THE FUTURE OF BIOTECHNOLOGY: ACCELERATING GENEEDITING ADVANCEMENTS THROUGH NON-EXCLUSIVE LICENSES AND OPEN-SOURCE ACCESS OF CRISPR-CAS9

From the immune system of bacteria comes a promising new gene-editing technology, CRISPR-Cas9. Discovered in 2012, CRISPR-Cas9 has already been named one of the fastest, easiest, and cheapest gene-editing technologies. With this reputation, CRISPR-Cas9 shows promise in the research and treatments of a wide array of diseases: cancer, blood disorders, blindness, AIDS, Cystic Fibrosis, Muscular Dystrophy, Huntington’s disease, and even COVID-19 to name a few. This relatively new technology has brought hope to researchers, doctors, and patients alike; however, current biotechnology licensing practices could hinder CRISPR-Cas9’s groundbreaking potential. This article examines common biotechnology licensing practices, specifically the practices of two of the largest CRISPR-Cas9 patent holders, The University of California, Berkeley and The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. After each institution’s respective CRISPRCas9 discovery, a lengthy court battled ensued to determine which institution discovered CRIPR-Cas9 first, and whether patent infringement existed. Eventually, both institutions were granted their desired patents and quickly ensured the future of their technologies by creating independent companies to control the licensing of CRISPR-Cas9 patents. This article refers to such companies as “surrogate companies” and explains the function of these entities as the gatekeeper of valuable patent rights through exclusive licenses. This article offers solutions to existing exclusive licenses without losing sight of the important relationship between research institutions and surrogate companies. Providing limited field-of-use licenses, rather than over-inclusive exclusive licenses of CRISPR-Cas9 patented technology, will ensure that a wider range of the human genome can be treated. Rather than merely scratching the surface of multiple therapies, limited licenses allow companies to focus on and thoroughly develop specific gene therapies. This reduces the risk of overlooking or under developing potentially life-changing gene therapies. This article goes further, suggesting that the biotechnology industry adopt an open-source access model like the one used in the software industry. Such a model could prove beneficial for companies looking to expand product offerings while still maintaining profits. Historically low-profit diseases, like tropical diseases, could become more desirable to companies based on the collaboration and reduced R&D costs inherent in open-source practices

Human user authentication based on mouse dynamics: a feasibility study

Security problems have been discussed for a long time in the past recent decades in many fields such as communication, networking and user authentication. Security and authentication methods have also been explored for a long time by many researchers, and many ecient ways have been developed and used in modern society. Password and fingerprint based user authentication methods are most common user authentication methods being used in our daily lives. With computers and smart phones population growing vastly, we need to put more attention on the security methods. However, those traditional authentication methods are not safe and ecient enough. Passwords are stolen and revealed to hackers, while fingerprint can be easily got from an authenticated person. We moved our eyes on another way of security and authentication- biometric kinesiology. The muscle in our body can remember the movement if we practiced an action a lot, and that memory is built in the body, not in our brain memory, which means that we cannot forget a practiced action in the way we forget a password. We proposed to use the action with mouse from an authenticated user as the password of a system, in which only the user perform right action can be regarded as an authenticated user. Otherwise the system will reject the user. This movement is hard to mimic unless the hacker do a lot of practice of that certain movement and do exactly the same as an authenticated user. This is very difficult because we modified the normal mouse and the mouse will not move as the hacker expect. What’s more, only the authenticated user knows how was the mouse be modified and how to act to adjust to that modification. In this way our proposed approach is much safer than the above traditional security and authentication methods. However, this is a feasibility study and more experiment will be done to prove our proposal and we will discuss it in the future work chapter

