University patenting, licensing and technology transfer: how organizational context and available resources determine performance.

The paper assesses the performance of the technology licensing offices (TLO) and technology transfer offices (TTO) which have been active in Portuguese higher education institutions. Data stemming from a survey of these entities was analyzed in successive steps through factor analysis, cluster analysis and estimation of a model using the Partial-Least Squares methodology. It is shown that the institutional nature of each of the surveyed organizations implies different behaviours and outcomes. Further it has also became clear that the type of resources and activities in the surveyed organizations determine both their “primary outcome” (patent applications and technology transfer processes) and their “final outcome” (technology licensing contracts and technology-based spin-offs). The results of this paper might be particularly relevant for other similar economies as Portugal where high-tech and knowledge-intensive industries have not been dominant.technology transfer; university-industry relationships; university patenting; university spin-offs

University patenting, licensing and technology transfer: how organizational context and available resources determine performance

The paper assesses the performance of the technology licensing offices (TLO) and technology transfer offices (TTO) which have been active in Portuguese higher education institutions. Data stemming from a survey of these entities was analyzed in successive steps through factor analysis, cluster analysis and estimation of a model using the Partial-Least Squares methodology. It is shown that the institutional nature of each of the surveyed organizations implies different behaviours and outcomes. Further it has also became clear that the type of resources and activities in the surveyed organizations determine both their “primary outcome” (patent applications and technology transfer processes) and their “final outcome” (technology licensing contracts and technology-based spin-offs). The results of this paper might be particularly relevant for other similar economies as Portugal where high-tech and knowledge-intensive industries have not been dominant

AlScN: A III-V semiconductor based ferroelectric

Ferroelectric switching is unambigiously demonstrated for the first time in a III-V semiconductor based material: AlScN -- A discovery which could help to satisfy the urgent demand for thin film ferroelectrics with high performance and good technological compatibility with generic semiconductor technology which arises from a multitude of memory, micro/nano-actuator and emerging applications based on controlling electrical polarization. The appearance of ferroelectricity in AlScN can be related to the continuous distortion of the original wurtzite-type crystal structure towards a layered-hexagonal structure with increasing Sc content and tensile strain, which is expected to be extendable to other III-nitride based solid solutions. Coercive fields which are systematically adjustable by more than 3 MV/cm, high remnant polarizations in excess of 100 \mu C/cm$^2$ which constitute the first experimental estimate of the previously inaccessible spontaneous polarization in a III-nitride based material, an almost ideally square-like hysteresis resulting in excellent piezoelectric linearity over a wide strain interval from -0.3% to +0.4% as well as a paraelectric transition temperature in excess of 600{\deg}C are confirmed. This intriguing combination of properties is to our knowledge as of now unprecedented in the field of polycrystalline ferroelectric thin films and promises to significantly advance the commencing integration of ferroelectric functionality to micro- and nanotechnology, while at the same time providing substantial insight to one of the central open questions of the III-nitride semiconductors - that of their actual spontaneous polarization

Blended Learning Based on Creative Approach: Enhancing The Mutual Impact of Creativity, Intrinsic Motivation and Achievement in Academic Camputer Courses.

Information and communication technology (ICT) has become the essential part of the university course aims. The rapid speed of technical development, growth of information, and knowledge, gives the attention of the higher education to improve their teaching methods in a creative way. One of the educational innovative ways that gain support in learning methods is called blended learning. The blended learning approach is a mix of e-learning technology with conventional teaching methods to get the advantage of the both methods. The research is trying to apply the blended learning based on creative approach in order to enhance the mutual impact of creativity, intrinsic motivation and achievement in academic computer courses. Existing research has emphasized on the applications of distinctive characteristics of creative teaching strategies in the particular domain of blinded learning applications for academic computer courses. High successful management of creative approach in blended -learning application's task gives learners a sufficient creative knowledge and performance   in academic computer courses. So this research aims to decide on what the extent of applying blended learning based creative approach effects on the level of creativity, motivation, and achievement in the academic computer courses. The subject participants consist of 57 undergraduate students. They all enrolled in the academic computer course. The intrinsic motivation questionnaire, Torrance creativity test, achievement test, and rubric evaluation tool to evaluate the creativity of the final computer program product have been conducted. The whole sample was drawn randomly from the faculty of medicine- foundation year –Taif University in Saudi Arabia. A creative blended learning applications have been constructed to teach the students how to design computer program, the creative blended learning applications aim to build up student creative performance to build up the computer program in their profession.According to the findings blended learning applications based on creative approach have a positive effect on the learners' creative performance on computer programming. Furthermore there is a mutual relationship between creativity, intrinsic motivation and achievement in favor of creativity in computer programming. Key words: Blended learning , learning environment , Creativity, Intrinsic Motivation, computer creative performance ,  E-learning applications , E-learning  creative approach,  Rubric evaluation

