5,228 research outputs found
Food for Thought: Genetically Modified Seeds as De Facto Standard Essential Patents
For several years, courts have been improperly calculating damages in cases involving the unlicensed use of genetically-modified (GM) seed technology. In particular, when courts determine patent damages based on the hypothetical negotiation method, they err in exaggerating these damages to a point where no rational negotiator would agree. In response, we propose a limited affirmative defense of an implied license due to the patentâs status as a de facto standard essential patent. To be classified as a de facto standard essential patent, the farmer must prove three elements that reflect the peculiarities of GM seeds used in farming: (1) dominance, (2) impracticability, and (3) necessary to fulfill a basic need. Based on the approaches used by courts and standard setting organizations in licensing standard essential patents in technological fields such as cell phones and software, designation of some GM seeds as standard essential patents allows the courts to imply a license from patentees to farmers on reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms. Doing so shifts the case from a tort-based patent infringement suit to a breach of contract dispute and alters the damages regime from one based in compensation, deterrence, and punishment (a tort approach) to one based solely in compensation (a contractual approach). As a result of this novel proposal, the damages calculations in these suits return to economic reality
The Sunyaev Zel'dovich effect: simulation and observation
The Sunyaev Zel'dovich effect (SZ effect) is a complete probe of ionized
baryons, the majority of which are likely hiding in the intergalactic medium.
We ran a CDM simulation using a moving mesh hydro code to
compute the statistics of the thermal and kinetic SZ effect such as the power
spectra and measures of non-Gaussianity. The thermal SZ power spectrum has a
very broad peak at multipole with temperature fluctuations
K. The power spectrum is consistent with available
observations and suggests a high and a possible role of
non-gravitational heating. The non-Gaussianity is significant and increases the
cosmic variance of the power spectrum by a factor of for .
We explore optimal driftscan survey strategies for the AMIBA CMB
interferometer and their dependence on cosmology. For SZ power spectrum
estimation, we find that the optimal sky coverage for a 1000 hours of
integration time is several hundred square degrees. One achieves an accuracy
better than 40% in the SZ measurement of power spectrum and an accuracy better
than 20% in the cross correlation with Sloan galaxies for . For
cluster searches, the optimal scan rate is around 280 hours per square degree
with a cluster detection rate 1 every 7 hours, allowing for a false positive
rate of 20% and better than 30% accuracy in the cluster SZ distribution
function measurement.Comment: 34 pages, 20 figures. Submitted to ApJ. Simulation maps have been
replaced by high resolution images. For higher resolution color images,
please download from http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~zhangpj/research/SZ/ We
corrected a bug in our analysis. the SZ power spectrum decreases 50% and y
parameter decrease 25
Supervoid Origin of the Cold Spot in the Cosmic Microwave Background
We use a WISE-2MASS-Pan-STARRS1 galaxy catalog to search for a supervoid in
the direction of the Cosmic Microwave Background Cold Spot. We obtain
photometric redshifts using our multicolor data set to create a tomographic map
of the galaxy distribution. The radial density profile centred on the Cold Spot
shows a large low density region, extending over 10's of degrees. Motivated by
previous Cosmic Microwave Background results, we test for underdensities within
two angular radii, , and . Our data, combined with an
earlier measurement by Granett et al 2010, are consistent with a large supervoid with centered at . Such a supervoid, constituting a
fluctuation in the model, is a plausible cause
for the Cold Spot.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Proceedings of IAU 306 Symposium: Statistical
Challenges in 21st Century Cosmolog
Fast and Credible Likelihood-Free Cosmology with Truncated Marginal Neural Ratio Estimation
Sampling-based inference techniques are central to modern cosmological data
analysis; these methods, however, scale poorly with dimensionality and
typically require approximate or intractable likelihoods. In this paper we
describe how Truncated Marginal Neural Ratio Estimation (TMNRE) (a new approach
in so-called simulation-based inference) naturally evades these issues,
improving the efficiency, scalability, and trustworthiness
of the inferred posteriors. Using measurements of the Cosmic Microwave
Background (CMB), we show that TMNRE can achieve converged posteriors using
orders of magnitude fewer simulator calls than conventional Markov Chain Monte
Carlo (MCMC) methods. Remarkably, the required number of samples is effectively
independent of the number of nuisance parameters. In addition, a property
called \emph{local amortization} allows the performance of rigorous statistical
consistency checks that are not accessible to sampling-based methods. TMNRE
promises to become a powerful tool for cosmological data analysis, particularly
in the context of extended cosmologies, where the timescale required for
conventional sampling-based inference methods to converge can greatly exceed
that of simple cosmological models such as CDM. To perform these
computations, we use an implementation of TMNRE via the open-source code
\texttt{swyft}.Comment: v2: accepted journal version. v1: 37 pages, 13 figures.
