Brief Amici Curiae of Intellectual Property Professors in Support of Petitoner

Congress enacted the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in 1946 as a comprehensive statute to regulate the field of federal administrative law. In holding that the PTO Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences is not subject to the standards of judicial review set forth in the APA, the [Zurko] decision isolates patent law from the rest of administrative law and undermines the APA’s goal of achieving consistency and uniformity in federal administrative law

Impacts of the 1985 Food Security Act on Crop Rotations and Fertilizer Use

The 1985 Food Security Act has provided tremendous income support for U.S. farmers. This support has helped pull agriculture out of its worst depression in over 50 years. The financial incentives of the Food Security Act has assured substantial farmer participation. Data from a long-term rotation-fertility study conducted by Iowa State University was used to analyze the impact of the feedgrain program in the Food Security Act. The impacts analyzed were the rewards offered by the program as they relate to crop rotations and nitrogen fertilizer use. Average yields and costs from six alternative rotations and four nitrogen use levels were analyzed. Returns without a land charge were calculated with and without the government program

Rethinking Patent Law’s Uniformity Principle

Modern law on expert testimony insists, as a condition of admissibility, that the asserted expertise be determined by the trial judge to be reliable. Reliability is usually characterized as a dichotomous attribute of evidence, as if expertise were either reliable or unreliable. This article argues that making progress in the development of meaningful and appropriate restrictions on the admissibility of expert testimony requires that we abandon this conceptualization and understand the implications of endorsing a gradational notion of reliability in which evidence can be more or less reliable and in which a comparative assessment of reliability is prominent. Consistent with Supreme Court precedent and available empirical evidence about jury decision-making, this article recommends that, in deciding whether to exclude expert testimony, the court\u27s comparative reliability inquiry should focus on whether more reliable expertise is reasonably available to the proponent, rather than on the question of whether the jury will overvalue the expertise at the offered level of reliability. A rudimentary outline of how this would work is provided. The creation in 1982 of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit represents the first significant appellate consolidation of a particular area of law in American history. Evaluating the Federal Circuit experiment is highly important to understanding, and perhaps improving upon, the institutional design of the federal judiciary. The Federal Circuit was grounded in a congressional desire for greater uniformity in the application of patent law. In patent law, as in other areas of the law, uniformity is a virtue. But uniformity is not the only virtue and centralization has its costs. The issue of centralization versus decentralization manifests itself in numerous areas of law, politics, economics and business. This article draws upon that literature and argues that the time is ripe to rethink the Federal Circuit experiment and the fixation on uniformity that gave rise to the experiment. The criticisms currently levied against the Federal Circuit - that it maintains excessive insularity, is subject to path dependency in its case law, and produces inadequately nuanced jurisprudence - can be traced back ultimately to the court\u27s chief structural limitation: The court lacks the benefit of sister-circuit jurisprudence that would engender a healthy competition of rationales and provide a mechanism for testing legal innovations. Accordingly, the article proposes that in addition to the Federal Circuit, at least one, and perhaps two or three, extant circuit courts should have jurisdiction to hear appeals relating to patent law. This proposal represents a shift in strategy from one dominated by the pursuit of uniformity, to one where competition and diversity are equally important. As the literature from many other areas suggests, a choice between centralized and decentralized institutions cannot and should not be made with a polar solution. The issue is one of optimization. In 1982 Congress decided that the optimal number of federal appellate courts deciding patent cases was fewer than thirteen; we suggest that the optimal number may also be greater than one

