Digital Commons Network^™

Innovation Heuristics: Experiments On Sequential Creativity In Intellectual Property, Stefan Bechtold, Christopher Buccafusco, Christopher Jon Sprigman

Articles

All creativity and innovation build on existing ideas. Authors and inventors copy, adapt, improve, interpret, and refine the ideas that have come before them. The central task of intellectual property (IP) law is regulating this sequential innovation to ensure that initial creators and subsequent creators receive the appropriate sets of incentives. Although many scholars have applied the tools of economic analysis to consider whether IP law is successful in encouraging cumulative innovation, that work has rested on a set of untested assumptions about creators’ behavior. This Article reports four novel creativity experiments that begin to test those assumptions. In particular, …

The Hopes And Fears Of All The Years: 30 Years Behind And The Road Ahead For The Widespread Use Of Mediation, Lela P. Love, Ellen A. Waldman

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Looking through the windshield in 1985, the dispute resolution community was enthusiastic about mediation's promise: the promise of a radically different paradigm premised on party-driven resolution and collaborative decision-making. Peering ahead, mediation's pioneers anticipated a quiet revolution in conflict management toward more therapeutic and democratic processes. What do events in the last three decades tell us about the high and low points — the successes and failures — in the journey of that endeavor? Looking forward, how might we best align reality with our highest aspirations and avoid the disappointing troughs we encountered in those past decades? This article addresses …

The Moral Psychology Of Copyright Infringement, Christopher Buccafusco, Dave Fagundes

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Numerous recent cases illustrate that copyright owners sue for infringement even when an unauthorized use of their work causes them no economic harm. This presents a puzzle from the perspective of copyright theory as well as a serious social problem, since infringement suits designed to remedy non-economic harms tend to stifle rather than encourage creative production. While much scholarship has critiqued copyright’s economic theory from the perspective of authors’ incentives to create, ours is the first to explore this issue from the perspective of owners’ motivations to sue for infringement. We turn to moral psychology, and in particular to moral …

The Never Ending Tale: Racism And Inequality In The Era Of Broken Windows, Jonathan Oberman, Kendra Johnson

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No abstract provided.

Abortion, Informed Consent, And Regulatory Spillover, Katherine Shaw, Alex Stein

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The constitutional law of abortion stands on the untenable assumption that any state’s abortion regulations impact citizens of that state alone. On this understand-ing, the state’s boundaries demarcate the terrain on which women’s right to abortion clashes with state power to regulate that right.

This Article uncovers a previously unnoticed horizontal dimension of abortion regulation: the medical-malpractice penalties imposed upon doctors for failing to inform patients about abortion risks; the states’ power to define those risks, along with doctors’ informed-consent obligations and penalties; and, critically, the possi-bility that such standards might cross state lines. Planned Parenthood v. Casey and other …

The Continuing Battle Over Economically Targeted Investments: An Analysis Of The Department Of Labor's Interpretative Bulletin 2015-01, Edward A. Zelinsky

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In Interpretive Bulletin 2015-01 (IB 2015-01), the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) renewed the now two-decades old battle over “economically targeted investments” (ETIs). As a matter of statutory interpretation, IB 2015-01, like its predecessors, is unpersuasive. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) requires plan trustees to invest “solely” to provide participants’ retirement benefits. A trustee who invests in ETIs violates this statutory obligation by pursuing collateral economic benefits for persons other than plan participants. As a matter of policy, the social investing which ETIs exemplify is unsound. At best, such social investing in practice merely shuffles investment …

The Science Of Christmas: Dinner Table, Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire

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This article discusses the science of preservation behind two famous Irish and English Christmas foods, Christmas Pudding and Mince Pies.

The Difficulties Of Democratic Mercy, Aziz Huq

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No abstract provided.

