An alternative to intellectual property theories of Locke and utilitarian economics

In this paper, I examine two standard theories of intellectual property, voice criticisms of each theory from within their own perspectives, and offer an alternative approach to intellectual property. In the first chapter, I explicate Locke’s original property theory and provide a modern account of Lockean intellectual property as an extension of the original theory. I argue this extension is not compatible with Locke’s original thought on property rights. In the second chapter, I dissect the mainstream economic approach to intellectual property, an approach which employs utilitarianism to justify the intellectual property regime of first world, western nations. I argue that this mainstream utilitarian economic approach fails to satisfy the principle of utility. Lastly, I offer a sketch of an alternative theory or perspective on intellectual property based on the notion of human flourishing. I argue that our obligations to develop and use our minds are so extensive that exclusive claim-type intellectual property rights are not possible

Qatari Philanthropy and Out-of-School Children in Southeast Asia: an Interview With the Director of Educate A Child

In September 2015, the UN agreed on Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4), which aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform, 2017). Embedded in this broad goal, Educate A Child (EAC) is the only global support program that focuses solely on out-of-school children1 (OOSC) across the world, including Southeast Asia.EAC is an initiative of the Education Above All Foundation of Qatar. It works through co-funding interventions of trusted partners to bring OOSC into quality primary education programs. It pairs with organizations to support innovative programs and methods of education for the most vulnerable children, especially those affected by poverty, conflict, natural disaster, and cultural barriers. EAC’s partners range from international educational, development, and humanitarian organizations to locally-based groups. It currently has around fifty partners, also in Southeast Asia, among others, Aide et Action and its 25-NGO consortium in Cambodia, the Monastic Education Development Group (MEDG), Save the Children, UNESCO, UNHCR, and United World Schools. Dr. Mary Joy Pigozzi is Executive Director of EAC and member of the WISE Prize Committee

Evolutionary quantitative genetics of nonlinear developmental systems

In quantitative genetics, the effects of developmental relationships among traits on microevolution are generally represented by the contribution of pleiotropy to additive genetic covariances. Pleiotropic additive genetic covariances arise only from the average effects of alleles on multiple traits, and therefore the evolutionary importance of nonlinearities in development is generally neglected in quantitative genetic views on evolution. However, nonlinearities in relationships among traits at the level of whole organisms are undeniably important to biology in general, and therefore critical to understanding evolution. I outline a system for characterizing key quantitative parameters in nonlinear developmental systems, which yields expressions for quantities such as trait means and phenotypic and genetic covariance matrices. I then develop a system for quantitative prediction of evolution in nonlinear developmental systems. I apply the system to generating a new hypothesis for why direct stabilizing selection is rarely observed. Other uses will include separation of purely correlative from direct and indirect causal effects in studying mechanisms of selection, generation of predictions of medium‐term evolutionary trajectories rather than immediate predictions of evolutionary change over single generation time‐steps, and the development of efficient and biologically motivated models for separating additive from epistatic genetic variances and covariances.PostprintPeer reviewe

Masters of the Middle Waters: Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions along the Mississippi

Review of: Masters of the Middle Waters: Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions along the Mississippi, by Jacob F. Lee

Great Lakes Creoles: A French-Indian Community on the Northern Borderlands, Prairie Du Chien, 1750-1860

Review of: Great Lakes Creoles: A French-Indian Community on the Northern Borderlands, Prairie Du Chien, 1750–1860, by Lucy Eldersveld Murphy

The Aerodynamics of the Knuckleball Pitch: An Experimental Investigation into the Effects that the Seam and Slow Rotation have on a Baseball

There has been plenty of research on the fluid dynamic effects on different spheres, including sports balls, such as baseballs. Baseball pitches have different velocities, rotation rates and orientations which will cause the baseball to move in different directions. There has also been plenty of research on the aerodynamics of curveballs, but not nearly as much on knuckleballs. The difference between the two is that the knuckleball has a much slower rotation rate and a different initial orientation. This causes the baseball to knuckle, or moving erratically. This pitch in baseball is one of the hardest to pitch, hit, catch, and umpire. So through various wind tunnel experiments, an attempt will be made that would predict the movement of the pitch under these given conditions. The experimental data includes force balance dynamometry, flow visualization, and hot film anemometry. The force balance data includes the lift and lateral forces acting on a two-seam baseball rotating at 50 rpm. The flow visualization presents how separation on a rotating, two-seam baseball changes position along the surface of the ball due to rotation and the seams. Lastly, hot film anemometry illustrates how the seams effect separation during a rotation of the baseball. Together, these experiments illuminate the complicated interactions the presence of the seam induces, namely for formation of the turbulent boundary layer juxtaposed against the variations in the location of separated region

Shifting the focus from species to individuals in invasion biology : individual differences in jumping behaviour

Dispersal is critical to population persistence, colonization and connectivity which are all critical components of invasive success. While individual propensity to disperse varies within populations, the underlying mechanisms promoting individual dispersal remain unclear. Collectively, dispersal is influenced by the environment and individual phenotype. Here we investigated individual dispersal propensity in the Trinidadian guppy, Poecilia reticulata, and related individual variation in dispersal behaviour to phenotype and social/environmental conditions. Namely, we addressed the effect of sex ratio (social/environmental factor) on the tendency for individuals to disperse across physical barriers via jumping behaviour. Jumping is vital for the dispersal of many aquatic species and has been anecdotally linked to the guppy's global invasive success. We found similar jumping behaviour for males and females, with population sex ratio not influencing the magnitude of male or female dispersal. Further, we found consistent among-individual variation in jumping probability; individual differences explained 17.46% and 7.92% of total variation in jumping probability for males and females, respectively. These results strongly indicate that sex ratio does not influence jumping behaviour, suggesting that species invasions are mediated by a nonrandom subset of individuals with greater dispersal tendencies. Overall, this study stresses the need to move the focus of invasion biology from the species level to incorporate information on individual variation in behaviour.Peer reviewe

Revisiting advice on the analysis of count data

Funding: MBM is supported by a University Research Fellowship from the Royal Society (London).1. O’Hara and Kotze (2010; Methods in Ecology and Evolution 1: 118‐122) present simulation results that appear to show very poor behaviour (as judged by bias and overall accuracy) of linear models (LMs) applied to count data, especially in relation to generalised linear model (GLM) analysis. 2. We considered O’Hara and Kotze’s (2010) comparisons, and determined that the finding occurred primarily because the quantity that they estimated in their simulations of the LM analysis (the mean of a transformation of the count data) was not the same quantity that was simulated and to which the results were compared (the logarithm of the mean of the count data). We correct this discrepancy, re‐run O’Hara and Kotze’s simulations, and add additional simple analyses. 3. We found that the apparent superiority of the GLMs over LMs in O’Hara and Kotze’s (2010) simulations was primarily an artefact of divergence in the meanings of results from the two analyses. After converting results from LM analyses of transformed data to estimators of the same quantity as provided by the GLM, results from both analyses rarely differed substantially. Furthermore, under the circumstances considered by O’Hara and Kotze, we find that an even simpler implementation of LM analysis, inference of the mean of the raw data, performs even better, and gives identical results to the GLM. 4. While the analysis of count data with generalised linear models can certainly provide many benefits, we strongly caution against interpreting O’Hara and Kotze’s (2010) results as evidence that simpler approaches are severely flawed.PostprintPeer reviewe