Digital Commons Network^™

Atlantic Salmon, Pacific Bound: Initiative, Defiance, Courage, And Indian Tribes In Environmental Law, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

Articles

I want to address my remarks to the students of the University of Maine School of Law who will face a great deal of unfinished legal business on the topics of salmon, Indian tribes, and environmental law.

Elsewhere, I have derived what I describe as the five virtues of effective action (genius, high-leveraging, symbolism, optimism, courage). People of achievement, lawyers or otherwise, are familiar with these virtues and display them in many creative forms.

Next, I will peer through this lens of effective action at some key moments in the history of Atlantic-Pacific Salmon Interactions. This coming together has been …

Rethinking The United States First-To-Invent Principle From A Comparative Law Perspective: A Proposal To Restructure § 102 Novelty And Priority Provisions, Toshiko Takenaka

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This Article first examines the novelty and priority provisions of first-to-file countries, and then compares them with U.S. counterparts to identify major differences and determine why these differences result. The Article discusses the origins of the complex structure adopted by § 102 to define prior art and the difficult interpretation given to terms used in the novelty definition. This Article then reviews the USPTO's practice of the novelty examination and the priority determination in interference proceedings. This review confirms the first-to-file patent professional's perception that the United States, in fact, follows the first-to-file principle, although it also provides an exception …

Defeating Environmental Law: The Geology Of Legal Advantage, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

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My talk today will: (1) introduce the metaphor of geology, (2) suggest to you that complexity has "gainers" as well as "losers," and (3) show you how environmental laws can be defeated by these twin engines of complexity and clever human adversaries.

[Third Annual Lloyd K. Garrison Lecture on Environmental Law, Pace University School of Law.]

Public Vs. Proprietary Science: A Fruitful Tension?, Rebecca S. Eisenberg, Richard R. Nelson

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What should be public and what should be private in scientific research? The competitive sprint of public and private laboratories to complete the sequence of the human genome has brought this question to the fore. The same question frames the developing struggle over terms of access to human embryonic stem cell lines and the conflict between Microsoft and the open source movement over how best to promote software development. We expect such conflicts to become more widespread as the role of for-profit research expands in a broader range of scientific fields. Will science progress more swiftly and fruitfully if its …

Scale And Orientation-Invariant Scene Similarity Metrics For Image Queries, James Carswell

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In this paper we extend our previous work on shape-based queries to support queries on configurations of image objects. Here we consider spatial reasoning, especially directional and metric object relationships. Existing models for spatial reasoning tend to rely on pre-identified cardinal directions and minimal scale variations, assumption that cannot be considered as given in our image applications, where orientations and scale may vary substantially, and are often unknown. Accordingly, we have developed the method of varying baselines to identify similarities in direction and distance relations. Our method allows us to evaluate directional similarities without a priori knowledge of cardinal directions, …

Precise Chemical Analysis Development For Si And Gaas Surfaces, T. A. Briantseva, Z. M. Lebedeva, D. V. Lioubtchenko, M. Nolan, T. S. Perova, R. A. Moore, Kevin Berwick

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Precise chemical analysis (PCA) was developed to allow the study of non-interconnected atoms on crystalline semiconductor surfaces, such as those produced during rapid thermal processing (RTP) of silicon and electron beam lithography on gallium arsenide (GaAs). The PCA method is based on selectively dissolving the different components present on the semiconductor surface using preferential etchant solutions. After etching, the etchant solution, containing the etched component, is analyzed by a photometric technique. In this paper, we present photometric measurements of the amount of “free” (non-interconnected) atoms that remain on semiconductor surfaces following electron beam and RTP processing. In this context, “free” …

Clinical Assessment Of The Quantitative Posturography System (Qps), Jacinta Browne, G. O'Hare, A. Finn, J. Colin

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The objectives of this study were to evaluate a novel design dynamic force platform the Quantitative Posturography System (QPS). The evaluation consisted of identifying the effects due to ageing and disease of the postural control system and also to examine the relationship between functional performance and postural sway. An AOVA design and Pearson-Product correlation design were used. Seventy healthy subjects, seven subjects with Parkinson’s disease and eight subjects with a history of falls took part in the study. It was found that the QPS was able to identify changes due to both the ageing process and disease on the postural …

Many-To-Many Invocation: A New Paradigm For Ad Hoc Collaborative Systems, Alan Kaminsky, Hans-Peter Bischof

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No abstract provided.

Fibonacci Determinants, Nathan Cahill, John D’Errico, Darren Narayan

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Fibonacci numbers don't occur everywhere but they can arise in unexpected places, such as Hessenberg matrices. (You don't know what a Hessenberg matrix is? Better find out!)