Raman Spectroscopic Analysis Of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma And Oral Dysplasia In The High-Wavenumber Region, Hugh Byrne, Luis Felipe Carvalho, Fiona Lyng, Franck Bonnier

Articles

Raman spectroscopy can provide a molecular-level signature of the biochemical composition and structure of cells with excellent spatial resolution and could be useful to monitor changes in composition for early stage and non-invasive cancer diagnosis, both ex-vivo and in vivo. In particular, the fingerprint spectral region (400–1,800 cm^-1) has been shown to be very promising for optical biopsy purposes. However, limitations to discrimination of dysplastic and inflammatory processes based on the fingerprint region still persist. In addition, the Raman spectral signal of dysplastic cells is one important source of misdiagnosis of normal versus pathological tissues. The high wavenumber …

Fatigue Modeling Via Mammalian Auditory System For Prediction Of Noise Induced Hearing Loss, Pengfei Sun, Jun Qin, Kathleen Campbell

Articles

Noise induced hearing loss (NIHL) remains as a severe health problem worldwide. Existing noise metrics and modeling for evaluation of NIHL are limited on prediction of gradually developing NIHL (GDHL) caused by high-level occupational noise. In this study, we proposed two auditory fatigue based models, including equal velocity level (EVL) and complex velocity level (CVL), which combine the high-cycle fatigue theory with the mammalian auditory model, to predict GDHL. The mammalian auditory model is introduced by combining the transfer function of the external-middle ear and the triple-path nonlinear (TRNL) filter to obtain velocities of basilar membrane (BM) in cochlea. The …

Does The Constitution Mean What It Says?, David A. Strauss

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No abstract provided.

Political Powerlessness, Nicholas Stephanopoulos

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No abstract provided.

Audiovisual Processing Is Abnormal In Parkinson's Disease And Correlates With Freezing Of Gait And Disease Duration, Conor Fearon, John Butler, Louise Newman, Timothy Lynch, Richard B. Reilly

Articles

Background: Sensory and perceptual disturbances progress with disease duration in Parkinson’s disease (PD) and probably contribute to motor deficits such as bradykinesia and gait disturbances, including freezing of gait (FOG). Simple reaction time tests are ideal to explore sensory processing, as they require little cognitive processing. Multisensory integration is the ability of the brain to integrate sensory information from multiple modalities into a single coherent percept, which is crucial for complex motor tasks such as gait. 9 10 11 12 13 Objectives: The aims of this study were to: 1. Assess differences in unisensory (auditory and visual) and multisensory processing …

What The Marriage Equality Cases Tell Us About Voter Id, Ellen D. Katz

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Two years ago, United States u. Windsor tossed out the Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA"). Thereafter, proponents of marriage equality secured dozens of notable victories in the lower courts, a smattering of setbacks, and last June, the victory they sought in Obergefell v. Hodges. During this same period, opponents of electoral restrictions such as voter identification have seen far less sustained success. Decided the day before Windsor, Shelby County v. Holder scrapped a key provision of the Voting Rights Act ("VRA") while making clear that plaintiffs might still challenge disputed voting regulations under Section 2 of the VRA and the …

Chevron Is Dead; Long Live Chevron, Michael Herz

Articles

The Supreme Court's decision in Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. continues to obsess academics and courts alike. Despite all the attention, however; the "Chevron revolution" never quite happens. This decision, though seen as transformatively important, is honored in the breach, in constant danger of being abandoned, and the subject of perpetual confusion and uncertainty. This Essay seeks both to bury and to praise Chevron.

Chevron is not a revolutionary shift of authority from the judiciary to the executive. That Chevron is dead. The Chevron that survives is an appropriate allocation of decisionmaking responsibility among the three …

Regulatory Textualism, Jennifer Nou

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No abstract provided.

Age-Related Sexual Dimorphism In Temporal Discrimination And In Adult-Onset Dystonia Suggests Gabaergic Mechanisms, John Butler, Ines M. Beiser, Laura Williams, Eavan Mcgovern, Fiona Molloy, Timothy Lynch, Dan G. Healy, Helena Moore, Richard Walsh, Richard B. Reilly, Sean O'Riordan, Cathal Walsh, Michael Hutchinson

Articles

Background: Adult-onset isolated focal dystonia (AOIFD) presenting in early adult life is more frequent in men, whereas in middle age it is female predominant. Temporal discrimination, an endophenotype of adult-onset idiopathic isolated focal dystonia, shows evidence of sexual dimorphism in healthy participants. Objectives: We assessed the distinctive features of age-related sexual dimorphism of (i) sex ratios in dystonia phenotypes and (ii) sexual dimorphism in temporal discrimination in unaffected relatives of cervical dystonia patients. Methods: We performed (i) a meta-regression analysis of the proportion of men in published cohorts of phenotypes of adult-onset dystonia in relation to their mean age of …

