15,656 research outputs found
The Logic & Limits of the Exceptional Circumstances Test in Magill and IMS Health
In this Article, we show that, in contrast to the Commission\u27s balancing approach in Microsoft, the ECJ\u27s narrow construction of the obligation to license IP under Article 82 of the EC Treaty is based on sound economics and constitutes appropriate public policy. The set of “exceptional circumstances” listed in Magill and IMS Health constitutes a reasonable implementation of the optimal legal standard for the assessment of refusals to licence IP: modified per se legality. In the IP context, an obligation to make property available is a requirement for compulsory licensing. The ECJ test limits compulsory licensing to those situations in which the prospective social benefits of licensing are large, while the negative effects of reducing the incentives to innovate are small. The ECJ test ensures that intervention is restricted to cases where the intervention is still likely to increase social welfare. The Commission\u27s test in Microsoft, being a balancing test, does not. As noted by Professor Gerardin, “balancing ex ante vs. ex post efficiencies is obviously a very difficult process, which even the most sophisticated economists may find daunting. The risk of mistaken decisions is therefore high.
The self-consistent general relativistic solution for a system of degenerate neutrons, protons and electrons in beta-equilibrium
We present the self-consistent treatment of the simplest, nontrivial,
self-gravitating system of degenerate neutrons, protons and electrons in
-equilibrium within relativistic quantum statistics and the
Einstein-Maxwell equations. The impossibility of imposing the condition of
local charge neutrality on such systems is proved, consequently overcoming the
traditional Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff treatment. We emphasize the crucial role
of imposing the constancy of the generalized Fermi energies. A new approach
based on the coupled system of the general relativistic
Thomas-Fermi-Einstein-Maxwell equations is presented and solved. We obtain an
explicit solution fulfilling global and not local charge neutrality by solving
a sophisticated eigenvalue problem of the general relativistic Thomas-Fermi
equation. The value of the Coulomb potential at the center of the configuration
is and the system is intrinsically stable against
Coulomb repulsion in the proton component. This approach is necessary, but not
sufficient, when strong interactions are introduced.Comment: Letter in press, Physics Letters B (2011
Measuring the interaction force between a high temperature superconductor and a permanent magnet
Repulsive and attractive forces are both possible between a superconducting
sample and a permanent magnet, and they can give place to magnetic levitation
or free-suspension phenomena, respectively. We show experiments to quantify
this magnetic interaction which represents a promising field regarding to
short-term technological applications of high temperature superconductors. The
measuring technique employs an electronic balance and a rare-earth magnet that
induces a magnetic moment in a melt-textured YBa2Cu3O7 superconductor immersed
in liquid nitrogen. The simple design of the experiments allows a fast and easy
implementation in the advanced physics laboratory with a minimum cost. Actual
levitation and suspension demonstrations can be done simultaneously as a help
to interpret magnetic force measurements.Comment: 12 pages and 3 figures in postscrip
Ab initio Evidence for Giant Magnetoelectric Responses Driven by Structural Softness
We show that inducing structural softness in regular magnetoelectric (ME)
multiferroics -- i.e., tuning the materials to make their structure strongly
reactive to applied fields -- makes it possible to obtain very large ME
effects. We present illustrative first-principles results for BiFeO3 thin
films.Comment: 4 pages with 3 figures embedded. More information at
http://www.icmab.es/dmmis/leem/jorg
An Exact Approach to Early/Tardy Scheduling with Release Dates
In this paper we consider the single machine earliness/tardiness scheduling problem with di?erent release dates and no unforced idle time. The problem is decomposed into a weighted earliness subproblem and a weighted tardiness subproblem. Lower bounding procedures are proposed for each of these subproblems, and the lower bound for the original problem is then simply the sum of the lower bounds for the two subproblems. The lower bounds and several versions of a branch-and-bound algorithm are then tested on a set of randomly generated problems, and instances with up to 30 jobs are solved to optimality. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first exact approach for the early/tardy scheduling problem with release dates and no unforced idle time.scheduling, early/tardy, release dates, lower bounds, branch-and-bound
Diffusion in Fluctuating Media: The Resonant Activation Problem
We present a one-dimensional model for diffusion in a fluctuating lattice;
that is a lattice which can be in two or more states. Transitions between the
lattice states are induced by a combination of two processes: one periodic
deterministic and the other stochastic. We study the dynamics of a system of
particles moving in that medium, and characterize the problem from different
points of view: mean first passage time (MFPT), probability of return to a
given site (), and the total length displacement or number of visited
lattice sites (). We observe a double {\it resonant activation}-like
phenomenon when we plot the MFPT and as functions of the intensity of
the transition rate stochastic component.Comment: RevTex, 15 pgs, 8 figures, submitted to Eur.Phys.J.
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