The economic impact of consumer copyright exceptions: a literature review

Advances in the technology available to consumers have fundamentally altered the relationship between authors, rights-holders and consumers with regard to copyrighted creative works. The copyright system in the UK is undergoing a gradual process of reform to reflect this new reality. In 2006, Andrew Gowers, a former editor of the Financial Times, presented a report into the state of intellectual property in the U.K. Among his policy recommendations were three proposed changes to the copyright exceptions system which alter the way in which consumers can interact with copyrighted works. Gowers proposed introducing copyright exceptions for: - Format shifting, for instance the transfer of a piece of music from a CD to an mp3 player. - Parody, caricature and pastiche. - Creative, transformative or derivative works. In our context, this definition includes user-generated content. Our review examines the existing literature on the possible economic effects of these proposed changes to the copyright exceptions system, specifically whether the introduction of these proposed changes would cause economic damage to rights-holders. Whilst the economic issues surrounding copyright infringement via file-sharing and commercial "mash-ups" are interesting and important, our review is focused solely on copyright

Superintendent and School Board Relations: Impacting Achievement through Collaborative Understanding of Roles and Responsibilities

One of the most important and influential persons in the governance structure of the local school district is the Superintendent of Schools. Functioning as the CEO of the district, the superintendent is responsible for a myriad of functions. Examples include daily operations inclusive of transportation and finance, curriculum and policy implementation, media relations, and empowering leaders. However, as Meador (2014) contends, a crucial role is that of board liaison. The Superintendent is responsible for keeping the board informed, making recommendations regarding district operations, and setting the board agenda. It is interesting to note that the superintendent does participate in board meetings, but in an advisory capacity. Finally, the superintendent is responsible for enacting all mandates approved by the school board

Field efficacy evaluation and post-treatment contamination risk assessment of an ultraviolet disinfection and safe storage system.

Inconsistent use of household water treatment and safe storage (HWTS) systems reduces their potential health benefits. Ultraviolet (UV) disinfection is more convenient than some existing HWTS systems, but it does not provide post-treatment residual disinfectant, which could leave drinking water vulnerable to recontamination. In this paper, using as-treated analyses, we report on the field efficacy of a UV disinfection system at improving household drinking water quality in rural Mexico. We further assess the risk of post-treatment contamination from the UV system, and develop a process-based model to better understand household risk factors for recontamination. This study was part of a larger cluster-randomized stepped wedge trial, and the results complement previously published population-level results of the intervention on diarrheal prevalence and water quality. Based on the presence of Escherichia coli (proportion of households with ≥ 1 E. coli/100 mL), we estimated a risk difference of -28.0% (95% confidence interval (CI): -33.9%, -22.1%) when comparing intervention to control households; -38.6% (CI: -48.9%, -28.2%) when comparing post- and pre-intervention results; and -37.1% (CI: -45.2%, -28.9%) when comparing UV disinfected water to alternatives within the household. We found substantial increases in post-treatment E. coli contamination when comparing samples from the UV system effluent (5.0%) to samples taken from the storage container (21.1%) and drinking glasses (26.0%). We found that improved household infrastructure, additional extractions from the storage container, additional time from when the storage container was filled, and increased experience of the UV system operator were associated with reductions in post-treatment contamination. Our results suggest that the UV system is efficacious at improving household water quality when used as intended. Promoting safe storage habits is essential for an effective UV system dissemination. The drinking glass appears to represent a small but significant source of recontamination that is likely to impact all HWTS systems

Automated Fiber Placement of Composite Wind Tunnel Blades: Process Planning and Manufacturing