New Theory Proven Of Disease And New Ideas And New Methods For Medical Science For Vaccinations, Cures And Treatments Of Diseases, Stephen Smith

Articles

Abstract This research paper for medical science is applying new original further science aimed at curing the Ebola virus and adding to research for the vaccination, curing and treatment of diseases. This research approach achieves the construction of own research from accumulating answers to set goals finding answers to analysis of information of factors associated to disease research and this research adds to medical development needs as observed by actions reported from sources in the news media and from sources in general medical science literature. New theories are presented that apply to medical science involving disease function, new case types, …

Genetic Models For The Study Of Luteinizing Hormone Receptor Function, Prema Narayan

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The luteinizing hormone/chorionic gonadotropin receptor (LHCGR) is essential for fertility in men and women. LHCGR binds luteinizing hormone (LH) as well as the highly homologous chorionic gonadotropin. Signaling from LHCGR is required for steroidogenesis and gametogenesis in males and females and for sexual differentiation in the male. The importance of LHCGR in reproductive physiology is underscored by the large number of naturally occurring inactivating and activating mutations in the receptor that result in reproductive disorders. Consequently, several genetically modified mouse models have been developed for the study of LHCGR function. They include targeted deletion of LH and LHCGR that mimic …

Improving Operator Situational Awareness With Wide Area Geographic Data View Displays Of The Electric Power Grid, Esa M. Rantanen, Limor Hochberg, Diego Klabjan, Mingyang Di

Articles

To reduce clutter on wide-area geographic data view displays of electric power systems, substations in geographically compact areas should be spread out and line overlaps and intersections minimized. Such pat- terns optimized with respect to given constraints can be modeled as a multicommodity flow problem. Due to the size of the developed model, we developed two clustering-based iterative algorithms to decompose the global network into smaller regions and then iteratively solve the subproblem in each region by readjusting some values. Three solutions were selected for experimental evaluation. The experimental results were somewhat inconclusive, due to naïve participants, simple task, and …

Cold Plasma Inactivation Of Bacterial Biofilms And Reduction Of Quorum Sensing Regulated Virulence Factors, Dana Ziuzina, Daniela Boehm, Sonal Patil, Patrick J. Cullen, Paula Bourke

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The main objectives of this work were to investigate the effect of atmospheric cold plasma (ACP) against a range of microbial biofilms commonly implicated in foodborne and health- care associated human infections and against P. aeruginosa quorum sensing (QS)-regu- lated virulence factors, such as pyocyanin, elastase (Las B) and biofilm formation capacity post-ACP treatment. The effect of processing factors, namely treatment time and mode of plasma exposure on antimicrobial activity of ACP were also examined. Antibiofilm activity was assessed for E. coli, L. monocytogenes and S. aureus in terms of reduction of cultur- ability and retention of metabolic activity using …

Applications And Comparison Of Continuous Wavelets Transforms On Analysis Of A-Wave Impulse Noise, Jun Qin, Pengfei Sun

Articles

Noise induced hearing loss (NIHL) is a serious occupational related health problem worldwide. The A-wave impulse noise could cause severe hearing loss, and characteristics of such kind of impulse noise in the joint time-frequency (T-F) domain are critical for evaluation of auditory hazard level. This study focuses on the analysis of A-wave impulse noise in the T-F domain using continual wavelet transforms. Three different wavelets, referring to Morlet, Mexican hat, and Meyer wavelets, were investigated and compared based on theoretical analysis and applications to experimental generated A-wave impulse noise signals. The underlying theory of continuous wavelet transform was given and …

Taking Care Of Federal Law, Leah Litman

Articles

Article II of the Constitution vests the “executive power” in the President and directs the President to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” But do these provisions mean that only the President may execute federal law? Two lines of Supreme Court precedent suggest conflicting answers to that question. In several prominent separation-of-powers cases, the Court has suggested that only the President may execute federal law: “The Constitution requires that a President chosen by the entire Nation oversee the execution of the laws.” Therefore, the Court has reasoned, Congress may not create private rights of action that allow nonexecutive …

Sanctity In The Midst Of Mediocrity : Graham Greene's Whiskey Priest, Eamon Maher

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The English novelist and convert to Catholicism, Graham Greene (1904-1991), saw the priest as being core to his literary portrayal of Catholicism. The Power and the Glory (1940), published four years after Bernanos' Diary of a Country Priest, is set in a Latin American country, most probably Mexico, which Greene visited in 1938.

