Strange Bedfellows: Native American Tribes, Big Pharma, and the Legitimacy of Their Alliance

Lost in the cacophony surrounding the debate about high drug prices is the fundamental principle that pharmaceutical innovation will not occur without the prospect of outsized returns enabled through market exclusivity. Biopharmaceutical patents are currently under siege, subject to challenge both in inter partes review (“IPR”) proceedings and in Hatch-Waxman actions. These twin assaults threaten to eliminate the incentives necessary for biotechnological innovation—particularly for discoveries made upstream in the innovation pipeline—thus imperiling the development of new drug therapies. But a fascinating solution has emerged: invoking tribal immunity to shield pharmaceutical patents from IPR before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”). This serves two critically important objectives: promoting tribal self-sufficiency, and encouraging investment in life-saving and life-improving new drugs. Contractual partnerships between Native American tribes and pharmaceutical companies not only provide the tribes with a steady stream of royalty revenue, but also insulate biopharmaceutical patents from challenge in IPR proceedings through the invocation of long-established principles of tribal sovereign immunity. This Note is the first piece of scholarship to comprehensively analyze, and advocate for, the right to invoke tribal sovereign immunity in IPR proceedings

Enhanced Urinalysis as a Screening Test for Urinary Tract Infection in Children Aged One Month to Twelve Years

OBJECTIVE: Comparison of enhanced urinalysis and routine urine analysis in screening for UTI in children against positive urine culture. METHODS: Descriptive study conducted by involving 205 children aged above one year to twelve years attending OPD or got admitted, with symptoms/signs suggestive of UTI in tertiary care hospital. Urine samples were obtained by age appropriate methods ( catheterization, MSCCU); results of enhanced urinalysis (urine WBC count/mm3 plus Gram-stain both in uncentrifuged sample) and routine urine analysis (WBC and bacteria per high-power-field in centrifuged sample) compared with urine culture results( positive urine results defined as 5x104CFU/ml and >105CFU/ml for two methods of sampling) for each sample. RESULTS: The enhanced UA showed significantly greater sensitivity and PPV (84.2% and 96% respectively ;95% confidence interval) than the routine urine analysis(54.4% and 88.6% respectively).the specificity doesn’t show much difference among the two methods(98.6% and 97.3% respectively).when Gram stain of uncentrifuged urine alone considered shows higher sensitivity (89.5%),and specificity( 93.2%). CONCLUSION: Both screening test cannot identify all children with UTI. Sample for Urine culture should be obtained from all children with suspicious of UTI, can begin presumptive treatment in case of enhanced urinalysis positivity. Gram stain of urine can be used as a screening tool either as single or in combination in primary care level with limited resources

Worshiping Nature in Sangam Literature

Rituals in human life are a socio-cultural phenomenon that occurs from birth to death. Ritualistic concepts of worship play an important role in all these events. 'Worship' is an activity deeply rooted in human faith. Through Sangam literature we can know that worshiping nature is an important activity in all kinds of events that happens in human life. Rituals may have originated before the concept of God or Lord. These rituals are performed based on faith, belief and customs

Water Leakage In Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) From Taps to Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Emission

This report shows the water leakage problem in Universiti Teknologi Petronas and its impact to the amount of energy which is wasted due to the water leakage. Water leakage due to poor maintenances is a major issue in every building around the country and in Universiti Teknologi Petronas the issue had reached a critical stage. Domestic water which is acquired form a 3rd party which treats the water and supply to UTP is bought at certain stipulated price. The water outlet especially water taps which are leaking and allows continuous water flow. This creates constant flow of wastage of resources in UTP. These report shows the amount of water is being wasted in UTP campus in per minute basis which is crucial for our research. Data collection was done from point to point by measuring the amount of water being leaked at each point using measurement tools. Site visits were done accordingly based on the schedule in Gantt chart. Interviews were conducted with relevant personals who are involved in water facility management and handling to support data gathering process. Interviews also was conducted with personals involved in energy supply for UTP, for data collection on analysis purposes Due to the increment number of students in Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, the accommodations are also increased. This directly had resulted in the increased need of water .Treated water supply and demand comes with an energy usage tag. All activities related to water treatment and supply such as treating raw water, pumping, filtering, storage requires the usage of energy. This directly results in the release of greenhouse gas, more specifically Carbon dioxide. Wastage of water due to poor maintenance and services contributes for the loss of energy, increased in cost and also increase in Carbon Dioxide emission. 6 These problems can be avoided if proper maintenance is done routinely in the campus. A schedule should be prepared for maintenance personals to constantly monitor the water outlets in UTP. The minor repairs should be tackled from time to time to avoid more wastage and increased maintenance cost. A permanent vendor with contractor licence of class F can be appointed to tackle the water leaking problems in campus. A minor allocation of budget can help to eliminate leakage problems. Recommendations such as stakeholder’s awareness and appointment of extra maintenance personals should be considered in avoiding the main issue. When the major issue is tackled the correlating problems such as energy wastage and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission can be avoided

