WATER QUALITY - EVERYONE'S PROBLEM

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Title Insurance Aspects of Tort Liability

By reason of the adequate damages recoverable in contract by the insured, and because of safeguards of ethics and efficient methods of title examinations, underwriting practices, and sophisticated systems of document storage and retrieval, it would appear that tort liability will not become prevalent in the title industry. Since law is disposed to follow the needs of society, rather than to anticipate them, it seems logical that actions in tort liability will not be needed

Book Review

Reviewing Land (The 1958 Yearbook of Agriculture), United States Government Printing Office, 195

Book Review

Reviewing Land (The 1958 Yearbook of Agriculture), United States Government Printing Office, 195

Due Care in Drafting Real Property Descriptions

A long, detailed description may be exasperating to the engineer, attorney, or title examiner when preparing and checking the deed, but it is not nearly so exasperating as is a long, detailed, and expensive law suit to the client. Identity of land is the sole purpose of the description, and the authorities are endless that nothing will pass by a deed except what is described in it, whatever the intentions of the parties may have been

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Public Television as a Method for Watershed Education

We describe a program that evolved from Cooperative Extension educators\u27 concern about declining attendance at face-to-face workshops on environmental issues. As a result, we developed an education program comprising six television programs; a radio series; Web-based materials; and information supplied to libraries. We randomly selected individuals to complete a written survey assessing their environmental knowledge and commitment pre- and post-broadcast. Our analyses indicate that watching the television programs did not predict significant changes in environmental knowledge or commitment. Our study findings do not strongly support the effectiveness of using local public television as an environmental education tool

Co-patents’ commercialization: evidence from China

Co-patents are outcomes of R&D collaboration, which has been proven with higher-quality. Does this mean that high-quality patents should also extend their advantage to the technology market? Based on the transaction cost theory, we use the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) database and logit model to explore the effect of co-ownership on firms’ patent commercialization and the factors of co-patents that affect their commercialization. Our findings illustrate that co-ownership has a negative impact on patent commercialization. In addition, the co-owner’s nature, country, and co-patent’s industry influence the commercialization of co-patents. Firstly, a company and a university or research institution’s co-owned co-patents are less likely to be commercialization than a company and a company coowned co-patents. Secondly, multi-countries co-owned co-patents are less likely to be commercialization than a single-country coowned co-patents. Thirdly, co-patents in high technology (hightech) industries are less likely to be commercialization than copatents in non-high-tech industries. This paper supports policymakers in implementing policies to promote the co-patents’ commercialization. Meanwhile, our paper suggests that to pursue the economic value of the R&D collaborative intellectual property fruits, R&D collaborative intellectual property fruits are not be encouraged to be applied as the co-patents.European Union (EU) TIN2016-75850-

Urinary Epidermal Growth Factor as a Marker of Disease Progression in Children With Nephrotic Syndrome

© 2019 International Society of Nephrology Introduction: Childhood-onset nephrotic syndrome has a variable clinical course. Improved predictive markers of long-term outcomes in children with nephrotic syndrome are needed. This study tests the association between baseline urinary epidermal growth factor (uEGF) excretion and longitudinal kidney function in children with nephrotic syndrome. Methods: The study evaluated 191 participants younger than 18 years enrolled in the Nephrotic Syndrome Study Network, including 118 with their first clinically indicated kidney biopsy (68 minimal change disease; 50 focal seNorthwell Healthntal glomerulosclerosis) and 73 with incident nephrotic syndrome without a biopsy. uEGF was measured at baseline for all participants and normalized by the urine creatinine (Cr) concentration. Renal epidermal growth factor (EGF) mRNA was measured in the tubular compartment microdissected from kidney biopsy cores from a subset of patients. Linear mixed models were used to test if baseline uEGF/Cr and EGF mRNA expression were associated with change in estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) over time. Results: Higher uEGF/Cr at baseline was associated with slower eGFR decline during follow-up (median follow-up = 30 months). Halving of uEGF/Cr was associated with a decrease in eGFR slope of 2.0 ml/min per 1.73 m2 per year (P \u3c 0.001) adjusted for age, race, diagnosis, baseline eGFR and proteinuria, and APOL1 genotype. In the biopsied subgroup, uEGF/Cr was correlated with EGF mRNA expression (r = 0.74; P \u3c 0.001), but uEGF/Cr was retained over mRNA expression as the stronger predictor of eGFR slope after multivariable adjustment (decrease in eGFR slope of 1.7 ml/min per 1.73 m2 per year per log2 decrease in uEGF/Cr; P \u3c 0.001). Conclusion: uEGF/Cr may be a useful noninvasive biomarker that can assist in predicting the long-term course of kidney function in children with incident nephrotic syndrome

Trade secrets law

The standardisation of trade secret protection was one of the goals of the TRIPs Agreement of 1998. Nevertheless, substantial differences in this protection remain across jurisdictions. When defining the optimal scope of trade secrets law, lawmakers should be aware that strong trade secret protection is likely to promote inventiveness, but it is also likely to hinder the diffusion of knowledge and prevent competition

Patenting and licensing of university research: promoting innovation or undermining academic values?

Since the 1980s in the US and the 1990s in Europe, patenting and licensing activities by universities have massively increased. This is strongly encouraged by governments throughout the Western world. Many regard academic patenting as essential to achieve 'knowledge transfer' from academia to industry. This trend has far-reaching consequences for access to the fruits of academic research and so the question arises whether the current policies are indeed promoting innovation or whether they are instead a symptom of a pro-intellectual property (IP) culture which is blind to adverse effects. Addressing this question requires both empirical analysis (how real is the link between academic patenting and licensing and 'development' of academic research by industry?) and normative assessment (which justifications are given for the current policies and to what extent do they threaten important academic values?). After illustrating the major rise of academic patenting and licensing in the US and Europe and commenting on the increasing trend of 'upstream' patenting and the focus on exclusive as opposed to non-exclusive licences, this paper will discuss five negative effects of these trends. Subsequently, the question as to why policymakers seem to ignore these adverse effects will be addressed. Finally, a number of proposals for improving university policies will be made