Accountability in patenting of federally funded research

Bayh-Dole allows academic grantees to patent federally-funded research for purposes of promoting the commercialization of this research. To ensure commercialization goals are achieved, the Act requires grantees to report to funding agencies not only the existence of federally-funded patents but also utilization efforts they and their licensees/assignees are making. Although reporting is a cornerstone of accountability under Bayh-Dole, information about grantee compliance with reporting requirements is incomplete and dated. In fact, the last significant study of the question dates back to the late 1990s and analyzes only 633 patents. Since that time, concerns have emerged that federally-funded university patents are being asserted improperly against independent commercializers or even assigned to so-called “patent trolls.” This article provides fresh evidence indicating substantial under-reporting of the existence of federal funding in over 30,000 academic biomedical patents issued between 1980 to 2007. The article finds substantial under-reporting of federal funding even in the case of patents on FDA-approved drugs, which should presumably receive significant attention from universities. Grantees’ failure to report federal funding suggests similar, or even more significant, noncompliance with requirements to report utilization information. However, compliance with reporting requirements on utilization cannot be assessed because of secrecy associated with relevant government databases. Accordingly, the article makes a fresh argument that the Commerce Department, which has the requisite regulatory authority, work with funding agencies, to improve transparency. Greater transparency would not only motivate grantees to improve reporting but would also allow assessment of whether grantee patent management is actually achieving Bayh-Dole\u27s utilization goals

Observation of guanidine-carbon dioxide complexation in solution and its role in reaction of carbon dioxide and propargylamines

The first observation of guanidine-CO2 'activation' complexes in solution using ATR-FTIR is reported. While cyclic guanidines TBD and MTBD form stable and detectable complexes with CO2, other guanidines and tertiary amines do not. Correlation with catalytic activity of these amines/guanidines in reaction between CO2 and propargylamines indicated that the basicity of the catalyst, rather than its ability to form complexes with CO2, is the origin of catalytic activity

Contribution to fusion research from IAEA coordinated research projects and joint experiments

The paper presents objectives and activities of IAEA Coordinated Research Projects 'Conceptual development of steady-state compact fusion neutron sources' and 'Utilisation of a network of small magnetic confinement fusion devices for mainstream fusion research'. The background and main projects of the CRP on FNS are described in detail, as this is a new activity at IAEA. Recent activities of the second CRP, which continues activities of previous CRPs, are overviewed

Grid-Obstacle Representations with Connections to Staircase Guarding

In this paper, we study grid-obstacle representations of graphs where we assign grid-points to vertices and define obstacles such that an edge exists if and only if an $xy$-monotone grid path connects the two endpoints without hitting an obstacle or another vertex. It was previously argued that all planar graphs have a grid-obstacle representation in 2D, and all graphs have a grid-obstacle representation in 3D. In this paper, we show that such constructions are possible with significantly smaller grid-size than previously achieved. Then we study the variant where vertices are not blocking, and show that then grid-obstacle representations exist for bipartite graphs. The latter has applications in so-called staircase guarding of orthogonal polygons; using our grid-obstacle representations, we show that staircase guarding is \textsc{NP}-hard in 2D.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of the 25th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2017

Timing by Stellar Pulsations as an Exoplanet Discovery Method

The stable oscillations of pulsating stars can serve as accurate timepieces, which may be monitored for the influence of exoplanets. An external companion gravitationally tugs the host star, causing periodic changes in pulsation arrival times. This method is most sensitive to detecting substellar companions around the hottest pulsating stars, especially compact remnants like white dwarfs and hot subdwarfs, as well as delta Scuti variables (A stars). However, it is applicable to any pulsating star with sufficiently stable oscillations. Care must be taken to ensure that the changes in pulsation arrival times are not caused by intrinsic stellar variability; an external, light-travel-time effect from an exoplanet identically affects all pulsation modes. With more long-baseline photometric campaigns coming online, this method is yielding new detections of substellar companions.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures: Invited review to appear in 'Handbook of Exoplanets,' Springer Reference Works, edited by Hans J. Deeg and Juan Antonio Belmont

Acute and Subacute Toxic Study of Aqueous Leaf Extract of Combretum Molle

Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the acute and subacute toxicity of the aqueous leaf extract of Combretum molle.Methods: The acute toxicity of the extract was evaluated in rats. The animals were orally administered with doses ranging from 2000 to 8000 mg/kg and observed continuously for the first 4 h, then hourly for the next 24 h, and finally, 6-hourly for 72 h. Control animals received orally normal saline. The rats were observed carefully for mortality, pain as well as respiratory movements. For subacute toxicity, 6 groups of 6 rats (3 male and 3 female) each received intraperitoneally, normal saline (control), 400, 600, 800, 1000 and 1200 mg/kg of the extract, respectively, thrice daily for 15 days. At the end of the treatment period, the animals were sacrificed and their organs (liver, heart and kidney) removed for macroscopic examination.Results: For the acute toxicit test, no death and signs of poisoning were observed in the treated groups. In the subacute tstudy, LD50 in the rats after intraperitoneal administration was 700 mg/kg (456 - 896, 95 % confidence interval). The clinical signs of poisoning (motor difficulties, decreased respiratory rate, and tremor preceding death) were observed, suggesting overt toxicity throughout the neuromuscular system. However, histological examination of vital organs showed normal architecture suggesting no morphological abnormalities in the heart, kidney and liver.Conclusion: The results show that the aqueous leaf extract of C. molle is moderately toxic when given intraperitoneally.Keywords: Combretum molle, Acute/subacute toxicity, Histopathology, Rat