Memoria sobre el proyecto de ferro-carril económico de Rioseco a Santas Martas : dedicada al ilustrado ingeniero D. Francisco Torres, encargado de su estudio y construcción

Copia digital. Valladolid : Junta de Castilla y León. Consejería de Cultura y Turismo, 2009-201

HIV/AIDS Policy in Nicaragua: A Civil Society Perspective

Examines Nicaragua's HIV/AIDS epidemic in the context of socioeconomic, political, legal, and societal factors and the state of the health care system. Makes recommendations for improving policy implementation, monitoring, treatment, and legal protection

Best Practices for Urban Densification: A decision-making support process using microclimate analysis methods and parametric models for optimizing urban climate comfort

This paper presents an approach for microclimate aware densification of urban areas by creating best practices for an in situ application for block-size urban developments. The discussed procedure generates and evaluates urban block types according to microclimate criteria by integrating climate and comfort parameters in the design process of existing urban areas. It supports urban designers by generating design strategies that aim for climate, comfort and spatial as well as for urban design qualities. To achieve this, a multi-step method with different analysis and research processes has been set up. At the end, a parametric envelope tool was created for a local case study area by incorporating pre-defined design strategies built on previous investigations as urban design strategies. It is expected that this envelope tool can be transferred to similar urban development activities and guide microclimatic versus densification trade-offs. The presented approach can be applied from street canyon to block size urban situations

Brane world corrections to scalar vacuum force in RSII-p

Vacuum force is an interesting low energy test for brane worlds due to its dependence on field's modes and its role in submillimeter gravity experiments. In this work we generalize a previous model example: the scalar field vacuum force between two parallel plates lying in the brane of a Randall-Sundrum scenario extended by $p$ compact dimensions (RSII-$p$). Upon use of Green's function technique, for the massless scalar field, the 4D force is obtained from a zero mode while corrections turn out attractive and depend on the separation between plates as $l^{-(6+p)}$. For the massive scalar field a quasilocalized mode yields the 4D force with attractive corrections behaving like $l^{-(10+p)}$. Corrections are negligible w.r.t. 4D force for $AdS_{(5+p)}$ radius less than $\sim 10^{-6}$m. Although the $p=0$ case is not physically viable due to the different behavior in regard to localization for the massless scalar and electromagnetic fields it yields an useful comparison between the dimensional regularization and Green's function techniques as we describe in the discussion.Comment: 14 pages, v2: discussion clarified, reference adde

A Network Theory of Patentability

Patent law is built upon a fundamental premise: only significant inventions receive patent protection while minor improvements remain in the public domain. This premise is indispensable for maintaining an optimal balance between incentivizing new innovation and providing public access to existing innovation. Despite its importance, the doctrine that performs this gatekeeping role—nonobviousness— has long remained indeterminate and vague. Judicial opinions have struggled to articulate both what makes an invention significant (or nonobvious) and how to measure nonobviousness in specific cases. These difficulties are due in large part to the existence of two clashing theoretical frameworks, cognitive and economic, that have vied for prominence in justifying nonobviousness. Neither framework, however, has generated doctrinal tests that can be easily and consistently applied. This Article draws on a novel approach—network theory—to answer both the conceptual question (what is a nonobvious invention?) and the measurement question (how do we determine nonobviousness in specific cases?). First, it shows that what is missing in current conceptual definitions of nonobviousness is an underlying theory of innovation. It then supplies this missing piece. Building upon insights from network science, we model innovation as a process of search and recombination of existing knowledge. Distant searches that combine disparate or weakly connected portions of social and information networks tend to produce high-impact, new ideas that open novel innovation trajectories. Distant searches also tend to be costly and risky. In contrast, local searches tend to result in incremental innovation that is more routine, less costly, and less risky. From a network theory perspective, then, the goal of nonobviousness should be to reward, and therefore to incentivize, those risky distant searches and recombinations that produce the most socially significant innovations. By emphasizing factors specific to the structure of innovation—namely, the risks and costs of the search and recombination process—a network approach complements and deepens current economic understandings of nonobviousness. Second, based on our network theory of innovation, we develop an empirical, algorithmic measure of patentability—what we term a patent’s “network nonobviousness score” (NNOS). We harness data from US patent records to calculate the distance between the technical knowledge areas recombined in any given invention (or patent), allowing us to assign each patent a specific NNOS. We propose a doctrinal framework that incorporates an invention’s NNOS to nonobviousness determinations both at the examination phase and during patent litigation. Our use of network science to develop a legal algorithm is a methodological innovation in law, with implications for broader debates about computational law. We illustrate how differences in algorithm design can lead to different nonobviousness outcomes, and discuss how to mitigate the negative impact of black box algorithms

