TRIPS and Human Rights: The Case of India

The twenty-first century has seen a rapid growth of two regimes: the intellectual property rights regime and the human rights regime. On one hand, growth of multinational corporations has led to a stronger and stricter intellectual property rights regime. On the other hand, human rights have gained primacy in public as well as political debates. Developing countries have argued that intellectual property rights and Human Rights often come into conflict, particularly when implementing their international obligations under TRIPS. Nevertheless, developing countries are forced to provide better intellectual property protection. There is a need to give heed to the voices of the developing countries. This article seeks to understand and bring clarity to this debate. It suggests that intellectual property should be seen through human rights lens and analyzes various approaches

TRIPS and Human Rights: The Case of India

The twenty-first century has seen a rapid growth of two regimes: the intellectual property rights regime and the human rights regime. On one hand, growth of multinational corporations has led to a stronger and stricter intellectual property rights regime. On the other hand, human rights have gained primacy in public as well as political debates. Developing countries have argued that intellectual property rights and Human Rights often come into conflict, particularly when implementing their international obligations under TRIPS. Nevertheless, developing countries are forced to provide better intellectual property protection. There is a need to give heed to the voices of the developing countries. This article seeks to understand and bring clarity to this debate. It suggests that intellectual property should be seen through human rights lens and analyzes various approaches

Qualitative Fault Detection and Hazard Analysis Based on Signed Directed Graphs for Large-Scale Complex Systems

Nowadays in modern industries, the scale and complexity of process systems are increased continuously. These systems are subject to low productivity, system faults or even hazards because of various conditions such as mis-operation, equipment quality change, externa

FORMULATION DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF FAST DISINTEGRATING TABLETS OF CINITAPRIDE HYDROGEN TARTARATE BY USING DIRECT COMPRESSION TECHNIQUE

Objective: In the present study, efforts were taken to develop fast disintegrating tablets of Cinitapride hydrogen tartrate, is a gastro-prokinetic agent and antiulcer agent with an objective to achieve rapid disintegration, and further improving the bioavailability of the drug. Also, to resolve the swallowing problems (Dysphasia) in pediatric, geriatric patients by rapid disintegration in saliva and improve the patient compliance.Methods: Fast disintegrating tablets were prepared by direct compression method using superdisintegrants like crospovidone (CP), croscarmellose sodium (CCS), sodium starch glycolate (SSG) and combination of super-disintegrants in different concentrations. The prepared formulations were evaluated for the pre-compression parameters like bulk density, tapped density, Carr's compressibility, Hausner's ratio and angle of repose. The prepared batches of fast disintegrating tablets of Cinitapride hydrogen tartarate were evaluated for hardness, weight variation, thickness, friability, drug content, disintegration time, wetting time, water absorption ratio, and in vitro dissolution profile.Results: Bulk density and tapped density were found in the range of 0.412–0.432 g/cc and 0.507–0.528 g/cc respectively. In all formulations, tablet weight and thickness were within mean±9.5% and mean±5% respectively. Wetting time values lie between 19.76 to 39.53 sec. Water absorption ratio ranged from 57.30 to 78.82 %. The in vitro disintegration time for all the 12 formulations varied from 17.43 to 38.61 seconds. Formulation F8 which contained crosspovidone have recorded drug release 96.94±0.47% at the end of 30 min.Conclusion: The formulation containing crospovidone (F8) showed better performance in terms of disintegration time and drug release when compared to other formulations

Multiscale Model for Hurricane Evacuation and Fuel Shortage

Hurricanes are powerful agents of destruction with significant socioeconomic impacts. High-volume mass evacuations, disruptions to the supply chain, and fuel hoarding from non-evacuees have led to localized fuel shortages lasting several days during recent hurricanes. Hurricane Irma in 2017, resulted in the largest evacuation in the nation affecting nearly 6.5 million people and saw widespread fuel shortages throughout the state of Florida. While news reports mention fuel shortages in several past hurricanes, the crowd source platform Gasbuddy has quantified the fuel shortages in the recent hurricanes. The analysis of this fuel shortage data suggested fuel shortages exhibited characteristics of an epidemic. Fundamentally, as fueling stations were depleted, the latent demand spread to neighboring stations and propagated throughout the community, similar to an epidemiological outbreak. In this paper, a Susceptible- Infected –Recovered (SIR) epidemic model was developed to study the evolution of fuel shortage during a hurricane evacuation. Within this framework, an optimal control theory was applied to identify an effective intervention strategy. Further, the study found a linear correlation between traffic demand during the evacuation of Hurricane Irma and the resulting fuel shortage data from Gasbuddy. This correlation was used in conjunction with the State-wide Regional Evacuation Study Program (SRESP) surveys to estimate the evacuation traffic and fuel shortages for potential hurricanes affecting south Florida. The epidemiological SIR dynamics and optimal control methodology was applied to analyze the fuel shortage predictions and to develop an effective refueling strategy