FlexClock: Generic Clock Reconfiguration for Low-end IoT Devices

Clock configuration within constrained general-purpose microcontrollers takes a key role in tuning performance, power consumption, and timing accuracy of applications in the Internet of Things (IoT). Subsystems governing the underlying clock tree must nonetheless cope with a huge parameter space, complex dependencies, and dynamic constraints. Manufacturers expose the underlying functions in very diverse ways, which leads to specialized implementations of low portability. In this paper, we propose FlexClock, an approach for generic online clock reconfiguration on constrained IoT devices. We argue that (costly) generic clock configuration of general purpose computers and powerful mobile devices need to slim down to the lower end of the device spectrum. In search of a generalized solution, we identify recurring patterns and building blocks, which we use to decompose clock trees into independent, reusable components. With this segmentation we derive an abstract representation of vendor-specific clock trees, which then can be dynamically reconfigured at runtime. We evaluate our implementation on common hardware. Our measurements demonstrate how FlexClock significantly improves peak power consumption and energy efficiency by enabling dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) in a platform-agnostic way

Integration of generic operating systems in partitioned architectures

Tese de mestrado, Engenharia Informática (Arquitectura, Sistemas e Redes de Computadores), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2009The Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) specification defines a partitioned environment hosting multiple avionics functions of different criticalities on a shared computing platform. ARINC 653, one of the specifications related to the IMA concept, defines a standard interface between the software applications and the underlying operating system. Both these specifications come from the world of civil aviation, but they are getting interest from space industry partners, who have identified common requirements to those of aeronautic applications. Within the scope of this interest, the AIR architecture was defined, under a contract from the European Space Agency (ESA). AIR provides temporal and spatial segregation, and foresees the use of different operating systems in each partition. Temporal segregation is achieved through the fixed cyclic scheduling of computing resources to partitions. The present work extends the foreseen partition operating system (POS) heterogeneity to generic non-real-time operating systems. This was motivated by documented difficulties in porting applications to RTOSs, and by the notion that proper integration of a non-real-time POS will not compromise the timeliness of critical real-time functions. For this purpose, Linux is used as a case study. An embedded variant of Linux is built and evaluated regarding its adequacy as a POS in the AIR architecture. To guarantee safe integration, a solution based on the Linux paravirtualization interface, paravirt-ops, is proposed. In the course of these activities, the AIR architecture definition was also subject to improvements. The most significant one, motivated by the intended increased POS heterogeneity, was the introduction of a new component, the AIR Partition OS Adaptation Layer (PAL). The AIR PAL provides greater POS-independence to the major components of the AIR architecture, easing their independent certification efforts. Other improvements provide enhanced timeliness mechanisms, such as mode-based schedules and process deadline violation monitoring.A especificação Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) define um ambiente compartimentado com funções de aviónica de diferentes criticalidades a coexistir numa plataforma computacional. A especificação relacionada ARINC 653 define uma interface padrão entre as aplicações e o sistema operativo subjacente. Ambas as especificações provêm do mundo da aviónica, mas estão a ganhar o interesse de parceiros da indústria espacial, que identificaram requisitos em comum entre as aplicações aeronáuticas e espaciais. No âmbito deste interesse, foi definida a arquitectura AIR, sob contrato da Agência Espacial Europeia (ESA). Esta arquitectura fornece segregação temporale espacial, e prevê o uso de diferentes sistemas operativos em cada partição. A segregação temporal é obtida através do escalonamento fixo e cíclico dos recursos às partições. Este trabalho estende a heterogeneidade prevista entre os sistemas operativos das partições (POS). Tal foi motivado pelas dificuldades documentadas em portar aplicações para sistemas operativos de tempo-real, e pela noção de que a integração apropriada de um POS não-tempo-real não comprometerá a pontualidade das funções críticas de tempo-real. Para este efeito, o Linux foi utilizado como caso de estudo. Uma variante embedida de Linux é construída e avaliada quanto à sua adequação como POS na arquitectura AIR. Para garantir uma integração segura, é proposta uma solução baseada na interface de paravirtualização do Linux, paravirt-ops. No decurso destas actividades, foram também feitas melhorias à definição da arquitectura AIR. O mais significante, motivado pelo pretendido aumento da heterogeneidade entre POSs, foi a introdução de um novo componente, AIR Partition OS Adaptation Layer (PAL). Este componente proporciona aos principais componentes da arquitectura AIR maior independência face ao POS, facilitando os esforços para a sua certificação independente. Outros melhoramentos fornecem mecanismos avançados de pontualidade, como mode-based schedules e monitorização de incumprimento de metas temporais de processos.ESA/ITI - European Space Agency Innovation Triangular Initiative (through ESTEC Contract 21217/07/NL/CB-Project AIR-II) and FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (through the Multiannual Funding Programme

