Strange Bedfellows: Native American Tribes, Big Pharma, and the Legitimacy of Their Alliance

Lost in the cacophony surrounding the debate about high drug prices is the fundamental principle that pharmaceutical innovation will not occur without the prospect of outsized returns enabled through market exclusivity. Biopharmaceutical patents are currently under siege, subject to challenge both in inter partes review (“IPR”) proceedings and in Hatch-Waxman actions. These twin assaults threaten to eliminate the incentives necessary for biotechnological innovation—particularly for discoveries made upstream in the innovation pipeline—thus imperiling the development of new drug therapies. But a fascinating solution has emerged: invoking tribal immunity to shield pharmaceutical patents from IPR before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”). This serves two critically important objectives: promoting tribal self-sufficiency, and encouraging investment in life-saving and life-improving new drugs. Contractual partnerships between Native American tribes and pharmaceutical companies not only provide the tribes with a steady stream of royalty revenue, but also insulate biopharmaceutical patents from challenge in IPR proceedings through the invocation of long-established principles of tribal sovereign immunity. This Note is the first piece of scholarship to comprehensively analyze, and advocate for, the right to invoke tribal sovereign immunity in IPR proceedings

CULTURAL CONSUMPTION AS PART OF THE COLOMBIAN INCOME 1999-2004

Plenty of people’s consumption is referred to necessary products used every day, and the cultural products are classified as sumptuary groceries used aside the people’s basic necessities. But those cultural consumptions are the ones that cause great difference among people. Those frequent books consumers are more demanded in the labor market and those classic music listeners are clearly different from those who listen tropical music. Towards this phenomenon, understand the Colombian cultural consumption would let us know more about the population and see how prepared it is to face cultural and social changes, because those who consume more cultural products are more prone to cultural transformations.Cultural Consumption, books, video.

Nonlinear Time-Domain Structure/Aerodynamics Coupling in Systems with Concentrated Structural Nonlinearities

This paper details a practical approach for predicting the aeroelastic response (structure/aerodynamics coupling) of flexible pod/missile-type configurations with freeplay/hysteresis concentrated structural nonlinearities. The nonlinear aeroelastic response of systems in the presence of these nonlinearities has been previously studied by different authors; this paper compiles methodologies and related airworthiness regulations. The aeroelastic equations of the pod/missile configuration are formulated in state-space form and time-domain integrated with Fortran/Matlab codes developed ad hoc for dealing with freeplay/hysteresis nonlinearities. Results show that structural nonlinearities change the classical aeroelastic behaviour with appearence of non-damped motion (LCOs and chaotic motion)

Development of a context knowledge system for mobile conversational agents

Un agente conversacional móvil o chatbot es un software que puede realizar tareas o servicios para un usuario o grupo en concreto. El objetivo principal de este Trabajo de Fin de Grado es desarrollar un sistema de conocimiento de contexto para agentes móviles, así como proporcionarle herramientas para que pueda adaptarse dinámicamente. Este sistema permitirá al usuario recibir sugerencias personalizadas de acciones basadas en su contexto y preferencias. Este proyecto se desarrolla en la modalidad A, que significa que está asociado a un departamento universitario. En este caso, este proyecto está vinculado al departamento de Grupo de Ingeniería del Software y de los Servicios (GESSI) de la Facultad de Informática de Barcelona, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Este sistema expondrá integraciones de funciones entre diferentes aplicaciones de un dispositivo móvil, permitiendo al usuario realizar acciones en una aplicación y recibir sugerencias de acciones posibles para ser ejecutadas en otra, permitiéndole completar esa acción sin tener que abrir explícitamente la aplicación en cuestión.A mobile conversational agent or chatbot is software that can perform tasks or services for a particular user or group. The main goal of this Final Degree Project is to develop a context knowledge system for mobile agents, as well as provide it with tools that allow it to be adapted dynamically. This system will allow the user to receive personalised suggestions of actions based on their context and preferences. This project is developed in the A modality, which means it is associated with a university department. In this case, this project is linked to the Software and Service Engineering Group (GESSI) department from the Barcelona School of Informatics, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. This system will expose feature integrations between different applications of a mobile device, allowing the user to perform actions in one application and receive suggestions of possible actions to be executed in another application, letting them complete that suggestion without having to explicitly open the application

