\u3ci\u3eIn re Epstein\u3c/i\u3e: A Case of Patent Hearsay

In In re Epstein, the Federal Circuit held that the United States Patent and Trademark Office may rely on hearsay evidence to reject patent applications. This Note examines the effects of the Epstein decision against the backdrop of software patenting and how administrative agencies have traditionally approached the problem of evaluating hearsay. It argues that the Patent and Trademark Office should articulate standards when scrutinizing hearsay in order to provide guidance to examiners and applicants, to prevent placing an unfair burden on applicants, and to thwart the abuse of the patent system

A survey of the macroscopic fungi of the Lula Lake Land Trust

I conducted a survey of the macroscopic fungi in an area designated as Chestnut Orchard #1 of the Lula Lake Land Trust from May 29, 1999 to March 8, 2000. The purpose of the survey centered on making a comprehensive list of the fleshy fungi to serve as baseline data of the fungal diversity contained on this experimental chestnut plot. The fieldwork resulted in a collection of 139 sporocarp specimens, comprising 17 families, 38 genera, 63 species and, as of yet, approximately 30 unidentified specimens. Some of the specimens collected were also determined to be edible, thus offering a possible future economic venue for Lula Lake and the surrounding areas as potential cash crops. This study provides baseline fungal information on Chestnut Orchard #1 for means of comparison for future examinations of changes in the mycological diversity that may come as the American chestnut, Castanea dentata, resumes its place in the forest canopy

Social Representations of Foreign Aid: Exploring Meaning-Making in Aid Practice in Sulu, Southern Philippines

Conceptualising foreign aid as a controversial social object, this study utilised Social Representations Theory as a social constructionist framework to understand the meanings that arise from people\u27s social interactions in relation to foreign aid practice in a particular historical, political and social context such as the province of Sulu in Southern Philippines. Key informant interviews and group discussions with representatives of various social groups involved in the practice of foreign aid in Sulu were conducted. Research data were examined using thematic analysis. Results showed two interrelated representational systems about foreign aid in the province. First, foreign aid was understood as a valuable resource for peace and development in Sulu. Second, based on narratives of aid practice in the province, the same social object was also represented as a profiteering enterprise that operates at various levels of the aid structure. Results are discussed in terms of meaning-making in aid practice; the possible psychological, social and political consequences of the social meaning of foreign aid as a profiteering enterprise; and the potential of these social representations for reflection, critique and transformation in the practice of foreign aid

The very fast evolution of Sakurai's object

V4334 Sgr (a.k.a. Sakurai's object) is the central star of an old planetary nebula that underwent a very late thermal pulse a few years before its discovery in 1996. We have been monitoring the evolution of the optical emission line spectrum since 2001. The goal is to improve the evolutionary models by constraining them with the temporal evolution of the central star temperature. In addition the high resolution spectral observations obtained by X-shooter and ALMA show the temporal evolution of the different morphological components.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figures to appear in the Proceedings of the IAU Symp. 323: "Planetary nebulae: Multi-wavelength probes of stellar and galactic evolution". Eds. X.-W. Liu, L. Stanghellini and A. Karaka

Load Transfer Analysis in Short Carbon Fibers with Radially-Aligned Carbon Nanotubes Embedded in a Polymer Matrix

A novel shortfiber composite in which the microscopic advanced fiber reinforcements are coated with radially aligned carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is analyzed in this study. A shear-lag model is developed to analyze the load transferred to such coated fibers from the aligned-CNT reinforced matrix in a hybrid composite application. It is found that if the carbon fibers are coated with radially aligned CNTs, then the axial load transferred to the fiber is reduced due to stiffening of the matrix by the CNTs. Importantly, it is shown that at low loading of CNTs in the polymer matrix, there is a significant reduction in the maximum interfacial shear stress, e.g., at 1% CNTs, there is an ~25 % reduction in this maximum stress. Further, the modification in the load sharing between the fiber and the matrix plateaus at ~2% CNT matrix loading, indicating a small but critical window for engineering the interface in this manner. Effects of the variation of the aspect ratio of the fiber, CNT volume fraction and the application of radial load on the load transferred to such CNT coated fibers are also investigated

Fragmented Ethnopolitical Social Representations of a Territorial Peace Agreement: The Mindanao Peace Talks

This article examines fractures in the social representations of a contested peace agreement in the longstanding territorial conflict of Mindanao. We compared representational structures and discourses about the peace talks among Muslims and Christians. Study One used an open-ended survey of 420 Christians and Muslims from two Mindanao cities identified with different Islamised tribes, and employed the hierarchical evocation method to provide representational structures of the peace agreement. Study Two contrasted discourses about the Memorandum of Agreement between two Muslim liberation fronts identified with separate Islamised tribes in Mindanao. Findings show unified Christians’ social representations about the peace agreement. However, Muslims’ social representations diverge along the faultlines of the Islamised ethnic groups. Findings are examined in the light of ethnopolitical divides that emerge among apparently united nonmigrant groups, as peace agreements address territorial solutions. Research results are likewise discussed in relation to other tribally contoured social landscapes that carry hidden, yet fractured ethnic narratives embedded in a larger war storyline

Learning Action Cell Implementation in the Philippine Public Schools: A Descriptive Phenomenological Study

Philippine DepEd Order (DO) #35, s. 2016, institutionalized the Learning Action Cell (LAC) in public schools. The policy’s key objective is to improve teachers’ teaching competence. Conversely, there needs to be more literature, specifically in the Davao City public schools, to account for its implementation since its inception. Thus, this study. The study aimed to propose a LAC implementation model for the Davao City public school’s division. It made use of qualitative, descriptive phenomenological research design. Ten (10) participants were involved, and they participated in the focus group discussion and key informant interviews. The proposed LAC implementation model focused on the students’ learning as its definitive goal. It can be realized if the teachers’ teaching skills are enhanced, and the LAC implementation is well implemented. Correspondingly, the proposed model emphasizes supportive leadership, teachers’ positive attitudes, well-defined roles and responsibilities, sufficient resources, systematic procedures, and well-disseminated policy. One of the study’s recommendations is for future researchers to study the impact of the continuous improvement model adopted in the implementation of LAC in the DepEd schools on the learning quality of the students and the school improvement. Keywords: teacher professional development, LAC implementation model, academic performance DOI: 10.7176/JEP/14-27-07 Publication date:September 30th 202

Ensemble methods for meningitis aetiology diagnosis

In this work, we explore data-driven techniques for the fast and early diagnosis concerning the etiological origin of meningitis, more specifically with regard to differentiating between viral and bacterial meningitis. We study how machine learning can be used to predict meningitis aetiology once a patient has been diagnosed with this disease. We have a dataset of 26,228 patients described by 19 attributes, mainly about the patient's observable symptoms and the early results of the cerebrospinal fluid analysis. Using this dataset, we have explored several techniques of dataset sampling, feature selection and classification models based both on ensemble methods and on simple techniques (mainly, decision trees). Experiments with 27 classification models (19 of them involving ensemble methods) have been conducted for this paper. Our main finding is that the combination of ensemble methods with decision trees leads to the best meningitis aetiology classifiers. The best performance indicator values (precision, recall and f-measure of 89% and an AUC value of 95%) have been achieved by the synergy between bagging and NBTrees. Nonetheless, our results also suggest that the combination of ensemble methods with certain decision tree clearly improves the performance of diagnosis in comparison with those obtained with only the corresponding decision tree.This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. We would like to thank the Health Department of the Brazilian Government for providing the dataset and for authorizing its use in this study. We would also like to express our gratitude to the reviewers for their thoughtful comments and efforts towards improving our manuscript. Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málaga / CBUA