Patentes de invención, nuevas tecnologías y la aprobación privada del conocimiento público

In this working paper an examination is made of the logical balance of the deductive argument that commonly appears in various economic texts to justify a system of patents of invention. The examination mentioned should be applied in times of radical technological change in the world to avoid a priori extensions of the legal and institutional protection provided by a system of patents of invention based on past technological realities. The result of the examination shows partial lack of balance when proper account is taken of the financial expenses and coordination efforts by governments as well as of the free distribution of useful knowledge in the fields of biotechnology and the Internet. To refer to that nonlegitimate appropriation of public knowledge by the private sector the term ‘epistemo-piracy’ is coined by analogy with ‘bio-piracy’ of common use. The fields of biotechnology and the Internet were chosen because they are preponderant to explain the rise in the number of patents of invention in the world.

A Little Honesty Goes a Long Way: The Two-Tier Model for Secure Multiparty Computation

Secure multiparty computation (MPC) as a service is becoming a tangible reality. In such a service, a population of clients wish to utilize a set of servers to delegate privately and reliably a given computation on their inputs. MPC protocols have a number of desired properties including tolerating active misbehavior by some of the servers and guaranteed output delivery. A fundamental result is that in order to achieve the above, an honest majority among servers is necessary. There are settings, however, where this condition might be overly restrictive, making it important to investigate models where this impossibility result can be circumvented, allowing secure computation to be performed even when the number of malicious participants outweighs the number of honest participants. To this end, we introduce the two-tier model for MPC, where a set of $m$ parties that are guaranteed to be honest (the first tier) remains hidden within a set of $n-m$ servers which are of dubious trustworthiness (the second tier), and where the objective is to perform MPC withstanding a number of active misbehaviors that is larger than $m/2$. Indeed, assuming $\alpha n$ of the second-tier servers are dishonest (where $\alpha\in (0,1)$), we present an MPC protocol that can withstand up to $(1-\epsilon)(1-\alpha)n/2$ additional faults, for any $\epsilon>0$ and $m = \omega(\log n)$. Somewhat surprisingly, this allows the total number of faulty parties to exceed $n/2$ across both tiers. We demonstrate that the two-tier model naturally arises in various settings, as in the case, for example, of a resource-constrained service provider wishing to utilize a pre-existing set of servers

Tuberculosis Immune Reconstitution Inflammatory Syndrome in Children Initiating Antiretroviral Therapy for HIV Infection: A Systematic Literature Review

People with HIV initiating combination antiretroviral therapy are at risk for tuberculosis-associated immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (TB-IRIS). While this syndrome has been well researched in adults, little is known about the incidence, case fatality, underlying immunopathology and treatment approaches in children

Technetium Waste Form Development - Progress Report

Analytical electron microscopy using SEM and TEM has been used to analyze a ~5 g. ingot with composition 71.3 wt% 316SS-5.3 wt% Zr-13.2 wt% Mo-4.0 wt% Rh-6.2 wt% Re prepared at the Idaho National Laboratory. Four phase fields have been identified two of which are lamellar eutectics, with a fifth possibly present. A Zr rich phase was found distributed as fine precipitate, ~10µm in diameter, often coating large cavities. A Mo-Fe-Re-Cr lamellar eutectic phase field appears as blocky regions ~30µm in diameter, surrounded by a Fe-Mo-Cr lamellar eutectic phase field, and that in turn is surrounded by a Zr-Fe-Rh-Mo-Ni phase field. The eutectic phase separation reactions are different. The Mo-Fe-Re-Cr lamellar eutectic appears a result of austenitic steel forming at lower volume fraction within an Mo-Fe-Re intermetallic phase, whereas the Fe-Mo-Cr lamellar eutectic may be a result of the same intermetallic phase forming within a ferritic steel phase. Cavitation may have arisen either as a result of bubbles, or from loss of equiaxed particles during specimen preparation

Paradoxical tuberculosis-associated immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome in children: Paradoxical TB IRIS in Children

Paradoxical tuberculosis (TB)-associated Immune Reconstitution Inflammatory Syndrome (IRIS) is a common complication of combination antiretroviral treatment (cART) initiation in adults residing in resource-limited regions. Little is known about the burden and presentation of TB-IRIS in children initiating cART while receiving TB treatment

Generalisability of vaccine effectiveness estimates: an analysis of cases included in a postlicensure evaluation of 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in the USA

External validity, or generalisability, is the measure of how well results from a study pertain to individuals in the target population. We assessed generalisability, with respect to socioeconomic status, of estimates from a matched case–control study of 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine effectiveness for the prevention of invasive pneumococcal disease in children in the USA

Tenure, gender and household structure

Starting with a review of recent literature on gender and housing, this paper goes on to develop a new theory of household structure, in which concepts of gender and generation play a key role. The utility of this theory is then demonstrated in the analysis of data from a survey of households in the City of Salford