Digital Commons Network^™

Public-Private Approaches To Mass Tort Victim Compensation: Some Thoughts On The Gulf Coast Claims Facility, Myriam E. Gilles

Articles

No abstract provided.

Taxing Facebook Code: Debugging The Tax Code And Software, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Jeffrey A. Maine

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This article sets out to analyze both intellectual property laws and tax systems as applied to computer software. It analyzes software within intellectual property's established doctrinal framework, a difficult task due to the fact that software can encompass some combination of the traits of copyrights, trade dress, patents, and trade secrets. It then examines both the federal and state tax systems governing software. It shows that fitting software within current tax schemes presents unique challenges, as software contains both tangible and intangible elements, is subject to varying intellectual property protections, and can be delivered through various media. The article argues …

Serious Flaw Of Employee Invention Ownership Under The Bayh-Dole Act In Stanford V. Roche: Finding The Missing Piece Of The Puzzle In The German Employee Invention Act, Toshiko Takenaka

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This article argues that the current Bayh-Dole Act is incomplete because the Act fails to provide a mechanism for contractors to secure the ownership of federally funded inventions from their employees. Part I of this Article discusses this flaw in the current Bayh-Dole Act, highlighted by Stanford v. Roche, and argues that a historical accident resulted in this flaw due to Congress's failure to pass a series of bills based on the German EIA. Passages in the Bayh-Dole Act suggest that the Act assumes a transfer by operation of law to secure the ownership of federally funded inventions through …

The Generalised Zakharov-Shabat System And The Gauge Group Action, Georgi Grahovski

Articles

The generalized Zakharov–Shabat systems with complex-valued non-regular Cartan elements and the systems studied by Caudrey, Beals and Coifman (CBC systems) and their gauge equivalent are studied. This study includes: the properties of fundamental analytical solutions (FAS) for the gauge-equivalent to CBC systems and the minimal set of scattering data; the description of the class of nonlinear evolutionary equations, solvable by the inverse scattering method, and the recursion operator, related to such systems; the hierarchies of Hamiltonian structures. The results are illustrated on the example of the multi-component nonlinear Schr¨odinger (MNLS) equations and the corresponding gauge-equivalent multi-component Heisenberg ferromagnetic (MHF) type …

Evaluation Of A Prototype Desktop Virtual Reality Model Developed To Enhance Electrical Safety And Design In The Built Environment, Martin Barrett, Jonathan Blackledge

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The use of Desktop Virtual Reality (VR) systems for enhancing electrical safety and engineering design is a novel prospect for both practicing and student electrical services engineers. This innovative approach, which can be readily accessed via the World Wide Web, constitutes a marked shift in conventional learning and design techniques to a more immersive, interactive and intuitive working and learning environment. This paper initially identifies the unique characteristics of desktop web based VR technologies and highlights the educational affordances offered by working in such an environment. Subsequently, using a prototype model titled ‘Virtual Electrical Services’, a case study is carried …

Point Of Care Diagnostics: Status And Future, Vladimir Gubala, Leanne Harris, Antonio J. Ricco, Ming X. Tan, David Williams

Articles

The most commonly used test for monitoring heparin therapy is the activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT). The response of available aPTT reagents to heparin varies significantly. The aim of this study was to highlight the differences between aPTT reagents stored in a dried format to select the most suitable formulations to be used for the development of point-of-care diagnostic devices used for monitoring of unfractionated heparin dose response.

METHODS:

Ten reagents were analysed in terms of their performance in liquid and in dried form after storage for 24 h and 14 days. Performance was assessed by measurement of the clotting …

Occupational Noise Exposure Of Nightclub Bar Employees In Ireland, Gary Henehan, Aoife Kelly, Sara Boyd, Gordon Chambers

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Due to the transposition of the EU Directive 2003/10/EC into Irish Law, the entertainment sector was obligated to comply with the requirements of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (General Application) Regulations 2007, Chapter 1 Part 5: Control of Noise at Work since February 2008. Compliance with the Noise Regulations was examined in 9 nightclubs in Ireland. The typical daily noise exposure of 19 bar employees was measured using 2 logging dosimeters and a Type 1 fixed position sound level meter. Physical site inspections identified nightclub noise control measures. Interviews and questionnaires were used to assess the managers and …

Trust In The Information Society, Brian O'Neill

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Trust is an important feature for all users of the Internet who rely on the safety and security of network technologies and systems for their daily lives. Trust, or the lack of it, has also been identified by the European Commission’s Digital Agenda as a major barrier to further development of the information society in Europe. One of the areas in which concerns have been raised is in relation to children’s safety online. As a result, substantial efforts have been made by policymakers and by the industry to build greater trust and confidence in online digital safety. This paper examines …

