Sovereign Immunity for Rent: How the Commodification of Tribal Sovereign Immunity Reflects the Failures of the U.S. Patent System

Last year, a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company attempted to rent the sovereign immunity of an American Indian tribe in order to shield its patents on a dry-eye drug from invalidation by generic competitors in inter partes review. Pharmaceutical firms are notorious for pursuing unconventional methods to extend the duration of their patents and, in this sense, the maneuver is unsurprising. The exploitation, however, of an historically disenfranchised community with limited economic opportunities is particularly unsettling. This Article will provide, firstly, a factual summary of the legal background of this case; secondly, a review of the February 2018 decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) to deny the application of tribal sovereign immunity in this case; thirdly, a review of the July 2018 decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, affirming the PTAB’s decision; fourthly, a discussion of the ways in which the precedent set by Allergan’s maneuver may adversely affect consumer welfare by undermining the process of inter partes review; fifthly, an analysis of the history of tribal sovereign immunity and how its exploitation in this case reflects the historic oppression of American Indians; and finally, strategies to deter such transactions from recurring in the future

Ocularcentrism and Deepfakes: Should Seeing Be Believing?

The pernicious effects of misinformation were starkly exposed on January 6, 2021, when a violent mob of protestors stormed the nation’s capital, fueled by false claims of election fraud. As policymakers wrestle with various proposals to curb misinformation online, this Article highlights one of the root causes of our vulnerability to misinformation, specifically, the epistemological prioritization of sight above all other senses (“ocularcentrism”). The increasing ubiquity of so-called “deepfakes”—hyperrealistic, digitally altered videos of events that never occurred—has further exposed the vulnerabilities of an ocularcentric society, in which technology-mediated sight is synonymous with knowledge. This Article traces the evolution of visual manipulation technologies that have exploited ocularcentrism and evaluates different means of addressing the issues raised by deepfakes, including the use of copyright law

On the refractive index for a nonmagnetic two-component medium: resolution of a controversy

The refractive index of a dielectric medium comprising both passive and inverted components in its permittivity was determined using two methods: (i) in the time domain, a finite-difference algorithm to compute the frequency-domain reflectance from reflection data for a pulsed plane wave that is normally incident on a dielectric half-space, and (ii) in the frequency domain, the deflection of an obliquely incident Gaussian beam on transmission through a dielectric slab. The dielectric medium was found to be an active medium with a negative real part for its refractive index. Thereby, a recent controversy in the scientific literature was resolved.Comment: manuscript submitted to Optics Communication

Scaling Studies Of Spheromak Formation And Equilibrium

Formation and equilibrium studies have been performed on the Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment (SSX). Spheromaks are formed with a magnetized coaxial plasma gun and equilibrium is established in both small (d(small)=0.16 m) and large (d(large)=3d(small)=0.50 m) copper flux conservers. Using magnetic probe arrays it has been verified that spheromak formation is governed solely by gun physics (in particular the ratio of gun current to flux, mu(0)I(gun)/Phi(gun)) and is independent of the flux conserver dimensions. It has also been verified that equilibrium is well described by the force free condition del xB=lambda B (lambda=constant), particularly early in decay. Departures from the force-free state are due to current profile effects described by a quadratic function lambda=lambda(psi). Force-free SSX spheromaks will be merged to study magnetic reconnection in simple magnetofluid structures. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics

Modeling laser wakefield accelerators in a Lorentz boosted frame

Modeling of laser-plasma wakefield accelerators in an optimal frame of reference \cite{VayPRL07} is shown to produce orders of magnitude speed-up of calculations from first principles. Obtaining these speedups requires mitigation of a high-frequency instability that otherwise limits effectiveness in addition to solutions for handling data input and output in a relativistically boosted frame of reference. The observed high-frequency instability is mitigated using methods including an electromagnetic solver with tunable coefficients, its extension to accomodate Perfectly Matched Layers and Friedman's damping algorithms, as well as an efficient large bandwidth digital filter. It is shown that choosing the frame of the wake as the frame of reference allows for higher levels of filtering and damping than is possible in other frames for the same accuracy. Detailed testing also revealed serendipitously the existence of a singular time step at which the instability level is minimized, independently of numerical dispersion, thus indicating that the observed instability may not be due primarily to Numerical Cerenkov as has been conjectured. The techniques developed for Cerenkov mitigation prove nonetheless to be very efficient at controlling the instability. Using these techniques, agreement at the percentage level is demonstrated between simulations using different frames of reference, with speedups reaching two orders of magnitude for a 0.1 GeV class stages. The method then allows direct and efficient full-scale modeling of deeply depleted laser-plasma stages of 10 GeV-1 TeV for the first time, verifying the scaling of plasma accelerators to very high energies. Over 4, 5 and 6 orders of magnitude speedup is achieved for the modeling of 10 GeV, 100 GeV and 1 TeV class stages, respectively

