Private Copying Levy in Cross-Border Transactions: CJEU’s stance in Stichting v Opus

On 16 June 2011 the Court of Justice of the European Court (CJEU) gave its decision in Stichting de Thuiskopie v Opus Supplies Deutschland GmbH, Mijndert van der Lee, Hananja van der Lee (Case C-462/09). The Court held that the Member States which have introduced the private copying exception are required to guarantee an adequate compensation to right holders by ensuring the collection of the levy even in case of transaction with cross-border elements

Exceptions to Public Lending Rights and Remuneration to Authors: CJEU’s stance in Vewa v Belgium

On 30 June 2011 the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) gave its decision in Vereniging van Educatieve en Wetenschappelijke Auters (Vewa) v Belgium (Case C-271/10). The CJEU interpreted Article 6(1) of Directive 2006/115, which allows Member States to derogate from the exclusive rights provided in respect of “public lending”, provided that authors receive a remuneration. It was held that such remuneration cannot be purely symbolic but it must be determined on the basis of the number of both the works made available and of the users of the public establishment suitable for the lending

The fungal alternative: Insights on medicinal mushrooms-based protein-rich biomasses by submerged fermentation of agro-industrial by-products

Among the alternative proteins aimed at replacing those of animal origin, fungal proteins stand out as a promising resource capable of meeting environmental, health, and ethical demands. Fungal biomasses, or mycoproteins, are indeed rich in proteins and other macro- and micronutrients, while low in fats. However, their production is an ongoing challenge. This study focused on submerged fermentation, a highly controllable process that can couple high yields and agro-industrial by-products exploitation as growth media. Five medicinal mushrooms (Ganoderma resinaceum, Pleurotus ostreatus, Cordyceps militaris, Pleurotus eryngii, and Lentinula edodes) were tested for their biomass growth, protein content, and antioxidant properties on several agro-industrial by-product-based media. Among the experimental lines, the highest biomass production and protein content (51%) were achieved in P. eryngii grown in black solider fly (Hermetia illucens) exuviae-media. Concerning the antioxidant properties, the production of fungal extracts through microwave-assisted maceration was as performing as, if not better than, ethanolic extraction

Positivity of the English language

Over the last million years, human language has emerged and evolved as a fundamental instrument of social communication and semiotic representation. People use language in part to convey emotional information, leading to the central and contingent questions: (1) What is the emotional spectrum of natural language? and (2) Are natural languages neutrally, positively, or negatively biased? Here, we report that the human-perceived positivity of over 10,000 of the most frequently used English words exhibits a clear positive bias. More deeply, we characterize and quantify distributions of word positivity for four large and distinct corpora, demonstrating that their form is broadly invariant with respect to frequency of word use.Comment: Manuscript: 9 pages, 3 tables, 5 figures; Supplementary Information: 12 pages, 3 tables, 8 figure