Biotechnology and the Law: A Consideration of Intellectual Property Rights and Related Social Issues

[Excerpt] “Recent advances in biotechnology are expected by many to improve crop yield, reduce reliance on agricultural inputs like pesticides and herbicides, alleviate world hunger, improve the safety and effectiveness of pharmaceuticals, assist in the discovery of genes that trigger diseases like cancer, and make more efficient our legal institutions through DNA testing. Clearly, innovations in biotechnology are a powerful force for social change, and they pose unique challenges and opportunities for legal scholars and institutions. This section of the Pierce Law Review focuses on the interface between law and technology by examining how innovations in biotechnology accelerate debates about social justice (on a global scale), the role of science, and the patenting of intellectual property. Since biotechnology, and the actors involved in the debates over intellectual property rights, are involved in a form of “high drama” that plays itself out in the social world, it is necessary to understand that technology does not exist in a vacuum. All technologies generate social change and affect, in varying degrees individuals, groups, institutions, etc. For example, the introduction of the pen changed how information is recorded. A pen is portable, relatively inexpensive and creates semi-permanent markings. The pen, however, represented a shift away from orality, created a note-taking culture and lessened our reliance on short-term memory. The pen also helped consolidate the power of bureaucracies where a reliance on efficiency and order was paramount. Legal documents are generally signed in ink. The pen plays a prominent role in our society and can be found in almost all institutions, including those where information/communication technology dominate. If these transformations can occur when a relatively simple technology is introduced, what can be said about the introduction of innovations arising from the science of biotechnology

Risk Assessment and Sustainable Development: Towards a Concept of Sustainable Risk

Dr. Mehta examines two dominant approaches for managing health and environmental risks and suggests that they would better serve if integrated

Public Perceptions of Food Safety: Assessing the Risks Posed by Genetic Modification, Irradiation, Pesticides, Microbiological Contamination and High Fat/High Calorie Foods

[Excerpt] In general, people in the developed world have access to a safe and varied supply of food. Instead of systemic hunger, many developed countries have problems with obesity and other kinds of eating disorders among their citizenry. It is within this context that some find public concerns about the safety of food both paradoxical and misplaced. Nevertheless, understanding how people perceive the risk associated with food is an important exercise in demonstrating accountability and in setting priorities for regulation. With the advent of technologies for producing genetically modified foods, and the development of fat blockers like Olestra, the public is increasingly being asked to judge the social acceptability of various kinds of food modifications. In addition to interpreting the risks and benefits associated with these newer innovations, the public is also balancing the risks and benefits of more familiar food interventions. Not only must consumers of food assess the merits of genetic modification and food irradiation, they still must consider exposure to pesticide residues and microbiological contaminants like Salmonella, Listeria, Escherichia coli, and Campylobacter. Additionally, with high rates of cardiovascular disease and elevated concerns about developing diseases like diabetes, many people seriously consider the fat and sugar content of the foods they consume. This exploratory study examines how the public perceives food risks by employing a ranking exercise, a scale for assessing food safety practices, a scale for combining elements from the psychometric paradigm (e.g., voluntary exposure, perceived benefit, and perceived risk) across five potential food hazards, and demographic variables (sex, age, and level of education) most commonly linked to the perception of food risks

Public Perceptions of Genetically Engineered Foods: Playing God or Trusting Science

The author considers whether levels of religiosity or scientism affect public perceptions of genetically engineered foods

Phase transitions detached from stationary points of the energy landscape

The stationary points of the potential energy function V are studied for the \phi^4 model on a two-dimensional square lattice with nearest-neighbor interactions. On the basis of analytical and numerical results, we explore the relation of stationary points to the occurrence of thermodynamic phase transitions. We find that the phase transition potential energy of the \phi^4 model does in general not coincide with the potential energy of any of the stationary points of V. This disproves earlier, allegedly rigorous, claims in the literature on necessary conditions for the existence of phase transitions. Moreover, we find evidence that the indices of stationary points scale extensively with the system size, and therefore the index density can be used to characterize features of the energy landscape in the infinite-system limit. We conclude that the finite-system stationary points provide one possible mechanism of how a phase transition can arise, but not the only one.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Peer-to-peer sharing on the Internet: An analysis of how Gnutella networks are used to distribute pornographic material

By our very nature, humans are creatures that communicate and network. Over the past several decades much of this communicating and networking has been facilitated by developments in information and communication technology. The social and economic transformations resulting from developments on the Internet have created several challenges for policymakers, lawmakers, courts and a wide range of other kinds of institutions. Some of these challenges are associated with the technologies and applications themselves. Other challenges result from content made available on the Internet and how users exchange data. Recent developments in peer-to-peer data exchange bring these two sets of challenges together

Ground-state energy of the electron liquid in ultrathin wires

The ground-state energy and the density correlation function of the electron liquid in a thin one-dimensional wire are computed. The calculation is based on an approximate mapping of the problem with a realistic Coulomb interaction law onto exactly solvable models of mathematical physics. This approach becomes asymptotically exact in the limit of small wire radius but remains numerically accurate even for modestly thin wires.Comment: (v3) Replaced with the published version. 4 pages, 1 figur

Peer-to-peer sharing on the Internet: An analysis of how Gnutella networks are used to distribute pornographic material

By our very nature, humans are creatures that communicate and network. Over the past several decades much of this communicating and networking has been facilitated by developments in information and communication technology. The social and economic transformations resulting from developments on the Internet have created several challenges for policymakers, lawmakers, courts and a wide range of other kinds of institutions. Some of these challenges are associated with the technologies and applications themselves. Other challenges result from content made available on the Internet and how users exchange data. Recent developments in peer-to-peer data exchange bring these two sets of challenges together

The value of kinetic glomerular filtration rate estimation on medication dosing in acute kidney injury.

BackgroundIn acute kidney injury (AKI), medication dosing based on Cockcroft-Gault creatinine clearance (CrCl) or Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration (CKD-EPI) estimated glomerular filtration rates (eGFR) are not valid when serum creatinine (SCr) is not in steady state. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of a kinetic estimating equation that incorporates fluctuations in SCrs on drug dosing in critically ill patients.MethodsWe used data from participants enrolled in the NIH Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome Network Fluid and Catheters Treatment Trial to simulate drug dosing category changes with the application of the kinetic estimating equation developed by Chen. We evaluated whether kinetic estimation of renal function would change medication dosing categories (≥60, 30-59, 15-29, and <15mL/min) compared with the use of CrCl or CKD-EPI eGFR.ResultsThe use of kinetic CrCl and CKD-EPI eGFR resulted in a large enough change in estimated renal function to require medication dosing recategorization in 19.3% [95 CI 16.8%-21.9%] and 23.4% [95% CI 20.7%-26.1%] of participants, respectively. As expected, recategorization occurred more frequently in those with AKI. When we examined individual days for those with AKI, dosing discordance was observed in 8.5% of total days using the CG CrCl and 10.2% of total days using the CKD-EPI equation compared with the kinetic counterparts.ConclusionIn a critically ill population, use of kinetic estimates of renal function impacted medication dosing in a substantial proportion of AKI participants. Use of kinetic estimates in clinical practice should lower the incidence of medication toxicity as well as avoid subtherapeutic dosing during renal recovery