This report outlines the results of an analysiscarried out by 1790 Analytics on behalf of NIST's Economic Analysis Officedesigned to evaluate the technological impact of technical outputs associated with NIST.The analysis is based primarily on locating technical outputssuch as patents, scientific journal articles, standards documents, conferences papers, and other forms of grey literatureassociated with NIST funding.We then trace forward from these technical outputs to determine how they have influenced subsequent technological developments, specifically those developments described in patents assigned to all organizations.The idea behind this analysis is that patents that reference NIST technical outputs as prior art build in some way on these NIST outputs.By determining how frequently NIST technical outputs have been cited by subsequent patents, it is thus possible to evaluate the extent to which NIST funded activities have helped form the foundation for a wide range of technologies.The main findings of this report are:Between January 1995 and July 2015, there were a total of 34,241 citations from US patents to NIST-supported technical outputs.This is an impressive figure, especially given the fact that NIST had only 201 US patents assigned to it through the end of 2014.It suggests that NIST's influence extends far beyond just its own patented inventions, and that the agency's activities help form the foundation for technological developments made by a wide range of other organizations. We divided the citations from US patents to NIST into four broad categories, based on the type of NIST technical output cited.The four categories are: patents assigned to NIST; patents in which NIST has a government interest; peer reviewed papers funded by NIST; and NIST grey literature. 14,538 (43%) of the 34,241 citations from US patents to NIST outputs are to peer reviewed papers authored by NIST-supported researchers; 9,062 (26%) are to patents in which NIST has a government interest (i.e.patents resulting from research funded by NIST in an external organization); and 2,173 (6%) are to patents assigned to NIST. The remaining 24% of citations from US patents to NIST technical outputs are to NIST grey literature.The largest of these grey literature categories is software, standard reference databases and algorithms, which accounts for 2,914 (8%) of citations from US patents to NIST documents.Other grey literature categories that receive significant

Forward citations are widely recognized as a useful measure of the impact of patents upon subsequent technological developments. However, an inherent characteristic of forward citations is that they take time to accumulate. This makes them valuable for retrospective impact evaluations, but less helpful for prospective forecasting exercises. To overcome this, it would be desirable to have indicators that forecast future citations at the time a patent is issued. In this paper, we outline one such indicator, based on the size of the inventor teams associated with patents. We demonstrate that, on average, patents with eight or more co-inventors are cited significantly more frequently in their first 5 years than peer patents with fewer inventors. This result holds true across technologies, assignee type, citation source (examiner versus applicant), and after self-citations are accounted for. We hypothesize that inventor team size may be a reflection of the amount of resources committed by an organization to a given innovation, with more researchers attached to innovations regarded as having particular promise or value.

•The Emerging Clusters Model for identifying emerging technologies is proposed.•The model locates emerging technologies in close to real time, not retrospectively.•The model uses advanced forms of patent citation analysis.•Patents identified by the model are significantly more highly cited than peer patents.

Emerging fields in science and technology are of great interest to innovation researchers, but such fields are often difficult to identify and characterize. This paper outlines a system for identifying a key element of emerging fields: their community of practice, consisting of active scientists and researchers. The system does not simply count these human actors and the interactions between them. Rather, guided by actant network theory, it also examines other non-human actors with which they interact, such as organizations, publications and terminologies. Using quantitative indicators inspired by actant network theory, and derived from features extracted from the full text and metadata of scientific publications and patents, the system attempts to identify communities of practice associated with emerging fields in science and technology. This paper outlines details of these features and indicators, describes how these indicators are combined using Bayesian models, and reports the results of applying these indicators to document sets associated with emerging scientific and technological fields. The results reported in this paper show that system outputs generally agree with subject matter expert judgments with respect to determining the existence of communities of practice, and appear to offer interesting insights into the development of emerging fields.