The population genetics and genomics of the African Salivarian trypanosomes

The African Salivarian trypanosomes are the causative agents of both Human African Trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness, and Animal African Trypanosomiasis, more widely known as Nagana. Primarily spread through the tsetse fly vector both diseases are distributed across the sub-Saharan tsetse belt, afflicting some of the poorest communities in the world. Three species of trypanosomes are predominantly responsible for these two diseases. T. brucei, which is comprised of the three morphologically identical sub-species T. b. brucei, T. b. gambiense (further separated into two subgroups) and T. b. rhodesiense, with the latter two sub-species exclusively responsible for infections in humans. The animal infective species T. congolense, comprised of the Forest, Kilifi and Savannah subtypes, and T. vivax meanwhile are responsible for millions of livestock and wild animal infections across the continent, with severe downstream economic consequences. A crucial component in understanding the diseases caused by these parasites is through understanding the diversity present in the field, as it is ultimately the combination of host, vector and parasite diversity that gives rises to the disease phenotypes observed during clinical diagnosis and treatment. In order to truly understand the role of such diversity in the field it is necessary to know how individuals within a population interact with one another, if they do at all. Mating between individuals allows for the direct interaction of genomes, allowing for the generation of new chromosomal sequences through meiotic recombination and new chromosomal pairings through bi-parental inheritance of genetic material. Identified as a non-obligatory process in T. brucei the importance of mating in natural trypanosome populations is both a controversial and understudied topic despite the significant role of the process in shaping the evolutionary development of these clinically important parasites. In order to further investigate the genetic diversity and role of mating in the trypanosomes populations from The Gambia, Uganda and Malawi have been examined through the use of microsatellite markers specific to the genomes of T. brucei, T. congolense and T. vivax. The results presented here demonstrate drastically different levels of diversity in the respective populations and evidence for a spectrum of genetic exchange, with both highly clonal and frequently mating populations identified in this manner. T. vivax, sampled from horses, donkeys and cattle in The Gambia would appear to most closely fit with the traditional views of clonality in trypanosomes, extensive clonal reproduction of a single genotype, significant disagreement with Hardy-Weinberg principles and the presence of significant linkage between the loci examined. These results, which closely resemble those observed for T. b. gambiense Group 1, suggest that genetic exchange may be absent or rare in T. vivax, which may lead to the eventual divergence of independent populations as they slowly accumulate unique mutations. The apparent dominant clonality of T. vivax is a sharp contrast to the situation observed for T. congolense in The Gambia, with strong evidence for frequent mating and a high rate of inbreeding. That this evidence originated from the same sample sets used in the T. vivax studies presented here highlights the differences between these two species and the requirement for further work independent of the studies into T. brucei. The final half of this thesis has focused upon the population genetics and genomics of T. brucei, the species responsible for sleeping sickness in humans. Examination of five of T. b. rhodesiense populations, four from Uganda and one from Malawi has demonstrated the potential for variation in the population structure within a single species. The Ugandan populations are dominated by clonality; with repeated bottlenecks reducing the genetic diversity present as the parasites has spread northwards. The Malawi population, genetically distinct from the populations of Uganda, instead appears to favour genetic exchange over clonality, with a genetically diverse population and only a limited number of repeated genotypes. This provides the first evidence of mating playing a significant role in a field population of human infective trypanosomes, introducing a significant role for meiotic recombination and chromosomal reassortment which may drastically alter the way in which these parasites respond to selective pressures and evolutionary forces. Finally, this thesis has aimed to bridge the gap between traditional low resolution studies and the developing field of genomics by examining the SNP variation present between three laboratory strains of T. brucei, providing the building blocks in understanding genome wide variation in trypanosomes. Utilising these data, and through sequencing of progeny generated in the process of constructing the TREU 927 genetic map, it has been possible to partially reassemble the haplotypes for the megabase chromosomes of this strain, previously selected as the T. brucei genome reference strain. Collected together these data provide an important resource of genomic variation for both laboratory studies and as a baseline for future investigations into the genomic diversity of field populations. In summary this thesis has demonstrated the variable nature and versatile role of genetic exchange in the trypanosomes, bringing together data not only from the human infective sub-species of T. brucei but from the animal infective species T. congolense and T. vivax. Finally in looking to the future this work has begun the process of transitioning from the relatively low density microsatellite markers by examining high density SNP variation in common laboratory strains, the first step towards future adoption of these markers for the purpose of population genomics

Dickinson v Zurko: An Amicus Brief

Professors Field, Nard, and Duffy submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the case of Dickinson v. Zurko. In Dickinson, the Federal Circuit concluded that the Patent and Trademark Office\u27s factual findings must be reviewed under a clearly erroneous standard and not the substantial evidence standard set out in the Administrative Procedure Act. However, the amicus brief asserted that the PTO is subject to the standards of judicial review set forth in the APA

Introducing Agile/DevSecOps into the Space Acquisition Environment

Excerpt from the Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Acquisition Research SymposiumThe University of Southern California (USC) and its Information Sciences Institute (USC-ISI) is undertaking research into improving the space-based systems acquisition process through the adoption of agile and DevSecOps methodologies. The USC-ISI team is currently undertaking research and systems engineering analysis to explore the mission engineering methods, analysis, metrics and training needed to transition from a traditional DoDI 5000.02 waterfall development environment to an agile/DevSecOps space systems acquisition environment. Over the past several years, the project team has been embedded at the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command, Production Corps (SSC/PC), developing performance measuring tools, collecting performance metrics and providing subject matter expertise on three projects – a traditional waterfall project, a hybrid parallel waterfall and agile development project and an on-going long-term highly agile development effort that is subject to traditional waterfall acquisition reporting requirements. This paper summarizes initial research results and lessons learned along with a discussion on next steps.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Introducing Agile/DevSecOps into the Space Acquisition Environment

Symposium PresentationApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Effect of the Condensation of Hybrid Organic–Inorganic sol–gel Materials on the Optical Properties of Tripan Blue

