License to Sublicense: The Legal Possibility of Impliedly Sublicensing a Copyrighted Work

On March 13, 2020, in Photographic Illustrators Corp. v. Orgill, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that, within copyright law, an implied sublicense is legally possible where a licensee’s nonexclusive license permits unrestricted sublicensing. This was an issue of first impression among the federal courts of appeals. This Comment argues that the First Circuit correctly concluded that implied sublicenses are legally possible and that the legal test for determining whether an implied sublicense exists must consider the relationship between the licensee and sublicensee. Nevertheless, because sublicensing necessarily excludes the copyright owner, applying a modified form of the stringent three-element test the court eschewed would serve as a better guide for future cases analyzing this issue. This tripartite formula, incorporating request, delivery, and intent, creates a framework that would ensure that the intent portrayed by the licensee is deliberate and that privity exists between the two parties to the sublicensing agreement

Building Information Management (BIM) implementation in naval construction

Traditional two-dimensional (2D) delivery systems in the construction industry can hinder the way information is communicated between owners, architects, and contractors. This hindrance exists in all phases of a project, from design and construction to the operation and maintenance of the completed facility. Building Information Management (BIM) is an emerging information technology that promotes a collaborative process for the Architectural, Engineering, Construction and Facilities Management (AECFM) industry; it can aid the exchange of information and provide improved project data accessibility to all stakeholders of a construction project. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC), in conjunction with the facility management (FM) chiefs of the other Department of Defense (DoD) agencies, is committed to adopting the standards and technologies used in the private sector that promote efficient and effective business and construction management practices. The AECFM industry shift to BIM is resonating to the public sector and implementation plans to accommodate the shift are being developed by many public agencies at all levels of government. NAVFAC recognizes the need to develop and adopt BIM technologies in order to keep pace with private sector advances and has drafted a BIM Road Map document (NAVFAC, 2009) to provide BIM implementation guidance to the NAVFAC organizations responsible for providing and maintaining facilities and infrastructure to Supported Commanders. The objective of this thesis is to evaluate the NAVFAC BIM Road Map, analyze BIM tools and processes currently used in the construction industry, and provide recommendations for best practices and improvements to the NAVFAC BIM Road Map. The methodologies used in this research includes three phases: Phase 1- evaluate the current NAVFAC BIM Road Map, Phase 2: Case Study and Phase 3: Develop recommendations to improve BIM Road Map. The outcome of this research effort will be a set of recommendations that ensure that all parties are clearly aware of the opportunities and responsibilities associated with incorporation of BIM into the organizational workflow for naval construction projects

(Ven)mo Money, (Ven)mo Problems? How Money Laundering Permeates Peer-to-Peer Payment Platforms

In the last decade, new payment forms known as peer-to-peer (P2P) payments have become widely accepted and mainstream across the United States. Driven by young consumers, these innovative platforms overcame many barriers presented by traditional payment systems. With this innovation, however, comes increased potential for abuse. P2P platforms operate outside of pure banking transactions, allowing for quick payments through either fiat currency or cryptocurrency between individuals, making these applications ripe for criminal activity. Although the United States has robust money laundering laws, P2P platforms do not fully fit within their boundaries, allowing criminals to abuse the system to move and access illicit funds. These laws serve as a solid foundation for anti-money laundering procedures on P2P systems, but with some finetuning, Congress can extend these regulations to fully capture criminal conduct across P2P applications. This Note analyzes how P2P payment applications fit within traditional financial technology regulation. This Note argues that, under federal law, P2P platforms should enhance their risk-based customer monitoring to surveil user accounts that link multiple payment forms, institute a short screening period on transactions for anti-money laundering risk compliance, and rigorously assess cryptocurrency transfers, similar to how they assess fiat currency transfers

2018 2nd Place: Budget Disparity in Education

The social issue this project deals with is the budget disparity in America\u27s public schools. This problem is important to investigate because today\u27s children are tomorrow\u27s leaders and if they are not being educated properly, then how do we as a society expect them to lead us in the future

ArcaDB: A Container-based Disaggregated Query Engine for Heterogenous Computational Environments

Modern enterprises rely on data management systems to collect, store, and analyze vast amounts of data related with their operations. Nowadays, clusters and hardware accelerators (e.g., GPUs, TPUs) have become a necessity to scale with the data processing demands in many applications related to social media, bioinformatics, surveillance systems, remote sensing, and medical informatics. Given this new scenario, the architecture of data analytics engines must evolve to take advantage of these new technological trends. In this paper, we present ArcaDB: a disaggregated query engine that leverages container technology to place operators at compute nodes that fit their performance profile. In ArcaDB, a query plan is dispatched to worker nodes that have different computing characteristics. Each operator is annotated with the preferred type of compute node for execution, and ArcaDB ensures that the operator gets picked up by the appropriate workers. We have implemented a prototype version of ArcaDB using Java, Python, and Docker containers. We have also completed a preliminary performance study of this prototype, using images and scientific data. This study shows that ArcaDB can speed up query performance by a factor of 3.5x in comparison with a shared-nothing, symmetric arrangement

