The Rules of Standard Setting Organizations: An Empirical Analysis

This paper empirically explores the procedures employed by standard-setting organizations. Consistent with Lerner-Tirole (2004), we find (a) a negative relationship between the extent to which an SSO is oriented to technology sponsors and the concession level required of sponsors and (b) a positive correlation between the sponsor-friendliness of the selected SSO and the quality of the standard. We also develop and test two extensions of the earlier model: the presence of provisions mandating royalty-free licensing is negatively associated with disclosure requirements, and when there are only a limited number of SSOs, the relationship between concessions and user friendliness is weaker.

The Rules of Standard Setting Organizations: an Empirical Analysis

This paper empirically explores standard-setting organizations ’ policy choices. Consistent with Lerner-Tirole (2006), we find (a) a negative relationship between the extent to which an SSO is oriented to technology sponsors and the concession level required of sponsors and (b) a positive correlation between the sponsor-friendliness of the selected SSO and the quality of the standard. We also develop and test two extensions of the earlier model: the presence of provisions mandating royalty-free licensing is negatively associated with disclosure requirements, and the relationship between concessions and user friendliness is weaker when there is only a limited number of SSOs

Using Uncensored Communication Channels to Divert Spam Traffic

We offer a microeconomic model of the two-sided market for the dominant form of spam: bulk, unsolicited, and commercial advertising email. We adopt an incentive-centered design approach to develop a simple, feasible improvement to the current email system using an uncensored communication channel. Such a channel could be an email folder or account, to which properly tagged commercial solicitations are routed. We characterize the circumstances under which spammers would voluntarily move much of their spam into the open channel, leaving the traditional email channel dominated by person-to-person, non-spam mail. Our method follows from observing that there is a real demand for unsolicited commercial email, so that everyone can be made better off if a channel is provided for spammers to meet spamdemanders. As a bonus, the absence of filtering in an open channel restores to advertisers the incentive to make messages truthful, rather than to disguise them to avoid filters. We show that under certain conditions all email recipients are better off when an open channel is introduced. Only recipients wanting spam will use the open channel enjoying the less disguised messages, and for all recipients the satisfaction associated with desirable mail received increases, and dissatisfaction associated with both undesirable mail received and desirable mail filtered out decreases

Using Uncensored Communication Channels to Divert Spam Traffic

We offer a microeconomic model of the two-sided market for the dominant form of spam: bulk, unsolicited, and commercial advertising email. Most most spam is advertising, and thus should be modeled as a problem in the market supply and demand for advertising, rather than the usual approach of modeling spam as pure social cost to be eliminated. We adopt an incentive-centered design approach to develop a simple, feasible improvement to the current email system using an uncensored (open) communication channel. Such a channel could be an email folder or account, to which properly tagged commercial solicitations are routed without any blocking or filtering along the way. We characterize the circumstances under which spammers would voluntarily move much of their spam into the open channel, leaving the traditional email channel dominated by person-to-person, non-spam mail. We show that under certain conditions all email recipients are better off when an open channel is introduced. Only recipients wanting spam will use the open channel enjoying the less disguised messages and cheaper sale prices, and for all recipients the dissatisfaction associated with both undesirable mail received and desirable mail filtered out decreases.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/49506/1/OpenChannel_tprc.pd

Can probability of genetic mutation be an indicator of clinical relevance?

AbstractNPM1 gene mutation evaluated on a population basis is a valuable and realistic tool to reflect the pathophysiological relevance of cancer. In a comparison of the NPM1 cDNA of human bladder cancer with its consensus sequence, we have found that a higher NPM1 sequence identity in a population is consistent with poor tumor differentiation, advanced tumor stage, and likelihood of recurrence. These data imply that “probability” of NPM1 mutation is an indicator of status of malignancy

The diabatic picture of electron transfer, reaction barriers and molecular dynamics

Diabatic states have a long history in chemistry, beginning with early valence bond pictures of molecular bonding and extending through the construction of model potential energy surfaces to the modern proliferation of methods for computing these elusive states. In this review, we summarize the basic principles that define the diabatic basis and demonstrate how they can be applied in the specific context of constrained density functional theory. Using illustrative examples from electron transfer and chemical reactions, we show how the diabatic picture can be used to extract qualitative insight and quantitative predictions about energy landscapes. The review closes with a brief summary of the challenges and prospects for the further application of diabatic states in chemistry.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF-CAREER Award (CHE-0547877)David & Lucile Packard FoundationAlfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Ultra microelectrodes increase the current density provided by electroactive biofilms by improving their electron transport ability

Electroactive biofilms were formed from garden compost leachate on platinum wires under constant polarisation at -0.2 V vs. SCE and temperature controlled at 40 C. The oxidation of 10 mM acetate gave maximum current density of 7 A/m2 with the electrodes of largest diameters (500 and 1000 µm). The smaller diameter wires exhibited an ultra-microelectrode (UME) effect, which increased the maximum current density up to 66 A/m2 with the 25 µm diameter electrode. SEM imaging showed biofilms around 75 µm thick on the 50 µm diameter wire, while they were only 25 µm thick on the 500 µm diameter electrode. Low scan cyclic voltammetry (CV) curves were similar to those already reported for biofilms formed with pure cultures of G. sulfurreducens. Concentrations of the redox molecules contained in the biofilms, which were derived from the non-turnover CVs, were around 0.4 to 0.6 mM, which was close to the value of 1 mM extracted from literature data for G. sulfurreducens biofilms. A numerical model was designed, which demonstrated that the microbial anodes were not controlled here by microbial kinetics. Introducing the concept of average electron transport length made the model well fitted with the experimental results, which indicates rate control by electron transport through the biofilm matrix. According to this model, the UME effect improved the electron transport network in the biofilm, which allowed the biofilm to grow to greater thickness

Non-canonical odor coding in the mosquito

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are a persistent human foe, transmitting arboviruses including dengue when they feed on human blood. Mosquitoes are intensely attracted to body odor and carbon dioxide, which they detect using ionotropic chemosensory receptors encoded by three large multi-gene families. Genetic mutations that disrupt the olfactory system have modest effects on human attraction, suggesting redundancy in odor cod-ing. The canonical view is that olfactory sensory neurons each express a single chemosensory receptor that defines its ligand selectivity. We discovered that Ae. aegypti uses a different organizational principle, with many neurons co-expressing multiple chemosensory receptor genes. In vivo electrophysiology demon-strates that the broad ligand-sensitivity of mosquito olfactory neurons depends on this non-canonical co-expression. The redundancy afforded by an olfactory system in which neurons co-express multiple chemosensory receptors may increase the robustness of the mosquito olfactory system and explain our long-standing inability to disrupt the detection of humans by mosquitoes