SB Science Management

Abstract Interfacing light from solid-state single-photon sources with scalable and robust room-temperature quantum memories has been a long-standing challenge in photonic quantum information technologies due to inherent noise processes and time-scale mismatches between the operating conditions of solid-state and atomic systems. Here, we demonstrate storage of single photons from a semiconductor quantum dot (QD) device in a room-temperature atomic vapor memory and their on-demand retrieval. A deterministically fabricated InGaAs QD light source emits single photons at the wavelength of the cesium D1 line at 895 nm which exhibit an inhomogeneously broadened linewidth of 5.1(7) GHz and are subsequently stored in a low-noise ladder-type cesium vapor memory. We show control over the interaction between the single photons and the atomic vapor, allowing for variable retrieval times of up to 19.8(3) ns. A maximum internal efficiency of η int = 0.6 ( 1 ) % is achieved. Our results expand the application space of both room-temperature vapor memories and semiconductor QDs in future quantum network architectures.

We suggest how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help us make more accurate legal liability provisions under International Accounting Standards. International Financial Reporting Standards provide considerable guidance on how uncertain legal events should be recognized on the balance sheet. The process is subjective and, we argue, a more qualitative approach would be beneficial. We recommend the use of Artificial Intelligence to get a tentative outcome and a more reliable liability assessment for use in financial statements. This would provide a more true and fair view of the outcome of disputes. We discuss the theoretical and practical issues raised by using Artificial Intelligence to value provisions and propose a way of applying it to calculations of provisions under IAS 37.

Today, academic researchers benefit from the changes driven by digital technologies and the enormous growth of knowledge and data, on globalisation, enlargement of the scientific community, and the linkage between different scientific communities and the society. To fully benefit from this development, however, information needs to be shared openly and transparently. Digitalisation plays a major role here because it permeates all areas of business, science and society and is one of the key drivers for innovation and international cooperation. To address the resulting opportunities, the EU promotes the development and use of collaborative ways to produce and share knowledge and data as early as possible in the research process, but also to appropriately secure results with the European strategy for Open Science (OS). It is now widely recognised that making research results more accessible to all societal actors contributes to more effective and efficient science; it also serves as a boost for innovation in the public and private sectors. However for research data to be findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable the use of standards is essential. At the metadata level, considerable efforts in standardisation have already been made (e.g. Data Management Plan and FAIR Principle etc.), whereas in context with the raw data these fundamental efforts are still fragmented and in some cases completely missing. The CHARME consortium, funded by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Agency, has identified needs and gaps in the field of standardisation in the life sciences and also discussed potential hurdles for implementation of standards in current practice. Here, the authors suggest four measures in response to current challenges to ensure a high quality of life science research data and their re-usability for research and innovation.

Search and recombination are important mechanisms in the creativity phase of innovation. Digital transformation and the resulting pervasive digitalization of the innovation function have often been associated with increasing possibilities for search and recombination. In this paper, by systematically integrating the search and recombination literature with the literature on digitalization, we demonstrate that digitalization may engender new idiosyncratic tensions in the organizational antecedents of search and recombination and, by implication, in their likely outcomes. We propose that, depending on the interactions among the idiosyncratic tensions identified herein, knowledge recombination might spur very different outcomes, including knowledge layering, knowledge integration, knowledge grafting, or even no recombination at all (which we label “search for the sake of search”). These outcomes may not always be the initially planned desired outcomes. Finally, we provide implications of our integrative framework pertaining to product development and to organizing for innovation.

In der Aus- und Weiterbildung hat es in den letzten Jahren durch die Moglichkeiten der Onlinelehre grose Veranderungen gegeben. Am Beispiel der 2011 gegrundeten Onlineweiterbildungsplattform 123sonography wird aufgezeigt, wie medizinische Lehre im 21. Jahrhundert international skalierbar ist. Mehr als 220.000 Arzte aus 200 Landern lernen mit der Onlineplattform Ultraschall. Der einmalige Zugang zu einer grosen Zahl von Arzten aus der ganzen Welt wird auch wissenschaftlich eingesetzt, um die Moglichkeiten und Grenzen der visuellen Beurteilung von Ultraschallbildern zu erforschen.