Restaurant Selection In Dublin, Frank Cullen

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The primary objective of this research was to investigate the selection process used by consumers when choosing a restaurant to dine. This study examined literature on consumer behaviour, restaurant selection, and decision-making, underpinning the contention that service quality is linked to the consumer’s selection of a restaurant. It supports the utility theories that consumers buy bundles of attributes that simultaneously combined represent a certain level of service quality at a certain price. The findings of the research displayed a preference by Dublin consumers for Italian and Chinese styled restaurants and identified quality of the food, type of food, cleanliness of …

Journalism Education And Children's Rights: New Approaches To Media Development In Cee/Cis Countries, Michael Foley, Noirin Hayes, Brian O'Neill

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This article gives the background to a project entitled Children's Rights and Journalism Practice, which was carried out for UNICEF in university journalism faculties in CEE/CIS countries

By focusing on journalism in the context of the academy and raising awareness of children’s rights from a journalistic perspective, the project seeks to provide a relatively safe space for critical engagement with journalistic ethics and values. Children are targets of, or are implicated in, nearly all aspects of public policy, yet are largely invisible in news-media coverage, and rarely have their voices heard in matters affecting them. By using the UNCRC as …

New Tools In Improvised Music Performance., Seán Mac Erlaine

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This paper looks at the synthesis of computer technology and instrumental practice in improvised music performance. The emerging field of performers who use real-time signal processing as a technological extension of their instrument is discussed. How do new tools affect musical practice? Does the use of computers impose an associated aesthetic?

A number of key players are scrutinised including Evan Parker, La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Jon Hassell, Miles Davis, Pauline Oliveros, David Behrman. The research provides a historical context to these practices and explores how pre- and post-digital technologies have shaped their work.

This article identifies an innovative and …

Co-Operatives As Social Innovation – How Older Models Of Social Enterprise Are More Relevant Than Ever, Gerard Doyle

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Ireland faces a number of socio-economic issues, including, an over-reliance on fossil fuels, inequality, unsustainable approaches to urban regeneration and unbalanced regional development. This chapter will demonstrate how social enterprise can lead to the implementation of socially innovative responses to addressing these issues.

Increased Susceptibility Of Arterial Tissue To Wire Perforation With The Application Of High Frequency Mechanical Vibrations, Mark Wylie, Garrett Mcguinness, Graham Gavin

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High frequency mechanical vibrations (20–50 kHz), delivered via small diameter flexible wire waveguides represent a minimally invasive technology for the treatment of chronic total occlusions (CTOs) and in other tissue ablation applications. Tissue disruption is reported to be caused by repetitive mechanical contact and cavitation. This work focuses on the effects of vibrating wire waveguides in contact with arterial tissue. An apparatus with clinically relevant parameters was used, characterized as operating at 22.5 kHz and delivering amplitudes of vibration of 17.8 - 34.3 µm (acoustic intensity, I_SATA: 1.03 - 3.83 W/cm²) via 1.0 mm diameter waveguides. …

Crisis And Policy Change: The Role Of The Political Entrepreneur, John Hogan, Sharon Feeney

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This paper seeks to investigate the inner mechanics of policy change. It aims to discover how ideas enter the political arena, and how endogenous forces within the policy making environment transform ideas into new policies. The central hypothesis is that in times of crisis, new ideas emanate from a number of change agents, but in order for any of these ideas to enter the institutional environment, one specific agent of change must be present: the political entrepreneur. Without political entrepreneurs, ideational change, and subsequent policy change, would not occur. The paper sets out a framework for identifying and explaining the …

Young Men Consuming Newspaper Prostitution: A Discourse Analysis Of Responses To Irish Newspaper Coverage Of Prostitution., Joseph Fitzgerald, Brendan O'Rourke

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In this article we look at how young men consume coverage of prostitution in Irish newspapers. This is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, because the media, and newspapers in particular, seem to be an important source of information for people (Meade, 2008). This is especially true in the case of prostitution, as the only contact the citizenry generally have with sex-workers is through the media (Hallgrimsdottir, Phillips and Benoit, 2006). In many Western countries consuming media is one of the main activities that people, particularly young people, engage in and therefore is the prism through which they view …

Discipline And Discharge Of Public-Sector Employees: An Empirical Study Of Arbitration Awards, Laura J. Cooper

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Commentators frequently assert that government employees enjoy a level of protection from discharge far greater than privatesector employees, and, indeed, that government employers are actually unable to fire public employees who perform poorly or engage in misconduct. For example, author Mortimer B. Zuckerman maintained in a 2010 U.S. News & World Report article that there were "two Americas" with a division that "affronts a sense of fairness" between the protections afforded public-sector workers and those available to workers in the private sector.1 He stated, "it is almost impossible to fire government workers except after a long process and only for …

Families Now: What We Don't Know Is Hurting Us, Judith T. Younger

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No abstract provided.