The purpose of this chapter is to explain how patent analysis is used for program evaluation, what research questions it can help to answer, how it is performed, and what are its limitations. Examples drawn from an evaluation study using patent analysis illustrate the approach. The analysis of patents is primarily applicable to evaluation of applied research programs and innovation because patents are knowledge outputs and indicators of invention. Patents disclose to society how an invention is practiced in exchange for the temporary right to exclude others from using the patented invention without the patent assignee's permission. Each patent reveals a list of references to informational sources, including publications and other patents, that predate it and that are relevant to the patent's claim of originality—that is they form the "prior art" of the new invention. The revelation of prior art enables an evaluator to identify what previous work has influenced a new invention, and allows the tracing of knowledge dissemination through patent citation analysis.

This paper outlines a system designed to determine whether practical applications exist for research fields, particularly emerging research fields. The system uses indicator patterns, based on features extracted from the metadata and full text of scientific papers and patents, to assess different characteristics that point to the existence of practical applications for research fields. The system may thus help determine whether a particular research field has moved beyond the early, conceptual phase towards a more applied, practical phase. It may also help to classify emerging research fields as being more 'technological' or more 'scientific' in nature. The system is tested on data from a number of research fields across a range of time periods, and the outputs are compared to responses from subject matter experts. The results suggest that the system shows promise, albeit based on a relatively small data sample, in terms of determining whether practical applications exist for given research fields. The system also shows promise in detecting the transition from absence to existence of practical applications over time, which may be of particular value in evaluating emerging technologies.

We fabricated superconducting MgB2 thin films on (001) MgO substrates. The samples were prepared by magnetron rf and dc co-sputtering on heated substrates. They were annealed ex-situ for one hour at temperatures between 450{\deg}C and 750{\deg}C. We will show that the substrate temperature during the sputtering process and the post annealing temperatures play a crucial role in forming MgB2 superconducting thin films. We achieved a critical onset temperature of 27.1K for a film thickness of 30nm. The crystal structures were measured by x-ray diffraction.

Mn3-xGa (x=0.1, 0.4, 0.7) thin films on MgO and SrTiO3 substrates were investigated with magnetic anisotropy perpendicular to the film plane. An anomalous Hall effect was observed for the tetragonal distorted lattice in the crystallographic D0(22) phase. The Hall resistivity Q(xy) was measured in a temperature range from 20 to 330 K. The determined skew scattering and side jump coefficients are discussed with regard to the film composition and used substrate and compared to the crystallographic and magnetic properties. (C) 2012 Elsevier By. All rights reserved.

There is growing interest in automating the detection of interesting new developments in science and technology. BAE Systems is pursuing ARBITER (Abductive Reasoning Based on Indicators and Topics of EmeRgence), a multi-disciplinary study and development effort to analyze full- text and metadata for indicators of emergent technologies and scientific fields. To define these indicators, our team has applied the primary insights of actant network theory developed within the disciplines of Science and Technology Studies and the history of technology and science to create a pragmatic theory of technoscientific emergence. Specifically, this practical theory articulates emergence in terms of the robustness of actant networks. This applied actant-network theory currently guides our definition of indicators and indicator patterns for the ARBITER system, and represents a novel contribution to the discussion of emergent technologies and fields. Several elements of our theory were validated with 15 case studies and 25 example technologies.

The anomalous Hall effect (AHE) in the Heusler compounds Co2FeSi and Co2FeAl is studied in dependence of the annealing temperature to achieve a general comprehension of its origin. We have demonstrated that the crystal quality affected by annealing processes is a significant control parameter to tune the electrical resistivity ρxx as well as the anomalous Hall resistivity ρahe. Analyzing the scaling behavior of ρahe in terms of ρxx points to a temperature-dependent skew scattering as the dominant mechanism in both Heusler compounds.

