Science and technology parks and their effects on the quality of tenants’ patents

Science and technology parks (STPs) have proliferated in many countries as an innovation policy tool. Several studies have used patent counts to assess their impact on innovation performance rather than the quality of patents, leading to mixed results. The aim of this paper is to explore whether STPs contribute to increasing the quality of patents filed by tenants since patent counts alone do not capture the technological or economic value of the patented inventions. Using a novel database of Spanish patents generated on- and off-park together with firms’ characteristics, we compare the quality of patents filed by firms located inside and outside STPs and find that STPs have a positive effect on the quality of the ten- ants’ innovative performance. We apply a novel econometric technique to confirm that our results are robust to omitted variable bias and explore possible channels through which STPs produce an effect on patent quality, such as by facilitating collaboration, increasing collaboration with universities, and fostering the internationalisation of inventions.Funding for open Access charge: Universidad de Málaga / CBUA. funding from Universidad de Málaga (Contrato predoctoral, I Plan Propio de Investigación, Transferencia y Divulgación Científica de la Universidad de Málaga), and the support and funding of CNRS-CSIC program ALLIES-IRP (LIA2019FR1). Catalina Martinez gratefully acknowledges funding from the Regional Government of Madrid and the European Social Fund (MIMA-CM, H2019/HUM-5859), and the CNRS-CSIC program ALLIES-IRP (LIA2019FR1). Alberto Albahari acknowledges funding from Universidad de Málaga (B4-2023-01) and (B3-2020_01). Andrés Barge-Gil acknowledges funding from Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (ECO2017- 82445-R) and from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (PID2020-112984GB-C21). The authors are grate- ful to APTE, Asociación de Parques Científicos y Tecnológicos de España, for the support

Science and technology parks and their heterogeneous effect on firm innovation

Science and Technology Parks (STPs) have proliferated in many countries as an innovation policy tool. Previous studies have mostly used a homogeneous approach, leading to mixed results. This paper aims to explore whether there are factors which generate heterogeneous STP effects on the quality of patents filed by tenants. Creating a novel database of Spanish patents generated on- and off-park, merged with firm and STP characteristics, we find that younger and larger firms benefit more from being on-park and younger and older STPs generate a higher effect on tenants’ patent quality, while STPs promoted by universities exhibit a lower effect.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Science and technology parks and their heterogeneous effect on firm innovation

Science and Technology Parks (STPs) have proliferated in many countries as a policy initiative to foster innovation. Previous studies have mostly analysed average effects on the innovation performance of tenant firms, leading to mixed results. This paper aims to explore whether there are heterogeneous STP effects. Creating a novel database of Spanish patents generated on- and off- park, merged with firm and STP characteristics, we find that younger and larger firms benefit more from being on-park and younger and older STPs have a stronger effect on tenants’ patent quality, while STPs promoted by universities do not exhibit a differential effect.Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málaga / CBU

Primer registro de Rosalia alpina (Linnaeus 1758) (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae) en Prunus avium (L.) (Rosaceae)

The use of Prunus avium (L.) as habitat of the legally protected longicorn Rosalia alpina (Linnaeus, 1758) is recorded for the first time. The observations took place in a dying cherry tree located in a garden of a countryside land belonging to the municipality of Asteasu (Gipuzkoa). The presence of adults mating and looking for oviposition sites, exit holes, and one larva inside a dead branch suggest that R. alpina is able to complete its life cycle in the cherry tree. Two other saproxylic species, Cerambyx scopolii Fuessly, 1775 and Ampedus pomonae (Stephens, 1820), were found inside dead branches. In the region of the study area, R. alpina had only been previously recorded on Fagus sylvatica L. trees. Therefore, further research is suggested to determine the importance of other tree species like alternative habitat and their role in the conservation of R. alpina.El empleo de Prunus avium (L.) como hábitat para el longicornio legalmente protegido Rosalia alpina (Linnaeus, 1758) se registra por primera vez. Las observaciones tuvieron lugar en un cerezo moribundo localizado en un jardín en un entorno rural perteneciente al término municipal de Asteasu (Gipuzkoa). La presencia de adultos apareándose y buscando lugares para ovopositar, de orificios de salida y de una larva dentro de una rama muerta, sugieren que la especie es capaz de completar su ciclo biológico en el cerezo. Dentro de las ramas muertas se encontraron otras dos especies de saproxílicos: Cerambyx scopolii Fuessly, 1775 and Ampedus pomonae (Stephens, 1820). En la región del área de estudio, R. alpina sólo había sido previamente citada en ejemplares de Fagus sylvatica L. Por tanto, se recomiendan futuras investigaciones para determinar la importancia de otras especies de árboles como hábitat alternativo y su papel para la conservación de R. alpina

True power consumption labeling and mapping of the health system of the Castilla y León region in Spain by clustering techniques