Unusual Behavior In Parental Care By A House Wren (Troglodytes Aedon): Post Fledging Use Of An Old Nest During Cold Nights, Micah N. Scholer

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I report on the unusual behavior of an adult House Wren (Troglodytes aedon) leading recently fledged young back to the nest for two consecutive nights. The ambient temperature reached below 0°C during both nights. Despite disadvantages associated with remaining in the nest, this observation suggests that adult birds may assess trade-offs between perceived risks versus the benefits of engaging in other activities, in this case roosting communally for thermoregulation.

Diagnostics Need Not Apply, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

Diagnostic testing helps caregivers and patients understand a patient's condition, predict future outcomes, select appropriate treatments, and determine whether treatment is working. Improvements in diagnostic testing are essential to bringing about the long-heralded promise of personalized medicine. Yet it seems increasingly clear that most important advances in this type of medical technology lie outside the boundaries of patent-eligible subject matter. The clarity of this conclusion has been obscured by ambiguity in the recent decisions of the Supreme Court concerning patent eligibility. Since its 2010 decision in Bilski v. Kappos, the Court has followed a discipline of limiting judicial exclusions from …

Acus - And Administrative Law - Then And Now, Michael Herz

Articles

The Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) both shapes and reflects the intellectual, policy, and practical concerns of the field of administrative law. Its recommendations are therefore a useful lens through which to view that field. Also, because of an unfortunate hiatus, ACUS has gotten underway not once but twice. Those two beginnings provide a kind of natural experiment, and they make a revealing contrast. This article traces the transformations of American administrative law, as well as the field’s perpetual concerns, by comparing the initial recommendations of ACUS 1.0 (1968 to 1970) with the initial recommendations of ACUS 2.0 …

Quantitative Trait Loci Underlying Seed Sugars Content In “Md96-5722” By “Spencer” Recombinant Inbred Line Population Of Soybean, Masum Akond, David A. Lightfoot, My Abdelmajid Kassem, Khalid Meksem, Shiming Liu, Stella K. Kantartzi, Nacer Bellaloui

Articles

Sucrose, raffinose, and stachyose are important soluble sugars in soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] seeds. Seed sucrose is a desirable trait for taste and flavor. Raffinose and stachyose are undesirable in diets of monogastric animals, acting as anti-nutritional factors that cause flatulence and abdominal discomfort. Therefore, reducing raffinose and stachyose biosynthesis is considered as a key quality trait goal in soy food and feed industries. The objective of this study was to identify genomic regions containing quantitative trait loci (QTL) controlling sucrose, raffinose, and stachyose in a set of 92 F5:7 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) derived from a cross between …

Adopting Agile Practices When Developing Medical Device Software, Martin Mchugh, Fergal Mccaffery, Garret Coady

Articles

Agile methods are gaining momentum amongst the developers of non-safety critical software. They offer the ability to improve development time, increase quality and reduce development costs. Despite this, the rate of adoption of agile methods within safety critical domains remains low. On face value agile methods appear to be contradictory to regulatory requirements. However while they may appear contradictory, they align on key values such as the development of the highest quality software. To demonstrate that agile methods could in fact be adopted when developing regulatory compliant software they were implemented on a medical device software development project. This implementation …

15 Years On Sirna Delivery: Beyond The State-Of-The-Art On Inorganic Nanoparticles For Rnai Therapeutics, Joao Conde, Furong Tian, Alfredo Ambrosone, Yulán Hernandez, Mark Mccully, Catherine C. .Berry, Pedro Baptista, Claudia Tortiglione, Jesus M. De La Fuented

Articles

RNAi has always captivated scientists due to its tremendous power to modulate the phenotype of living organisms. This natural and powerful biological mechanism can now be harnessed to downregulate specific gene expression in diseased cells, opening up endless opportunities. Since most of the conventional siRNA delivery methods are limited by a narrow therapeutic index and significant side and off-target effects, we are now in the dawn of a new age in gene therapy driven by nanotechnology vehicles for RNAi therapeutics. Here, we outlook the “do's and dont's” of the inorganic RNAi nanomaterials developed in the last 15 years and the …