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NURSING SAFETY CULTURE AND PATIENT PERCEPTION OF SAFETY IN INPATIENT UNITS OF AN ACADEMIC SPECIALTY HOSPITAL

The objective of this research was to analyze the relationship between nursing safety work culture in inpatient nursing units of a specialty academic hospital and their patients’ perception of safety using quantitative and qualitative methods. The aim of the quantitative study was to quantitatively evaluate whether nursing safety culture, as measured on the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPS) safety questions of the institutional employee opinion survey, was associated with patients’ perception of safety during their inpatient care, as measured by responses on the inpatient Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. The aim of the qualitative study was to explore patients’ and nurses’ perceptions of the experiences about safety through individual interviews. The setting of the study was 14 inpatient nursing units. The sample for the quantitative study was these 14 units. The selected HSOPS and HCAHPS question scores were used for selected domains for a regression analysis. For the qualitative study, 4 units were selected from these 14 units based on their HCAHPS score (top, lowest, and two average performers). A total of 14 nurses and 12 patients were interviewed from these selected units. The quantitative results indicated that there was no significant association between any of the domains of the nurses’ safety culture and the domains of patients’ perception of safety. A possible explanation was the limited vii statistical power, given the fixed sample size of 14 units. In the qualitative study, the nursing themes were the following: High workload and insufficient staff, nurses identified safety risks, and safety climate is favorable. The patient themes were the following: Patients identified safety risks, Communication and caring from nurses is appreciated, Patients noticed nurses work as a team, Insufficient staffing not an issue for patients. The conclusions from the study was that nurses are working in a favorable safety climate and teamwork is important because both nurses and patients recognized it as part of safety, patients perceived safe care and felt that nurses genuinely cared for them, and working and staffing are the highest safety priority for nurses

Applying remote sensing and GIS techniques in solving rural county information needs

The project designed was to acquaint county government officials and their clientele with remote sensing and GIS products that contain information about land conditions and land use. Other users determined through the course of this project were federal agencies working at the county level, agricultural businesses and others in need of spatial information. The specific project objectives were: (1) to investigate the feasibility of using remotely sensed data to identify and quantify specific land cover categories and conditions for purposes of tax assessment, cropland area measurements and land use evaluation; (2) to investigate the use of satellite remote sensing data as an aid in assessing soil management practices; and (3) to evaluate the use of remotely sensed data to assess soil resources and conditions which affect productivity

Spinal Cord Injury: What About the Brain?

Background: Recent research has suggested that the brain may also undergo neurodegeneration after a spinal cord injury (SCI). Here, we evaluated neurodegeneration in the brain of patients with SCI and related neurodegeneration to rehabilitation performance, spine degeneration, and motor function. Methods: T1-weighted and diffusion-weighted images of 13 SCI patients and 13 healthy controls were obtained. We evaluated fractional anisotropy in the motor cortex (MC), the sulci in front of the MC, the posterior limb of the internal capsule (PLIC), and the cerebral peduncles (CP) in both hemispheres to determine neurodegeneration. Statistical analysis was performed between patients with SCI and healthy controls. A p-value Results: In the MC and PLIC, we observed significant neurodegeneration in the side of the brain controlling the weakest side of the body in SCI patients (p Conclusions: Our results suggest that SCI patients have neurodegeneration in the MC and PLIC in the side of the brain controlling the weakest side of the body. Future research will evaluate more regions of interest to help determine if white matter loss increases as it approaches the spinal cord. We are also evaluating how spinal cord neurodegeneration relates to our observed neurodegeneration in the brain