Intellectual Property Rights and South-North Global Innovation Networks

This paper explores the role of IPR protection in the emergence of R&D linkages from newly emerging economies. Using data from a new survey on Chinese and Indian firms in the ICT sector, we find IPR protection to be key in the engagement of Southern firms in global innovation networks. A complementary exercise uses global bilateral patent data to investigate the location-specificity of IPR enforcement for this phenomenon. We find that a stringent IPR regime in the North (South) discourages (encourage) foreign patenting activities of firms in the South, suggesting that a global convergence of IPRs can stimulate Southern innovation.

Intellectual property rights and south-north formation of global innovation networks

With the rise of the knowledge economy, delivering sound innovation policies requires a thorough understanding of how knowledge is produced and diffused. This paper takes a step to analyze a new form of globalization, the so-called system of Global Innovation Networks (GINs), to shed light on how the protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs) influences their creation and development. We focus on the role of IPR protection in fostering international innovative activities in emerging economies (South), such as China and India, and more generally, how IPRs affect the development of GINs between newly industrialized countries and OECD countries. Using both survey-based firm-level and country-level global data, we find IPRs to be an important determinant of participation in GINS from a Southern perspective. We find IPR protection at home and its harmonization across county pairs foster South-North formation of GINs. We also find that a stringent regime in the destination country discourages foreign international innovative activities that originate in NICs. Both levels of our analysis confirm the ICT industry, particularly the hardware segment, to rely on IPRs when engaging in the international outsourcing and offshoring of innovation or in patenting activities abroad

Fate of Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCPs) from discharge to drinking water: a modelling and monitoring integrated framework

Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCPs) presence in drinking water is gaining growing concern for potential negative effects on human health. This study combined modelling of river transport with monitoring campaigns performed over one year at a drinking water treatment plant (DWTP) located at the closure section of Po river basin, to evaluate the types of released PPCPs, their concentrations and fate in both the river and the DWTP. Over the 114 monitored PPCPs, maximum 23 compounds have been detected at the DWTP inlet with concentrations from 10 to 1800 ng/L, varying among PPCPs and in time. The transport in Po river of iopamidol, with the highest concentration at the DWTP inlet, was simulated combining hydrological and quality data and models. Finally, DWTP monitoring showed that ozonation and adsorption onto activated carbon have the main impact in reducing a wide variety of PPCPs, with performances influenced by their characteristics

The Algorithm Steering and Trigger Decision mechanism of the ATLAS High Level Trigger

Given the extremely high output rate foreseen at LHC and the general-purpose nature of ATLAS experiment, an efficient and flexible way to select events in the High Level Trigger is needed. An extremely flexible solution is proposed that allows for early rejection of unwanted events and an easily configurable way to choose algorithms and to specify the criteria for trigger decisions. It is implemented in the standard ATLAS object-oriented software framework, Athena. The early rejection is achieved by breaking the decision process down into sequential steps. The configuration of each step defines sequences of algorithms which should be used to process the data, and 'trigger menus' that define which physics signatures must be satisfied to continue on to the next step, and ultimately to accept the event. A navigation system has been built on top of the standard Athena transient store (StoreGate) to link the event data together in a tree-like structure. This is fundamental to the seeding mechanism, by which data from one step is presented to the next. The design makes it straightforward to utilize existing off-line reconstruction data classes and algorithms when they are suitableComment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 8 pages, PDF, PSN TUGT00

Hunt for new phenomena using large jet multiplicities and missing transverse momentum with ATLAS in 4.7 fb−1 of s√=7TeV proton-proton collisions

Results are presented of a search for new particles decaying to large numbers of jets in association with missing transverse momentum, using 4.7 fb−1 of pp collision data at s√=7TeV collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in 2011. The event selection requires missing transverse momentum, no isolated electrons or muons, and from ≥6 to ≥9 jets. No evidence is found for physics beyond the Standard Model. The results are interpreted in the context of a MSUGRA/CMSSM supersymmetric model, where, for large universal scalar mass m 0, gluino masses smaller than 840 GeV are excluded at the 95% confidence level, extending previously published limits. Within a simplified model containing only a gluino octet and a neutralino, gluino masses smaller than 870 GeV are similarly excluded for neutralino masses below 100 GeV