The authors of this paper spent over three decades on average working with, for and on business decision takers, typically top executives. We have been working with them in different parts of their organisations, for them in a variety of advisory roles, and on them in various research projects trying to understand the process of decision making and decision taking. In this paper we reflect on our consultancy and research experience involving decision takers in order to conceptualize a distinction between two types of decisions with regards to the way of supporting them. Therefore, purpose of the study could be described as an attempt of a minimalist decision typology (involving only two types) where the two decision types are achieved by their characteristics and then we argue that two different approaches to decision support can be useful for the two types of decisions. This paper qualifies as a conceptual one informed by underlying empirical studies. These empirical underpinnings comprise of three types: (1) designed as qualitative empirical research projects, involving participant observations, interviews, focus groups, and knowledge modelling using knowledge-based expert systems, (2) consultancy carried out through executive coaching and knowledge engineering, and (3) a mix of the previous two in action research projects. We reflect on these experiences in this paper drawing speculative conclusions using retrospective sensemaking – therefore the resulting model is a conceptual one and we offer it for debate and potential conceptual for forthcoming research projects for the academic audience interested in decision making. Additionally, the model can also be useful for practicing executives, in deciding what kind of decision support to seek for the particular decision at hand, as well as for consultants to figure out what type of decision support to offer. The super-large decisions that may redefine the organisation we call Icons (with capital ‘I’), referring to the notion of Iconic. These decisions require exceptionally high degree of competence. The second group consists of those insignificant decisions that do not require any substantial degree of competence; we call these as icons (with lower case ‘i’) referring to the icons that we need to click or touch in order to run an app on our computers, tablets, smartphones or wearables. It is perhaps obvious that Icons need very different types of decision support than icons. To get a better understanding of this, we need to look at the dominant knowledge type used in the decision situations. We distinguish three types of knowledge: facts, skills, and intuition. Facts are not of primary focus in most decision situations and these are pre-processed and provided by ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems. Skills play a significant role in the professional lives of practicing managers, but they actually need one single skill: communication. Good managers are typically good communicators. Therefore, the focus in the case of both Icons and icons is intuition. In Icons the dominant knowledge is focal intuition, which we call hunch. The dominant knowledge in icons is subsidiary intuition, which we call explanation. Thus, Icons call for a coach who can help decision takers clarify their expectations, while icons need knowledge-based expert systems which can help develop organisational routines.

This paper analyses the degree to which lifetime production and availability figures are subject to variation due to inherent inter annual climate variations. This is achieved by performing operational simulations based on different measurement periods chosen from 10 years of historic wind and wave data in the North Sea, establishing the financial implications this has for the industry. The investigation is carried out using a robust Monte Carlo simulation climate and lifetime operational expenditure model. Significant variations are observed with regards to availability, power production and OPEX costs with OPEX costs varying by 15% above and below the average value when a single year is used for the simulation input. It has also been demonstrated that results with similar availability predictions can have divergent power production and OPEX results. This is explained by the correlations between wind speed, wave height, accessibility and power production. The best practice to minimize uncertainty in cost projections from short term measurement campaigns has been identified.

This paper introduces a disposable battery-driven heating system for loop-mediated isothermal DNA amplification (LAMP) inside a centrifugally-driven DNA purification platform (LabTube). We demonstrate LabTube-based fully automated DNA purification of as low as 100 cell-equivalents of verotoxin-producing Escherichia coli (VTEC) in water, milk and apple juice in a laboratory centrifuge, followed by integrated and automated LAMP amplification with a reduction of hands-on time from 45 to 1 min. The heating system consists of two parallel SMD thick film resistors and a NTC as heating and temperature sensing elements. They are driven by a 3 V battery and controlled by a microcontroller. The LAMP reagents are stored in the elution chamber and the amplification starts immediately after the eluate is purged into the chamber. The LabTube, including a microcontroller-based heating system, demonstrates contamination-free and automated sample-to-answer nucleic acid testing within a laboratory centrifuge. The heating system can be easily parallelized within one LabTube and it is deployable for a variety of heating and electrical applications.

This article describes a method for estimating the reliability of a system under development that is an evolution of previous designs. We present an approach to making effective use of heritage data from similar operational systems to estimate reliability of a design that is yet to realise any data. The approach also has a mechanism to adjust initial estimates in the light of sparse data that becomes available in early stages of test. While the estimation approach, known as empirical Bayes is generic, we focus on one shot devices as this was the type of system which provided the practical motivation for this work and for which we illustrate an application.