The Meaning of Patent Citations: Report on the NBER/Case-Western Reserve Survey of Patentees

A survey of recent patentees was conducted to elicit their perceptions regarding the importance of their inventions, the extent of their communication with other inventors, and the relationship of both importance and communication to observed patent citations. A cohort of 1993 patentees were asked specifically about 2 patents that they had cited, and a third placebo' patent that was similar but which they did not cite. One of the two cited inventors was also surveyed. We find that inventors report significant communication, at least some of which is in forms that suggests spillovers from the cited inventor to the citing inventor. The perception of such communication was substantively and statistically significantly greater for the cited patents than for the placebos. There is, however, a large amount of noise in citations data; it appears that something like one-half of all citations do not correspond to any perceived communication, or even necessarily to a perceptible technological relationship between the inventions. We also find a significant correlation between the number of citations a patent received and its importance (both economic and technological) as perceived by the inventor.

Evidence from Patents and Patent Citations on the Impact of NASA and Other Federal Labs on Commercial Innovation

We explore the commercialization of government-generated technology by analyzing patents awarded to the U.S. government and the citations to those patents from subsequent patents. We use information on citations to federal patents in two ways: (1) to compare the average technological impact of NASA patents, other Federal' patents, and a random sample of all patents using measures of importance' and generality;' and (2) to trace the geographic location of commercial development by focusing on the location of inventors who cite NASA and other federal patents. We find, first, that the evidence is consistent with increased effort to commercialize federal lab technology generally and NASA specifically. The data reveal a striking NASA golden age' during the second half of the 1970s which remains a puzzle. Second, spillovers are concentrated within a federal lab complex of states representing agglomerations of labs and companies. The technology complex links five NASA states through patent citations: California, Texas, Ohio, DC/Virginia-Maryland, and Alabama. Third, qualitative evidence provides some support for the use of patent citations as proxies for both technological impact and knowledge spillovers.

Origin Of the enhanced flexoelectricity of relaxor ferroelectrics

We have measured the bending-induced polarization of Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 single crystals with compositions at the relaxor-ferroelectric phase boundary. The crystals display very large flexoelectricity, with flexocoupling coefficients an order of magnitude bigger than the theoretical upper limit set by the theories of Kogan and Tagantsev. This enhancement persists in the paraphrase up to a temperature T* that coincides with the start of elastic softening in the crystals. Analysis of the temperature dependence and cross-correlation between flexoelectric, dielectric and elastic properties indicates that the large bendinginduced polarization of relaxor ferroelectrics is not caused by intrinsically giant flexoelectricity, but by the reorientation of polar nanotwins that become ferroelastically active below T*

Dynamics of the Narrow-Line Region in the Seyfert 2 Galaxy NGC 1068

We present dynamical models based on a study of high-resolution long-slit spectra of the narrow-line region (NLR) in NGC 1068 obtained with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) aboard The Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The dynamical models consider the radiative force due to the active galactic nucleus (AGN), gravitational forces from the supermassive black hole (SMBH), nuclear stellar cluster, and galactic bulge, and a drag force due to the NLR clouds interacting with a hot ambient medium. The derived velocity profile of the NLR gas is compared to that obtained from our previous kinematic models of the NLR using a simple biconical geometry for the outflowing NLR clouds. The results show that the acceleration profile due to radiative line driving is too steep to fit the data and that gravitational forces along cannot slow the clouds down, but with drag forces included, the clouds can slow down to the systemic velocity over the range 100--400 pc, as observed. However, we are not able to match the gradual acceleration of the NLR clouds from ~0 to ~100 pc, indicating the need for additional dynamical studies.Comment: Paper prepared by emulateapj version 10/09/06 and accepted for print in Ap

On the relation between nuclear and nucleon Structure Functions and their moments