The invertebrate Caenorhabditis elegans biosynthesizes ascorbate.

l-Ascorbate, commonly known as vitamin C, serves as an antioxidant and cofactor essential for many biological processes. Distinct ascorbate biosynthetic pathways have been established for animals and plants, but little is known about the presence or synthesis of this molecule in invertebrate species. We have investigated ascorbate metabolism in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, where this molecule would be expected to play roles in oxidative stress resistance and as cofactor in collagen and neurotransmitter synthesis. Using high-performance liquid chromatography and gas-chromatography mass spectrometry, we determined that ascorbate is present at low amounts in the egg stage, L1 larvae, and mixed animal populations, with the egg stage containing the highest concentrations. Incubating C. elegans with precursor molecules necessary for ascorbate synthesis in plants and animals did not significantly alter ascorbate levels. Furthermore, bioinformatic analyses did not support the presence in C. elegans of either the plant or the animal biosynthetic pathway. However, we observed the complete (13)C-labeling of ascorbate when C. elegans was grown with (13)C-labeled Escherichia coli as a food source. These results support the hypothesis that ascorbate biosynthesis in invertebrates may proceed by a novel pathway and lay the foundation for a broader understanding of its biological role

Anti-Innovation Norms

Intellectual property (IP) scholars have recently turned their attention to social norms—informal rules that emerge from and are enforced by nonhierarchically organized social forces—as a promising way to spur innovation in communities as diverse as the fashion industry and the open-source software movement. The narrative that has emerged celebrates social norms’ ability to solve IP’s free-rider problem without incurring IP’s costs. But this account does not fully consider the dark side of social norms. In fact, certain social norms, when overenforced, can create substantial barriers to the most socially beneficial creative pursuits. Because IP scholars have left unexplored how social norms can hinder innovation in this way, the harm they cause has gone unmitigated. This Article sheds light on the dark side of innovation norms. It coins the term “anti-innovation norms” to label these counterproductive social forces. Using the double lens of sociology and psychology, it gives a full theoretical account of three types of anti-innovation norms: research priority, methodology, and evaluation norms—all of which interfere with socially beneficial boundary-crossing innovation. Our elucidation of anti-innovation norms has both theoretical and policy implications. On the theory side, it suggests that IP scholars to date have been too focused on addressing the free-rider problem. This has caused them to overlook other barriers to innovation, like those posed by the set of anti-innovation norms we describe here. This focus on free riding may also help explain why innovation and norms scholars have paid little attention to debates within the broader literature on law and social norms concerned with identifying situations in which social norms are welfare reducing. On the policy side, it points to innovation dilemmas that IP is not fully equipped to solve. While changes to the IP doctrines of attribution and fair use in copyright and nonobviousness in patent law can counteract anti-innovation norms at the margin, a comprehensive solution requires innovation scholars to broaden their vision beyond the IP toolkit. We take the first steps in this direction, proposing a number of interventions, including novel funding regimes and tax credits

Information flow and optimization in transcriptional control

In the simplest view of transcriptional regulation, the expression of a gene is turned on or off by changes in the concentration of a transcription factor (TF). We use recent data on noise levels in gene expression to show that it should be possible to transmit much more than just one regulatory bit. Realizing this optimal information capacity would require that the dynamic range of TF concentrations used by the cell, the input/output relation of the regulatory module, and the noise levels of binding and transcription satisfy certain matching relations. This parameter-free prediction is in good agreement with recent experiments on the Bicoid/Hunchback system in the early Drosophila embryo, and this system achieves ~90% of its theoretical maximum information transmission.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Survey vs Scraped Data: Comparing Time Series Properties of Web and Survey Vacancy Data

This paper studies the relationship between a vacancy population obtained from web crawling and vacancies in the economy inferred by a National Statistics Office (NSO) using a traditional method. We compare the time series properties of samples obtained between 2007 and 2014 by Statistics Netherlands and by a web scraping company. We find that the web and NSO vacancy data present similar time series properties, suggesting that both time series are generated by the same underlying phenomenon: the real number of new vacancies in the economy. We conclude that, in our case study, web-sourced data are able to capture aggregate economic activity in the labor market