Right On Time: A Reply to Professors Allen, Claeys, Epstein, Gordon, Holbrook, Mossoff, Rose, and Van Houweling

A simple observation started us off in writing Right on Time. Studying and teaching intellectual property law, we noticed striking parallels between traditional first possession rules in property law and analagous rules governing the acquisition of patent, copyright, and trademark rights. We thought that established first possession principles could illuminate the workings of IP law. As we dug in, however, it became increasingly clear that our premise wasn’t quite right. While many penetrating commentators had said many penetrating things about first possession, the leading treatments tended to focus on significant individual aspects of the overall issue. What we could not find was a synthetic treatment that knitted together the accumulated insights in the literature in a comprehensive way, showing how the different parts of the puzzle relate to one another. And so our project grew. The final article sought to accomplish two goals: first, to set out a unified theoretical framework for first possession of the sort that seemed to be missing from the literature and, second, as originally planned, to apply that framework to patent, copyright, and trademark law to show both the similarities and differences with real and tangible property. [...] Our goals were thus reasonably ambitious, and it is immensely gratifying to have elicited responses from eight leading property and intellectual property scholars, all of whom influenced our own thinking in developing our thesis. We are even more gratified by their kind words about the fruits of our labors. But like them, we are probably more interested in points of departure than in our many areas of agreement. Our attempt to articulate an omnibus account of the dynamics of first possession systems was always going to be vulnerable to charges that some variables deserved greater emphasis than we could give them, and several of the thoughtful responses to our article single out elements of the first possession story for greater attention. These comments have spurred some further thinking on our part and in some cases called attention to aspects of our original article that may need clarification, and we are grateful to the editors of this journal for the chance to add a few additional words to the conversation. This abstract has been taken from the authors\u27 introductory paragraphs

The fiscal objection to social welfare rights

The paper addresses the objections often made, implicitly or explicitly, that social welfare (also known as social-economic) rights are not justiciable because of the fiscal implications that they carry. The paper compares this argument to the parallel claim, that is easily rejected by the courts, where civil and political rights are concerne

Prophetic Imagination in the Light of Narratology and Disability Studies in Isaiah 40–48

Analyzes Isaiah 40–48 as a single literary work through levels of speakers (frame and subordinate) with implications for its construction of divine potency and communication

Neural basis of identity information extraction from noisy face images

Previous research has made significant progress in identifying the neural basis of the remarkably efficient and seemingly effortless face perception in humans. However, the neural processes that enable the extraction of facial information under challenging conditions when face images are noisy and deteriorated remains poorly understood. Here we investigated the neural processes underlying the extraction of identity information from noisy face images using fMRI. For each participant, we measured (1) face-identity discrimination performance outside the scanner, (2) visual cortical fMRI responses for intact and phase-randomized face stimuli, and (3) intrinsic functional connectivity using resting-state fMRI. Our whole-brain analysis showed that the presence of noise led to reduced and increased fMRI responses in the mid-fusiform gyrus and the lateral occipital cortex, respectively. Furthermore, the noise-induced modulation of the fMRI responses in the right face-selective fusiform face area (FFA) was closely associated with individual differences in the identity discrimination performance of noisy faces: smaller decrease of the fMRI responses was accompanied by better identity discrimination. The results also revealed that the strength of the intrinsic functional connectivity within the visual cortical network composed of bilateral FFA and bilateral object-selective lateral occipital cortex (LOC) predicted the participants' ability to discriminate the identity of noisy face images. These results imply that perception of facial identity in the case of noisy face images is subserved by neural computations within the right FFA as well as a re-entrant processing loop involving bilateral FFA and LOC. © 2015 the authors

Ottomanism at its final gasp: Memoirs of the ottomans on duty in arab provinces during world war i

This study aims to expose the ways in which leading officials of the Committee of Union and Progress (the CUP) interpreted, internalized, and questioned the conditions of their mission in Arab lands during World War I (WWI). It builds on the memoirs of Falih Rıfkı, aide-de-camp of Commander-in-Chief Cemal Pasha, and Halide Edip, an ardent supporter of the social and educational reforms of the CUP government. Both written after the war, these memoirs reflect not only nostalgia and regret but also the complicated relationship between Turkish officials and Arabs on the eve of their breakup from one another as citizens of the Ottoman State. The study also questions the orthodox argument that the Turkist and anti-Arabic ideology of the CUP government in general and Cemal Pasha’s wartime crusade against Arab nationalists in particular triggered the emergence of Arab nationalism. By contemplating the memoirs of CUP members in Arab lands, this study argues that Falih Rıfkı, Cemal Pasha, and Halide Edip tried to understand the region and its people in order to create a mutual future for Turks and Arabs within the Ottoman Empire