1,720,973 research outputs found
Scalar effective potential for D7 brane probes which break chiral symmetry
No full textWe consider D7 brane probes embedded in deformed AdS5 × S5 supergravity backgrounds which are non-supersymmetric in the interior. In the context of the generalised AdS/CFT correspondence, these setups are dual to QCD-like theories with fundamental matter which display chiral symmetry breaking by a quark condensate. Evaluating the D7 action for a surface instanton configuration gives rise to an effective potential for the scalar Higgs vev in the dual field theory. We calculate this potential for two specific supergravity backgrounds. For a metric due to Constable and Myers, we find that the potential is asymptotically bounded by a 1/Q4 behaviour and has a minimum at zero vev. For the Yang-Mills* background we find that the Higgs potential scales quadratically with the Higgs vev. This corresponds to a canonical mass term and the embedding is again stable
Characterizing the Knowledge Base in the Middle-earth: a Longitudinal Patent-based Analysis of the Bioinformatics Industry
No full textThis paper investigates the nature of bioinformatics inventions by analysing technological contributions (patents). By analyzing data from USPTO, EPO, and WIPO, we shed some light on the antecedents that gave rise to what can be thought of as an interdisciplinary radical innovation. A quadruple helix of actors, entailing the exceptional role of single inventors, shaped the field. First evidence about trends and the role of non-patent references suggest that Bioinformatics has roots in science; the latter, still providing fundamental contributions for the growth of the industry and the patenting activity. A diversity analysis supports the view that scientific contributions (first and more than their technological counterparts) played an important role in sustaining the patenting activity in the Bioinformatics industry
Scientific Inspiration, Technological Perspiration: a Longitudinal Patent-Based Analysis of the Bioinformatics Industry
No full textThis paper investigates the nature of bioinformatics inventions by analyzing technological contributions (patents). By analyzing data from USPTO, EPO, and WIPO, we shed some light on the antecedents that gave rise to what can be thought of as an interdisciplinary radical innovation. A quadruple helix of actors, entailing the exceptional role of single inventors, shaped the field. First evidence about trends and the role of non-patent references suggest that Bioinformatics has roots in science; the latter, still providing fundamental contributions for the growth of the industry and the patenting activity. A diversity analysis supports the view that scientific contributions (first and more than their technological counterparts) played an important role in sustaining the patenting activity in the Bioinformatics industry
Strong coupling effective Higgs potential and a first order thermal phase transition from AdS/CFT duality
No full textWe use anti–de Sitter/conformal field theory duality to study the thermodynamics of a strongly coupled [script N]=2 supersymmetric large Nc SU(Nc) gauge theory with Nf=2 fundamental hypermultiplets. At finite temperature T and isospin chemical potential µ, a potential on the Higgs branch is generated, corresponding to a potential on the moduli space of instantons in the anti–de Sitter description. For µ=0, there is a known first order phase transition around a critical temperature Tc. We find that the Higgs vacuum expectation value is a suitable order parameter for this transition; for T>Tc, the theory is driven to a nontrivial point on the Higgs branch. For µ[not-equal]0 and T=0, the Higgs potential is unbounded from below, leading to an instability of the field theory due to Bose-Einstein condensation
Automatic extraction of function-behaviour-state information from patents
No full textPatents contain a large quantity of technical information not available elsewhere and therefore very interesting for both academia and industry. The purpose of the research is to try to detect and extract information about the functions, the physical behaviours and the states of the system directly from
the text of a patent in an automatic way. The above three categories constitute a well-known set of relevant entities in the theory of engineering design, and their study allows powerful analysis of individual artefacts as well as that of groups of products or technologies. The focus is in providing a handy tool that could speed up and facilitate human analysis and allow tackling also large corpora of documents. A second
goal is to develop a protocol based on free software and database resources, so that it could be replicable with limited effort by everyone without having to rely on commercial databases.