The magnetic anisotropy and transport properties of superconducting MgB2 thin films on MgO (100) substrates were studied. The films were prepared by rf/dc-magnetron cosputtering and with in situ annealing temperatures of 650 degrees C. The film orientation was measured by X-ray diffractometry, which revealed a c-axis orientation of the MgB2 films. The critical onset temperature without field cooling is 15.5 K. We found a critical field of 14.73 T parallel to the film plane and 10.79 T perpendicular to the film plane from transport measurements of the dependence of the applied magnetic field. Differential conductance measurements of a lateral MgB2/Fe/MgB2 junction show the Delta(pi) gap and the Delta(sigma) gap. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3671792]

Nanoparticle syntheses utilizing biomimetic approaches have advanced in recent years. Polypeptides, with their ability to influence inorganic crystal growth, are a topic of great interest. Their effect on the particle formation has not been completely understood yet. Here we report a bioinspired synthesis of cobalt ferrite nanoparticles carried out in vitro under mild conditions using a short, synthetic polypeptide c25-mms6. The influence of c25-mms6 on the nanoparticle formation was investigated by comparing the particles synthesized with the polypeptide to particles synthesized under equivalent conditions without c25-mms6. A separation into D small,av = 10 nm small, superparamagnetic spheres and D big,av = 48 nm disc-like single-domain particles was observed. Non-stoichiometric cobalt ferrite particles with a shape-dependent stoichiometry were produced in the polypeptide-free synthesis. Stoichiometric D small,av = 10 nm CoFe2O4 spheres and D big,av = 60–70 nm  Co2FeO4 ferromagnetic discs were obtained in the polypeptide-enhanced synthesis. The results indicate that the polypeptide acts as a catalyst during the multistep biomineralization process and allows the formation of stoichiometric phases which cannot be synthesized at room temperature using conventional bottom-up syntheses.

Introduction: Heart failure develops earlier and is more prevalent in blacks than whites because of their higher incidence of hypertension and diabetes and likely subsequent diastolic dysfunction. Natriuretic peptides (NP) prevent cardiac malfunction through pressure, natriuresis action. However, whether race affects the relationships of NP action with cardiac function is unknown. Methods: To assess this, 55 (21 whites and 27 males) normotensive adults underwent a 2-hour protocol of 40 minutes rest, video game stressor and recovery. Mitral inflow and myocardial velocities (tissue Doppler) were recorded every 20 minutes. Blood pressure and heart rate were obtained at 10-minute intervals. Blood samples for proatrial NP and pro-brain NP (pro-BNP) were collected every 40 minutes. Results: There were differences in the association between (1) the changes from rest to stress for E/A ratio and double product (whites, r = -0.42; blacks, r = 0. 10; P = 0.034 for difference between correlations); (2) stress E-m and pro-atrial NP (whites, r = 0.59; blacks, r = -0.25; P = 0.025); (3) rest E-m and BNP (whites, r = 0.83; blacks r = -0.17; P = 000); (4) rest E-m/A(m) and pro-BNP (whites, r = 0.70; blacks, r = -0.42; P = 0.003); (5) rest E/E-m and pro-BNP (whites, r = -0.61; blacks, r = 0.31; P = 0.015) and (6) stress E and pro-BNP (whites, r = 0.56; blacks, r = -0.18; P = 0.043). Conclusion: The higher correlations between levels of NP and diastolic function indices both at rest and stress suggest that NP protective action is more pronounced in whites than in blacks.

This study provides an evaluation of the Geothermal Technologies Program (GTP) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Specifically, for the period 1976 to 2008, it investigates the linkages between GTP's outputs and their downstream use by others to produce power from geothermal energy. The results are relevant for assessing DOE's past and future roles in the development and advancement of the nation's geothermal resources. In addition, the study investigates other applications of the GTP's outputs beyond power generation.

DOE's Solar Photovoltaic R&D Subprogram promotes the development of cost-effective systems for directly converting solar energy into electricity for residential, commercial, and industrial applications. This study was commissioned to assess the extent to which the knowledge outputs of R&D funded by the DOE Solar PV subprogram are linked to downstream developments in commercial renewable power. A second purpose was to identify spillovers of the resulting knowledge to other areas of application. A third purpose was to lend support to a parallel benefit-cost study by contributing evidence of attribution of benefits to DOE.