Aereo and Internet Television: A Call to Save the Dukes (A La Carte)

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably a duck. The most recent U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding the Copyright Act employed this “duck test” when determining that Aereo, an Internet content-streaming company, violated the Copyright Act by infringing on the copyrights of television broadcast networks. The Supreme Court ruled that Aereo\u27s Internet streaming services resembled cable television transmissions too closely. Therefore, by streaming copyrighted programming to its subscribers without the cable compulsory license, Aereo violated the Transmit Clause of the 1976 Copyright Act. Subsequently, Aereo used this Supreme Court decision to obtain a compulsory license from the Copyright Office but was denied. Forced back into litigation, Aereo filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy This Issue Brief describes Aereo’s technology, the litigation that followed, and the related precedent, and concludes that the district court should have granted Aereo a Section 111 Statutory License in line with the Supreme Court’s “duck test.” It considers the implications of the Court’s preliminary injunction against Aereo’s “a la carte” TV technology, what this means for the future of similar technological innovation, and the effects on consumers and competition

Aereo and Internet Television: A Call to Save the Dukes (A La Carte)

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably a duck. The most recent U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding the Copyright Act employed this “duck test” when determining that Aereo, an Internet content-streaming company, violated the Copyright Act by infringing on the copyrights of television broadcast networks. The Supreme Court ruled that Aereo\u27s Internet streaming services resembled cable television transmissions too closely. Therefore, by streaming copyrighted programming to its subscribers without the cable compulsory license, Aereo violated the Transmit Clause of the 1976 Copyright Act. Subsequently, Aereo used this Supreme Court decision to obtain a compulsory license from the Copyright Office but was denied. Forced back into litigation, Aereo filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy This Issue Brief describes Aereo’s technology, the litigation that followed, and the related precedent, and concludes that the district court should have granted Aereo a Section 111 Statutory License in line with the Supreme Court’s “duck test.” It considers the implications of the Court’s preliminary injunction against Aereo’s “a la carte” TV technology, what this means for the future of similar technological innovation, and the effects on consumers and competition

Believe in All: Adaptive Gymnastics Program

This poster is part of the doctoral capstone project completed with the gymnastics facility, Believe Gymnastics. The project focused on developing a gymnastics program for children with cognitive, physical, or neurological needs or impairments. The goal of this project was to increase the opportunity for children with disabilities to participate into the leisure activity of gymnastics

Prefrontal Cortex Activity During Categorization

Category learning is necessary for humans to distinguish among objects in the world and to understand their unseen characteristics. It is through categorization that similarities and differences among items are understood. A prominent neurobiological theory of category learning called COVIS (for Competition between Verbal and Implicit Systems) contends that separate systems underlie category learning. Specifically, explicit (verbalizable) learning is mediated by the prefrontal cortex (PFC), while implicit (non-verbalizable) learning is largely mediated by basal ganglia structures. The explicit and implicit systems compete to find an effective classification rule. If the explicit system succeeds in finding an appropriate rule, it comes to dominate (i.e., determine) responding. If it fails to find an effective rule, then the implicit system may gradually learn an effective rule for classification and come to dominate responding (Ashby & Waldron, 2000; Maddox & Ashby, 2004). After a verbalizable rule has been learned, the task requires less effort and thus less activation in the prefrontal cortex (Ashby & Waldron, 2000). Increased task difficulty should lead to greater activation in the PFC. We are investigating PFC activity during rule learning that is either mediated by the explicit or implicit system. In the current study, participants completed either a rule-based (explicit) or information-integration (implicit) learning task. On each trial, participants were shown a 2-dimensional stimulus: a line that varied in length and orientation from trial to trial. Prefrontal cortex activity was measured using fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy). Our analysis will include fitting computational models that indicate whether participants were using the correct or incorrect rule type (one that integrates dimensions or one based on selective attention to a single dimension, depending on condition completed). We predict that participants showing slower learning performance in the selective attention (rule-based) condition will exhibit greater PFC activation over blocks compared to those learning the rule more quickly. We predict that participants using a (suboptimal) integration rule during the selective attention condition (in which a selective attention rule is optimal) will show higher PFC activation than those using the correct selective attention rule. And we predict that participants learning the correct rule early on in the selective attention condition will show lower PFC activation than those in the dimensional integration condition. This study is a pilot study for our initial question into whether compensatory activation in older adults is advantageous and to what extent does it benefit explicit rule learning. Compensatory activation refers to the supplementary blood oxygenation that the brain recruits to make up for the increased difficulty of a task. There are other applications for this study, particularly to different types of training. For example this is useful for classification of cancerous tumors. Since every tumor is unique, it requires an implicit understanding. While on the other hand, explicitly written instructions are verbalizable, therefore easier to grasp

