Cassandra\u27s Curse or Cassandra\u27s Triumph: Three Tales of Intellectual Property Revised

Cassandra’s curse, which assured that her prophesies will come true, but that no one would ever believe her, evokes three major predictions in regard to Intellectual Property in the information era. First, the information era requires no “Law of the Horse”, as phrased by Judge Easterbrook, as a sound law of intellectual property be applicable to digital technologies as well, instead of creating new law for every new step in technology’s evolution. Secondly, Lessig’s seminal “code is law” reframed this dilemma, in reference to private conglomerates versus legislative authority. Thirdly, John Perry Barlow, in his ʻDeclaration of the Independence of Cyberspace’ predicted that selling information, i.e.: wine, will not require any bottles, namely, IP Law. Prima facie, Perry Barlow was over optimistic. Justice Eastbrook succumbed to “The Law of the Horse” in ProCD v. Zeidenberg, in which he preferred the legitimation of the new era’s contract, i.e.: shrink-wrap licenses, over Copyright Law paradigms, and Lessig, who advocated for governmental legal interference, ended up confronting the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) with partial success in Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. Yet, parallel to the legal axis that led to “code is law” by creating a “para-copyright” through the DMCA and the EU Digital Single Market Directive (“DSM”), that are backed by the monolithic vocabulary of the Enlightenment era, the evolution of the audience axis, that leans on Postmodernist vocabulary, as seen through the “Cultural Dominant” media design in Western culture major stages, from the Greek tragedies to the recent case of Bel-Air (film), defies the former. Hence, tacitly, code creates a new law; not from the superior layer of imposed legislation downward, but from the users’ undercurrent of creativity upward. The transformation of Cassandra’s curse into Cassandra’s triumph will assure that we live free of fear of imaginary bottles, with the ability to create our cultural code as our law of the horse

Growth of polar and non-polar nitride semiconductor quasi-substrates by hydride vapor phase epitaxy for the development of optoelectronic devices by molecular beam epitaxy

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston UniversityThe family of nitride semiconductors has had a profound influence on the development of optoelectronics for a large variety of applications. However, as of yet there are no native substrates commercially available that are grown by liquid phase methods as with Si and GaAs. As a result, the majority of electronic and optoelectronic devices are grown heteroepitaxially on sapphire and SiC. This PhD research addresses both the development of polar and nonpolar GaN and AIN templates by Hydride Vapor Phase Epitaxy (HVPE) on sapphire and SiC substrates, as well as the growth and characterization of optoelectronic devices on these templates by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Polar and non-polar GaN templates have been grown in a vertical HVPE reactor on the C- and R-planes of sapphire respectively. The growth conditions have been optimized to allow the formation for thick (50µm) GaN templates without cracks. These templates were characterized structurally by studying their surface morphologies by SEM and AFM, and their structure through XRD and TEM. The polar C-plane GaN templates were found to be atomically smooth. However, the surface morphology of the non-polar GaN films grown on the R-plane of sapphire were found to have a facetted surface morphology, with the facets intersecting at 120° angles. This surface morphology reflects an equilibrium growth, since the A-plane of GaN grows faster than the M-planes of GaN due to the lower atomic density of the plane. For the development of deep-UV optoelectronics, it is required to grow AIGaN quantum wells on AIN templates. However, since AIN is a high melting point material, such templates have to be grown at higher temperatures, close to half the melting point of the material (1500 °C). As these temperatures cannot be easily obtained by traditional furnace heating, an HVPE reactor has been designed to heat the substrate inductively to these temperatures. This apparatus has been used to grow high-quality, transparent AIN films with a screw dislocation density of 10^6 cm^-2 on sapphire repeatedly. On such templates, both lnGaN- and AIGaN-based quantum wells (QWs) and quantum dots (QDs) were formed by MBE and were characterized. lnGaN/GaN and AIGaN/AIN QWs were grown on the non-polar GaN templates and found to emit at near green and deep UV respectively with internal quantum efficiency (IQE) close to 90%. The lnGaN GaN QWs and QDs have been investigated to understand the influence of plasmonic nanoparticles on the efficiency of corresponding green LEOS

A dynamic network of transcription in LPS-treated human subjects

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Understanding the transcriptional regulatory networks that map out the coordinated dynamic responses of signaling proteins, transcription factors and target genes over time would represent a significant advance in the application of genome wide expression analysis. The primary challenge is monitoring transcription factor activities over time, which is not yet available at the large scale. Instead, there have been several developments to estimate activities computationally. For example, Network Component Analysis (NCA) is an approach that can predict transcription factor activities over time as well as the relative regulatory influence of factors on each target gene.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this study, we analyzed a gene expression data set in blood leukocytes from human subjects administered with lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a prototypical inflammatory challenge, in the context of a reconstructed regulatory network including 10 transcription factors, 99 target genes and 149 regulatory interactions. We found that the computationally estimated activities were well correlated to their coordinated action. Furthermore, we found that clustering the genes in the context of regulatory influences greatly facilitated interpretation of the expression data, as clusters of gene expression corresponded to the activity of specific factors or more interestingly, factor combinations which suggest coordinated regulation of gene expression. The resulting clusters were therefore more biologically meaningful, and also led to identification of additional genes under the same regulation.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Using NCA, we were able to build a network that accounted for between 8–11% genes in the known transcriptional response to LPS in humans. The dynamic network illustrated changes of transcription factor activities and gene expressions as well as interactions of signaling proteins, transcription factors and target genes.</p

Pretreatment with a 55-kDa Tumor Necrosis Factor Receptor-Immunoglobulin Fusion Protein Attenuates Activation of Coagulation, but not of Fibrinolysis, during Lethal Bacteremia in Baboons

Baboons (Papio anubis) receiving a lethal intravenous infusion with live Escherichia coli were pretreated with either a 55-kDa tumor necrosis factor (TNF) receptor-IgG fusion protein (TNFR55:IgG) (n = 4, 4.6 mg/kg) or placebo (n = 4). Neutralization of TNF activity in TNFR55:IgG-treated animals was associated with a complete prevention of mortality and a strong attenuation of coagulation activation as reflected by the plasma concentrations of thrombin-antithrombin III complexes (P < .05). Activation of fibrinolysis was not influenced by TNFR55:IgG (plasma tissue-type plasminogen activator and plasmin-a2-antiplasmin complexes), whereas TNFR55:IgG did inhibit the release of plasminogen activator inhibitor type I (P < .05). Furthermore, TNFR55:IgG inhibited neutrophil degranulation (plasma levels of elastase-α1-antitrypsin complexes, P < .05) and modestly reduced release of secretory phospholipase A2. These data suggest that endogenous TNF contributes to activation of coagulation, but not to stimulation of fibrinolysis, during severe bacteremi