Intercepted Silvanidae [Insecta: Coleoptera] From The International Falls, MN [USA] Port-Of-Entry

Silvanidae species recorded in association with imported commodities, at United States ports-of-entry, have not been comprehensively studied. The present study examines the species of beetles of the family Silvanidae intercepted during agricultural quarantine inspections at the International Falls, MN port-of-entry. A total of 244 beetles representing two subfamilies, three genera, and four species of Silvanidae were collected between June 2016 and June 2017. Taxa were associated with 13 imported commodities and recorded from seven countries of origin. A substantial proportion (97.4%) of the records included Silvanus lewisi Reitter and Ahasverus advena (Waltl), two cosmopolitan species associated with dried stored products and various imported commodities. Both Psammoecus simonis Grouvelle and an undetermined species of the genus Psammoecus (sp. 01) were intercepted on a single occasion

Thermal conductivity of diamond-loaded glues for the ATLAS particle physics detector

The ATLAS experiment is one of two large general-purpose particle detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. ATLAS has been collecting data from the collisions of protons since December 2009, in order to investigate the conditions that existed during the early Universe and the origins of mass, and other topics in fundamental particle physics. The innermost layers of the ATLAS detector will be exposed to the most radiation over the first few years of operation at the LHC. In particular, the layer closest to the beam pipe, the B-layer, will degrade over time due to the added radiation. To compensate for its degradation, it will be replaced with an Insertable B-Layer (IBL) around 2016. The design of and R&D for the IBL is ongoing, as the hope is to use the most current technologies in the building of this new sub-detector layer. One topic of interest is the use of more thermally conductive glues in the construction of the IBL, in order to facilitate in the dissipation of heat from the detector. In this paper the measurement and use of highly thermally conductive glues, in particular those that are diamond-loaded, will be discussed. The modified transient plane source technique for thermal conductivity is applied in characterizing the glues across a wide temperature range

How Courts Adjudicate Patent Definiteness and Disclosure

Section 112 of the Patent Act requires patentees to clearly explain what their invention is (a requirement known as claim definiteness), as well as how to make and use it (the disclosure requirements of enablement and written description). Many concerns about the modern patent system stem from these requirements. But despite the critical importance of § 112 to the functioning of the patent system, there is surprisingly little empirical data about how it has been applied in practice. To remedy the reliance on anecdotes, we have created a hand-coded dataset of 1144 reported court decisions from 1982 to 2012 in which U.S. district courts or the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rendered a decision on the enablement, written-description, or claim-definiteness requirements of § 112. We coded validity outcomes under these three doctrines on a novel five-level scale so as to capture significant subtlety in the strength of each decision, and we also classified patents by technology and industry categories. We also coded for a number of litigation characteristics that could arguably influence outcomes. Although one must be cautious about generalizing from reported decisions due to selection effects, our results show some statistically significant disparities in § 112 outcomes for different technologies and industries—although fewer than the conventional wisdom suggests, and not always in the direction that many have believed. Just as importantly, our analysis reveals significant relationships between other variables and § 112 litigation outcomes, including whether a district court or the Federal Circuit made the last decision in a case, whether a patent claim was drafted in means-plus-function format, and whether a case was decided before or after Markman v. Westview Instruments. Our results showing how § 112 has been applied in practice will be helpful in evaluating current proposals for reform, and our rich dataset will enable more systematic studies of these critical doctrines in the future

Changes in the age-at-death distribution in four low mortality countries: A nonparametric approach

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, important transformations have occurred in the age-at-death distribution within human populations. We propose a flexible nonparametric smoothing approach based on P-splines to refine the monitoring of these changes. Using data from the Human Mortality Database for four low mortality countries, namely Canada (1921-2007), France (1920-2009), Japan (1947-2009), and the USA (1945-2007), we find that the general scenario of compression of mortality no longer describes appropriately some of the recent adult mortality trends recorded. Indeed, reductions in the variability of age at death above the mode have stopped since the early 1990s in Japan and since the early 2000s for Canadian, US, and French women, while their respective modal age at death continued to increase. These findings provide additional support to the shifting mortality scenario, using an alternative method free from any assumption on the shape of the age-at-death distribution.modal age of death, old-age mortality compression, P-spline smoothing, shifting mortality

Dynamic Factor Demands and Technology Measurement under Arbitrary Expectations

We present a dynamic model of factor demands based on expected discounted costs min-imization. While making only very mild assumptions on expectations and technology, we are able to establish a duality relationship between contemporary factor demands and the technology, and we provide formula for easily recovering marginal products, returns to scale, and technological change from estimated factor demands. Parametrization and implementation are illustrated in a detailed example. Nous présentons un modèle dynamique de demande de facteurs de production basé sur un comportement de minimisation de l'espérance des coûts cumulatifs actualisés. Sous des hypothèses peu restrictives sur les anticipations et la technologie, nous établissons une relation de dualité entre les demandes courantes de facteurs et la technologie. Produits marginaux, rendements d'échelle et progrès technologique peuvent se calculer simplement à partir des demandes de facteurs. Nous illustrons à travers un exemple détaillé une façon de paramétriser et d'appliquer le modèle.Dynamic duality; Investment; Expectations; Expected future cost function; Factor demands; Returns to scale; Technological change - Dualité dynamique; Investissement; Anticipations; Demandes de facteurs de production; Rendements d'échelle; Progrès technique.

Investment and Dynamic DEA

A dynamic version of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is developed in the present paper. Our model introduces investment in traditional DEA and imposes intertemporal cost minimization. Adding an intertemporal adjustment constraint into the cost minimization problem, we derive the relation between the DEA variables of the cost function and those of the primary production frontiers’ coefficients. The augmented DEA model can be solved using standard linear programming. This dynamic framework enables computing the production frontiers, measuring the productive efficiencies and evaluating the potential economies all in the presence of adjustment costs.Adjustment cost, Data envelopment analysis, Efficiency, Multiple outputs/inputs, Quasi-fixed inputs.