past, breeding of fungi was restricted mainly to selection of better strains after spontaneous or induced mutations. Today, the inclusion of genetic recombination—based on better knowledge of how to handle fungi under controlled conditions, of their life cycles, and of their breeding systems—has given the possibility of ‘concerted breeding’. In addition, some recent basic research provides means of preventing ageing and death of fungal strains, by either genetic alterations or therapeutic treatment. Examples of the application of these ideas and results are given.     

New archeological marvels of ancient Shu civilization

China Central Television broadcasted live reports on the latest archaeological excavation at the Sanxingdui site over four consecutive days, from 20–23 March 2021. Exquisite large golden mask fragments, as well as numerous bronze, jade, pottery and ivory artefacts, were unearthed in six newly discovered pits at the site. Following the public presentation of these ancient cultural relics, along with the contemporary archaeological excavation technologies, the mysterious Sanxingdui civilization has become a hot topic within the Chinese media and scientific community.     

Fingerprinting the mind

Until recently the identification of the authorship of written works has—like that of paintings—been largely subjective, but the application of the computer to analysis of literary structure has opened up important new possibilities. It has shown that simple frequency patterns are of much less diagnostic value than groupings of words and their position in sentences. Stylometry, as this new investigative method is called, has the merit of knowing no language barriers—it is equally applicable, for example, to classical Greek, English, and Swedish.     

Innovation regimes, R&D and radical innovations in telecommunications

By introducing the concept of innovation regimes, the aim of this article is to show how the rapid pace of technological development in the telecom sector may be explained by the close links between the sector's own R&D and the creation of numerous innovations, many of which are radical. In contemporary innovation theory, a theoretical antinomy exists: Whereas, the creation of incremental innovations is variously explained in terms of «rational» responses to markets, dynamics of technological regimes, dominant design, etc., radical innovations, in contrast, are explained in terms of serendipity, chance or haphazard scientific discoveries. Evidence from analysis of innovations in the telecom sector suggests that innovation regimes have provided a capability of coordination, direction and leadership in the creation of many of the radical technological innovations that have emerged in the sector. Thus, one may claim that the strong innovation regimes and high R&D intensity of the telecom sector, at least until recently, have provided a capability of creating innovations on purpose — for a purpose. The policy implications of this contradict some of the assumptions on which the prevailing market-oriented R&D governance models and policies are based — and which are supported by contemporary innovation theories.     

Enhanced single-cell printing by acoustophoretic cell focusing

Recent years have witnessed a strong trend towards analysis of single-cells. To access and handle single-cells, many new tools are needed and have partly been developed. Here, we present an improved version of a single-cell printer which is able to deliver individual single cells and beads encapsulated in free-flying picoliter droplets at a single-bead efficiency of 96% and with a throughput of more than 10 beads per minute. By integration of acoustophoretic focusing, the cells could be focused in x and y direction. This way, the cells were lined-up in front of a 40 μm nozzle, where they were analyzed individually by an optical system prior to printing. In agreement with acoustic simulations, the focusing of 10 μm beads and Raji cells has been achieved with an efficiency of 99% (beads) and 86% (Raji cells) to a 40 μm wide center region in the 1 mm wide microfluidic channel. This enabled improved optical analysis and reduced bead losses. The loss of beads that ended up in the waste (because printing them as single beads arrangements could not be ensured) was reduced from 52% ± 6% to 28% ± 1%. The piezoelectric transducer employed for cell focusing could be positioned on an outer part of the device, which proves the acoustophoretic focusing to be versatile and adaptable.     

Profiting from technological innovation: Implications for integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy

This paper attempts to explain why innovating firms often fail to obtain significant economic returns from an innovation, while customers, imitators and other industry participants benefit Business strategy — particularly as it relates to the firm's decision to integrate and collaborate — is shown to be an important factor. The paper demonstrates that when imitation is easy, markets don't work well, and the profits from innovation may accrue to the owners of certain complementary assets, rather than to the developers of the intellectual property. This speaks to the need, in certain cases, for the innovating firm to establish a prior position in these complementary assets. The paper also indicates that innovators with new products and processes which provide value to consumers may sometimes be so ill positioned in the market that they necessarily will fail. The analysis provides a theoretical foundation for the proposition that manufacturing often matters, particularly to innovating nations. Innovating firms without the requisite manufacturing and related capacities may die, even though they are the best at innovation. Implications for trade policy and domestic economic policy are examined.     

Exploiting aspectual features and connecting words for summarization-inspired temporal-relation extraction

This paper presents a model that incorporates contemporary theories of tense and aspect and develops a new framework for extracting temporal relations between two sentence-internal events, given their tense, aspect, and a temporal connecting word relating the two events. A linguistic constraint on event combination has been implemented to detect incorrect parser analyses and potentially apply syntactic reanalysis or semantic reinterpretation—in preparation for subsequent processing for multi-document summarization. An important contribution of this work is the extension of two different existing theoretical frameworks—Hornstein’s 1990 theory of tense analysis and Allen’s 1984 theory on event ordering—and the combination of both into a unified system for representing and constraining combinations of different event types (points, closed intervals, and open-ended intervals). We show that our theoretical results have been verified in a large-scale corpus analysis. The framework is designed to inform a temporally motivated sentence-ordering module in an implemented multi-document summarization system.     

论生态文明、循环经济与和谐社会的内在逻辑

人类文明经历了原始文明、农业文明和工业文明三个阶段,正在步入生态文明的发展轨道。生态文明是人类觉醒与进步的必然结果,也是构成和谐社会的重要特征向量;"天人合一"则为和谐社会奠定了思想基础;循环经济为构建和谐社会提供了现实路径。于是,生态文明、循环经济、和谐社会之间构成了严密的内在逻辑联系。