How do MNC R&D laboratory roles affect employee international assignments?

Research and development (R&D) employees are important human resources for multinational corporations (MNCs) as they are the driving force behind the advancement of innovative ideas and products. International assignments of these employees can be a unique way to upgrade their expertise; allowing them to effectively recombine their unique human resources to progress existing knowledge and advance new ones. This study aims to investigate the effect of the roles of R&D laboratories in which these employees work on the international assignments they undertake. We categorise R&D laboratory roles into those of the support laboratory, the locally integrated laboratory and the internationally interdependent laboratory. Based on the theory of resource recombinations, we hypothesise that R&D employees in support laboratories are not likely to assume international assignments, whereas those in locally integrated and internationally interdependent laboratories are likely to assume international assignments. The empirical evidence, which draws from research conducted on 559 professionals in 66 MNC subsidiaries based in Greece, provides support to our hypotheses. The resource recombinations theory that extends the resource based view can effectively illuminate the international assignment field. Also, research may provide more emphasis on the close work context of R&D scientists rather than analyse their demographic characteristics, the latter being the focus of scholarly practice hitherto

Tales of Emergence - Synthetic Biology as a Scientific Community in the Making

International audienceThis article locates the beginnings of a synthetic biology network and thereby probes the formation of a potential disciplinary community. We consider the ways that ideas of community are mobilized, both by scientists and policy-makers in building an agenda for new forms of knowledge work, and by social scientists as an analytical device to understand new formations for knowledge production. As participants in, and analysts of, a network in synthetic biology, we describe our current understanding of synthetic biology by telling four tales of community making. The first tale tells of the mobilization of synthetic biology within a European context. The second tale describes the approach to synthetic biology community formation in the UK. The third narrates the creation of an institutionally based, funded 'network in synthetic biology'. The final tale de-localizes community-making efforts by focussing on 'devices' that make communities. In tying together these tales, our analysis suggests that the potential community can be understood in terms of 'movements'--the (re)orientation and enrolment of people, stories, disciplines and policies; and of 'stickiness'--the objects and glues that begin to bind together the various constitutive elements of community

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Bigger, Faster, Better? Rhetorics and Practices of Large-Scale Research in Contemporary Bioscience

publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticleEditorial for Special Issu

Anti-cancer drug validation: the contribution of tissue engineered models

Abstract Drug toxicity frequently goes concealed until clinical trials stage, which is the most challenging, dangerous and expensive stage of drug development. Both the cultures of cancer cells in traditional 2D assays and animal studies have limitations that cannot ever be unraveled by improvements in drug-testing protocols. A new generation of bioengineered tumors is now emerging in response to these limitations, with potential to transform drug screening by providing predictive models of tumors within their tissue context, for studies of drug safety and efficacy. Considering the NCI60, a panel of 60 cancer cell lines representative of 9 different cancer types: leukemia, lung, colorectal, central nervous system (CNS), melanoma, ovarian, renal, prostate and breast, we propose to review current Bstate of art^ on the 9 cancer types specifically addressing the 3D tissue models that have been developed and used in drug discovery processes as an alternative to complement their studyThis article is a result of the project FROnTHERA (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000023), supported by Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). This article was also supported by the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation HORIZON 2020 (H2020) under grant agreement n° 668983 — FoReCaST. FCT distinction attributed to Joaquim M. Oliveira (IF/00423/2012) and Vitor M. Correlo (IF/01214/2014) under the Investigator FCT program is also greatly acknowledged.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Study of hadronic event-shape variables in multijet final states in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV

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Search for new physics in the multijet and missing transverse momentum final state in proton-proton collisions at √s=8 Tev

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Measurement of Higgs boson production and properties in the WW decay channel with leptonic final states

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