Is Innovation King at the Antitrust Agencies? The Intellectual Property Guidelines Five Years Later

The Microsoft antitrust case focused public attention on the role of antitrust enforcement in preserving the forces of innovation in high-technology markets. Traditionally, regulators focused on whether companies artificially hiked prices or reduced output. Now, they're increasingly likely to look first at whether corporate behavior aids or impedes innovation. In this paper, we examine whether innovation has displaced short-term price effects as the focus of antitrust enforcement by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission and, to the extent that it has, whether enforcement actions are any different as a result. We also ask whether enforcement actions in the area of intellectual property and innovation have been consistent with the 1995 DOJ/FTC Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of Intellectual Property [IP Guidelines]. Finally, we consider whether recent enforcement actions identify key areas in which additional guidance from the Agencies would be desirable. We address these questions first in merger cases and then in non-merger cases.

Becoming the falconer: productive feedback for the redrafting of creative writing

Within a wider neoliberal education system, time and space for redrafting creative writing are marginalised, with focus on the written product rather than the writing process. This precludes the development of young writers. As academics and creative writers working in university Schools of Education, we use inductive autoethnography to explore our memories of feedback on creative writing throughout our writing lives. The affective dimension of feedback, with readers having power over their writers, is emphasised. We identify how feedback can be unproductive and unempathetic, harming the writer. We also identify how feedback can be productive, nurturing the writer through the process towards an internal dialogue with their inner ideal reader – their ‘superaddressee.’ It is the internal dialogue with the superaddressee, who perfectly understands what the writer is communicating, that develops the writer over time, giving them control over the writing process and facilitating redrafting. We recommend the professional development of teachers to become self-reflexive readers, who plan focused writing assessments, and provide productive feedback as well as mentorship programmes in publishing to develop new writers. Future research should explore the psychoanalytic nature of the writer–reader relationship and what the facilitation of redrafting looks like in educational settings

「ことば」で「学ぶ」ということ : ヨナとトゥエットの人生の物語から

In order to understand the genetic basis for the evolutionary success of modern humans, it is necessary to compare their genetic makeup to that of closely related species. Unfortunately, our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, are evolutionarily quite distant. With the advent of ancient DNA study and more recently paleogenomics — the study of the genomes of ancient organisms — it has become possible to compare human genomes to those of much more closely related groups. Our closest known relatives are the Neanderthals, which evolved and lived in Europe and Western Asia, from about 600,000 years ago until their disappearance around 30,000 years ago following the expansion of anatomically modern humans into their range. The closely related Denisovans are only known by virtue of their DNA, which has been extracted from bone fragments dating around 30,000 to 50,000 years ago found in a single Siberian cave. Analyses of Neanderthal and Denisovan nuclear and mitochondrial genomes have revealed surprising insights into these archaic humans as well as our own species. The genomes provide a preliminary catalogue of derived amino acids that are specific to all extant modern humans, thus offering insights into the functional differences between the three lineages. In addition, the genomes provide evidence of gene flow between the three lineages after anatomically modern humans left Africa, drastically changing our view of human evolution

The Apologies of Australia, Canada and the United States to Historically Subjugated Peoples: On argumentation, reconciliation, and forgiveness

In 2008, the governments of Australia and Canada apologized to indigenous peoples of each respective country for past wrongs, while the United States House of Representatives offered an apology to African peoples and their descendants for slavery. This paper conducts a comparative analysis of the three national moments to explore the capacities for language-based argumentation to invite forgiveness, mitigate historical social injustices, and promote inter-cultural accord that weaves temporal sinews of reconciliation

Attitudes of teachers to evidence based medicine

AIM: To describe the attitudes of general practitioners and specialist clinical teachers toward teaching evidence based medicine (EBM). PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: Questionnaire survey of 114 general practitioner and 162 specialist university teachers teaching EBM. RESULTS: Two hundred and six (80%) teachers responded; 196 regularly consulted with patients, 21% had received training, and 40% taught EBM. Those with formal training (68%) taught more often than without (32%) (p=0.0001), 27% had taught EBM for over 5 years. More GPs (57%) than specialists (40%) asked students to assist in finding evidence (p=0.036). Most welcomed EBM and were confident in teaching it. Barriers included antagonism to EBM philosophy, shortage of time, and a need for training in teaching EBM. DISCUSSION: Although not all trained, GPs and specialists teach EBM, enjoy doing so, and want to increase their ability to teach it

Distance transform: a tool for the study of animal colour patterns

Summary The information in animal colour patterns plays a key role in many ecological interactions; quantification would help us to study them, but this is problematic. Comparing patterns using human judgement is subjective and inconsistent. Traditional shape analysis is unsuitable as patterns do not usually contain conserved landmarks. Alternative statistical approaches also have weaknesses, particularly as they are generally based on summary measures that discard most or all of the spatial information in a pattern. We present a method for quantifying the similarity of a pair of patterns based on the distance transform of a binary image. The method compares the whole pattern, pixel by pixel, while being robust to small spatial variations among images. We demonstrate the utility of the distance transform method using three ecological examples. We generate a measure of mimetic accuracy between hoverflies (Diptera: Syrphidae) and wasps (Hymenoptera) based on abdominal pattern and show that this correlates strongly with the perception of a model predator (humans). We calculate similarity values within a group of mimetic butterflies and compare this with proposed pairings of Müllerian comimics. Finally, we characterise variation in clypeal badges of a paper wasp (Polistes dominula) and compare this with previous measures of variation. While our results generally support the findings of existing studies that have used simpler ad hoc methods for measuring differences between patterns, our method is able to detect more subtle variation and hence reveal previously overlooked trends

Hoverflies are imperfect mimics of wasp colouration

Many Batesian mimics are considered to be inaccurate copies of their models, including a number of hoverfly species which appear to be poor mimics of bees and wasps. This inaccuracy is surprising since more similar mimics are expected to deceive predators more frequently and therefore have greater survival. One suggested explanation is that mimics which appear inaccurate to human eyes may be perceived differently by birds, the probable agents of selection. For example, if patterns contain an ultra-violet (UV) component, this would be visible to birds but overlooked by humans. So far, indirect comparisons have been made using human and bird responses to mimetic stimuli, but direct colour measurements of mimetic hoverflies are lacking. We took spectral readings from a wide range of hoverfly and wasp patterns. They show very low reflectance in the UV range, and do not display any human-invisible colour boundaries. We modelled how the recorded spectra would be perceived by both birds and humans. While colour differences between wasps and hoverflies are slightly more distinct according to human visual abilities, bird vision is capable of discriminating the two taxa in almost all cases. We discuss a number of factors that might make the discrimination task more challenging for a predator in the field, which could explain the apparent lack of selection for accurate colour mimicry

The History and Risks of Reinforcement Learning and Human Feedback

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has emerged as a powerful technique to make large language models (LLMs) easier to use and more effective. A core piece of the RLHF process is the training and utilization of a model of human preferences that acts as a reward function for optimization. This approach, which operates at the intersection of many stakeholders and academic disciplines, remains poorly understood. RLHF reward models are often cited as being central to achieving performance, yet very few descriptors of capabilities, evaluations, training methods, or open-source models exist. Given this lack of information, further study and transparency is needed for learned RLHF reward models. In this paper, we illustrate the complex history of optimizing preferences, and articulate lines of inquiry to understand the sociotechnical context of reward models. In particular, we highlight the ontological differences between costs, rewards, and preferences at stake in RLHF's foundations, related methodological tensions, and possible research directions to improve general understanding of how reward models function.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure