Seed dormancy is an adaptive mechanism that allows seed germination under suitable environmental conditions. Germination of stored dormant seeds proceeds after dormancy breaking induced by ...stratification. To improve understanding of dormancy breaking in beechnuts, we: investigated effects of moisture content and temperature during storage; analysed contents of abscisic acid, abscisic acid metabolites and indole-3-acetic acid in embryonic axes during storage and stratification; and histochemically localized storage proteins in embryogenic axes and cotyledons of beechnut embryos. The results show that storage conditions can affect the nuts’ abscisic acid contents, but not the stratification process. In addition, dormancy breaking is linked to a reduction in abscisic acid contents and depth of dormancy is not influenced by either of these storage factors. Detected changes that correlated most strongly with dormancy breaking were a big increase in abscisic acid-glucosyl ester levels and accompanying reduction in the abscisic acid-glucosyl ester to abscisic acid ratio. We detected extremely low concentrations of other abscisic acid metabolites-neophaseic, phaseic and dihydrophaseic acids—in non-dormant stored beechnuts, but somewhat higher concentrations during dormancy. No relationships between changes in indole-3-acetic acid levels with either storage conditions or dormancy breaking were detected. Changes in distributions of storage proteins were related to the seeds’ moisture content during storage and stratification rather than seed dormancy. We conclude that increases in endogenous abscisic acid-glucosyl ester levels and abscisic acid-glucosyl ester to abscisic acid ratios are good markers of depth of dormancy and/or effectiveness of stratification in beechnuts.
An effective knowledge transfer between research institutions and industry is a significant bottleneck in the national innovation system. CR adopted in recent years a series of systemic measures ...aimed to stimulate the orientation of the R&D organizations towards the generation of knowledge directly applicable in the innovation process and more generally to improve the collaboration of the R&D establishment with the industry. In the majority of programs supporting the applied research patents and industrial designs and utility models are among the anticipated results. The Methodology of the evaluation of R&D organizations implemented in the second half of the last decade brought financial bonuses for the creation of the results in the category of industrial property. Despite of this stimulus CR lags behind the technologically advanced EU countries in the patent activities. The topic of this article is a comparison of the protection of the industrial property rights in the Czech higher education institutions and governmental R&D institutions with selected EU countries. We make use of a couple of quantitative indicators to assess the quality and the technological and the commercial potential of the produced industrial property. Despite a dynamic growth of the patent applications in the CR the number of patent applications relative to the country size is far below the EU-15 average. The Czech research organizations contribute to a higher extent to the number of patent applications then do the analogous institutions in EU-15 countries where the majority of patent applications come from the industrial sphere. The Czech research organizations mainly limit the patent rights to the Czech Republic whereas in the EU-15 countries the opposite is preponderant and only a small fraction of patent applications remains limited to the national environment. Thus the majority of the Czech patents created by research organizations cannot be commercialized on the international scene nor can contribute to the international competitiveness of the Czech industry. The patent applications submitted by the Czech research organizations are significantly less cited. This indicates that the protected intellectual property is of lesser importance. The Methodology of the evaluation of research organizations which was implemented in the second half of the last decade has visibly stimulated the patent activities of the research organizations but simultaneously an absence of any assessment of a future commercialization promoted a production of intellectual property of a limited commercial usability.
The Czech Republic is at the forefront of the EU in the contribution of the manufacturing to the total gross value added. The Czech industry contributes significantly to the positive balance of trade ...of the country. The overall international competitiveness of the Czech Republic will depend upon the innovation performance of the manufacturing sector and its competitiveness on the foreign markets. A necessary condition for extending the share on the foreign markets is the effective harnessing of the national R&D capacity and a strong qualified local workforce. This contribution uses a bibliometric and a patent analysis for the assessment of the R&D carried out by the Czech higher education institutions (HEIs) oriented towards the engineering fields, and selected more general universities, and compares them with similar HEIs in a selected group of developed countries. The analysis indicates that the Czech publication activity in the field of engineering grows. The Czech publications in engineering are cited below the world average which indicates that their impact (and to some extent the quality of the underlying R&D) lags behind the world. The patent activity of the Czech HEIs is on the international scale rather weak. The patenting activity of the Czech HEIs strongly grows since the middle of the last decade. This may by a side effect of the new evaluation methodology which takes into account also the patents. The number of patents registered with the Czech Industrial Property Office increases but on the other hand the international patenting activities tend to stagnate. This gives rise to questions about the real value of the produced patents from the point of their importance for the export competitiveness of the Czech industry.