Observing PFC Activation in Older Adults during Category Learning

There are many well-known theories of category learning, one of which is the COVIS (Competition between Verbal & Implicit Systems) theory. The COVIS theory postulates that there are two systems always competing to learn the classifying rule when categorizing—regions of basal ganglia, and the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Literature supports that explicit learning is largely mediated by the PFC, while the more subcortical regions facilitates in categorizing non-verbalizable and implicit learning. Based off the assumptions of COVIS we can hypothesize that when an explicit method of categorization is being used for an implicit task, we should see greater activation, because the task is attempting a verbalizable rule. When the correct rule is applied for categorization, it should require less PFC activation. The present study observed both implicit (information-integration) and explicit rule (rule-based) learning in older adults. Hemodynamic changes of the PFC was measured using the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Participants classified squares that varied in number of shapes within (squares or circles), as well as in background color. Rule-based (RB) tasked relied on one feature changing to categorize, while the information integration (II) task relied on integrating color information with type of shape or frequency. We replicated a previous study—average number of trials participants completed before reaching criterion was 50 in the RB condition, while the average for the II condition was 128 trials. We found a significant difference in oxygenated hemoglobin between the rule-based and information-integration tasks. This difference was even stronger for the recorded deoxygenated hemoglobin

Showcasing Pathogenic Viruses through Art

This project entails creating pictorial representations of viruses that cause human disease and increasing the awareness of these pathogens/their mechanisms of action using art. The viruses that are displayed as a part of the project include: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Ebola virus, Influenza, Zika virus, Hantavirus, Dengue virus, Bacteriophage that causes Cholera, Rabies virus, Hepatitis A/B/C virus, and Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). These viruses all impact humans around the world and cause substantial disease. Understanding more about these pathogens will increase awareness of the importance of vaccinations and viral research. Each of the virus images includes a QR code that links to the project’s Stem-O-Sphere website. Under Pooja Patel’s project name, it has informational pages with citations. Each informational page contains more information regarding the virus, the parts of the virus, and its implications on human health/how it causes disease. Images of the viruses are also portrayed on Stem-OSphere’s social media pages. This project was presented to many different individuals at the Spring Undergraduate Research Festival in partnership with ICRU at the University of Iowa. This project will continue throughout the summer with the venue changing to “Science Thursdays.

Floods and spillovers: Households after the 2011 great flood in Thailand

In 2011, Thailand experienced its worst flooding in decades; it caused widespread damages, and a considerable loss of life. Using data from the Thai Household Socio-Economic Survey (THSES), this paper analyses its economic impacts. In the 2012 THSES, households answered a set of questions on the extent of flooding they experienced in the 12 months prior. As the same households are followed over time, the timing of the survey and its panel structure allows us to analyse household welfare before and after the flood, for both affected households and for those who were not directly flooded. We can thus measure the true impact of the disaster on income, expenditure, assets, debt and savings levels as well as labour market outcomes. We analyse flood impacts across different socio-economic groups and livelihoods, and identify spillover effects on those households that were not directly affected by the flooding