[EN] The latest revisions in April 2018 of the 2010/31/UE and 2012/27/UE Directives on Energy Efficiency and Energy Savings respectively, point out the need of the development of smart energy indexes for buildings with the aim to (i) supervise the energy consumption on the building sector -that currently represents up to one third of the total final energy consumption- and (ii) lead the appropriate actions to transform the current buildings stock to nearly Zero Energy Buildings and Positive Energy Buildings. From public managed buildings, the Health System is the first energy consumer with great difference with other government administration sectors, such as Education or General Administration. Moreover, the energy bill has great impact on the sustainability of the public health care system. However, very few real data were available to characterize the energy demand on public buildings, which are usually the most intensive energy consumers, and efficiency indexes were usually obtained from simulation results. Nevertheless, thanks to the deployment of Smart Metering systems in the last years, it is possible to access to the true energy demand profiles of hundreds of these buildings. In this paper, with three years historical monthly electrical energy consumption data from the health system of the region of Castilla y León in Spain -including hospitals, outpatient facilities, clinics and other medical institutions- and the application of data mining techniques, an end-use electrical energy analysis was conducted to cluster the building housing according to the energy consumption into several energy use intensity clusters and, then, an average value and a Reference Building Energy Index for each cluster is proposed. Thus, a true energy labeling of these buildings based on their distance to the Reference Building Energy Index is done and presented in georeferenced maps.S

Discovery of Genes Implied in Cancer by Genetic Algorithms and Association Rules

This work proposes a methodology to identify genes highly related with cancer. In particular, a multi-objective evolutionary algo rithm named CANGAR is applied to obtain quantitative association rules. This kind of rules are used to identify dependencies between genes and their expression levels. Hierarchical cluster analysis, fold-change and review of the literature have been considered to validate the relevance of the results obtained. The results show that the reported genes are consistent with prior knowledge and able to characterize cancer colon patients.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2011-28956-C02-02Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2014-55894-C2-1-RJunta de Andalucía P11-TIC-7528Junta de Andalucía P12-TIC-172

Mitigating Communications Threats in Decentralized Federated Learning through Moving Target Defense

The rise of Decentralized Federated Learning (DFL) has enabled the training of machine learning models across federated participants, fostering decentralized model aggregation and reducing dependence on a server. However, this approach introduces unique communication security challenges that have yet to be thoroughly addressed in the literature. These challenges primarily originate from the decentralized nature of the aggregation process, the varied roles and responsibilities of the participants, and the absence of a central authority to oversee and mitigate threats. Addressing these challenges, this paper first delineates a comprehensive threat model, highlighting the potential risks of DFL communications. In response to these identified risks, this work introduces a security module designed for DFL platforms to counter communication-based attacks. The module combines security techniques such as symmetric and asymmetric encryption with Moving Target Defense (MTD) techniques, including random neighbor selection and IP/port switching. The security module is implemented in a DFL platform called Fedstellar, allowing the deployment and monitoring of the federation. A DFL scenario has been deployed, involving eight physical devices implementing three security configurations: (i) a baseline with no security, (ii) an encrypted configuration, and (iii) a configuration integrating both encryption and MTD techniques. The effectiveness of the security module is validated through experiments with the MNIST dataset and eclipse attacks. The results indicated an average F1 score of 95%, with moderate increases in CPU usage (up to 63.2% +-3.5%) and network traffic (230 MB +-15 MB) under the most secure configuration, mitigating the risks posed by eavesdropping or eclipse attacks

Fedstellar: A Platform for Training Models in a Privacy-preserving and Decentralized Fashion

This paper presents Fedstellar, a platform for training decentralized Federated Learning (FL) models in heterogeneous topologies in terms of the number of federation participants and their connections. Fedstellar allows users to build custom topologies, enabling them to control the aggregation of model parameters in a decentralized manner. The platform offers a Web application for creating, managing, and connecting nodes to ensure data privacy and provides tools to measure, monitor, and analyze the performance of the nodes. The paper describes the functionalities of Fedstellar and its potential applications. To demonstrate the applicability of the platform, different use cases are presented in which decentralized, semi-decentralized, and centralized architectures are compared in terms of model performance, convergence time, and network overhead when collaboratively classifying hand-written digits using the MNIST dataset

NGC1600 - Cluster or Field Elliptical?

A study of the galaxy distribution in the field of the elliptical galaxy NGC1600 has been undertaken. Although this galaxy is often classified as a member of a loose group, all the neighbouring galaxies are much fainter and could be taken as satellites of NGC1600. The number density profile of galaxies in the field of this galaxy shows a decline with radius, with evidence of a background at approximately 1.3 Mpc. The density and number density profile are consistent with that found for other isolated early-type galaxies. NGC1600 appears as an extended source in X-rays, and the center of the X-ray emission seems not to coincide with the center of the galaxy. The velocity distribution of neighbouring galaxies has been measured from optical spectroscopic observations and shows that the mean radial velocity is approximately 85 km/s less than that of NGC1600, indicating that the centre of mass could lie outside the galaxy. The velocity dispersion of the `group' is estimated at 429 km/s. The inferred mass of the system is therefore of the order of 10^14 solar masses, a value that corresponds to a large group. NGC1600 therefore shares some similarities, but is not identical to, the `fossil clusters' detected in X-ray surveys. Implications of this result for studies of isolated early-type galaxies are briefly discussed.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures and 2 table, accepted for publication in the Ap