Development and optimization of animal origin-free, serum-free media for human treg manufacturing

Regulatory T cells (Treg) constitute a small subset of immunosuppressive CD4+ T cells. Studies have shown that imbalanced or aberrant Treg function can result in autoimmune disorders. The importance of Tregs in dampening immune responses has been described in multiple studies and Treg immunotherapies are being explored to develop personalized therapies for various autoimmune diseases. Scalable commercial development of Treg therapies suffers similar challenges as other T cell immunotherapies: biosafety and supply chain concerns of human serum and limitations regarding bioprocess development due to serum variability. Additionally, there a challenges regarding Treg isolation for both magnetically isolated (blockade of CD25+ epitope may affect function and low purity) and flow cytometry sorted Tregs (low numbers and viability). In addition, the starting population and purity (measured by FOXP3 expression) can be low, resulting in small cell numbers post expansion which can impact dose escalation studies. To address these challenges, we are developing a serum-free, animal origin component – free, defined medium and Treg optimized Dynabeads™. Our strategy was to exploit metabolic differences between Tregs and conventional Tcells as well as optimizing the level of activation ligands to develop a defined Treg manufacturing system. Using design of experiment (DOE) approaches we explored factors described in the literature to be associated with Treg development. DOE studies were followed by testing in combination with Treg Dynabeads™ in development. Feasibility was evaluated with positively selected Tregs (CD4+CD25+CD127lo, n=5). Tregs cultured in our system achieve higher FOXP3+ frequencies (\u3e60% FOXP3+) outperforming control containing 10% human serum (~30% FOXP3+). In summary, our results suggest that serum can be eliminated from Treg workflows to generate highly suppressive enriched FOXP3+ Treg immunotherapy product. We believe that our defined serum-free medium and Dynabeads™ Treg system will enable the development of better immunotherapies for autoimmunity

Chemically diverse microtubule stabilizing agents initiate distinct mitotic defects and dysregulated expression of key mitotic kinases.

Microtubule stabilizers are some of the most successful drugs used in the treatment of adult solid tumors and yet the molecular events responsible for their antimitotic actions are not well defined. The mitotic events initiated by three structurally and biologically diverse microtubule stabilizers; taccalonolide AJ, laulimalide/fijianolide B and paclitaxel were studied. These microtubule stabilizers cause the formation of aberrant, but structurally distinct mitotic spindles leading to the hypothesis that they differentially affect mitotic signaling. Each microtubule stabilizer initiated different patterns of expression of key mitotic signaling proteins. Taccalonolide AJ causes centrosome separation and disjunction failure to a much greater extent than paclitaxel or laulimalide, which is consistent with the distinct defects in expression and activation of Plk1 and Eg5 caused by each stabilizer. Localization studies revealed that TPX2 and Aurora A are associated with each spindle aster formed by each stabilizer. This suggests a common mechanism of aster formation. However, taccalonolide AJ also causes pericentrin accumulation on every spindle aster. The presence of pericentrin at every spindle aster initiated by taccalonolide AJ might facilitate the maintenance and stability of the highly focused asters formed by this stabilizer. Laulimalide and paclitaxel cause completely different patterns of expression and activation of these proteins, as well as phenotypically different spindle phenotypes. Delineating how diverse microtubule stabilizers affect mitotic signaling pathways could identify key proteins involved in modulating sensitivity and resistance to the antimitotic actions of these compounds

Heterogeneous cancer-associated fibroblast population potentiates neuroendocrine differentiation and castrate resistance in a CD105-dependent manner.

Heterogeneous prostatic carcinoma-associated fibroblasts (CAF) contribute to tumor progression and resistance to androgen signaling deprivation therapy (ADT). CAF subjected to extended passaging, compared to low passage CAF, were found to lose tumor expansion potential and heterogeneity. Cell surface endoglin (CD105), known to be expressed on proliferative endothelia and mesenchymal stem cells, was diminished in high passage CAF. RNA-sequencing revealed SFRP1 to be distinctly expressed by tumor-inductive CAF, which was further demonstrated to occur in a CD105-dependent manner. Moreover, ADT resulted in further expansion of the CD105+ fibroblastic population and downstream SFRP1 in 3-dimensional cultures and patient-derived xenograft tissues. In patients, CD105+ fibroblasts were found to circumscribe epithelia with neuroendocrine differentiation. CAF-derived SFRP1, driven by CD105 signaling, was necessary and sufficient to induce prostate cancer neuroendocrine differentiation in a paracrine manner. A partially humanized CD105 neutralizing antibody, TRC105, inhibited fibroblastic SFRP1 expression and epithelial neuroendocrine differentiation. In a novel synthetic lethality paradigm, we found that simultaneously targeting the epithelia and its microenvironment with ADT and TRC105, respectively, reduced castrate-resistant tumor progression, in a model where either ADT or TRC105 alone had little effect