Access to Medicines: the Role of Intellectual property Law and Policy

Intellectual property (IP) policy is an important structural determinant of health. Patent policy influences the rate and direction of innovation for health, playing a positive or negative role depending on how it is shaped and implemented. Patent policy also has critical implications for access to existing medicines and medical technologies. This has been illustrated most dramatically in the context of the global Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)/ Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) pandemic. Prices for a three-drug combination of anti-retroviral (ARV) HIV therapy in 2000 from patent-holding companies exceeded USD $10,000 per person per year, ensuring that treatment could not be extended to the vast majority of those living with HIV around the world. Generic competition led to precipitous price reductions, so that today treatment can be provided for less than USD$75 per person per year. This history has contributed to the growing recognition that strong patent law applied to pharmaceuticals in developing countries undermines access to medicines and compromises the human right to health. While the relationship between IP and innovation is covered in a separate paper, it is worth noting here that there is little reason to expect that stronger patent rights in developing countries will lead to any substantial offsetting gains in innovation for the affected countries. Developing countries represent a very small share of the world’s pharmaceutical market, meaning that the marginal added value of stronger patent protection will be small, and is unlikely to outweigh the costs to access

Ethical Judgments among Public Relations Officers in Higher Education Institutions:a Cross-National Study

Kajian bertujuan menentukan: (i) bagaimana beretika atau tidak sesetengah amalan hipotesis perhubungan awam yang diamalkan oleh pegawai perhubungan awam di institusi pengajian tinggi (universiti, kolej, institut, sekolah) di Amerika Syarikat, India, China, Malaysia, Thailand, Israel, Palestin, dan Emiriyah Arab Bersatu; (ii) sama ada jenis institusi, sikap pegawai, ciri profesional dan kebertanggungjawapan memberikan perbezaan yang signifikan dan pertimbangan etika mereka, dan (iii) menentukan - ..... sejauhmana agama dan polisi institusi di tempat setiap pegawai bekerja mempengaruhi pertimbangan etikanya. Populasi kajian terdiri daripada pegawai perhubungan awam di institusi yang mempunyai Iaman web berbahasa Inggeris. Satu sampel rambang sistematik mengandungi 254 (10%) yang dipilih daripada 2540 institusi di Amerika Syarikat. Sementara itu, semua institusi yang mempunyai Iaman web berbahasa Inggeris di negara-negara lain dikaji. The study determines: how ethical/unethical certain hypothetical public relations practices are as perceived by public relations practitioners in higher education institutions (universities, colleges, institutes, schools) in the United States, India, China, Malaysia, Thailand, Israel, Palestine, and the United Arab Emirates; whether the institution type, practitioners' personal attributes, professional characteristics and responsibilities produce significant differences in their ethical judgments; and finally to determine the extent to which religion and the policy of the institution for which each practitioner serves influence his/her ethical judgments. -··- The population consists of public relations officers in the institutions that have English web-sites only. A systematic random sample of 254 ( 1 0%) institutions was drawn from 2540 of the United States, while all English web-sited institutions of the other countries were surveyed

Les principaux fondements théoriques de la performance des organisations publiques: Retour sur l’approche multidimensionnelle pour le cas des collectivités territoriales

Fortement réputée au sein de la communauté des chercheurs en sciences de gestion par son caractère polysémique, la performance constitue sans aucun doute un sujet de débat et d’étude d’une importance capitale. Le nombre important des articles publiés à l’échelle nationale et à l’échelle internationale indique tout seul ce constat. Toutefois, les contributions scientifiques en relation avec les organisations publiques, entre autres, les collectivités territoriales, ne sont pas aussi nombreuses en comparaison avec les entreprises privées. Ainsi, l’objectif de ce travail de recherche consiste à jeter quelques éclairages sur les principaux fondements théoriques de la performance des organisations publiques, en particulier les collectivités territoriales. Il s’agit d’une occasion pour discuter dans un premier temps les spécificités de la notion de la performance. Dans un deuxième temps, l’attention sera focalisée sur l’évolution marquante vers la consécration des valeurs de la responsabilité sociétale et l’approche multidimensionnelle de la performance des collectivités territoriales. Le troisième et dernier point nous permettra de présenter l’un des outils les plus importants, sinon le plus important dans le pilotage de la performance fondé sur la complémentarité et l’équilibre entre les dimensions financières et celles non financières, à savoir ; le tableau de bord prospectif

Youth Heavy Metal Bands in Morocco: Resistance and the Struggle for Change

In Morocco, Metal is a controversial genre of youth music that has usually been misinterpreted, marginalized and stigmatized by many individuals due to its transgressive sound, lyrical contents and visual codes.  In his regard, the purpose of this paper is to explore the specific lyrical themes of Moroccan Metal bands in relation to elements of symbolic transgression and musical activism. It also aims to the main motivations that push these bands to produce and sustain their musical discourse taking into account the conservative nature of the Moroccan context. Using both content analysis and semi-structured interviews, the paper concluded that despite the severe cultural challenges that surround their socio-cultural condition, the artistic participation of Moroccan Metal bands have not just allowed them to gain support from their subculture but also made them impose themselves as leaders of culture of courage. By tracing the Moroccan Metal bands’ artistic engagement and commitments, this paper will bring to light the cultural sociology and multi-dimensional nature of Metal narratives in Morocco and the challenges that shape its existence. It also provides an interesting account for students and academics concerned with cultural minorities, literature and arts-related topics about the nature of content produced by this minority as a reference

Effect of Bond Thickness on Lifetime of Adhesive Joints

The aim of this research was to study the effect of bond thickness on the fracture energy and the lifetime of an adhesively bonded system and develop a model to predict the lifetime of adhesive joints. An approach based on fracture mechanics was employed to assess aluminum/epoxy bond lifetime. An experimental investigation was carried out using double cantilever beam (DCB) specimens with various bond thicknesses under mode 1. This study describes an approach to predict the rate of crack propagation using Paris\u27 power law. The approach used elevated temperatures to accelerate the crack propagation under constant loads. The elevated temperatures were kept below the glass transition of the adhesive. The general idea was to apply a constant load below the critical value to allow for measurable slow crack propagation. The fracture energy of the bonded joints was evaluated using both simple beam and beam on elastic foundation analyses. A simple model was proposed to predict the variation of the two kinetic parameters of Paris\u27 law as a function of bond thickness. A model was developed, which would enable crack propagation to be modeled and hence the lifetime of adhesive joints to be predicted

Fractional integrated semi groups and nonlocal Cauchy problem for abstract nonlinear fractional differential equations

Some classes of fractional abstract differential equations with α-integrated semi groups are studied in Banach space. The existence of a unique solution of the nonlocal Cauchy problem is studied. Some properties are given