Calling Bulls**t on the Lanham Act: The 2(a) Bar for Immoral, Scandalous, and Disparaging Marks

As the Lanham Act approaches the age of 65, it is a good time to take stock of its application to, and place within, the object and purpose of trademark law. Trademark law seeks to promote fair competition by reducing consumer search costs and preventing confusion in the minds of consumers as to the source of goods and services. However, Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act prevents registration of marks that are “immoral,” “scandalous,” “disparaging,” “deceptive,” or which “create a false association” with persons, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols. The 2(a) bar expands trademark law well beyond its basic goals. While a bar to registration for marks that are deceptive or create a false association is related to the overall object and purpose of trademark law, we argue that the bar to registration for marks that are immoral, scandalous, or disparaging is not, and that the 2(a) bar is — both in definition and application — ineffective, inconsistent, and vague, and that it should be removed from the Lanham Act

Revisiting Constraints on Fourth Generation Neutrino Masses

We revisit the current experimental bounds on fourth-generation Majorana neutrino masses, including the effects of right handed neutrinos. Current bounds from LEPII are significantly altered by a global analysis. We show that the current bounds on fourth generation neutrinos decaying to eW and mu W can be reduced to about 80 GeV (from the current bound of 90 GeV), while a neutrino decaying to tau W can be as light as 62.1 GeV. The weakened bound opens up a neutrino decay channel for intermediate mass Higgs, and interesting multi-particle final states for Higgs and fourth generation lepton decays.Comment: 7 pages 1 fi

Calibration of a far ultraviolet spectrograph and a study of vacuum spark breakdown

Calibration of far ultraviolet spectrograph and study of vacuum spark breakdow

Revealing the pure confinement effect in glass-forming liquids by dynamic mechanical analysis

Many molecular glass forming liquids show a shift of the glass transition Tg to lower temperatures when the liquid is confined into mesoporous host matrices. Two contrary explanations for this effect are given in literature: First, confinement induced acceleration of the dynamics of the molecules leads to an effective downshift of Tg increasing with decreasing pore size. Secondly, due to thermal mismatch between the liquid and the surrounding host matrix, negative pressure develops inside the pores with decreasing temperature, which also shifts Tg to lower temperatures. Here we present novel dynamic mechanical analysis measurements of the glass forming liquid salol in Vycor and Gelsil with pore sizes of d = 2.6, 5.0 and 7.5 nm. The dynamic complex elastic susceptibility data can be consistently described with the assumption of two relaxation processes inside the pores: A surface induced slowed down relaxation due to interaction with rough pore interfaces and a second relaxation within the core of the pores. This core relaxation time is reduced with decreasing pore size d, leading to a downshift of Tg in perfect agreement with recent DSC measurements

Recognition of 3-D Objects from Multiple 2-D Views by a Self-Organizing Neural Architecture

The recognition of 3-D objects from sequences of their 2-D views is modeled by a neural architecture, called VIEWNET that uses View Information Encoded With NETworks. VIEWNET illustrates how several types of noise and varialbility in image data can be progressively removed while incornplcte image features are restored and invariant features are discovered using an appropriately designed cascade of processing stages. VIEWNET first processes 2-D views of 3-D objects using the CORT-X 2 filter, which discounts the illuminant, regularizes and completes figural boundaries, and removes noise from the images. Boundary regularization and cornpletion are achieved by the same mechanisms that suppress image noise. A log-polar transform is taken with respect to the centroid of the resulting figure and then re-centered to achieve 2-D scale and rotation invariance. The invariant images are coarse coded to further reduce noise, reduce foreshortening effects, and increase generalization. These compressed codes are input into a supervised learning system based on the fuzzy ARTMAP algorithm. Recognition categories of 2-D views are learned before evidence from sequences of 2-D view categories is accumulated to improve object recognition. Recognition is studied with noisy and clean images using slow and fast learning. VIEWNET is demonstrated on an MIT Lincoln Laboratory database of 2-D views of jet aircraft with and without additive noise. A recognition rate of 90% is achieved with one 2-D view category and of 98.5% correct with three 2-D view categories.National Science Foundation (IRI 90-24877); Office of Naval Research (N00014-91-J-1309, N00014-91-J-4100, N00014-92-J-0499); Air Force Office of Scientific Research (F9620-92-J-0499, 90-0083

Calling Bullshit on the Lanham Act: The 2 (a) Bar for Immoral, Scandalous, and Disparaging Marks

