The Accelerated Kepler Problem

The accelerated Kepler problem is obtained by adding a constant acceleration to the classical two-body Kepler problem. This setting models the dynamics of a jet-sustaining accretion disk and its content of forming planets as the disk loses linear momentum through the asymmetric jet-counterjet system it powers. The dynamics of the accelerated Kepler problem is analyzed using physical as well as parabolic coordinates. The latter naturally separate the problem's Hamiltonian into two unidimensional Hamiltonians. In particular, we identify the origin of the secular resonance in the accelerated Kepler problem and determine analytically the radius of stability boundary of initially circular orbits that are of particular interest to the problem of radial migration in binary systems as well as to the truncation of accretion disks through stellar jet acceleration.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, in press at Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronom

Questioning the Frequency and Wisdom of Compulsory Licensing for Pharmaceutical Patents

Many advocates for using compulsory licensing (“CL”) for pharmaceutical patents in developing countries like Thailand rest their case in part on the purported use of CL in the United States. In this paper we take issue with that proposition on several grounds. As a theoretical matter, we argue that the basic presumption in favor of voluntary licenses for IP should apply in the international arena, in addition to the domestic one. In the international context, voluntary licenses are of special importance because they strengthen the supply chain for distributing pharmaceuticals and ease the government enforcement of safety standards. Next, this paper analyzes several of the key illustrations of purported CL for drug patents in the United States and shows that the use of CL elsewhere deviates in material ways from the standard U.S. practices. These are the compulsory copyright licenses for music; the award of damages instead of injunctions after eBay v. MercExchange, and the use of compulsory licenses in antitrust settlements. Whatever the ultimate desirability of these American doctrines, none of them seeks to reduce the payment on licenses to the marginal cost of the licensed goods. Any need to help poor people gain access should not rely on CL, but instead should rely on tools precisely aimed at that purpose, including direct government purchases of patented drugs from their manufacturers at negotiated prices

Questioning the Frequency and Wisdom of Compulsory Licensing for Pharmaceutical Patents

Many advocates for using compulsory licensing (CL) for pharmaceutical patents in developing countries like Thailand rest their case in part on the purported use of CL in the United States. In this Article we take issue with that proposition on several grounds. As a textual matter, the commercially reasonable terms language in Article 31 of TRIPS, even when qualified by the Doha declaration, prevents any host nation from using whatever royalties it wants in its CL arrangements, especially those that are below marginal cost. As a theoretical matter, we argue that the basic presumption in favor of voluntary licenses for intellectual property (IP) should apply in the international arena, in addition to the domestic one. In the international context, voluntary licenses are of special importance because they strengthen the supply chain for distributing pharmaceuticals and ease the government enforcement of safety standards. Next, this Article analyzes several of the key illustrations of purported CL for drug patents in the United States and shows that the use of CL elsewhere deviates in material ways from the standard US practices. These are the compulsory copyright licenses for music, the limited statutory exemptions for pharmaceuticals and medical procedures, the award of damages instead of injunctions after eBay Inc v MercExchange, LLC, government takings, and the use of compulsory licenses in antitrust settlements. Whatever the ultimate desirability of these American doctrines, none of them seeks to reduce the payment on licenses to the marginal cost of the licensed goods. Any need to help poor people gain access to vital drugs should not rely on CL, but instead should rely on tools precisely aimed at that purpose, including direct government purchases of patented drugs from their manufacturers at negotiated prices

Questioning the Frequency and Wisdom of Compulsory Licensing for Pharmaceutical Patents

Many advocates for using compulsory licensing ( CL ) for pharmaceutical patents in developing countries like Thailand rest their case in part on the purported use of CL in the United States. In this paper we take issue with that proposition on several grounds. As a theoretical matter, we argue that the basic presumption in favor of voluntary licenses for IP should apply in the international arena, in addition to the domestic one. In the international context, voluntary licenses are of special importance because they strengthen the supply chain for distributing pharmaceuticals and ease the government enforcement of safety standards. Next, this paper analyzes several of the key illustrations of purported CL for drug patents in the United States and shows that the use of CL elsewhere deviates in material ways from the standard U.S. practices. These are the compulsory copyright licenses for music; the award of damages instead of injunctions after eBay v. MercExchange, and the use of compulsory licenses in antitrust settlements. Whatever the ultimate desirability of these American doctrines, none of them seeks to reduce the payment on licenses to the marginal cost of the licensed goods. Any need to help poor people gain access should not rely on CL, but instead should rely on tools precisely aimed at that purpose, including direct government purchases of patented drugs from their manufacturers at negotiated prices

Questioning the Frequency and Wisdom of Compulsory Licensing for Pharmaceutical Patents