A Methodology For Planning Distance Learning Courses, Anthony Trippe

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This article is based on personal experience gained as a result of facilitating over sixty asynchronous classes over the last four years. The article is organized into five areas of review and consideration which can assist the faculty member to plan and develop a learning-centered course intended for distance delivery. Whether in the classroom or on the Internet, critical scrutiny and analysis of the elements of a course is essential for development of a high quality course. The review points presented in this article specifically address key considerations for development for a course delivered in a virtual environment.

Designing Programming Courses For Et Students, Anthony Trippe

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Rochester Institute of Technology offers a three-course technical programming sequence for Engineering Technology students. All three courses are required for Computer Engineering Technology students. The first two courses are required for Telecommunications ET students. Electrical and Civil ET students are required to take only the first course of the sequence. This paper reviews and discusses the events and experiences associated with the development and initial conduct of this sequence of C++ programming courses. It details how the courses were designed to assist ET students to better succeed in higher level courses taken later in their program sequence. Foundation elements of …

Data-Efficient Methods Applied To General Spectral Image Capture, Mitchell Rosen, Francisco Imai, Mark Fairchild

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Commercialization of spectral imaging for color reproduction will require low bandwidth but highly accurate spectral image acquisition systems. Self-adapting systems are proposed as potential solutions. Such systems perform spectral content analysis on an encountered scene, reacting to the analysis by configuring efficient high quality spectral reconstruction. An experiment is reported comparing scene-derived spectral estimation transforms to static global transforms in multi-channel imaging simulations. For noisefree simulations, the adaptive approach showed clear benefit in terms of colorimetric and spectral statistics. When noise was added, the adaptive method continued to be superior in terms of spectral evaluations, but colorimetric degradation for the …

How Theology Might Learn From Law (Symposium: The Theology Of The Practice Of Law), James Boyd White

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I want to start today with an account of the way lawyers think and speak, and then ask whether it might be useful for the theologically minded to take these practices and procedures seriously as a ground of comparison from which to look at their own. In doing this I shall look at the practice of law with an emphasis not on its social effects or ethical difficulties but on the nature of the activity itself, viewed from the inside, asking in particular what kind of knowledge it requires and creates in its practitioner. What does the lawyer learn from …

Reverberations From The Collision Of Tort And Warranty (Products Liability Law Symposium In Memory Of Professor Gary T. Schwartz), James J. White

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In his famous Stanford Law Review article, When Worlds Collide,' Professor Marc Franklin foretold the troubles for American law in the impending collision of the tort of strict liability with the warranty of merchantability.2 We daily suffer the reverberations from that collision as courts struggle with the proper application of strict tort liability and breach of warranty in products liability cases. Lawyers who have not studied Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code (U.C.C.) are surprised to learn that virtually every buyer who has a strict tort claim for an injury caused by a defective product also has a potential …

A Footnote For Jack Dawson, James J. White, David A. Peters

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Jack Dawson, known to many at Michigan as Black Jack, taught at the Law School from 1927 to 1958. Much of his work was published in the Michigan Law Review, where he served as a student editor during the 1923-24 academic year. We revisit his work and provide a footnote to his elegant writing on mistake and supervening events. In Part I, we talk a little about Jack the man. In Part II, we recite the nature and significance of his scholarly work. Part III deals briefly with the cases decided in the last twenty years by American courts on …

Flow Patterns In A Two-Roll Mill, Christopher Hills

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The two-dimensional flow of a Newtonian fluid in a rectangular box that contains two disjoint, independently-rotating, circular boundaries is studied. The flow field for this two-roll mill is determined numerically using a finite-difference scheme over a Cartesian grid with variable horizontal and vertical spacing to accommodate satisfactorily the circular boundaries. To make the streamfunction numerically determinate we insist that the pressure field is everywhere single-valued. The physical character, streamline topology and transitions of the flow are discussed for a range of geometries, rotation rates and Reynolds numbers in the underlying seven-parameter space. An account of a preliminary experimental study of …

How Extra-Copyright Protection Of Databases Can Be Constitutional, Justin Hughes

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Following the Supreme Court's 1991 Feist decision, intellectual property and Constitutional law scholars have debated whether extra-copyright protection of databases can be established by Congress under its Commerce Clause power. This article presents the problem as one of the gravitational zone of the Commerce Clause versus that of the Copyright and Patent Clause. The article reasons that the Supreme Court decisions in International News Service v. Associated Press, Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard, and the 19th century Trademark Cases all point to the possibility of limited protection of databases under the Commerce Clause. The Article also considers the constitutionality of extra-copyright protection …

Rulemaking, Michael Herz

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No abstract provided.