Bankers Behaving Badly? The Limits Of Regulatory Reform, Claire Hill

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We may finally be emerging from a "Great Recession." But the economy remains quite fragile. What bankers did was an important cause of the recession. They structured, sold and bought "toxic" securities, taking excessive risks with other people's money. Sometimes they did so recklessly, because they did not sufficiently understand the securities. Other times, they did understand the securities, and sold them to those who didn't, sometimes omitting much relevant information. Some evidence suggests that bankers knew the quality of mortgages being securitized was plummeting; indeed, given the dramatically increasing volume of mortgages being securitized, they had to at least …

Identifying And Localizing Intracellular Nanoparticles Using Raman Spectroscopy, Jennifer Dorney, Franck Bonnier, Amaya Garcia, Alan Casey, Gordon Chambers, Hugh Byrne

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Raman microscopy is employed to spectroscopically image biological cells previously exposed to fluorescently labelled polystyrene nanoparticles and, in combination with K-means clustering and Principal Component Analysis (PCA), is demonstrated to be capable of localising the nanoparticles and identifying the subcellular environment based on the molecular spectroscopic signatures. The neutral nanoparticles of 50 nm or 100 nm, as characterised by dynamic light scattering, are shown to be non-toxic to a human lung adenocarcinoma cell-line (A549), according to a range of cytotoxicity assays including Neutral Red, Alamar Blue, Coomassie Blue and (3-(4,5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT). Confocal fluorescence microscopy identifies intracellular fluorescence due to …

The Importance Of Serum Serotonin Levels In The Measurement Of Radiation-Induced Bystander Cell Death In Hacat Cells, Fiona Lyng, Maxine Desplanques, K.K. Jella, Amaya Garcia, Brendan Mcclean

Articles

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the importance of serum serotonin levels in the measurement of bystander cell death. The study was undertaken as part of an intercomparison exercise involving seven European laboratories funded under the European Union Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) Non-Targeted Effects (NOTE) integrated project. Materials and Methods: Three batches of foetal bovine serum were tested; serum with high and low serotonin content from the intercomparison exercise as well as serum from the home laboratory. Three sets of human keratinocytes (HaCaT cell line) were cultured in DMEM:F12 medium supplemented with serum with high or low …

Education Is Positively Associated With Macular Pigment: The Irish Longitudinal Study On Ageing (Tilda), John Nolan, Joanne Feeney, Rose Anne Kenny, Hilary Cronin, Claire O'Regan, George Savva, James Loughman, Ciaran Finucane, Eithne Connolly, Katie Meagher, Stephen Beatty

Articles

The three carotenoids lutein, zeaxanthin, and meso-zeaxanthin, are found at the macula and referred to as macular pigment (MP). This study was undertaken to investigate determinants of MP in a large randomly selected sample from the Republic of Ireland (as part of The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing [TILDA]).

METHODS:

MP optical density (MPOD) was measured using customized heterochromatic flicker photometry in 4373 participants. Sociodemographic and self reported health data was obtained using computer assisted personal interview (CAPI).

RESULTS

Mean (SD) MPOD for the study group was 0.203 (0.156) with a range of 0 to 1.01. MPOD was higher for …

Avoiding The Mistakes Of The Past, Tom Dunne

Articles

Tom Dunne explores the long term drivers of dysfunction in Ireland's housing markets and what a more sustainable housing system would look like.

Fidelity To Community: A Defense Of Community Lawyering, Anthony V. Alfieri

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No abstract provided.

Creation Stories: Stanley Hauerwas, Same-Sex Marriage, And Narrative In Law And Theology, Charlton C. Copeland

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No abstract provided.

When Bad Speech Does Good, Mary Anne Franks

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No abstract provided.

The Problem Of Trans-National Libel, Lili Levi

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Forum shopping in trans-national libel cases-"libel tourism"- - has a chilling effect on journalism, academic scholarship, and scientific criticism. The United States and Britain (the most popular venue for such cases) have recently attempted to address the issue legislatively. In 2010, the United States passed the SPEECH Act, which prohibits recognition and enforcement of libel judgments from jurisdictions applying law less speech-protective than the First Amendment. In Britain, consultation has closed and the Parliamentary Joint Committee has issued its report on a broad-ranging libel reform bill proposed by the Government in March 2011. This Article questions the extent to which …

Africa And The International Criminal Court, Charles C. Jalloh

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No abstract provided.

Endless Pursuit: Capturing Technology At The Intersection Of The First Amendment And Attorney Advertising, Jan L. Jacobowitz, Gayland O. Heathcote Ii

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No abstract provided.

Anticompetitive Product Design In The New Economy, John M. Newman

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Claims alleging anticompetitive product design and redesign lie at the very core of one of antitrust law's most challenging dilemmas: the intersection between innovation and regulation, invention and intervention. For over three decades, courts and scholars have struggled to determine the proper analytical framework within which to address such cases. Meanwhile, the very industries in which challenged conduct occurs have been undergoing fundamental changes.

As demonstrated by the ongoing and recent antitrust litigation involving high technology firms Apple, Intel, and Microsoft, distinctive features characterize most product markets in what has been called the 'New Economy'"--and what increasingly has become simply …

The Mindful Law School: An Integrative Approach To Transforming Legal Education, Scott L. Rogers

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No abstract provided.