\texttt{swyft} is available at https://github.com/undark-lab/swyft, and
demonstration code for cosmological examples is available at
https://github.com/acole1221/swyft-CM
The Periodic Standing-Wave Approximation: Overview and Three Dimensional Scalar Models
The periodic standing-wave method for binary inspiral computes the exact
numerical solution for periodic binary motion with standing gravitational
waves, and uses it as an approximation to slow binary inspiral with outgoing
waves. Important features of this method presented here are: (i) the
mathematical nature of the ``mixed'' partial differential equations to be
solved, (ii) the meaning of standing waves in the method, (iii) computational
difficulties, and (iv) the ``effective linearity'' that ultimately justifies
the approximation. The method is applied to three dimensional nonlinear scalar
model problems, and the numerical results are used to demonstrate extraction of
the outgoing solution from the standing-wave solution, and the role of
effective linearity.Comment: 13 pages RevTeX, 5 figures. New version. A revised form of the
nonlinearity produces better result
The Tully-Fisher Relation as a Measure of Luminosity Evolution: A Low Redshift Baseline for Evolving Galaxies
We use optical rotation curves to investigate the R-band Tully-Fisher
properties of a sample of 90 spiral galaxies in close pairs. The galaxies
follow the Tully-Fisher relation remarkably well, with the exception of eight
distinct 3-sigma outliers. Although most of the outliers show signs of recent
star formation, gasdynamical effects are probably the dominant cause of their
anomalous Tully-Fisher properties. Four outliers with small emission line
widths have very centrally concentrated line emission and truncated rotation
curves; the central emission indicates recent gas infall after a close
galaxy-galaxy pass. These four galaxies may be local counterparts to compact,
blue galaxies at intermediate redshift. The remaining galaxies have a
negligible offset from the reference Tully-Fisher relation, but a shallower
slope (2.6-sigma significance) and a 25% larger scatter. We characterize the
non-outlier sample with measures of distortion and star formation to search for
third parameter dependence in the residuals of the TF relation. Severe
kinematic distortion is the only significant predictor of TF residuals; this
distortion is not, however, responsible for the slope difference from the
reference distribution.
Because the outliers are easily removed by sigma clipping, we conclude that
even in the presence of some tidal distortion, detection of moderate luminosity
evolution should be possible with high-redshift samples the size of this
90-galaxy study. (Abridged.)Comment: LaTeX document, 55 pages including 18 figures, to appear in A
The DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey: Spectral classification of galaxies at z~1
We present a Principal Component Analysis (PCA)-based spectral
classification, eta, for the first 5600 galaxies observed in the DEEP2 Redshift
Survey. This parameter provides a very pronounced separation between absorption
and emission dominated galaxy spectra - corresponding to passively evolving and
actively star-forming galaxies in the survey respectively. In addition it is
shown that despite the high resolution of the observed spectra, this parameter
alone can be used to quite accurately reconstruct any given galaxy spectrum,
suggesting there are not many `degrees of freedom' in the observed spectra of
this galaxy population. It is argued that this form of classification, eta,
will be particularly valuable in making future comparisons between high and
low-redshift galaxy surveys for which very large spectroscopic samples are now
readily available, particularly when used in conjunction with high-resolution
spectral synthesis models which will be made public in the near future. We also
discuss the relative advantages of this approach to distant galaxy
classification compared to other methods such as colors and morphologies.
Finally, we compare the classification derived here with that adopted for the
2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey and in so doing show that the two systems are very
similar. This will be particularly useful in subsequent analyses when making
comparisons between results from each of these surveys to study evolution in
the galaxy populations and large-scale structure.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, Accepted for publication in Ap
Observational Constraints on Red and Blue Helium Burning Sequences
We derive the optical luminosity, colors, and ratios of the blue and red
helium burning (HeB) stellar populations from archival Hubble Space Telescope
observations of nineteen starburst dwarf galaxies and compare them with
theoretical isochrones from Padova stellar evolution models across
metallicities from Z=0.001 to 0.009. We find that the observational data and
the theoretical isochrones for both blue and red HeB populations overlap in
optical luminosities and colors and the observed and predicted blue to red HeB
ratios agree for stars older than 50 Myr over the time bins studied. These
findings confirm the usefulness of applying isochrones to interpret
observations of HeB populations. However, there are significant differences,
especially for the red HeB population. Specifically we find: (1) offsets in
color between the observations and theoretical isochrones of order 0.15 mag
(0.5 mag) for the blue (red) HeB populations brighter than M_V ~ -4 mag, which
cannot be solely due to differential extinction; (2) blue HeB stars fainter
than M_V ~ -3 mag are bluer than predicted; (3) the slope of the red HeB
sequence is shallower than predicted by a factor of ~3; and (4) the models
overpredict the ratio of the most luminous blue to red HeB stars corresponding
to ages <50 Myr. Additionally, we find that for the more metal-rich galaxies in
our sample (Z> 0.5 Zsolar) the red HeB stars overlap with the red giant branch
stars in the color magnitude diagrams, thus reducing their usefulness as
indicators of star formation for ages >100 Myr.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures, 3 table
Transcriptomic analysis of field-droughted sorghum from seedling to maturity reveals biotic and metabolic responses.
Drought is the most important environmental stress limiting crop yields. The C4 cereal sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] is a critical food, forage, and emerging bioenergy crop that is notably drought-tolerant. We conducted a large-scale field experiment, imposing preflowering and postflowering drought stress on 2 genotypes of sorghum across a tightly resolved time series, from plant emergence to postanthesis, resulting in a dataset of nearly 400 transcriptomes. We observed a fast and global transcriptomic response in leaf and root tissues with clear temporal patterns, including modulation of well-known drought pathways. We also identified genotypic differences in core photosynthesis and reactive oxygen species scavenging pathways, highlighting possible mechanisms of drought tolerance and of the delayed senescence, characteristic of the stay-green phenotype. Finally, we discovered a large-scale depletion in the expression of genes critical to arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis, with a corresponding drop in AM fungal mass in the plants' roots
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