First aid for a badly injured patent system

An academic lifetime of research on patents for invention led to conviction of how unfit for purpose current international arrangements have become, and to the proposal of several reforms (Kingston, 2010). What follows is the result of further reflection on how poorly the modern world system fulfils the original intention of patents. It explains how this has come about and offers two new suggestions for improvement

Galula in the Bush: A Case Study of Counterinsurgency Theory Using the Insurgent Conflicts in Postcolonial Uganda, 1981-2006

This thesis uses primary and secondary sources to analyse the applicability of David Galula’s counterinsurgency theories as described in his 1964 work Contre-insurrection: théorie et pratique to three cases from the insurgent conflicts in postcolonial Uganda from 1981 to 2006. These conflicts include the National Resistance Army (NRA) in the Luwero Triangle from 1981 to 1986, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency in northern Uganda and southern Sudan from the group’s founding in 1987 to its formal departure from Uganda in 2006, and the West Nile Bank Front (WNBF) and United National Rescue Front (UNRF I&II) insurgencies in West Nile district between 1986 and 2002. These three cases offer examples of localised insurgent conflicts fought between national armed forces and regionally or ethnically motivated insurgent groups. This provides substantial evidence that Galula’s theories apply in contexts other than the international, expeditionary and/or colonial counterinsurgent campaigns to which his theories have previously been applied. It concludes that Galula’s theories offer both civilian and military leaders a model for counterinsurgency operations that they can readily apply. Galula’s theory stands up when scrutinised in the context of thirty years of conflict in which ethnic, regional, geographic, and religious factors affected the insurgencies, thereby showing its applicability across a wide range of potential insurgencies

Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP) in a Patient with Diabetes: a primary care perspective

Chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) is a recurrent and progressive disease that causes proximal, symmetrical extremity weakness. The disease is diagnosed using clinical features, electrophysiologic testing, albumino-cytological disassociation in the cerebrospinal fluid, and sural nerve plexus biopsy. However, because of the low sensitivity of diagnostic criteria and other similar neuropathies, including diabetic polyneuropathy (DPN), accurate diagnosis is difficult. Differentiating between these diseases is especially important as CIDP’s changes are reversible and DPN’s are not. Making this differentiation allows for symptomatic improvement in a patient’s quality of life that would not be achieved otherwise. Early recognition and treatment, with modalities including corticosteroids, plasmapheresis, and IVIG, demonstrate improvement in a majority of patients. Primary care physicians (PCP) encounter patients with diabetes daily. It is important for PCPs to have a level of familiarity with CIDP to best care for those patients

Researching design and transportation systems for sustainable communities : what can we learn and how can it be applied in Rhode Island.

URITC Project No. 0001845There has been a marked growth of interest in the topic of sustainable communities and sustainable transportation due to increased concerns about global warming and climate change. One of the leading causes is urbanization and its impacts on people and places. As the size of cities has grown, roads have been extended, and traffic and congestion have worsened. There has been an increase in travel times and commuting distances while traffic has intruded into neighborhoods, hazardous conditions have increased and there remains a general lack of opportunities for walking and bicycling. These developments are seen to diminish the quality of life found in our cities and neighborhoods. Due to these conditions, researchers are looking for effective options to the pervasive car-oriented development patterns. One alternative that has received much attention and which is the focus for this research is the sustainable community and its transportation infrastructure. For this project, the author examined the literature pertaining to sustainable communities and sustainable transportation systems while looking at precedents, roadway and circulation patterns, and features including green streets, shared streets, skinny streets, green infrastructure and other sustainable practices. The author looked at publications describing new technologies, practices and policies that have been implemented in the United States and abroad. This paper summarizes his findings and concludes with recommendations

Assessing the cost of global biodiversity and conservation knowledge

Knowledge products comprise assessments of authoritative information supported by stan-dards, governance, quality control, data, tools, and capacity building mechanisms. Considerable resources are dedicated to developing and maintaining knowledge productsfor biodiversity conservation, and they are widely used to inform policy and advise decisionmakers and practitioners. However, the financial cost of delivering this information is largelyundocumented. We evaluated the costs and funding sources for developing and maintain-ing four global biodiversity and conservation knowledge products: The IUCN Red List ofThreatened Species, the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Protected Planet, and the WorldDatabase of Key Biodiversity Areas. These are secondary data sets, built on primary datacollected by extensive networks of expert contributors worldwide. We estimate that US$160million (range: US$116–204 million), plus 293 person-years of volunteer time (range: 278–308 person-years) valued at US$14 million (range US$12–16 million), were invested inthese four knowledge products between 1979 and 2013. More than half of this financingwas provided through philanthropy, and nearly three-quarters was spent on personnelcosts. The estimated annual cost of maintaining data and platforms for three of these knowl-edge products (excluding the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems for which annual costs were notpossible to estimate for 2013) is US$6.5 million in total (range: US$6.2–6.7 million). We esti-mated that an additional US$114 million will be needed to reach pre-defined baselines ofdata coverage for all the four knowledge products, and that once achieved, annual mainte-nance costs will be approximately US$12 million. These costs are much lower than those tomaintain many other, similarly important, global knowledge products. Ensuring that biodi-versity and conservation knowledge products are sufficiently up to date, comprehensiveand accurate is fundamental to inform decision-making for biodiversity conservation andsustainable development. Thus, the development and implementation of plans for sustain-able long-term financing for them is critical

Bridging Alone: Religious Conservatism, Marital Homogamy, and Voluntary Association Membership

This study characterizes social insularity of religiously conservative American married couples by examining patterns of voluntary associationmembership. Constructing a dataset of 3938 marital dyads from the second wave of the National Survey of Families and Households, the author investigates whether conservative religious homogamy encourages membership in religious voluntary groups and discourages membership in secular voluntary groups. Results indicate that couples’ shared affiliation with conservative denominations, paired with beliefs in biblical authority and inerrancy, increases the likelihood of religious group membership for husbands and wives and reduces the likelihood of secular group membership for wives, but not for husbands. The social insularity of conservative religious groups appears to be reinforced by homogamy—particularly by wives who share faith with husbands