How does a prior alliance between target and acquirer affect R&D performance?

The pharmaceutical industry has been in the spotlight for the last decades regarding some conflicting trends. Despite a consistent increase in research and development (R&D) investment, the number of approved drugs has remained, at most, constant. In addition, the pharma industry has witnessed a large trend in consolidation through mergers and acquisitions (M&As), which has not always translated in an improvement in R&D productivity. The aims of this paper are to study the effect of a pre-acquisition alliance on the R&D productivity of the merged firm, as well as looking at specific alliance characteristics that may influence this outcome. This study looks at the pharmaceutical industry from 1981 to 2017 and finds that the existence of an alliance prior to a merger negatively affects the R&D productivity of the merged firm. Reasons for this relationship may be that the knowledge gained during the alliance period does not benefit the acquirer in a way that is significant enough to increase its R&D productivity, or even that this earned insight is not immediately reflected during the post-M&A period. The implications of these findings look to improve the understanding of the productivity crisis in the pharmaceutical sector

D19 final plan for using and disseminating knowledge

This document presents the Final Plan for Using and Disseminating Knowledge acquired throughout the development of the CYCLOPS project as deliverable D19. It includes a description of the main achievements in disseminating knowledge, and the consortium and each participant’s plans for the exploitation of the results for the consortium as a whole, or for individual participants or groups of participants. It updates the Plan for Using and Disseminating Knowledge that was presented as Deliverable D4 and describes the final dissemination plan of the CYCLOPS project. This deliverable provides a strategy aimed at addressing various target communities in order to achieve the project dissemination and exploitation goals. After an update of the dissemination instruments employed, the deliverable focuses on the description of the dissemination activities carried out. In addition to the normal dissemination and exploitation of the work through scientific journals and professional bodies, Civil Protection Community will be specifically targeted for dissemination of the CYCLOPS deliverables, and their future exploitation of the results. Other written deliverables focus on presenting dissemination activities in specific subject areas. In particular deliverable D17 reports “the results of the dissemination of EGEE towards the Civil Protection community, and about the coordination between the EGEE and CYCLOPS activities”, deliverable D18 focuses on “collecting the CYCLOPS project results for dissemination towards different interested audiences such as Grid communities, other Civil protection agencies, but also national and international initiative and projects, SMEs, etc.” and deliverable D20 that reports “the extent to which actors beyond the research community have been involved to help spread awareness and to explore the wider societal implications of the proposed work

EGEE roll: a framework to fully-automated site deployment & management

The work focuses on an easy to use framework that automates the deployment and management of all EGEE components in sites where a common Grid operating environment must be rapidly setup. The approach is based on the Rocks Toolkit and is supported around the concept of ROLL, an isolated package containing software and configuration files, used to install and configure specific software packages and to create new appliances with little involvement from system administrator.FC

SEED GERMINATION OF Pouteria torta (MART.) RADLK. SUBESP. torta IN DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS

Germination is considered a critical step in the seedling production process aiming the recovery of environments. Thus, understanding the germination behavior of native species with potential for economic use contributes to the development of the forest seed and seedling chain. Considering the limited information on the tree species Pouteria torta subesp. torta, this study aimed to evaluate its seed germination and formation of normal seedlings using different temperatures and substrates. The experiment was conducted in germination chamber in a research laboratory using two substrates (paper and vermiculite) and six temperatures (20, 25, 30, 35, 20-30 and 25-35 °C) in a completely randomized design in a 2x6 factorial arrangement. Daily evaluation was conducted to verify primary root emission, seed vigor, and seedling formation. The results indicated that the primary root protrusion process began after 20 days of testing under the best conditions, with germination time lasting longer than two months. The results obtained also showed that there was interaction between factors, with use of the vermiculite substrate and the temperatures of 35 and 25-35 °C producing the best germination rates and germination speed index, and use of the paper substrate and the temperatures of 30 and 35 °C showing the best mean germination time. Considering the analyzed variables (germination, germination speed index, and formation of normal seedlings), the temperatures of 35 and 25-35 °C and the vermiculite substrate are the most suitable for the production of Pouteria torta subesp. torta seedlings

Contribution of portuguese vernacular building strategies to indoor thermal comfort and occupants’ perception

Solar passive strategies that have been developed in vernacular architecture from different regions are a response to specific climate effects. These strategies are usually simple, low-tech and have low potential environmental impact. For this reason, several studies highlight them as having potential to reduce the demands of non-renewable energy for buildings operation. In this paper, the climatic contrast between northern and southern parts of mainland Portugal is presented, namely the regions of Beira Alta and Alentejo. Additionally, it discusses the contribution of different climate-responsive strategies developed in vernacular architecture from both regions to assure thermal comfort conditions. In Beira Alta, the use of glazed balconies as a strategy to capture solar gains is usual, while in Alentejo the focus is on passive cooling strategies. To understand the effectiveness of these strategies, thermal performances and comfort conditions of two case studies were evaluated based on the adaptive comfort model. Field tests included measurement of hygrothermal parameters and surveys on occupants’ thermal sensation. From the results, it has been found that the case studies have shown a good thermal performance by passive means alone and that the occupants feel comfortable, except during winter where there is the need to use simple heating systems.The authors would like to acknowledge the support granted by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in the scope of the project with the reference EXPL/ECM-COM/1801/2013, and in the scope of the Doctoral Program Eco-Construction and Rehabilitation that supports the PhD scholarship with the reference PD/BD/113641/2015, that were fundamental for the development of this study. The authors also wish to thank the owners of case study buildings, Jose Pombo, Joao Cordovil and Isabel Gaivao, and also to Direcao Regional de Agricultura e Pescas do Norte (DRAPN) for helping and supporting this research work

Project results presentation (deliverable D18)

This document is a report which collects together the CYCLOPS project results for dissemination to different interested audiences such as Grid communities and Civil Protection agencies. It also reports on national and international initiatives and projects, SMEs, training activities and related projects. The structure of this document shows the approach used in the project. Following an introduction, it describes a set of related projects, namely grid- based technologies/EGEE, risk management, and GMEs-based services. It then presents the business of Civil Protection and the use cases selected. These highlight the grid requirements for Grid-based CP applications. The research strategies and enhancements needed for the EGEE infra-structure are identified, based on the use cases. Dissemination of training and knowledge to different communities are also key points of the project.FP

CoR's Faster Route over Myrinet

In this paper we concentrate in the efforts made to exploit the performance of Myrinet to build a faster communication route into CoR1. By accessing the Myrinet interface through GM2, we achieved low latency and high bandwidth message passing without the overhead of a higher level protocol stack, system calls or interrupts. CoR is an ongoing project unique in its design goal of combining multithreading, message passing and distributed shared memory with facilities to dynamically select from different transport media and protocols the one that best fits communication and interaction requirements. The ability to mix CoR and PVM calls in the same program brings numerous benefits to the application developer familiar with PVM, notably: 1) new transport communication layers; PvmRouteMyrinet and PvmRouteUdp; 2) migration mechanisms for exploiting fine grain message passing; 3) thread-safe communication PVM API; 4) object-oriented distributed shared memory

Biomimetic strategies to engineer mineralised human tissues

In the last few years, many reports have been describing promising biocompatible and biodegradable materials that can mimic in a certain extent the multidimensional hierarchical structure of bone, while are also capable of releasing bioactive agents or drugs in a controlled manner. Despite these great advances, new developments in the design and fabrication technologies are required to address the need to engineer suitable biomimetic materials in order tune cells functions, i.e. enhance cell-biomaterial interactions, and promote cell adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation ability. Scaffolds, hydrogels, fibres and composite materials are the most commonly used as biomimetics for bone tissue engineering. Dynamic systems such as bioreactors have also been attracting great deal of attention as it allows developing a wide range of novel in vitro strategies for the homogeneous coating of scaffolds and prosthesis with ceramics, and production of biomimetic constructs, prior its implantation in the body. Herein, it is overviewed the biomimetic strategies for bone tissue engineering, recent developments and future trends. Conventional and more recent processing methodologies are also described