Arzneimittelentwicklung zu vernachlässigten Krankheiten

Krankheiten, die fast ausschließlich in armen Ländern auftreten, werden seit Jahrzehnten in der medizinischen Forschung und Entwicklung vernachlässigt. Eine Ursache wird in der zahlungsschwachen Nachfrage gesehen. Sie kann die aufwendige kommerzialisierte Produktentwicklung nicht in ausreichendem Maße anreizen. Seit etlichen Jahren werden Wege gesucht, das systemische Problem des patentbasierten Innovationsprozesses zumindest bei armutsassoziierten Krankheiten abzumildern. Einige Akteure testen, inwiefern sich eine Grundidee der Open-Source-Softwareentwicklung – die Zusammenarbeit Freiwilliger bringt Produkte hervor, die keiner Firma allein gehören – auf die Arzneimittelentwicklung übertragen lässt. Dafür öffnen sie unterschiedliche Elemente des pharmakologischen Innovationsprozesses für eine gemeinsame Nutzung und Weiterentwicklung. Sie bezeichnen dies teilweise als Open Innovation. Der Artikel stellt relevante Initiativen vor

Drug development for neglected diseases: Field test for various open innovation initiatives

Krankheiten, die fast ausschließlich in armen Ländern auftreten, werden seit Jahrzehnten in der medizinischen Forschung und Entwicklung vernachlässigt. Eine Ursache wird in der zahlungsschwachen Nachfrage gesehen. Sie kann die aufwendige kommerzialisierte Produktentwicklung nicht in ausreichendem Maße anreizen. Seit etlichen Jahren werden Wege gesucht, das systemische Problem des patentbasierten Innovationsprozesses zumindest bei armutsassoziierten Krankheiten abzumildern. Einige Akteure testen, inwiefern sich eine Grundidee der Open-Source-Softwareentwicklung – die Zusammenarbeit Freiwilliger bringt Produkte hervor, die keiner Firma allein gehören – auf die Arzneimittelentwicklung übertragen lässt. Dafür öffnen sie unterschiedliche Elemente des pharmakologischen Innovationsprozesses für eine gemeinsame Nutzung und Weiterentwicklung. Sie bezeichnen dies teilweise als Open Innovation. Der Artikel stellt relevante Initiativen vor.There is a lack of sufficient research and development regarding diseases almost exclusively affection poor countries. One reason is seen in the financially weak demand, which can not sufficiently stimulate the complex commercialized product development. In recent years, national and international measures have been discussed and partly been implemented to attenuate the systemic problem of the patent-based innovation process, at least for poverty-related diseases. Some Stakeholders are testing how the idea of open source software development – the collaboration of volunteers generate products that are not owned by a company – can be transferred to drug development. They open different elements of the pharmacological innovation process for sharing and further drug development. Partly they call this Open Innovation. The article presents relevant initiatives

Open source tools for Linux distribution development and maintenance in corporate environment

In this thesis, we will look into utilizing open source software build tools in an enterprise environment. We will aim at providing a complete set of tools starting from developer support and leading to software delivery. We will discuss the different tools that we will use to offer more reliable, easy to use and efficient process of composing software products. Many open source projects will be utilized and we will examine the required steps to be able to successfully operate them in a closed environment. We will also look into providing a completely new base image for in-house cloud platform building. The process of internally composing the operating system from open source components will be discussed in depth