Many advocates for using compulsory licensing (“CL”) for pharmaceutical patents in developing countries like Thailand rest their case in part on the purported use of CL in the United States. In this paper we take issue with that proposition on several grounds. As a theoretical matter, we argue that the basic presumption in favor of voluntary licenses for IP should apply in the international arena, in addition to the domestic one. In the international context, voluntary licenses are of special importance because they strengthen the supply chain for distributing pharmaceuticals and ease the government enforcement of safety standards. Next, this paper analyzes several of the key illustrations of purported CL for drug patents in the United States and shows that the use of CL elsewhere deviates in material ways from the standard U.S. practices. These are the compulsory copyright licenses for music; the award of damages instead of injunctions after eBay v. MercExchange, and the use of compulsory licenses in antitrust settlements. Whatever the ultimate desirability of these American doctrines, none of them seeks to reduce the payment on licenses to the marginal cost of the licensed goods. Any need to help poor people gain access should not rely on CL, but instead should rely on tools precisely aimed at that purpose, including direct government purchases of patented drugs from their manufacturers at negotiated prices

Electrical spin injection from an organic-based ferrimagnet in a hybrid organic/inorganic heterostructure

We report the successful extraction of spin polarized current from the organic-based room temperature ferrimagnetic semiconductor V[TCNE]x (x~2, TCNE: tetracyanoethylene; TC ~ 400 K, EG ~ 0.5 eV, s ~ 10-2 S/cm) and its subsequent injection into a GaAs/AlGaAs light-emitting diode (LED). The spin current tracks the magnetization of V[TCNE]x~2, is weakly temperature dependent, and exhibits heavy hole / light hole asymmetry. This result has implications for room temperature spintronics and the use of inorganic materials to probe spin physics in organic and molecular systems

The FTC, IP, and SSOs: Government Hold-Up Replacing Private Coordination

In its recent report entitled “The Evolving IP Marketplace,” the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) advances a far-reaching regulatory approach (Proposal) whose likely effect would be to distort the operation of the intellectual property (IP) marketplace in ways that will hamper the innovation and commercialization of new technologies. The gist of the FTC Proposal is to rely on highly non-standard and misguided definitions of economic terms of art such as “ex ante” and “hold-up,” while urging new inefficient rules for calculating damages for patent infringement. Stripped of the technicalities, the FTC Proposal would so reduce the costs of infringement by downstream users that the rate of infringement would unduly increase, as potential infringers find it in their interest to abandon the voluntary market in favor of a more attractive system of judicial pricing. As the number of nonmarket transactions increases, the courts will play an ever larger role in deciding the terms on which the patents of one party may be used by another party. The adverse effects of this new trend will do more than reduce the incentives for innovation; it will upset the current set of well-functioning private coordination activities in the IP marketplace that are needed to accomplish the commercialization of new technologies. Such a trend would seriously undermine capital formation, job growth, competition, and the consumer welfare the FTC seeks to promote. In this paper, we examine how these consequences play out in the context of standard-setting organizations (SSOs), whose activities are key to bringing standardized technologies to market. If the FTC’s proposed definitions of “reasonable royalties” and “incremental damages” become the rules for calculating damages in patent infringement cases, the stage will be set to allow the FTC and private actors to attack, after the fact, all standard pricing methods through some combination of antitrust litigation or direct regulation on the ground that such time-honored royalty arrangements involve the use of monopoly power by patent licensors. In consequence, the FTC’s Proposal, if adopted, could well encourage potential licensees to adopt the very holdout strategies the FTC purports to address and that well-organized SSOs routinely counteract today. Simply put, the FTC’s proposal for regulating IP by limiting the freedom of SSOs to set their own terms would replace private coordination with government hold-up. The FTC should instead abandon its preliminary recommendations and support the current set of licensing tools that have fueled effective innovation and dissemination in the IP marketplace. FTC forbearance from its unwise Proposal will improve bargaining incentives, reduce administrative costs, and remove unnecessary elements of legal uncertainty in the IP system, thereby allowing effective marketplace transactions to advance consumer welfare

EXPERIMENTS AND MODELLING OF CALCIUM SULPHATE PRECIPITATION UNDER SENSIBLE HEATING CONDITIONS: INITIAL FOULING AND BULK PRECIPITATION RATE STUDIES

Crystallization of calcium sulphate, an inverse solubility salt, on a heated surface under sensible heating conditions has been studied. A temperature measurement technique was employed to detect initial fouling rates. Fouling experiments were carried out to determine how process variables such as surface temperature and velocity affect the initial fouling rates of calcium sulphate scaling. Experimental results show that, at a given surface temperature, there exists a maximum initial fouling rate for a range of fluid velocities. Also, this maximum rate and the fluid velocity at which it occurs both increase as the surface temperature increases. These observations are all qualitatively in agreement with the Initial Fouling Rate Model (IFRM) of Epstein (1994). The fouling experiments were supplemented by kinetic batch experiments to make a comparison between fouling activation energies and purely chemical activation energies