Calculations of nuclear Structure Functions (SF) F_k^A(x,Q^2) routinely exploit a generalized convolution, involving the SF for nucleons F_k^N and the linking SF f^{PN,A} of a fictitious nucleus, composed of point-particles, with the latter usually expressed in terms of hadronic degrees of freedom. For finite Q^2 the approach seemed to be lacking a solid justification and the same is the case for recently proposed, effective nuclear parton distribution functions (pdf), which exactly reproduce the above-mentioned hadronically computed F_k^A. Many years ago Jaffe and West proved the above convolution in the Plane Wave Impulse Approximation (PWIA) for the nuclear components in the convolution. In the present note we extend the above proof to include classes of nuclear Final State Interactions (FSI). One and the same function appears to relate parton distribution functions (pdf) in nuclei and nucleons, and SF for nuclear targets and for nucleons. That relation is the previously conjectured one,with an entirely different interpretation of f^{PN,A}. We conclude with an extensive analysis of moments of nuclear SF based on the generalized convolution. Characteristics of those moments are shown to be quite similar to the same for a nucleon. We conclude that the above evidences asymptotic freedom of a nucleon in a medium and not of a composite nucleus.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figure

An equivalent dipole analysis of PZT ceramics and lead-free piezoelectric single crystals

The recently proposed Equivalent Dipole Model for describing the electromechanical properties of ionic solids in terms of 3 ions and 2 bonds has been applied to PZT ceramics and lead-free single crystal piezoelectric materials, providing analysis in terms of an effective ionic charge and the asymmetry of the interatomic force constants. For PZT it is shown that, as a function of composition across the morphotropic phase boundary, the dominant bond compliance peaks at 52% ZrO2. The stiffer of the two bonds shows little composition dependence with no anomaly at the phase boundary. The effective charge has a maximum value at 50% ZrO2, decreasing across the phase boundary region, but becoming constant in the rhombohedral phase. The single crystals confirm that both the asymmetry in the force constants and the magnitude of effective charge are equally important in determining the values of the piezoelectric charge coefficient and the electromechanical coupling coefficient. Both are apparently temperature dependent, increasing markedly on approaching the Curie temperature

Einstein's mirror revisited

We describe a simple geometrical derivation of the formula for reflection of light from a uniformly moving plane mirror directly from the postulates of special relativity.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, RevTeX4, comments welcome; V2: corrected Fig. 5 and the discussion associated with it, co-author include

Parton distribution functions from nonlocal light-cone operators with definite twist

We introduce the chiral-even and chiral-odd quark distributions as forward matrix elements of related bilocal quark operators with well-defined (geometric) twist. Thereby, we achieve a Lorentz invariant classification of these distributions which differ from the conventional ones by explicitly taking into account the necessary trace terms. The relations between both kinds of distribution functions are given and the mismatch between their different definition of twist is discussed. Wandzura-Wilczek--like relations between the conventional distributions (based on dynamical twist) are derived by means of geometric twist distribution functions.Comment: 17 pages, REVTEX, Extended version, The Introduction has been rewritten, Setion V "Wandzura-Wilczek--like relations" and App. B are added; Sign errors are correcte

Higher-Twist Contribution to Pion Structure Function: 4-Fermi Operators

We present quenched lattice QCD results for the contribution of higher-twist operators to the lowest non-trivial moment of the pion structure function. To be specific, we consider the combination $F_2^{\pi^+} + F_2^{\pi^-} - 2 F_2^{\pi^0}$ which has $I = 2$ and receives contributions from 4-Fermi operators only. We introduce the basis of lattice operators. The renormalization of the operators is done perturbatively in the $\bar{\rm{MS}}$ scheme using the 't Hooft-Veltman prescription for $\gamma_5$, taking particular care of mixing effects. The contribution is found to be of $O(f_\pi^2/Q^2)$, relative to the leading contribution to the moment of $F_2^{\pi^+}$.Comment: Version to appear in Nucl. Phys.

Effect of manganese doping on the size effect of lead zirconate titanate thin films and the extrinsic nature of dead layers

We have investigated the size effect in lead zirconate titanate (PZT) thin films with a range of manganese (Mn) doping concentrations. We found that the size effect in the conventional Pt/PZT/Pt thin-film capacitors could be systematically reduced and almost completely eliminated by increasing Mn doping concentration. The interfacial layer at the electrode-film interface appears to disappear almost entirely for the PZT films with 2% Mn doping levels, confirmed by the fits using the conventional in-series capacitor model. Our work indicates that the size effect in ferroelectrics is extrinsic in nature, supporting the work by Saad et al. Other implications of our results have also been discussed. By comparing a variety of experimental studies in the literature we propose a scenario that the dead layer between PZT (or barium strontium titanate, BST) and metal electrodes such as Pt and Au might have a defective pyrochlore/fluorite structure (possibly with a small portion of ferroelectric perovskite phase).Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure