Movements, Moments, and the Eroding Antitrust Consensus

Timothy Wu, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age (Columbia Global Reports, 2018). $14.99. Timothy Wu’s book, The Curse of Bigness, offers a brief history on and critical perspective of antitrust law’s development over the last century, calling for a return to a Brandeisian approach to the law. In this review-essay, I use Wu’s text as a starting point to explore antitrust law’s current political moment. Tracing the dynamics at play in this debate and Wu’s role in it, I note areas underexplored in Wu’s text regarding the interplay of antitrust law with other forms of industrial regulation, highlighting in particular current difficulties in copyright law as one of the underlying tensions driving popular discontent with the major technology firms or “tech trusts.” I consider the continuing influence of Robert Bork’s The Antitrust Paradox, now more than forty years old, and how the current reform movement might execute a shift as lasting and substantial as the one Bork spearheaded with his book

The Apple E-Book Agreement and Ruinous Competition: Are E-Goods Different for Antitrust Purposes?

Publishers have spent the last decade and a half struggling against falling prices for digital goods. The recent antitrust case against Apple and the major publishers highlights collusive price fixing as a potential method for resisting depreciation. This Article examines the myriad ways in which digital distribution puts downward pressure on prices, and seeks to determine whether or not collusive price fixing would serve as an appropriate response to such pressure given the goals of the copyright grant. Considering retailer bargaining power, increased access to substitutes, the loss of traditional price discrimination methods, the effects of vertical integration in digital publishing, and the increasing competitiveness of the public domain, I conclude that the resultant downward price pressure might in fact significantly hamper the commodity distribution of digital goods. I remain unconvinced, however, that price fixing is an appropriate solution. The copyright grant affords rights holders commercial opportunities beyond simple commodity distribution. These other methods for commercializing e-goods suggest to me that current pricing trends are not indicative of market failure, but rather of a changing marketplace

Targeting mRNA for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias

Brain deposition of the amyloid beta-protein (Aβ) and tau are characteristic features in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Mutations in the Aβ precursor protein (APP) and a protease involved in Aβ production from APP strongly argue for a pathogenic role of Aβ in AD, while mutations in tau are associated with related disorders collectively called frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). Despite intense effort, therapeutic strategies that target Aβ or tau have not yet yielded medications, suggesting that alternative approaches should be pursued. In recent years, our laboratory has studied the role of mRNA in AD and FTLD, specifically those encoding tau and the Aβ-producing protease BACE1. As many FTLD-causing tau mutations destabilize a hairpin structure that regulates RNA splicing, we have targeted this structure with small molecules, antisense oligonucleotides, and small molecule-antisense conjugates. We have also discovered that microRNA interaction with the 3′-untranslated region of tau regulates tau expression. Regarding BACE1, we found that alternative splicing leads to inactive splice isoforms and antisense oligonucleotides shift splicing toward these inactive isoforms to decrease Aβ production. In addition, a G-quadruplex structure in the BACE1 mRNA plays a role in splice regulation. The prospects for targeting tau and BACE1 mRNAs as therapeutic strategies will be discussed

Xtoys: cellular automata on xwindows

Xtoys is a collection of xwindow programs for demonstrating simulations of various statistical models. Included are xising, for the two dimensional Ising model, xpotts, for the $q$-state Potts model, xautomalab, for a fairly general class of totalistic cellular automata, xsand, for the Bak-Tang-Wiesenfield model of self organized criticality, and xfires, a simple forest fire simulation. The programs should compile on any machine supporting xwindows.Comment: 4 pages, one figure, uuencoded compressed postscript Contribution to Lattice '95 Also available at http://penguin.phy.bnl.gov/www/papers/BNL-62123.ps.Z Programs available at http://penguin.phy.bnl.gov/www/xtoys/xtoys.htm

Ecological characterization of the Florida springs coast: Pithlachascotee to Waccasassa Rivers