Epidemiological Models for Transportation Applications: Secondary Crashes

Secondary crashes or crashes that occur in the wake of a preceding or primary crash are among the most critical incidents occurring on highways, due to the exceptional danger they present to the first responders and victims of the primary crash. In this work, we developed a self-exciting temporal point process to analyze crash events data and classify it into primary and secondary crashes. Our model uses a self-exciting function to describe secondary crashes while primary crashes are modeled using a background rate function. We fit the model to crash incidents data from the Florida Department of Transportation, on Interstate-4 (I-4) highway for the years 2015-2017, to determine the model parameters. These are used to estimate the probability that a given crash is secondary crash and to find queue times. To represent the periodically varying traffic levels and crash incidents, we model the background rate, as a stationary function, a sinusoidal non-stationary function, and a piecewise non-stationary function. We show that the sinusoidal non-stationary background rate fits the traffic data better and replicates the daily and weekly peaks in crash events due to traffic rush hours. Secondary crashes are found to account for up to 15.09% of traffic incidents, depending on the city on the I-4 Highway

South Africa's foreign investment policy (FIP) : a critical legal analysis of the country's FIP and its effects on particular trade relationships.

Master of Law in Business Law. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2014.No abstract available

EMERGENCE OF PRIVATE SECTOR IN PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP PROJECTS AND ANALYSIS OF RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STAKEHOLDER NETWORK CENTRALITY AND PROJECT PERFORMANCE

Infrastructure and construction projects are large, complex, and arduous ventures involving various actors or stakeholders. However, taking decisions based on the individual attributes of stakeholders is insufficient. The emergence of the private sector in Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects reveal the need to consider how multiple stakeholders in an inter-reliant network can impact the project’s performance. This research uses stakeholder and social network theories, and analyzes the centrality measures – total-degree, betweenness, closeness – of the key public and private entities against two project performance criteria: cost and schedule. Findings reveal that private sector becomes significantly more central in PPP projects, and there is a statistically significant correlation between private sector centrality measures and project schedule performance. In addition, the research reveals that the number of public agencies or sponsors involved in the project also plays a significant role in determining project performanc

Characterization of Post-Plasma Etch Residues and Plasma Induced Damage Evaluation on Patterned Porous Low-K Dielectrics Using MIR-IR Spectroscopy

As the miniaturization of functional devices in integrated circuit (IC) continues to scale down to sub-nanometer size, the process complexity increases and makes materials characterization difficult. One of our research effort demonstrates the development and application of novel Multiple Internal Reflection Infrared Spectroscopy (MIR-IR) as a sensitive (sub-5 nm) metrology tool to provide precise chemical bonding information that can effectively guide through the development of more efficient process control. In this work, we investigated the chemical bonding structure of thin fluorocarbon polymer films deposited on low-k dielectric nanostructures, using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Complemented by functional group specific chemical derivatization reactions, fluorocarbon film was established to contain fluorinated alkenes and carbonyl moieties embedded in a highly cross-linked, branched fluorocarbon structure and a model bonding structure was proposed for the first time. In addition, plasma induced damage to high aspect ratio trench low-k structures especially on the trench sidewalls was evaluated both qualitatively and quantitatively. Damage from different plasma processing was correlated with Si-OH formation and breakage of Si-CH3 bonds with increase in C=O functionality. In another endeavor, TiN hard mask defect formation after fluorocarbon plasma etch was characterized and investigated. Finding suggest the presence of water soluble amines that could possibly trigger the formation of TiN surface defect. An effective post etch treatment (PET) methods were applied for etch residue defect removal/suppression