Measurements of Higgs boson production and couplings in diboson final states with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements are presented of production properties and couplings of the recently discovered Higgs boson using the decays into boson pairs, H →γ γ, H → Z Z∗ →4l and H →W W∗ →lνlν. The results are based on the complete pp collision data sample recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider at centre-of-mass energies of √s = 7 TeV and √s = 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 25 fb−1. Evidence for Higgs boson production through vector-boson fusion is reported. Results of combined fits probing Higgs boson couplings to fermions and bosons, as well as anomalous contributions to loop-induced production and decay modes, are presented. All measurements are consistent with expectations for the Standard Model Higgs boson

Standalone vertex finding in the ATLAS muon spectrometer

A dedicated reconstruction algorithm to find decay vertices in the ATLAS muon spectrometer is presented. The algorithm searches the region just upstream of or inside the muon spectrometer volume for multi-particle vertices that originate from the decay of particles with long decay paths. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using both a sample of simulated Higgs boson events, in which the Higgs boson decays to long-lived neutral particles that in turn decay to bbar b final states, and pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC during 2011

Measurement of the top quark-pair production cross section with ATLAS in pp collisions at \sqrt{s}=7\TeV

A measurement of the production cross-section for top quark pairs(\ttbar) in $pp$ collisions at \sqrt{s}=7 \TeV is presented using data recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Events are selected in two different topologies: single lepton (electron $e$ or muon $\mu$) with large missing transverse energy and at least four jets, and dilepton ($ee$, $\mu\mu$ or $e\mu$) with large missing transverse energy and at least two jets. In a data sample of 2.9 pb-1, 37 candidate events are observed in the single-lepton topology and 9 events in the dilepton topology. The corresponding expected backgrounds from non-\ttbar Standard Model processes are estimated using data-driven methods and determined to be $12.2 \pm 3.9$ events and $2.5 \pm 0.6$ events, respectively. The kinematic properties of the selected events are consistent with SM \ttbar production. The inclusive top quark pair production cross-section is measured to be \sigmattbar=145 \pm 31 ^{+42}_{-27} pb where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic. The measurement agrees with perturbative QCD calculations.Comment: 30 pages plus author list (50 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, CERN-PH number and final journal adde

Measurement of the top quark pair cross section with ATLAS in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV using final states with an electron or a muon and a hadronically decaying τ lepton

A measurement of the cross section of top quark pair production in proton-proton collisions recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV is reported. The data sample used corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 2.05 fb -1. Events with an isolated electron or muon and a τ lepton decaying hadronically are used. In addition, a large missing transverse momentum and two or more energetic jets are required. At least one of the jets must be identified as originating from a b quark. The measured cross section, σtt-=186±13(stat.)±20(syst.)±7(lumi.) pb, is in good agreement with the Standard Model prediction

Measurement of the production cross section for W-bosons in association with jets in pp collisions at s=7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This Letter reports on a first measurement of the inclusive W + jets cross section in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV at the LHC, with the ATLAS detector. Cross sections, in both the electron and muon decay modes of the W-boson, are presented as a function of jet multiplicity and of the transverse momentum of the leading and next-to-leading jets in the event. Measurements are also presented of the ratio of cross sections sigma (W + >= n)/sigma(W + >= n - 1) for inclusive jet multiplicities n = 1-4. The results, based on an integrated luminosity of 1.3 pb(-1), have been corrected for all known detector effects and are quoted in a limited and well-defined range of jet and lepton kinematics. The measured cross sections are compared to particle-level predictions based on perturbative QCD. Next-to-leading order calculations, studied here for n <= 2, are found in good agreement with the data. Leading-order multiparton event generators, normalized to the NNLO total cross section, describe the data well for all measured jet multiplicitie