What’s So Special About Patent Law?

The widespread belief that patent law is special has shaped the development of patent law into one of the most specialized areas of the law today. The belief in patent law’s exceptionalism manifests itself as two related presumptions with respect to the judiciary: first, that generalist judges who do not have patent law expertise cannot effectively decide patent cases, and second, that judges can develop necessary expertise through repeated experience with patent cases. Congress showed that it acquiesced to both views when it created the Federal Circuit and the Patent Pilot Program. In recent years, however, the Supreme Court has reminded us that the judiciary’s difficulty with patent cases is not the law, but is instead that patent cases often involve difficult subject matter, which sometimes requires technical or scientific expertise. While Congress’s early attempts to deal with these difficulties focused on courts with legal―rather than technical―expertise, the Supreme Court’s recent pronouncements suggest that they should have been doing the reverse. Moreover, to the extent that it is the underlying technology that makes patent cases difficult, that commends the use of an administrative, rather than a judicial, solution. One potentially viable answer to the judiciary’s problem with patent law has already been partly implemented in the form of the recently created Patent Trial and Appeal Board. This Article proposes expansion of that solution by making that new entity the exclusive forum for deciding issues of patent validity

Searching for viable exploitation within small scale fisheries; the case of Solomon Islands

The sustainable management of small-scale fisheries in coral reef ecosystems constitutes a difficult objective especially because these fisheries usually face several stringent pressures including demographic growth and climate changes. The implications are crucial in term of food security as fish represents the major protein source for local populations in those regions. The case of the Salomon Islands fishery presented in this paper represents a challenging example of these issues. The fishery is characterized by a high diversity of coral reef marine resources but faces an increasing local food demand due to the combined effect of demographic pressure and growing need for cash. The paper proposes a bio-economic model that accounts for multi-species and multi-fleets dynamic and integrates a calibrated Lokta-Volterra trophic dynamics. Several contrasted fishing scenarios including status quo, total closure, and viable strategies are then simulated and their results compared in relation to ecological and economical considerations. The appreciation is driven by 3 biological indicators (Simpson index, species richness and marine trophic index) and 2 economical indicators (kg of fish consumed per week and weekly earned money). Finally the simulations show the extent to which fishing outputs including subsistence supply and profitability of fishing can be viable for the next fifty years

Searching for viable exploitation within small scale fisheries; the case of Solomon Islands

The sustainable management of small-scale fisheries in coral reef ecosystems constitutes a difficult objective especially because these fisheries usually face several stringent pressures including demographic growth and climate changes. The implications are crucial in term of food security as fish represents the major protein source for local populations in those regions. The case of the Salomon Islands fishery presented in this paper represents a challenging example of these issues. The fishery is characterized by a high diversity of coral reef marine resources but faces an increasing local food demand due to the combined effect of demographic pressure and growing need for cash. The paper proposes a bio-economic model that accounts for multi-species and multi-fleets dynamic and integrates a calibrated Lokta-Volterra trophic dynamics. Several contrasted fishing scenarios including status quo, total closure, and viable strategies are then simulated and their results compared in relation to ecological and economical considerations. The appreciation is driven by 3 biological indicators (Simpson index, species richness and marine trophic index) and 2 economical indicators (kg of fish consumed per week and weekly earned money). Finally the simulations show the extent to which fishing outputs including subsistence supply and profitability of fishing can be viable for the next fifty years

Thermal conductivity of porous materials

Incorporation of porosity into a monolithic material decreases the effective thermal conductivity. Porous ceramics were prepared by different methods to achieve pore volume fractions from 4 to 95%. A toolbox of analytical relations is proposed to describe the effective thermal conductivity as a function of solid phase thermal conductivity, pore thermal conductivity, and pore volume fraction (νp). For νp 0.65, the thermal conductivity of kaolin-based foams and calcium aluminate foams was well described by the Hashin Shtrikman upper bound and Russell's relation. Finally, numerical simulation on artificially generated microstructures yields accurate predictions of thermal conductivity when fine detail of the spatial distribution of the phases needs to be accounted for, as demonstrated with a bio-aggregate materia

Electrical Characterization of the Backside Interface on BSI Global Shutter Pixels with Tungsten-Shield Test Structures on CDTI Process

A new methodology is presented using well known electrical characterization techniques on dedicated single devices in order to investigate backside interface contribution to the measured pixel dark current in BSI CMOS image sensors technologies. Extractions of interface states and charges within the dielectric densities are achieved. The results show that, in our case, the density of state is not directly the source of dark current excursions. The quality of the passivation of the backside interface appears to be the key factor. Thanks to the presented new test structures, it has been demonstrated that the backside interface contribution to dark current can be investigated separately from other sources of dark current, such as the frontside interface, DTI (deep trench isolation), etc

Early Toxicities After High Dose Rate Proton Therapy in Cancer Treatments

Background: The conventional dose rate of radiation therapy is 0.01-0.05 Gy per second. According to preclinical studies, an increased dose rate may offer similar anti-tumoral effect while dramatically improving normal tissue protection. This study aims at evaluating the early toxicities for patients irradiated with high dose rate pulsed proton therapy (PT). Materials and methods: A single institution retrospective chart review was performed for patients treated with high dose rate (10 Gy per second) pulsed proton therapy, from September 2016 to April 2020. This included both benign and malignant tumors with ≥3 months follow-up, evaluated for acute (≤2 months) and subacute (>2 months) toxicity after the completion of PT. Results: There were 127 patients identified, with a median follow up of 14.8 months (3-42.9 months). The median age was 55 years (1.6-89). The cohort most commonly consisted of benign disease (55.1%), cranial targets (95.1%), and were treated with surgery prior to PT (56.7%). There was a median total PT dose of 56 Gy (30-74 Gy), dose per fraction of 2 Gy (1-3 Gy), and CTV size of 47.6 ml (5.6-2,106.1 ml). Maximum acute grade ≥2 toxicity were observed in 49 (38.6%) patients, of which 8 (6.3%) experienced grade 3 toxicity. No acute grade 4 or 5 toxicity was observed. Maximum subacute grade 2, 3, and 4 toxicity were discovered in 25 (19.7%), 12 (9.4%), and 1 (0.8%) patient(s), respectively. Conclusion: In this cohort, utilizing high dose rate proton therapy (10 Gy per second) did not result in a major decrease in acute and subacute toxicity. Longer follow-up and comparative studies with conventional dose rate are required to evaluate whether this approach offers a toxicity benefit

Should I Stay or Should I Go? A Habitat-Dependent Dispersal Kernel Improves Prediction of Movement

The analysis of animal movement within different landscapes may increase our understanding of how landscape features affect the perceptual range of animals. Perceptual range is linked to movement probability of an animal via a dispersal kernel, the latter being generally considered as spatially invariant but could be spatially affected. We hypothesize that spatial plasticity of an animal's dispersal kernel could greatly modify its distribution in time and space. After radio tracking the movements of walking insects (Cosmopolites sordidus) in banana plantations, we considered the movements of individuals as states of a Markov chain whose transition probabilities depended on the habitat characteristics of current and target locations. Combining a likelihood procedure and pattern-oriented modelling, we tested the hypothesis that dispersal kernel depended on habitat features. Our results were consistent with the concept that animal dispersal kernel depends on habitat features. Recognizing the plasticity of animal movement probabilities will provide insight into landscape-level ecological processes