The work reported in this paper highlights the effect of sol–gel structures on the optical properties of a typical organic dye (Trypan Blue, TB). Three transition-metal-based hybrid sol–gel materials with different structures and morphologies were developed and characterised by TEM. The optical properties of TB were investigated by incorporating it in the different sol–gel materials and the UV–Visible spectra recorded in both liquid and solid state, in thin-coatings cured at temperatures in the range 100– 150 [1]C. These studies revealed two relevant results. First, the sol–gel morphology plays a critical role in the optical properties of the dye. The effect of the sol–gel host matrix on the optical properties of the dye is attributed to the steric hindrance of the nanostructures, themselves intimately dependant on the reactivity of the transition metal. For instance, the less condensed system showed the highest reactivity with the dye, while the more condensed system exhibited limited interaction with the dye, symbolised by a significant change or quasi-unchanged UV–Visible spectra, respectively. It is also shown that the increase of the condensation degree of the sol–gel coatings by heat-curing can dramatically alter the optical properties of the dye especially for the most condensed sol–gel systems. This has been attributed to proximity effects enabled by the further increase of the materials densities. The results reported here aim to provide a better understanding of how material formulations can influence the optical properties of organic dyes and suggest that the structure of the host matrix along with the applied curing process have to be fully considered and assessed in the choice of organic dyes for a given application

Human and animal Trypanosomes in Côte d'Ivoire form a single breeding population.

BACKGROUND: Trypanosoma brucei is the causative agent of African Sleeping Sickness in humans and contributes to the related veterinary disease, Nagana. T. brucei is segregated into three subspecies based on host specificity, geography and pathology. T. b. brucei is limited to animals (excluding some primates) throughout sub-Saharan Africa and is non-infective to humans due to trypanolytic factors found in human serum. T. b. gambiense and T. b. rhodesiense are human infective sub-species. T. b. gambiense is the more prevalent human, causing over 97% of human cases. Study of T. b. gambiense is complicated in that there are two distinct groups delineated by genetics and phenotype. The relationships between the two groups and local T. b. brucei are unclear and may have a bearing on the evolution of the human infectivity traits. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A collection of sympatric T. brucei isolates from Côte d'Ivoire, consisting of T. b. brucei and both groups of T. b. gambiense have previously been categorized by isoenzymes, RFLPs and Blood Incubation Infectivity Tests. These samples were further characterized using the group 1 specific marker, TgSGP, and seven microsatellites. The relationships between the T. b. brucei and T. b. gambiense isolates were determined using principal components analysis, neighbor-joining phylogenetics, STRUCTURE, FST, Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and linkage disequilibrium. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Group 1 T. b. gambiense form a clonal genetic group, distinct from group 2 and T. b. brucei, whereas group 2 T. b. gambiense are genetically indistinguishable from local T. b. brucei. There is strong evidence for mating within and between group 2 T. b. gambiense and T. b. brucei. We found no evidence to support the hypothesis that group 2 T. b. gambiense are hybrids of group 1 and T. b. brucei, suggesting that human infectivity has evolved independently in groups 1 and 2 T. b. gambiense

Widespread distribution of Plasmodium vivax malaria in Mauritania on the interface of the Maghreb and West Africa.

BACKGROUND: Plasmodium vivax is very rarely seen in West Africa, although specific detection methods are not widely applied in the region, and it is now considered to be absent from North Africa. However, this parasite species has recently been reported to account for most malaria cases in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, which is a large country at the interface of sub-Saharan West Africa and the Maghreb region in northwest Africa. METHODS: To determine the distribution of malaria parasite species throughout Mauritania, malaria cases were sampled in 2012 and 2013 from health facilities in 12 different areas. These sampling sites were located in eight major administrative regions of the country, within different parts of the Sahara and Sahel zones. Blood spots from finger-prick samples of malaria cases were processed to identify parasite DNA by species-specific PCR. RESULTS: Out of 472 malaria cases examined, 163 (34.5 %) had P. vivax alone, 296 (62.7 %) Plasmodium falciparum alone, and 13 (2.8 %) had mixed P. falciparum and P. vivax infection. All cases were negative for Plasmodium malariae and Plasmodium ovale. The parasite species distribution showed a broad spectrum, P. vivax being detected at six of the different sites, in five of the country's major administrative regions (Tiris Zemmour, Tagant, Brakna, Assaba, and the capital Nouakchott). Most cases in Nouakchott were due to P. vivax, although proportions vary significantly among different health facilities in the city. In the northern town of Zouérat, all cases were due to P. vivax, whereas almost all cases in the south of the country were due to P. falciparum. All P. vivax cases tested were Duffy blood group positive. CONCLUSIONS: It is important that P. vivax is recognized to be a widespread cause of malaria in Mauritania, occurring in diverse regions. This should be noted by the World Health Organization, as it has significant implications for diagnosis, treatment and control of malaria in the northwestern part of Africa