Robotic Systems in Radiotherapy and Radiosurgery

Purpose of Review This review provides an overview of robotic systems in radiotherapy and radiosurgery, with a focus on medical devices and recently proposed research systems. We summarize the key motivation for using robotic systems and illustrate the potential advantages. Recent Findings. Robotic systems have been proposed for a variety of tasks in radiotherapy, including the positioning of beam source, patients, and imaging devices. A number of systems are cleared for use in patients, and some are widely used, particularly for beam and patient positioning. Summary The need for precise and safe delivery of focused high doses to the target region motivates the use of robots in radiotherapy. Flexibility in the arrangement of beams and the ability to compensate for target motion are key advantages of robotic systems. While robotic patient couches are widely used and robotic beam positioning is well established, brachytherapy robots are mostly considered in a research context.

The Interdependence of Research Funding Concentration, Policy Priorities, and Problem Choice

The prioritisation of research funding towards a small elite of researchers and research topics of "strategic" importance are becoming a norm across national research systems. Researchers are increasingly worried that such steering hampers the diversity of scientific approaches and problems addressed. However, the effects of increased steering of who and what receives research funds are not well known. I use evidence from 65,000 research grants awarded by seven research councils in the United Kingdom and fifteen Danish research funders to investigate how strong funding concentration and thematic targeting leads to less topical diversity. Researchers in the very top of the funding distribution primarily investigate topics and disciplines with the most funding success, and research output form targeted funding schemes overlaps with that from investigatorledgrants. Moreover, priorities from private funders line up with the type of researchfunded by public research councils. The findings highlight how steering through funding decisions can multiply

The Intellectual Assets in Europe

In this article we investigate the determinants of the Intellectual Assets in Europe. We use data from the European Innovation Scoreboard of the European Commission in the period 2000-2019 for 36 countries. Data are analyzed using Panel with Fixed Effects, Random Effects, WLS, Pooled OLS, Dynamic Panel at 1 Stage. Results show that the presence of Intellectual Assets in Europe is positively associated with “Enterprise Births”, “Top R&D Spending Enterprises per 10 mln Population”, “Employment Share Manufacturing”, “Share High and Medium high-tech Manufacturing”, “Attractive Research Systems”, “Finance and Support”, “Innovators”, “Sales Impact” and is negatively associated to “Government Procurement of Advanced Technology Products” and “Share Knowledge-Intensive Services”