Intellectual Property Topics in Open University Distance-Taught Courses

Patents lie at the heart of engineering as a permanent and ongoing record of invention. We have taught the subject for about 5 years in both UG and PG courses, written from scratch owing to the absence of textbooks aimed specifically at engineers. Most practising engineers develop patent skills on the job rather than through conventional courses. But there is a need to present such courses as early as possible in the engineering curriculum, so that graduates have a flying start in their first employment

Claremont I and II - Were They Rightly Decided, and Where Have They Left Us?

[Excerpt] “Our children embody the enduring wonder of life. They hold our hopes for the future. We want them to be happy, to succeed in whatever they do both in work and in play. We want them to contribute to our country and the world in constructive ways. But for these hopes to be realized our children must be educated-they must possess the requisite skills and knowledge to function well in this ever changing world. Yet, are we, as a society, meeting our responsibility to educate our children? What do we expect of our public schools? How important are these schools to us? Is a public education fit for the times guaranteed as a constitutional matter? These questions loomed large in the New Hampshire Supreme Court\u27s decisions in Claremont I and Claremont II, issued respectively in 1993 and 1997. Constituting New Hampshire\u27s core education rulings, they are among the Court\u27s most controversial exercises of constitutional jurisprudence. […] This article concludes that the New Hampshire Supreme Court correctly determined in Claremont I that Article 83 established enforceable positive constitutional rights for the provision and funding of an adequate public education. The Court acted properly in recognizing that the judiciary had an important role to play to assure these important constitutional rights. Claremont I properly upheld the State\u27s constitutional obligation to accord the State\u27s public school children with access to an education that would at all times enable them to be good citizens productive in their work. The decision also reflected proper regard for the prerogatives of the elected branches by leaving to them, at least initially, the development of an operational definition of adequacy in education, along with the responsibility to fashion the appropriate means to provide for it. The Claremont II decision, however, does not earn like approbation. It fails to stand up strongly as a tax ruling. It does not constitute a good appellate review of the other Superior Court rulings against the petitioners. The Court majority, after issuing its decision, deferred to the elected branches to give them time to fashion a remedy. Its decision, however, was not well received, or easily accepted, by many in the Legislature. Only after much resistance and much delay did the elected branches manage to put in place certain educational adequacy /funding reforms. Whatever their merits or flaws, this article sees these two decisions as having importantly and positively impacted New Hampshire\u27s public education system. The decisions had a good deal to do with ushering in needed reforms, so that the education system now operates with a specific definition for a constitutionally adequate education, regular assessment and accountability tools, and a costing out of adequacy linked to associated funding. The decisions have thus better positioned the public education system to meet the challenges of the future.

Signatures of hermitian forms and the Knebusch Trace Formula

Signatures of quadratic forms have been generalized to hermitian forms over algebras with involution. In the literature this is done via Morita theory, which causes sign ambiguities in certain cases. In this paper, a hermitian version of the Knebusch Trace Formula is established and used as a main tool to resolve these ambiguities. The last page is an erratum for the published version. We inadvertently (I) gave an incorrect definition of adjoint involutions; (II) omitted dealing with the case $(H\times H, \widehat{\phantom{m}}\,)$. As $W(H\times H, \widehat{\phantom{m}}\,)= W(R\times R, \widehat{\phantom{m}}\,)=0$, the omission does not affect our reasoning or our results. For the sake of completeness we point out where some small changes should be made in the published version.Comment: This is the final version before publication. The last page is an updated erratum for the published versio

Wildlife disease elimination and 1 density dependence

Disease control by managers is a crucial response to emerging wildlife epidemics, yet the means of control may be limited by the method of disease transmission. In particular, it is widely held that population reduction, while effective for controlling diseases that are subject to density-dependent transmission, is ineffective for controlling diseases that are subject to frequency-dependent transmission. We investigate control for horizontally transmitted diseases with frequency-dependent transmission where the control is via nonselective (for infected animals) culling or harvesting and the population can compensate through density-dependent recruitment or survival. Using a mathematical model, we show that culling or harvesting can eradicate the disease, even when transmission dynamics are frequency-dependent. E 24 radication can be achieved under frequency-dependent transmission when density-dependent population regulation induces compensatory growth of new, healthy individuals, which has the net effect of reducing disease prevalence by dilution. We also show that if harvest is used simultaneously with vaccination and there is high enough transmission coefficient, application of both controls may be less efficient than when vaccination alone is used. We illustrate the effects of these control approaches on disease prevalence using assumed parameters for chronic wasting disease in deer where the disease is transmitted directly among deer and through the environment

ICF core sets for low back pain: do they include what matters to patients?