This report covers the upper coast of west-central Florida. This region includes the drainage basins and nearshore waters of the west coast of Florida between, but not including, the Anclote River basin and the Suwannee River basin. The name Springs Coast wash chosen because this area contains a multitude of springs, both named and too small or inaccessible to have been names. Much of the area is karstic limestone. Most recognizable among the springs are the famous Crystal river, Weeki Wachee, and Homosassa. This territory includes large expanses of marsh and wetland and, along its shores, the southern end of the largest area of seagrass beds in the state -- the Florida Big Bend Seagrass Beds preserve. It also possesses numerous spring-fed rivers and streams along the coast, whose constant discharges provide unique, relatively stable estuarine environments. This document is a summary of the available information on the Springs Coast area of Florida, for use by planners, developers, regulatory authorities, and other interested parties. An understanding of the factors affecting their plans and the possibly unexpected impacts of their actions on others will, it is hoped, promote intelligent development in areas capable of supporting it. We have tried to provide a clear, coherent picture of what is currently known about how the physical, chemical, and biological factors of the environment interact. (343 pp.

The Role of Tau in Neurodegenerative Diseases and Its Potential as a Therapeutic Target

The abnormal deposition of proteins in and around neurons is a common pathological feature of many neurodegenerative diseases. Among these pathological proteins, the microtubule-associated protein tau forms intraneuronal filaments in a spectrum of neurological disorders. The discovery that dominant mutations in the MAPT gene encoding tau are associated with familial frontotemporal dementia strongly supports abnormal tau protein as directly involved in disease pathogenesis. This and other evidence suggest that tau is a worthwhile target for the prevention or treatment of tau-associated neurodegenerative diseases, collectively called tauopathies. However, it is critical to understand the normal biological roles of tau, the specific molecular events that induce tau to become neurotoxic, the biochemical nature of pathogenic tau, the means by which pathogenic tau exerts neurotoxicity, and how tau pathology propagates. Based on known differences between normal and abnormal tau, a number of approaches have been taken toward the discovery of potential therapeutics. Key questions still remain open, such as the nature of the connection between the amyloid-β protein of Alzheimer's disease and tau pathology. Answers to these questions should help better understand the nature of tauopathies and may also reveal new therapeutic targets and strategies

Can gravitational infall energy lead to the observed velocity dispersion in DLAs?

The median observed velocity width v_90 of low-ionization species in damped Ly-alpha systems is close to 90 km/s, with approximately 10% of all systems showing v_90 > 210 km/s at z=3. We show that a relative shortage of such high-velocity neutral gas absorbers in state-of-the-art galaxy formation models is a fundamental problem, present both in grid-based and particle-based numerical simulations. Using a series of numerical simulations of varying resolution and box size to cover a wide range of halo masses, we demonstrate that energy from gravitational infall alone is insufficient to produce the velocity dispersion observed in damped Ly-alpha systems, nor does this dispersion arise from an implementation of star formation and feedback in our highest resolution (~ 45 pc) models, if we do not put any galactic winds into our models by hand. We argue that these numerical experiments highlight the need to separate dynamics of different components of the multiphase interstellar medium at z=3.Comment: 12 Pages, 9 Figures, accepted to ApJ, printing in colour recommende

Magnetic White Dwarfs from the SDSS II. The Second and Third Data Releases

Fifty-two magnetic white dwarfs have been identified in spectroscopic observations from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) obtained between mid-2002 and the end of 2004, including Data Releases 2 and 3. Though not as numerous nor as diverse as the discoveries from the first Data Release, the collection exhibits polar field strengths ranging from 1.5MG to ~1000MG, and includes two new unusual atomic DQA examples, a molecular DQ, and five stars that show hydrogen in fields above 500MG. The highest-field example, SDSSJ2346+3853, may be the most strongly magnetic white dwarf yet discovered. Analysis of the photometric data indicates that the magnetic sample spans the same temperature range as for nonmagnetic white dwarfs from the SDSS, and support is found for previous claims that magnetic white dwarfs tend to have larger masses than their nonmagnetic counterparts. A glaring exception to this trend is the apparently low-gravity object SDSSJ0933+1022, which may have a history involving a close binary companion.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journa

Parameterized Littlewood-Paley operators with variable kernels on Hardy spaces and weak Hardy spaces

In this paper, by using the atomic decomposition theory of Hardy space and weak Hardy space, we discuss the boundedness of parameterized Littlewood-Paley operator with variable kernel on these spaces.Comment: 15 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1711.0961