English Language Teachers' Profile and Their Teaching Styles

English language teachers' teaching style(s) preferences are often the realization of the teachers' beliefs and attitudes towards the English language. These beliefs and attitudes of teachers will directly and indirectly influence the way students learn the language and, their success in learning it. Therefore, it is important to know who are the English language teachers, what are their teaching styles and, what perception do they have of other English language teachers and English language teaching. Relating to the above questions, this research describes the demographic variables of English language teachers and their perception of issues and trends in English language teaching in Malaysia. It also describes the teachers' teaching styles, and examines the relationships between teachers' teaching experience and teaching styles. The study was carried out in 14 secondary government schools in Sungai Petani, Kedah (n=108). Two sets of questionnaires were used: Language Teachers' Profile, developed by the researcher, based on Protherough & Atkinson (1992) and, Style Analysis Survey (Oxford 1993). It was found that the number of new English language teachers in the profession of teaching was dwindling very fast by the years. Schools lack qualified and trained English language teachers. In addition, teachers face students who show negative attitudes towards English language learning, and this was a serious problem for them. Teachers in this study display significant teaching styles i.e. visual, global, extroverted and closure-oriented. The study also found negative relationship between teachers' teaching experience and teaching styles (how teachers approach tasks)

IruMozhi: Automatically classifying diglossia in Tamil

Tamil, a Dravidian language of South Asia, is a highly diglossic language with two very different registers in everyday use: Literary Tamil (preferred in writing and formal communication) and Spoken Tamil (confined to speech and informal media). Spoken Tamil is under-supported in modern NLP systems. In this paper, we release IruMozhi, a human-annotated dataset of parallel text in Literary and Spoken Tamil. We train classifiers on the task of identifying which variety a text belongs to. We use these models to gauge the availability of pretraining data in Spoken Tamil, to audit the composition of existing labelled datasets for Tamil, and to encourage future work on the variety.Comment: 4 pages main text, 7 tota

2-(2,4-Diphenyl-3-aza­bicyclo­[3.3.1]nonan-9-ylidenehydrazono)-1,3-thia­zolidin-4-one

In the title compound, C23H24N4OS, the piperidine and cyclo­hexane rings adopt twin chair conformations and the phenyl groups occupy equatorial positions. The dihedral angle between the two benzene rings is 10.25 (12)°. The crystal structure is stabilized by intermolecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds with the formation of centrosymmetric dimers

Errors in writing made by Malaysian rural primary school pupils

This study is to identify errors made by rural primary school pupils in writing and to get information about the causes or sources of errors that lead to pupils’ writing problems. The conceptual framework concerns four types of errors committed by rural primary school pupils in writing, namely tense, spelling, and vocabulary. The study is based on Corder’s (1971) Error Analysis (EA) and Richards’ (1974) Causes or Sources of Errors as its theoretical framework. It was conducted at two rural schools with 44 pupils of Primary 5, aged 11, as the research sample. A written task was taken as the study instrument in order to answer two research questions. This study has revealed that tense is the most frequent error committed by the pupils, followed by punctuation, vocabulary, and spelling. Moreover, the pupils’ errors are caused by both interlingual and intralingual transfer. It is concerned with rural primary school settings in Kerian where the majority of the pupils use the Malay language as their medium of instruction. In addition, this study has its implication for English Language Education in Malaysia, in which it affects rural pupils’ performance especially in Primary School Achievement Test also known as Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR) in English Writing paper. Some adjustments in the education system and the total involvement from education departments are meant to better reduce the number of low performers, especially in English writing to enhance the level of English proficiency in rural schools

NILAVAAGAI CHOORANAM – A SIDDHA HERBAL MEDICINE

Siddha system is mainly experienced in the Southern part of India. It is one of the most primitive traditional medicines in the world which treats not only the body but also the mind and the soul. The word Siddha derived from Tamil words Siddhi which means An object to be Attained or perfection or heavenly bliss. The aim of this review article is to explore the scientific literary evidences for the therapeutic usage of Nilavaagai chooranam for respiratory illness (Swasakasam, Iya noi) as mentioned in Siddha literature Siddha vaidaya Thirattu and to focus on the Pharmacological activity for the healing nature of the drug. Most of the raw drugs used for the preparation of Nilavaagai chooranam have Broncho dilatory activity, Anti-microbial activity, Anti-inflammatory activity, Immunomodulatory activity, Anti-histamine activity hence justifying its usage in respiratory ailments