Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius

A Review of Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius by Edward de Grazi

Curiosities of REPINs and RAYTs

Repetitive extragenic palindromic (REP) sequences are a ubiquitous feature of bacterial genomes. Recent work shows that REPs are remnants of a larger mobile genetic element termed a REPIN. REPINs consists of two REP sequences in inverted orientation separated by a spacer region and are thought to be non-autonomous mobile genetic elements that exploit the transposase encoded by REP-Associated tYrosine Transposases (RAYTs). Complimentarity between the two ends of the REPIN suggests that the element forms hairpin structures in single stranded DNA or RNA. In addition to REPINs, other more complex arrangements of REPs have been identified in bacterial genomes, including the genome of the model organism Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25. Here, we summarize existing knowledge and present new data concerning REPIN diversity. We also consider factors affecting the evolution of REPIN diversity, the ease with which REPINs might be co-opted by host genomes and the consequences of REPIN activity for the structure of bacterial genomes

Very Small Strangelets

We study the stability of small strangelets by employing a simple model of strange matter as a gas of non-interacting fermions confined in a bag. We solve the Dirac equation and populate the energy levels of the bag one quark at a time. Our results show that for system parameters such that strange matter is unbound in bulk, there may still exist strangelets with $A<100$ that are stable and/or metastable. The lifetime of these strangelets may be too small to detect in current accelerator experiments, however.Comment: 13 pages, MIT CTP#217

Quark mass density- and temperature- dependent model for strange quark matter

It is found that the radius of a stable strangelet decreases as the temperature increases in a quark mass density-dependent model. To overcome this difficulty, we extend this model to a quark mass density- and temperature- dependent model in which the vacuum energy density at zero baryon density limit B depends on temperature. An ansatz is introduced and the regions for the best choice of the parameters are studied.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Contracting for innovation : vertical disintegration and interfirm collaboration

Rapidly innovating industries are not behaving the way theory expects. Conventional industrial organization theory predicts that, when parties in a supply chain have to make transaction-specific investments, the risk of opportunism will drive them away from contracts and toward vertical integration. Despite the conventional theory, however, contemporary practice is moving in the other direction. Instead of vertical integration, we observe vertical disintegration in a significant number of industries, as producers recognize that they cannot themselves maintain cutting-edge technology in every field required for the success of their products. In doing this, the parties are developing forms of contracting beyond the reach of contract theory models. In this Article, we connect the emerging contract practice to theory, learning from what has happened in the real world to frame a theoretical explanation of this cross-organizational innovation and to reconceptualize the boundaries of the firm accordingly. We argue that the vertical disintegration of the supply chain in many industries is mediated neither by fully specified technical interfaces that allow suppliers to produce a modular piece of the ultimate product, nor by entirely implicit relational contracts supported only by norms of reciprocity and the expectation of future dealings. Rather, we suggest that the change in the boundary of the firm has given rise to a new form of contracting between firms -- what we call "contracting for innovation." This pattern braids explicit and implicit contracting to support iterative collaborative innovation by raising switching costs. These costs, represented by the parties' parallel transaction-specific investments in knowledge about their collaborators' capacities, deter opportunism under circumstances where explicit contracting, renegotiation, and the anticipation of future dealings cannot

Contract and Innovation: The Limited Role of Generalist Courts in the Evolution of Novel Contractual Forms

In developing a contractual response to changes in the economic environment, parties choose the method by which their innovation will be adapted to the particulars of their context. These choices are driven centrally by the thickness of the relevant market – the number of actors who see themselves as facing similar circumstances – and the uncertainty related to that market. In turn, the parties\u27 choice of method will shape how generalist courts can best support the parties\u27 innovation and the novel regimes they envision. In this Article, we argue that contractual innovation does not come to courts incrementally, but instead reaches courts later in the innovation\u27s evolution and more fully developed than the standard picture contemplates. Highly stylized, the trajectory of innovation in contract we find is this: Private actors respond to exogenous shocks in their economic environments by changing existing structures or procedures to make them efficient under the new circumstances. The innovating parties stabilize their newly emergent practices through a variety of regimes – both bilateral and multilateral – with the goal of establishing the context through which the innovation is implemented. It is only at this point, and when a dispute is presented to them, that courts step in. If contract innovation does indeed reach generalist courts through the mediating institution of these contextualizing regimes, then our argument follows directly: Because a central goal of contract adjudication is to enforce the agreement in the context the parties intended, the courts\u27 willingness to defer to the context provided by the parties will put the law more directly in the service of innovation