How to assess a company's open innovation situation?

Open Innovation (OI) supports companies in systematically collaborating with external partners, offering various advantages. However, companies still face several challenges when applyingOI, e.g., identifying relevantOI partners, collaborationmethods, and project risks. Often, insufficient planning is the reason for subsequent deficits in OI projects. The analysis of relevant context factors ('situation') is important, which affect and constrain OI. To date, a general approach for analyzing (open) innovation situations or guidelines for developing one do not exist. Usually researchers develop their own situation analysis, including extensive literature reviews and experiencing similar challenges. This publication sets the basis for successfully planning OI projects. It focuses on developing an analysis approach for OI situations and supports other researchers in developing their own analysis approaches. The resultant objectives of the publication are to: (1) provide a list of potential situation analysis criteria; (2) provide a guideline for developing a situation analysis; (3) provide initial indications of relevant OI-specific situation criteria. The criteria were derived from the literature and qualitatively evaluated by three industry partners to assess their usability. Although this work is exploratory, and the results are not automatically generalizable, it is an important contribution for ensuring the success of OI, and for analyzing enablers and barriers to knowledge transfer from academia to industry

The ALPS project release 2.0: Open source software for strongly correlated systems

We present release 2.0 of the ALPS (Algorithms and Libraries for Physics Simulations) project, an open source software project to develop libraries and application programs for the simulation of strongly correlated quantum lattice models such as quantum magnets, lattice bosons, and strongly correlated fermion systems. The code development is centered on common XML and HDF5 data formats, libraries to simplify and speed up code development, common evaluation and plotting tools, and simulation programs. The programs enable non-experts to start carrying out serial or parallel numerical simulations by providing basic implementations of the important algorithms for quantum lattice models: classical and quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) using non-local updates, extended ensemble simulations, exact and full diagonalization (ED), the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) both in a static version and a dynamic time-evolving block decimation (TEBD) code, and quantum Monte Carlo solvers for dynamical mean field theory (DMFT). The ALPS libraries provide a powerful framework for programers to develop their own applications, which, for instance, greatly simplify the steps of porting a serial code onto a parallel, distributed memory machine. Major changes in release 2.0 include the use of HDF5 for binary data, evaluation tools in Python, support for the Windows operating system, the use of CMake as build system and binary installation packages for Mac OS X and Windows, and integration with the VisTrails workflow provenance tool. The software is available from our web server at http://alps.comp-phys.org/.Comment: 18 pages + 4 appendices, 7 figures, 12 code examples, 2 table

Demographic, clinical and antibody characteristics of patients with digital ulcers in systemic sclerosis: data from the DUO Registry

OBJECTIVES: The Digital Ulcers Outcome (DUO) Registry was designed to describe the clinical and antibody characteristics, disease course and outcomes of patients with digital ulcers associated with systemic sclerosis (SSc). METHODS: The DUO Registry is a European, prospective, multicentre, observational, registry of SSc patients with ongoing digital ulcer disease, irrespective of treatment regimen. Data collected included demographics, SSc duration, SSc subset, internal organ manifestations, autoantibodies, previous and ongoing interventions and complications related to digital ulcers. RESULTS: Up to 19 November 2010 a total of 2439 patients had enrolled into the registry. Most were classified as either limited cutaneous SSc (lcSSc; 52.2%) or diffuse cutaneous SSc (dcSSc; 36.9%). Digital ulcers developed earlier in patients with dcSSc compared with lcSSc. Almost all patients (95.7%) tested positive for antinuclear antibodies, 45.2% for anti-scleroderma-70 and 43.6% for anticentromere antibodies (ACA). The first digital ulcer in the anti-scleroderma-70-positive patient cohort occurred approximately 5 years earlier than the ACA-positive patient group. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides data from a large cohort of SSc patients with a history of digital ulcers. The early occurrence and high frequency of digital ulcer complications are especially seen in patients with dcSSc and/or anti-scleroderma-70 antibodies

Mirror concepts of the new wiggler and undulator beamlines at HASYLAB

The mirror concept of the new HASYLAB bypass beamlines has as its main design goal the handling of the large radiation power of up to 7 kW from wigglers and undulators. The first optical element is a SiC‐coated graphite mirror which acts as an energy low pass filter. The choice of the material, the cooling scheme, the mirrorchamber design, and the additional focusing mirrors are described

Identifying open innovation partners: A methodology for strategic partner selection

By opening a company's innovation process, and allowing purposeful collaboration with external partners, Open Innovation (OI) offers several advantages, such as the use of external expertise, shorter time-to-market and reduced failure rates. However, the success of OI projects is directly linked to the selection of suitable partners, who operationally or strategically contribute to reach the goal of the OI project. Despite this relevance of OIpartner selection, methodical support has hitherto been limited -it is either too abstract to be helpful in practice, or too focused on single aspects. This paper presents a methodical approach to close this gap by combining identification and selection approaches from different fields, such as stakeholder analysis, lead-user identification and systems engineering. The methodology was evaluated in an industrial OI-project with an SME from plant manufacturing

The WST survival assay: An easy and reliable method to screen radiation-sensitive individuals.

An easy, fast and reliable method was developed to screen hundreds of Epstein-Barr virus-transformed cell lines (lymphoblastoid cell lines, LCLs) for radiation sensitivity that were generated from lymphocytes isolated from young lung cancer patients. The WST-1 test explores the metabolic activity of the mitochondria as an indicator for the vital status of cells. Cell proliferation as well as indirect cell death can be quantified by this method on a large scale in microtiter plates. Cell survival was measured at 24- and 48-h post-irradiation with 10 Gy ((137)Cs source) by the WST-1 assay and Trypan blue staining. To set up the experimental screening conditions and to establish a positive and a negative control, an ATM-mutated cell line from a radiation-sensitive ATM patient and an ATM proficient cell line from a healthy brother were compared. An optimal differentiation between the two cell lines was demonstrated for 10 Gy and 24- and 48-h cell growth after irradiation. Upon screening 120 LCLs of young lung cancer patients under these conditions, 5 of them were found to be radiation sensitive to a high degree of statistical significance. The results have been confirmed by a second laboratory by means of Trypan blue testing. The WST-1 test represents an efficient and reliable method by means of screening for radiation-sensitive cell lines