Are We Legislating Away Our Scientific Future? The Database Debate

The ambiguity of the present copyright laws governing the protection of databases creates a situation where database owners, unsure of how IP laws safeguard their information, overprotect their data with oppressive licenses and technological mechanisms (condoned by the DMCA) that impede interoperation. Databases are fundamental to scientific research, yet the lack of interoperability between databases and limited access inhibits this research. The US Congress, spurred by the European Database Directive, and heavily lobbied by the commercial database industry, is presently considering ways to legislate database protections; most of the present suggestions for legislation will be detrimental to scientific progress. The author agrees that new legislation is necessary, but not to provide extra-copyright protections, as database owners would like, but to create an environment wherein data is easily accessible to academic research and interoperability is encouraged; yet simultaneously providing database owners with incentives to produce new databases. One possibility would be to introduce standardized compulsory licensing of databases to academics following an embargo period where databases could be sold at free-market prices (to recoup costs). Databases would be given some sort of intellectual property protection both during and after this embargo in return for a limiting of technical safeguards and conforming to interoperability standards

Computer program for predicting creep behavior of bodies of revolution

Computer program, CRAB, uses finite-element method to calculate creep behavior and predict steady-state stresses in an arbitrary body of revolution subjected to a time-dependent axisymmetric load. Creep strains follow a time hardening law and a Prandtl-Reuss stress-strain relationship

Maskless imaging of dense samples using pixel super-resolution based multi-height lensfree on-chip microscopy.

Lensfree in-line holographic microscopy offers sub-micron resolution over a large field-of-view (e.g., ~24 mm2) with a cost-effective and compact design suitable for field use. However, it is limited to relatively low-density samples. To mitigate this limitation, we demonstrate an on-chip imaging approach based on pixel super-resolution and phase recovery, which iterates among multiple lensfree intensity measurements, each having a slightly different sample-to-sensor distance. By digitally aligning and registering these lensfree intensity measurements, phase and amplitude images of dense and connected specimens can be iteratively reconstructed over a large field-of-view of ~24 mm2 without the use of any spatial masks. We demonstrate the success of this multi-height in-line holographic approach by imaging dense Papanicolaou smears (i.e., Pap smears) and blood samples

Bolitoglossa heiroreias

Number of Pages: 3Integrative BiologyGeological Science

A Lanczos Method for Approximating Composite Functions

We seek to approximate a composite function h(x) = g(f(x)) with a global polynomial. The standard approach chooses points x in the domain of f and computes h(x) at each point, which requires an evaluation of f and an evaluation of g. We present a Lanczos-based procedure that implicitly approximates g with a polynomial of f. By constructing a quadrature rule for the density function of f, we can approximate h(x) using many fewer evaluations of g. The savings is particularly dramatic when g is much more expensive than f or the dimension of x is large. We demonstrate this procedure with two numerical examples: (i) an exponential function composed with a rational function and (ii) a Navier-Stokes model of fluid flow with a scalar input parameter that depends on multiple physical quantities

The employment impact of business investment incentives in declining areas: an evaluation of the EU “Objective 2 Area” programs.

Beginning in 1989, the European Union started targeting its Structural Funds business incentives geographically to industrial areas that have been facing above average unemployment and industrial job loss. Although billions of euros have been invested in these Objective 2 areas, very little is known about the effectiveness of these public expenditures. This paper develops an estimation strategy utilizing parametric difference in difference specifications to estimate the impact of business incentives offered in the Objective 2 areas of central and northern Italy between 1995 and 1998. The paper finds the incentives to be most effective in the areas that faced the least pre-intervention employment loss.Urban and regional economic development; impact evaluation; employment policy; Structural Funds