Speeding up simulations of relativistic systems using an optimal boosted frame

It can be computationally advantageous to perform computer simulations in a Lorentz boosted frame for a certain class of systems. However, even if the computer model relies on a covariant set of equations, it has been pointed out that algorithmic difficulties related to discretization errors may have to be overcome in order to take full advantage of the potential speedup. We summarize the findings, the difficulties and their solutions, and show that the technique enables simulations important to several areas of accelerator physics that are otherwise problematic, including self-consistent modeling in three-dimensions of laser wakefield accelerator stages at energies of 10 GeV and above.Comment: To be published in the proceedings of DPF-2009, Detroit, MI, July 2009, eConf C09072

Effects of Hyperbolic Rotation in Minkowski Space on the Modeling of Plasma Accelerators in a Lorentz Boosted Frame

Laser driven plasma accelerators promise much shorter particle accelerators but their development requires detailed simulations that challenge or exceed current capabilities. We report the first direct simulations of stages up to 1 TeV from simulations using a Lorentz boosted calculation frame resulting in a million times speedup, thanks to a frame boost as high as gamma=1300. Effects of the hyperbolic rotation in Minkowski space resulting from the frame boost on the laser propagation in the plasma is shown to be key in the mitigation of a numerical instability that was limiting previous attempts

Observations of reactive nitrogen oxide fluxes by eddy covariance above two midlatitude North American mixed hardwood forests

Significant knowledge gaps persist in the understanding of forest–atmosphere exchange of reactive nitrogen oxides, partly due to a lack of direct observations. Chemical transport models require representations of dry deposition over a variety of land surface types, and the role of canopy exchange of NO_x (= NO + NO₂) is highly uncertain. Biosphere–atmosphere exchange of NO_x and NO_y (= NO_x + HNO₃ + PANs + RONO₂ + <i>p</i>NO₃^&minus; + ...) was measured by eddy covariance above a mixed hardwood forest in central Ontario (Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve, or HFWR), and a mixed hardwood forest in northern lower Michigan (Program for Research on Oxidants: Photochemistry, Emissions and Transport, or PROPHET) during the summers of 2011 and 2012 respectively. NO_x and NO_y mixing ratios were measured by a custom-built two-channel analyser based on chemiluminescence, with selective NO₂ conversion via LED photolysis and NO_y conversion via a hot molybdenum converter. Consideration of interferences from water vapour and O₃, and random uncertainty of the calculated fluxes are discussed. NO_y flux observations were predominantly of deposition at both locations. In general, the magnitude of deposition scaled with NO_y mixing ratios. Average midday (12:00–16:00) deposition velocities at HFWR and PROPHET were 0.20 ± 0.25 and 0.67 ± 1.24 cm s⁻¹ respectively. Average nighttime (00:00–04:00) deposition velocities were 0.09 ± 0.25 cm s⁻¹ and 0.08 ± 0.16 cm s⁻¹ respectively. At HFWR, a period of highly polluted conditions (NO_y concentrations up to 18 ppb) showed distinctly different flux characteristics than the rest of the campaign. Integrated daily average NO_y flux was −0.14 mg (N) m⁻² day⁻¹ and −0.34 mg (N) m⁻² day⁻¹ (net deposition) at HFWR and PROPHET respectively. Concurrent wet deposition measurements were used to estimate the contributions of dry deposition to total reactive nitrogen oxide inputs, found to be 22 and 40% at HFWR and PROPHET respectively