Intellectual property:an underestimated and undermanaged asset?

Intellectual Property (IP) is becoming more and more important for competitive advantage and companies’ success. We argue that making IP a key issue is essential and will be one of the main factors driving future business success. Nevertheless many companies have not yet managed to integrate IP into strategy development and all critical business processes and thus do not get the maximum value out of it. This article aims to show how companies can systematically develop and implement an IP strategy following a three-step approach. First, it is important for the management to get a more transparent picture about strengths and weaknesses of the current IP position. Modern IP database tools help to achieve this goal. In the second phase the management should evaluate whether the company is successful in realizing the full market and strategic potential of technologies with IP strength and how to cope with areas of IP weaknesses. After an in-depth evaluation an IP-strategy should be defined and implemented. In our experience strategy execution requires a clear commitment from the top management, clear roles & responsibilities, proper monitoring, a more intensive collaboration on IP issues between R&D, Marketing, Patent attorneys and often even changes in corporate structures and processes

Stability of quantum-dot excited-state laser emission under simultaneous ground-state perturbation

The impact of ground state amplification on the laser emission of In(Ga)As quantum dot excited state lasers is studied in time-resolved experiments. We find that a depopulation of the quantum dot ground state is followed by a drop in excited state lasing intensity. The magnitude of the drop is strongly dependent on the wavelength of the depletion pulse and the applied injection current. Numerical simulations based on laser rate equations reproduce the experimental results and explain the wavelength dependence by the different dynamics in lasing and non-lasing sub-ensembles within the inhomogeneously broadened quantum dots. At high injection levels, the observed response even upon perturbation of the lasing sub-ensemble is small and followed by a fast recovery, thus supporting the capacity of fast modulation in dual-state devices

High-Performance Query Processing of a Real-World OLAP Database with ParGRES

International audienc

PBrowse: A web-based platform for real-time collaborative exploration of genomic data

© 2017 The Author(s). Genome browsers are widely used for individually exploring various types of genomic data. A handful of genome browsers offer limited tools for collaboration among multiple users. Here, we describe PBrowse, an integrated real-time collaborative genome browser that enables multiple users to simultaneously view and access genomic data, thereby harnessing the wisdom of the crowd. PBrowse is based on the Dalliance genome browser and has a re-designed user and data management system with novel collaborative functionalities, including real-time collaborative view, track comment and an integrated group chat feature. Through the Distributed Annotation Server protocol, PBrowse can easily access a wide range of publicly available genomic data, such as the ENCODE data sets. We argue that PBrowse represents a paradigm shift from using a genome browser as a static data visualization tool to a platform that enables real-time human–human interaction and knowledge exchange in a collaborative setting. PBrowse is available at http://pbrowse.victorchang.edu.au, and its source code is available via an open source BSD 3 license at http://github.com/VCCRI/PBrowse

Replica Refresh Strategies in a Database Cluster

Abstract. Relaxing replica freshness has been exploited in database clusters to optimize load balancing. However, in most approaches, refreshment is typically coupled with other functions such as routing or scheduling, which makes it hard to analyze the impact of the refresh strategy itself on performance. In this paper, we propose to support routing-independent refresh strategies in a database cluster with mono-master lazy replication. First, we propose a model for capturing existing refresh strategies. Second, we describe the support of this model in Refresco, a middleware prototype for freshness-aware routing in database clusters. Third, we describe an experimental validation to test some typical strategies against different workloads. The results show that the choice of the best strategy depends not only on the workload, but also on the conflict rate between transactions and queries and on the freshness level required by queries. Although there is no strategy that is best in all cases, we found that one strategy is usually good and could be used as default strategy. This work was partially financed through the ANR-ARA Respire project