The ability to accurately manufacture large complex shapes in a consistent and repeatable manner has led to Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) being the predominant mode of manufacturing for large composite aerospace structures today. Currently, AFP is being considered for medium- and small-scale parts. Composite wind tunnel blades have traditionally been fabricated by hand layup for pre-impregnated or dry fabrics with resin infusion. Though well proven, the traditional fabrication method is laborious and tedious, and hence expensive. The project described in this paper used the Integral Structural Assembly of Advanced Composites (ISAAC) facility at the NASA Langley Research Center to build a manufacturing demonstration unit (MDU) with a shape representative of a wind tunnel blade. This MDU is used to discuss tooling, process planning, and fabrication. Additionally, details of the generic manufacturing workflow are presented

Signaling local non-credibility in an automatic segmentation pipeline

The advancing technology for automatic segmentation of medical images should be accompanied by techniques to inform the user of the local credibility of results. To the extent that this technology produces clinically acceptable segmentations for a significant fraction of cases, there is a risk that the clinician will assume every result is acceptable. In the less frequent case where segmentation fails, we are concerned that unless the user is alerted by the computer, she would still put the result to clinical use. By alerting the user to the location of a likely segmentation failure, we allow her to apply limited validation and editing resources where they are most needed. We propose an automated method to signal suspected non-credible regions of the segmentation, triggered by statistical outliers of the local image match function. We apply this test to m-rep segmentations of the bladder and prostate in CT images using a local image match computed by PCA on regional intensity quantile functions. We validate these results by correlating the non-credible regions with regions that have surface distance greater than 5.5mm to a reference segmentation for the bladder. A 6mm surface distance was used to validate the prostate results. Varying the outlier threshold level produced a receiver operating characteristic with area under the curve of 0.89 for the bladder and 0.92 for the prostate. Based on this preliminary result, our method has been able to predict local segmentation failures and shows potential for validation in an automatic segmentation pipeline

Validation of reference genes for gene expression analysis in olive (Olea europaea) mesocarp tissue by quantitative real-time RT-PCR

BACKGROUND: Gene expression analysis using quantitative reverse transcription PCR (qRT-PCR) is a robust method wherein the expression levels of target genes are normalised using internal control genes, known as reference genes, to derive changes in gene expression levels. Although reference genes have recently been suggested for olive tissues, combined/independent analysis on different cultivars has not yet been tested. Therefore, an assessment of reference genes was required to validate the recent findings and select stably expressed genes across different olive cultivars. RESULTS: A total of eight candidate reference genes [glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), serine/threonine-protein phosphatase catalytic subunit (PP2A), elongation factor 1 alpha (EF1-alpha), polyubiquitin (OUB2), aquaporin tonoplast intrinsic protein (TIP2), tubulin alpha (TUBA), 60S ribosomal protein L18-3 (60S RBP L18-3) and polypyrimidine tract-binding protein homolog 3 (PTB)] were chosen based on their stability in olive tissues as well as in other plants. Expression stability was examined by qRT-PCR across 12 biological samples, representing mesocarp tissues at various developmental stages in three different olive cultivars, Barnea, Frantoio and Picual, independently and together during the 2009 season with two software programs, GeNorm and BestKeeper. Both software packages identified GAPDH, EF1-alpha and PP2A as the three most stable reference genes across the three cultivars and in the cultivar, Barnea. GAPDH, EF1-alpha and 60S RBP L18-3 were found to be most stable reference genes in the cultivar Frantoio while 60S RBP L18-3, OUB2 and PP2A were found to be most stable reference genes in the cultivar Picual. CONCLUSIONS: The analyses of expression stability of reference genes using qRT-PCR revealed that GAPDH, EF1-alpha, PP2A, 60S RBP L18-3 and OUB2 are suitable reference genes for expression analysis in developing Olea europaea mesocarp tissues, displaying the highest level of expression stability across three different olive cultivars, Barnea, Frantoio and Picual, however the combination of the three most stable reference genes do vary amongst individual cultivars. This study will provide guidance to other researchers to select reference genes for normalization against target genes by qPCR across tissues obtained from the mesocarp region of the olive fruit in the cultivars, Barnea, Frantoio and Picual