Lawyers, Civil Disobedience, And Equality In The Twenty-First Century: Lessons From Two American Heroes Symposium: Of John Brown: Lawyers, The Law, And Civil Disobedience, U. W. Clemon, Bryan K. Fair

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No abstract provided.

De-Bugging Open Source Software Licensing, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

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Home computer users and businesses often rely on software developed by unconventional programmers known as "hackers." Hackers claim that the code they develop is superior in quality to the code developed by commercial software firms because hackers freely share the code they develop. This code sharing enables a multitude of programmers from around the world to rapidly find and fix bugs. The legal mechanism that enables hackers to deploy this worldwide team of de-buggers is a license agreement or, to be more precise,an assortment of license agreements known as "open source" licenses.

Although open source software developers may regularly fix …

Growth And Form: Indian Tribes, Terrorism, And The Durability Of Environmental Law, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

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My target audience is the body of extraordinary law students here at the Vermont Law School who will define the shape and direction of tomorrow's environmental law. My plan is to derive five virtues of significant achievement—genius, high-leveraging, symbolism, optimism, and courage—and to convince you that the Indian tribes of the United States are fortuitously blessed with these capacities for positive change.

I am obliged to defend my five virtues against the charge that they are "gray" virtues, mere tactics of opportunity open to use by the forces of hatred and destruction as freely as those of nurturing and protection. …

Calculation For The Parameter "Deflection" In A New Theory Of The Earth's Magnetic Field, Annraoi De Paor, Ted Burke

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In a recent paper on the theory of the Earth’s magnetic field and key features of Sunspot activity (de Paor, 2001), a central role in the calculation of secular variations of the geomagnetic field was played by a newly-introduced parameter called the deflection (abbreviated def ). In this note, the significance of def is elucidated and the method used to calculate it is explained

Holographically Recorded Photopolymer Diffractive Optical Element For Holographic And Electronic Speckle Pattern Interferometry, Sridhar Guntaka, Vincent Toal, Suzanne Martin

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A diffractive optical element is described that can be used to implement a self-aligning electronic speckle apttern interferometer and holographic interferometer requiring only a laser source and a camera in the optical set-up.

Ancient Astronomical Alignments: Fact Or Fiction?, Frank Prendergast

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No abstract provided.

Icann's "Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy"- Causes And (Partial) Cures, A. Michael Froomkin

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No abstract provided.

"We're All Consultants Now": How Change In Client Organizational Strategies Influences Change In The Organization Of Corporate Legal Services, Robert Eli Rosen

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No abstract provided.

Ethics, Race, And Reform, Anthony V. Alfieri

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No abstract provided.

Enron And The Dark Side Of Shareholder Value, William Wilson Bratton

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This Article addresses the implications that the Enron collapse holds out for the self-regulatory system of corporate governance. The case shows that the incentive structure that motivates actors in the system generates much less powerful checks against abuse than many observers have believed. Even as academics have proclaimed rising governance standards, some standards have declined, particularly those addressed to the numerology of shareholder value. The Article's inquiry begins with Enron's business plan. The Article asserts that there may be more to Enron’s "virtual firm" strategy than meets the eye beholding a firm in collapse. The Article restates the strategy as …

Document Processing For Automatic Color Form Dropout, Andreas E. Savakis, Christopher R. Brown

Articles

Color dropout refers to the process of converting color form documents to black and white by removing the colors that are part of the blank form and maintaining only the information entered in the form. In this paper, no prior knowledge of the form type is assumed. Color dropout is performed by associating darker non-dropout colors with information that is entered in the form and needs to be preserved. The color dropout filter parameters include the color values of the non-dropout colors, e.g. black and blue, the distance metric, e.g. Euclidian, and the tolerances allowed around these colors. Color dropout …

Pnp Si Resonant Interband Tunnel Diode With Symmetrical Ndr, Niu Jin, Phillip Berger, Sean Rommel

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A Si-based resonant interband tunnel diode (RITD) is presented with a pnp configuration so that an integrated RITD can be easily used to form a latch. The IN characteristics of this pnp RITD show symmetrical negative differential resistance (NDR) regions in both forward and reverse bias. The top diode shows a peak-to-valley current ratio (PVCR) of 1.63 with peak current density (Jp) of 1.5 kA/cm2, while the bottom diode shows a PVCR of 1.51 with J p of 2.0 kA/cm2