As the Lanham Act approaches the age of sixty-five, it is a good time to take stock of its application to, and place within, the object and purpose of trademark law. The consumer-search theory of trademarks posits that the purpose of trademark law is to promote fair competition by reducing consumer search costs and preventing confusion in the minds of consumers as to the source of goods and services.\u27 However, section 2(a) of the Lanham Act expands trademark law well beyond its basic goals by preventing registration of marks that are immoral, scandalous, or disparaging. There are two primary questions raised by this issue: First, should the Lanham Act proscribe trademark registration for marks that are scandalous, immoral, or disparaging? Second, can (and does) the Lanham Act do so effectively? The former question will be the focus of a subsequent article; the latter is the central inquiry of this piece, which discusses some of the practical problems with the interpretation and application of 2(a). Part II begins with a brief discussion of the purpose of trademark law as it has evolved over time and the expansion of trademark law into areas unrelated to its original purpose. Part III examines the meaning and application of the section 2(a) bars for immoral, scandalous, and disparaging marks, and examines how the two doctrines have been interpreted by courts. We argue that the standards are unclear, and, to the extent they do exist, are often erroneously interpreted. Part IV discusses the high degree of inconsistency inherent in interpretation of these particular 2(a) bars and argues that the content-based determinations are so highly subjective that application of the standards fails to take into account contextually relevant information. Part V looks at the registration process itself as a central situs of the application of the 2(a) bars and discusses the inadequacy of evidence available to trademark examiners at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Finally, we conclude that the section 2(a) bar for immoral, scandalous, and disparaging marks is problematic in both interpretation and application

Representing addition and subtraction : learning the formal conventions

The study was designed to test the effects of a structured intervention in teaching children to represent addition and subtraction. In a post-test only control group design, 90 five-year-olds experienced the intervention entitled Bi-directional Translation whilst 90 control subjects experienced typical teaching. Post-intervention testing showed some significant differences between the two groups both in terms of being able to effect the addition and subtraction operations and in being able to determine which operation was appropriate. The results suggest that, contrary to historical practices, children's exploration of real world situations should precede practice in arithmetical symbol manipulation

Massive Protoplanetary Disks in the Trapezium Region

(abridged) We determine the disk mass distribution around 336 stars in the young Orion Nebula cluster by imaging a 2.5' x 2.5' region in 3 mm continuum emission with the Owens Valley Millimeter Array. For this sample of 336 stars, we observe 3 mm emission above the 3-sigma noise level toward ten sources, six of which have also been detected optically in silhouette against the bright nebular background. In addition, we detect 20 objects that do not correspond to known near-IR cluster members. Comparisons of our measured fluxes with longer wavelength observations enable rough separation of dust emission from thermal free-free emission, and we find substantial dust emission toward most objects. For the ten objects detected at both 3 mm and near-IR wavelengths, eight exhibit substantial dust emission. Excluding the high-mass stars and assuming a gas-to-dust ratio of 100, we estimate circumstellar masses ranging from 0.13 to 0.39 Msun. For the cluster members not detected at 3 mm, images of individual objects are stacked to constrain the mean 3 mm flux of the ensemble. The average flux is detected at the 3-sigma confidence level, and implies an average disk mass of 0.005 Msun, comparable to the minimum mass solar nebula. The percentage of stars in Orion surrounded by disks more massive than ~0.1 Msun is consistent with the disk mass distribution in Taurus, and we argue that massive disks in Orion do not appear to be truncated through close encounters with high-mass stars. Comparison of the average disk mass and number of massive dusty structures in Orion with similar surveys of the NGC 2024 and IC 348 clusters constrains the evolutionary timescales of massive circumstellar disks in clustered environments.Comment: 27 pages, including 7 figures. Accepted by Ap

Meeting the challenges of public engagement, research impact and research participation as a baby and child lab

As well as conducting research in developmental science, baby and child labs face additional pressures. They must demonstrate public engagement and research impact, while also recruiting enough participants to conduct research, something that can be particularly challenging with infants and young children. These different pressures compete for time and resources, leaving researchers struggling to engage effectively in all such activities. Here we describe a low-cost, easy-to-implement, enjoyable and effective means of simultaneously addressing the challenges of recruitment, public engagement and research impact. It started with a process of listening and knowledge exchange with relevant local stakeholders to discern the interests and needs of the local infant community (including families, health professionals and businesses). This process led to the establishment of a fortnightly educational and support group for pregnant women and mothers of young infants, which met in the lab. This group combined peer discussion, presentations on developmental psychology, and ‘taster’ activities for mothers and infants from local businesses. Data collected from questionnaires from the first and final sessions indicated significant improvements in participants’ understanding of relevant concepts in developmental psychology, and showed that participants found this information helpful and reported using it at home. Participants also reported feeling more socially connected and more confident as mothers as a result of the group. The group also served to boost research participation, with 94 per cent of participants subsequently taking part in lab research or signing up to be contacted about future research. This approach can be employed by baby and child labs looking for ways to effectively and enjoyably promote public engagement and research impact, and for those looking to establish strong relationships with local stakeholders. The success of this strategy demonstrates that the aims of recruitment, public engagement and research impact need not be competing pressures on researchers’ time, but can be mutually supporting aspects of the research process