Enforcing IPR Through Informal Institutions: The Possible Role of Religion in Fighting Software Piracy

The existence of formal IPR laws can be considered a prerequisite for having efficient law enforcement but does not imply efficient enforcement in itself. A simple model is constructed to explain the interplay between the IPR law and human behavior within counterfeiting countries. It shows how a politically monitored IPR enforcement strategy is able to alter formal IPR laws or institutions but might not affect informal institutions, or human morals and behavior, to the same extent, hence barely affecting piracy situation. The model shows the essential role of informal institutions and its sanction mechanisms in the enforcement process. The main obstacle of IPR enforcement is that people are still not convinced that IPR violations are unethical. Religion can be considered an informal institution that might support or hinder formal laws issued with regards to IPR and hence influence de facto enforcement of laws, especially in countries with high piracy rate if a high adherence to religion is found. As the Religion-Loyalty Index (RLI) developed by this study shows, Muslim countries have the highest religiosity level among different religions. Consequently, an investigation of how Islamic jurisprudence views IPR piracy is conducted. As Islam generally prohibits IPR piracy, a set of policy recommendations based on new institutional perspective is presented that can effectively help in minimizing IPR piracy in developing countries in general and Muslim ones in specific

Short Bowel Syndrome and Kidney Transplantation: Challenges, Outcomes, and the Use of Teduglutide

Among patients with short bowel syndrome who commonly have kidney disease, kidney transplantation remains challenging. We describe the clinicopathologic course of a 59-year old man with short bowel syndrome secondary to Crohn’s disease who underwent a deceased donor kidney transplant that was complicated by recurrent acute kidney allograft injury due to volume depletion from diarrhea, ultimately requiring the placement of permanent intravenous access for daily volume expansion at home resulting in the recovery of allograft function. Teduglutide treatment at 1.8 years post-transplant led to a dramatic decrease in diarrhea. A literature review of similar cases yielded 18 patients who underwent 19 kidney transplants. Despite high rates of complications, at the time of last follow-up (median 2.1 years [0.04-7]), 94% of the patients were still alive and 89% had functioning allografts, with a median eGFR of 37.5 [14-122] ml/min/1.73m2. In conclusion, despite high rates of complications, kidney transplantation in patients with short bowel syndrome is associated with acceptable short- and midterm outcomes. Further, we report for the first time the effects of the glucagon-like peptide-2 analogue teduglutide for short bowel syndrome in a kidney transplant recipient

Self-oriented CoFe2O4 composites for non-reciprocal microwave components

In telecommunication systems, heavy bulky magnets are used to establish the proper functioning of a circulator by ensuring the uniform orientation of the ferrite material’s magnetic moment. Thus to develop an unbiased coplanar microwave circulator, the approach based on “ferromagnetic nanowired composite substrates” was promising. The idea was to do a magnetophoretic deposition of nanocoloidal cobalt ferrite nanoparticles into porous alumina membranes and permanently orient them uniformly. Therefore, in order to check the orientation possibility of the nanoparticle, samples of magnetic thin films on glass substrates were synthetized from CoFe2O4 nanoparticles dispersed in a silica sol-gel matrix using the dip-coating technique with and without a uniformly applied magnetic field. To investigate the magnetic behavior of the prepared samples, the Faraday rotation as a function of the applied magnetic field was measured using a spectral polarimeter. The unambiguous qualitative difference between the Faraday rotation hysteresis loops shows a large variation of coercive (μ0Hc) and remanent field (Mr/Ms) values, thus proving the orientation of the nanoparticles. Such nanocomposite is a promising candidate for future miniature microwave circulators fabrication

Ancient mitogenomes of Phoenicians from Sardinia and Lebanon: A story of settlement, integration, and female mobility

<div><p>The Phoenicians emerged in the Northern Levant around 1800 BCE and by the 9^th century BCE had spread their culture across the Mediterranean Basin, establishing trading posts, and settlements in various European Mediterranean and North African locations. Despite their widespread influence, what is known of the Phoenicians comes from what was written about them by the Greeks and Egyptians. In this study, we investigate the extent of Phoenician integration with the Sardinian communities they settled. We present 14 new ancient mitogenome sequences from pre-Phoenician (~1800 BCE) and Phoenician (~700–400 BCE) samples from Lebanon (n = 4) and Sardinia (n = 10) and compare these with 87 new complete mitogenomes from modern Lebanese and 21 recently published pre-Phoenician ancient mitogenomes from Sardinia to investigate the population dynamics of the Phoenician (Punic) site of Monte Sirai, in southern Sardinia. Our results indicate evidence of continuity of some lineages from pre-Phoenician populations suggesting integration of indigenous Sardinians in the Monte Sirai Phoenician community. We also find evidence of the arrival of new, unique mitochondrial lineages, indicating the movement of women from sites in the Near East or North Africa to Sardinia, but also possibly from non-Mediterranean populations and the likely movement of women from Europe to Phoenician sites in Lebanon. Combined, this evidence suggests female mobility and genetic diversity in Phoenician communities, reflecting the inclusive and multicultural nature of Phoenician society.</p></div

Median-Joining network and DAPC analysis.

<p>A) Median-Joining network of all ancient mitogenomes. Dark blue circles are pre-Phoenician samples from Sardinia [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0190169#pone.0190169.ref015" target="_blank">15</a>], light blue circles are Phoenician samples from Sardinia and red circles are Phoenician samples from Lebanon and the orange circle represents the pre-Phoenician sample from Lebanon. The number of mutations separating sequences are shown as dashes on the branches B) DAPC analysis retaining 4 PCs and 1 DA eigenvalues; and C) DAPC analysis retaining 4 PCs and 2 DA eigenvalues. Colours are the same as in 1A.</p

Maximum likelihood trees for what appear to be introduced ancient Phoenician haplotypes and publicly available sequences for the corresponding mitochondrial haplogroups.

<p>All samples are modern except for sample KY399146 (pre-Phoenician Sardinian; from Olivieri et al. 2017) and ancient samples from this study (MS10578, MS10581, MS10587 and MS10560). Each node is annotated with the GenBank accession number and the sample location, where known. Sequences from this study are highlighted in red text. A. N1b1 (including MS10578; N1b1a branch is labeled with bold text), B. W5 (including MS10581), C. X2 (including MS10587; X2b branch is labeled with bold text) and D. T2b3 (including MS10560).</p

Haplogroup assignments, dates, locations and Genbank accession details of all aDNA samples included in analyses.

<p>Haplogroup assignments, dates, locations and Genbank accession details of all aDNA samples included in analyses.</p