Effective Integration of Technology in a High School Beginning Japanese Class

Technological advancement is rapidly changing our daily lives. Many teachers seek ways to implement technology to improve students’ learning experiences. How do we determine what types of technological tools to use to maximize learning? This research investigated the effectiveness of the integration of the Substitution Augmentation Substitution and Redefinition (SAMR) model and other web applications in learning Japanese at the high school level. Fifty-one students in first-year Japanese language classes participated in a technology-integrated lesson. Technology-enhanced activities were selected with the SAMR model and were developed for students to learn and demonstrate Japanese language skills and cultural knowledge in a learning sequence based on second language theories. A pre-survey, formative assessments, summative assessments, homework logs, a post survey, and a teacher journal were analyzed to determine the effectiveness of such integration and its influences on learners’ language performance and motivation. Results indicated that students’ language performance increased in both interpretive and presentational modes of communication, however, there was no significant improvement in the interpersonal mode of communication. In addition, students also developed learning strategies with technology as they shared them with their peers

Integrating Form and Meaning: A Multi-Task Learning Model for Acoustic Word Embeddings

Models of acoustic word embeddings (AWEs) learn to map variable-length spoken word segments onto fixed-dimensionality vector representations such that different acoustic exemplars of the same word are projected nearby in the embedding space. In addition to their speech technology applications, AWE models have been shown to predict human performance on a variety of auditory lexical processing tasks. Current AWE models are based on neural networks and trained in a bottom-up approach that integrates acoustic cues to build up a word representation given an acoustic or symbolic supervision signal. Therefore, these models do not leverage or capture high-level lexical knowledge during the learning process. In this paper, we propose a multi-task learning model that incorporates top-down lexical knowledge into the training procedure of AWEs. Our model learns a mapping between the acoustic input and a lexical representation that encodes high-level information such as word semantics in addition to bottom-up form-based supervision. We experiment with three languages and demonstrate that incorporating lexical knowledge improves the embedding space discriminability and encourages the model to better separate lexical categories.Comment: Accepted in INTERSPEECH 202

A Wideband Inductorless CMOS Front-End for Software Defined

The number of wireless communication links is witnessing tremendous growth and new standards are being introduced at high pace. These standards heavily rely on digital signal processing, making CMOS the first technology of choice. However, RF CMOS circuit development is costly and time consuming due to mask costs and design iterations. This pleads for a Software Defined Radio approach, in which one piece of flexible radio hardware is re-used for different applications and standards, downloadable and under software control. To the best of our knowledge, little work has been done in this field based on CMOS technology. Recently, a bipolar downconverter front-end has been proposed [1]. In CMOS, only wideband low-noise amplifiers have been proposed, and some CMOS tuner ICs for satellite reception (which have less stringent noise requirements because they are preceded by an outdoor low-noise converter). This paper presents a wideband RF downconverter frontend in 0.18 um CMOS (also published in [2]), designed in the context of a research project exploring the feasibility of software defined radio, using a combined Bluetooth/WLAN receiver as a vehicle. Usually, RF receivers are optimised for low power consumption. In contrast, we have taken the approach to optimise for flexibility. The paper discusses the main system and circuit design choices, and assesses the achievable performance via measurements on a front-end implemented in 0.18um CMOS. The flexible design achieves a 0.2-2.2 GHz -3 dB bandwidth, a gain of 25 dB with 6 dB noise figure and +1 dBm IIP3