To investigate whether the International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health (ICF) Core Sets for low back pain encompass the key functional problems of patients

Piloted simulation of one-on-one helicopter air combat at NOE flight levels

A piloted simulation designed to examine the effects of terrain proximity and control system design on helicopter performance during one-on-one air combat maneuvering (ACM) is discussed. The NASA Ames vertical motion simulator (VMS) and the computer generated imagery (CGI) systems were modified to allow two aircraft to be independently piloted on a single CGI data base. Engagements were begun with the blue aircraft already in a tail-chase position behind the red, and also with the two aircraft originating from positions unknown to each other. Maneuvering was very aggressive and safety requirements for minimum altitude, separation, and maximum bank angles typical of flight test were not used. Results indicate that the presence of terrain features adds an order of complexiaty to the task performed over clear air ACM and that mix of attitude and rate command-type stability and control augmentation system (SCAS) design may be desirable. The simulation system design, the flight paths flown, and the tactics used were compared favorably by the evaluation pilots to actual flight test experiments

Quitting in Protest: A Theory of Presidential Policy Making and Agency Response

This paper examines the effects of centralized presidential policy-making, implemented through unilateral executive action, on the willingness of bureaucrats to exert effort and stay in the government. Extending models in organizational economics, we show that policy initiative by the president is a substitute for initiative by civil servants. Yet, total effort is enhanced when both work. Presidential centralization of policy often impels policy-oriented bureaucrats ( zealots ) to quit rather than implement presidential policies they dislike. Those most likely to quit are a range of moderate bureaucrats. More extreme bureaucrats may be willing to wait out an opposition president in the hope of tempering future policy when an allied president is elected. As control of the White House alternates between ideologically opposed extreme presidents, policy-minded moderates are stripped from bureaucratic agencies leaving only policy extremists or poorly performing slackers. These departures degrade policy initiative in moderate agencies

Spin-dependent charge recombination along para-phenylene molecular wires

We have used an efficient new quantum mechanical method for radical pair recombination reactions to study the spin-dependent charge recombination along PTZ$^{\bullet+}$--Ph$_n$--PDI$^{\bullet-}$ molecular wires. By comparing our results to the experimental data of E. Weiss {\em et al.} [J. Am. Chem. Soc. {\bf 126}, 5577 (2004)], we are able to extract the spin-dependent (singlet and triplet) charge recombination rate constants for wires with $n=2-5$. These spin-dependent rate constants have not been extracted previously from the experimental data because they require fitting its magnetic field-dependence to the results of quantum spin dynamics simulations. We find that the triplet recombination rate constant decreases exponentially with the length of the wire, consistent with the superexchange mechanism of charge recombination. However, the singlet recombination rate constant is nearly independent of the length of the wire, suggesting that the singlet pathway is dominated by an incoherent hopping mechanism. A simple qualitative explanation for the different behaviours of the two spin-selective charge recombination pathways is provided in terms of Marcus theory. We also find evidence for a magnetic field-independent background contribution to the triplet yield of the charge recombination reaction, and suggest several possible explanations for it. Since none of these explanations is especially compelling given the available experimental evidence, and since the result appears to apply more generally to other molecular wires, we hope that this aspect of our study will stimulate further experimental work.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figure

Public Sector Personnel Economics: Wages, Promotions, and the Competence-Control Trade-off

We model personnel policies in public agencies, examining how wages and promotion standards can partially offset a fundamental contracting problem: the inability of public sector workers to contract on performance, and the inability of political masters to contract on forbearance from meddling. Despite the dual contracting problem, properly constructed personnel policies can encourage intrinsically motivated public sector employees to invest in expertise, seek promotion, remain in the public sector, and develop policy projects. However, doing so requires internal personnel policies that sort slackers from zealots. Personnel policies that accomplish this task are quite different in agencies where acquired expertise has little value in the private sector, and agencies where acquired expertise commands a premium in the private sector. Finally, even with well-designed personnel policies, there remains an inescapable trade-off between political control and expertise acquisition