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the dynamically evolving research fields on the global scale. The world production of publication associated with the AI field increased by a third over the ...four-year period 2013–2017. Even less research intensive countries as Iran, Turkey, India and Indonesia appear to increase the share of the AI topics in their publication output. In the Czech Republic the fraction of publications in the AI field increased by approximately 10 % over this period. It makes the lowest increase within the EU/EEA. The field normalized citation index of the Czech publications in the year 2016 was above the world average but it is deeply below the top countries USA, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Singapore, and Norway. The extent of international cooperation in AI is generally below the world average. The Czech Republic falls into the group of less cooperating countries. The countries exhibiting the highest growth in AI research are underrepresented in the Czech cooperation portfolio. The fraction of Czech publications in AI coauthored by foreign authors is lower than the national average. It indicates a lower international collaboration in comparison with other research fields. CR falls also in the group of countries less engaged in the international cooperation. The Czech international collaboration misses the countries exhibiting the most vigorous R&D in AI. The international collaboration adds to the quality of the research. The Czech publications originating from the international collaboration are cited above the country average for the AI field. It is even more significant in the collaboration with researchers from the top countries in the AI R&D. The patent activity in the AI field has grown significantly in recent years. There is a marked increase of patent applications having inventors/applicants from more than one country. It indicates that the applied R&D in AI has a more international character in comparison with other technology fields. A high intensity of collaboration in the authorship of patent applications is within language and geographically neighbouring countries and with countries having a highly internationalized R&D system. Multinational corporations involved in international innovation networks contribute also to the international cooperation. ICT corporations like IBM, Google, or Microsoft which often employ foreign researchers have a dominant role in international cooperation. The R&D of the Czech enterprises is relatively closed to the international cooperation. Domestic enterprises in AI use foreign employees in a small extent. The domestic enterprises even do not tap into the pool of intellectual property authored by the Czech researchers. The majority of patents with participation of Czech inventors is registered by foreign corporations.
This article aims to examine the character of the international relationships of the Czech Republic in R&D in the Key Enabling Technologies (KETs), and in the protection of international industrial ...property rights. The analysis of the publication activities indicates an increase of the internationalization of the Czech R&D in nanotechnology and to a lesser extent in advanced manufacturing technologies both in an absolute volume and relatively to the overall internalization of the whole Czech R&D system. The R&D related to KETs uses the foreign expertise less than is the overall extent of the R&D international collaboration of the Czech Republic. The traditional Czech R&D partners USA, UK, and Germany dominate in the KETs oriented collaborations. The collaboration in photonics and micro- and nanoelectronic with Japan, in nanotechnology with Malaysia and in advanced materials with Singapore is significantly higher than the overall collaboration with these countries. On the other side it is rather disquieting, that countries with advanced R&D like Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden are underrepresented in the KETs oriented Czech collaborative research. The patent analysis indicates that almost a half of the inventions in which the Czech researchers participated, is co-owned by foreign subjects. This probably relates to a significant number of global corporations or subsidiaries with R&D operating in the Czech Republic. In micro- and nanolelectronics and to a significant extent in photonics more than half of patent applications are co-owned by foreign entities. Most of the patent applications originating from Czech inventors are owned by US subjects. On the other hand the fraction of patent applications which have foreign inventors and are co-owned by Czech subjects is significantly lower in comparison with developed countries.
"Klícové umoznující technologie" (Key Enabling Technologies, KETs) predstavující technologie nárocné na znalosti a spojené s intenzivním VaV, rychlými inovacními cykly, vysokými kapitálovými náklady ...a vysoce kvalifikovanými pracovními místy, jsou zdrojem inovací v celé rade technologických oblastí. KETs proto stojí v popredí zájmu tvurcu politiky výzkumu, vývoje a inovací a jsou zapracovány do rady strategicko-koncepcních dokumentu zamerených na oblast VaVaI. V CR jsou KETs zapracovány do Strategie pro inteligentní specializaci (RIS3) a také nekteré nove pripravené programy na podporu VaVaI svými cíli a zamerením zohlednují tyto technologické oblasti. Jak vsak vyplývá z provedené analýzy, CR ve VaV zatím ve vetsine KETs zaostává nejen za predními technologicky vyspelými zememi, jako jsou USA ci Korejská republika, ale i za prumerem zemí EU-28. Uspokojivou pozici má CR pouze v prípade nanotechnologií, kde patentová i publikacní aktivita predstihuje vetsinu clenských státu EU. Naopak nejvetsí "zaostávání" je patrné v prípade mikro- a nanoelektroniky. Také podíl produktu vyuzívajících KETs v celkovém vývozu je v CR ponekud nizsí, nez je tomu v prípade technologicky vyspelých zemí zarazených do této srovnávací studie. Vzhledem k tomu, ze KETs jsou zapracovány do národní RIS3 strategie a do pripravovaných operacních programu i nekterých programu pripravených na národní úrovni, lze ocekávat, ze kvalita VaV se v techto významných technologických oblastech bude v CR postupne zvysovat a nové poznatky budou vyuzívány efektivneji v podnikových inovacích.
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