Extracting technical and design information from a document whose aim is more legal than technical,
and that is written using a specific jargon, is not a trivial task. The approach chosen to overcome the various
issues is to support state-of-the-art Computational Linguistic tools with a large Knowledge Base. The
latter has been constructed both manually and automatically and comprises not only keywords but also
concepts, relationships and regular expressions. A case study about a very recent patent describing a
mechanical device has been included to show the functioning and output of the entire system
The worker profiler: Assessing the digital skill gaps for enhancing energy efficiency in manufacturing
Full text linkIn recent years, the manufacturing sector has been responsible for nearly 55 % of total energy consumption, inducing a major impact on the global ecosystem. Although technological advances are increasing its sustainability, zero-emission and fuel-efficient manufacturing is still considered a utopian target. Moreover, a primary feature of Industry 4.0 is the digitization of production processes, which offers the opportunity to optimize energy consumption. However, given the speed and often unpredictability with which innovation manifests itself, tools capable of measuring the impact that technology is having professions are still being designed. In light of the above, in this article we present the Worker Profiler, a software designed to map the skills currently possessed by workers, identifying misalignment with those they should ideally possess to meet the renewed demands that digital innovation and environmental preservation impose. In more detail, the authors inferred the key technologies and skills for the topic, isolating those with markedly increasing patent trends and identifying green and digital enabling skills and occupations. Thus, the software was designed and implemented at the user-interface level. The output of the self-assessment is the definition of the missing digital and green skills that enable the definition of a customized retraining strategy
Functional technology foresight. A novel methodology to identify emerging technologies
Full text linkThe speed and complexity of the technology evolution faced by modern societies need new approaches to the analysis and understanding of the world. Indeed, an exclusive focus on technological goals can miss to recognize all the stakeholders of a technology and address real user needs; moreover, on the one hand low signals are becoming more and more important in fast evolving markets, on the other hand the excess of hype, fashions, or vested interests sometimes deeply alter indicators. However, the so called Big Data promise to be a huge low cost set of valuable information, available and affordable to all (SMEs included). But, analyzing them is not trivial especially if we deal with academic papers and patents. To tackle these issues, the present paper proposes to apply a powerful methodological tool called Functional Analysis to the Technology Foresight process. Actually the rigorous study of the functions, that an artefact should perform to satisfy the user needs, provides a universal and thus unifying point of view, which is able to correlate the user perspective on the product with its technical features. Functional reasoning has been applied to (i) detect possible patterns of development, spotting missing elements and highlighting strengths as well as potential sources of failure; (ii) to enhance traditional bibliometric tools such as the analysis of S-curves and (iii), integrated with a natural language processing analysis toolchain, tailored for patent documents, to identify emerging technologies. The paper describes the functional approach to technology foresight activity, presents how to integrate it with text mining algorithms and experts’ domain knowledge, and finally discusses its benefits in the context of Technology Foresight also from an economic point of view, showing that oresight is affordable also for Small and Medium Enterprises
METHOD FOR ANALYSING DIGITAL DOCUMENTS
No full textDescribed is a method for analysing documents which can be implemented by a computer comprising the steps of:—selecting a digital document (10) comprising a text component (11) and a graphical component (12);—analysing the graphical component (12) identifying alphanumeric indicators (13) associated with respective portions of the graphical component (12);—searching inside the text component (11) of the digital document (10) for the alphanumeric indicators (13) identified inside the graphical component (12) and associating them uniquely with a text indicator (14) of the text component (11) representing the respective portions of the graphical component (12);—converting the digital document (10) into an augmented reality document (20) at least by displaying on the graphical component (12) of a corresponding text (15) of the text indicator (14), at the respective alphanumeric indicator (13) associated with the text indicator (14)
Confinement, glueballs and strings from deformed AdS
No full textWe study aspects of confinement in two deformed versions of the AdS/CFT correspondence — the GPPZ dual of Script N = 1* Yang Mills, and the Yang Mills* Script N = 0 dual. Both geometries describe discrete glueball spectra which we calculate numerically. The results agree at the 10% level with previous AdS/CFT computations in the Klebanov Strassler background and AdS Schwarzchild respectively. We also calculate the spectra of bound states of the massive fermions in these geometries and show that they are light, so not decoupled from the dynamics. We then study the behaviour of Wilson loops in the 10d lifts of these geometries. We find a transition from AdS-like strings in the UV to strings that interact with the unknown physics of the central singularity of the space in the IR
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