Intellectual Property and Biodiversity: When and Where are Property Rights Important?

An important issue in the life sciences industries concerns the nature of the incentive mechanism that should govern the production of innovation within this R&D sector. We look at the specific problem of coordinating the supply of inputs across very different agents - North and South - that must each supply inputs in order to generate innovations from the industry. The current arrangement in this industry provides for a single property right at “end of the pipeline”, i.e. where marketing of the innovation occurs. This property rights scenario raises two problems, one of efficiency and one of equity. The key question asked here pertains to the number and placement of property rights that should be instituted to address this property rights failure. Should one establish new property rights in traditional knowledge alone; property rights in genetic information alone; or in both? We demonstrate that in a world in which traditional knowledge and genetic information are complements in the production of R&D, a resolution of the property rights failure in genetic information also may resolve the allocation failure in traditional knowledge even in the absence of a distinct property right. The reason is that traditional knowledge of the nature of private information is comparable to a trade secret. Traditional knowledge holders may use this informational advantage to improve their benefit by capturing some informational rent. A new property right is important to enable bargaining and coordination to occur across the industry, but a single property right is probably sufficient to enable coordination between the two agents.Biodiversity Prospecting, Traditional Knowledge, Genetic Resources, Intellectual Property Rights, Sequential R&D

Sunlight and mental wellbeing: evidence of links from social housing in Glasgow, Scotland [Conference abstract]

Paper accepted for presentation at VELUX Daylight Symposium 2015 (London

COVID-19: Change of Plans - A Photojournal

This photo journal was an assignment for one of my classes. From March 20 to April 12 I photographed scenes from my life as it now was due to the Coronavirus, and wrote statements reflecting on the context in which they were taken

Equation of State for Helium-4 from Microphysics

We compute the free energy of helium-4 near the lambda transition based on an exact renormalization-group equation. An approximate solution permits the determination of universal and nonuniversal thermodynamic properties starting from the microphysics of the two-particle interactions. The method does not suffer from infrared divergences. The critical chemical potential agrees with experiment. This supports a specific formulation of the functional integral that we have proposed recently. Our results for the equation of state reproduce the observed qualitative behavior. Despite certain quantitative shortcomings of our approximation, this demonstrates that ab initio calculations for collective phenomena become possible by modern renormalization-group methods.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, revtex updated version, journal referenc

FOLLOW THE LEADER? TESTING FOR THE INTERNALIZATION OF LAW

The internalization of law is said to be a process that involves a change in people’s intrinsic motivation to act in accord with law’s obligations – so that it is possible to observe imposed obligations become individual choices. We empirically test for this phenomenon, by attempting to disentangle the impacts of a legal change (a 5 pence charge on use of plastic bags) on intrinsic motivation and individual choice. We do so by measuring both behaviors and attitudes before and after the legal change, and by comparing the impacts across neighboring jurisdictions without the change. Using a differences-in-differences (DID) estimator we find evidence for the internalization of law: that is, we find a significant increase in intrinsic motivation for those consumers subject to the implementation of the legislative change, and link this change in intrinsic motivation to an actual change in behavior. However, using mediation analysis we find that internalization of the law only explains around 5 to 8% of the change in behavior – the rest being attributable to the direct effect of the charge.Departmental research allowance

Indoor Annual Sunlight Opportunity in Domestic Dwellings May Predict Well-Being in Urban Residents in Scotland

Indoor sunlight improves health in hospitals, schools, and workplaces, and there is clinical evidence for the impact on depression. But the impact of indoor sunlight on residents' health and well-being in domestic dwellings is unclear. Understanding this relationship could have important implications for building design and residents' indoor behavior, and impacts on health. Using a cross-sectional survey, we investigated the relationship between annual indoor sunlight opportunity and psychological well-being in 40 residents of high-rise dwellings in a socioeconomically deprived area in Glasgow, Scotland.  Perceived physical health, physical activity, psychological distress, and indoor environmental factors were potential mediators of the relationship between annual sunlight opportunity and well-being. We used novel simulation modeling of window size, orientation, occlusion, and occupant behavior to measure annual sunlight opportunity.  We found a significant positive association between well-being and annual indoor sunlight opportunity but no relationship between sunlight and objective indoor environmental variables, including air quality, bacteria, and fungi. Our sample had generally poor physical and mental health. Perceived physical health, lower psychological distress, more physical activity, and better perceived environmental quality were associated with greater psychological well-being. Perceived physical health mediated the impact of sunlight on well-being. Findings merit replication in larger and more diverse samples but have important implications for building design and advice to residents on window occlusion.&nbsp

Making Sense of Blockchain Applications:A Typology for HCI

Blockchain is an emerging infrastructural technology that is proposed to fundamentally transform the ways in which people transact, trust, collaborate, organize and identify themselves. In this paper, we construct a typology of emerging blockchain applications, consider the domains in which they are applied, and identify distinguishing features of this new technology. We argue that there is a unique role for the HCI community in linking the design and application of blockchain technology towards lived experience and the articulation of human values. In particular, we note how the accounting of transactions, a trust in immutable code and algorithms, and the leveraging of distributed crowds and publics around vast interoperable databases all relate to longstanding issues of importance for the field. We conclude by highlighting core conceptual and methodological challenges for HCI researchers beginning to work with blockchain and distributed ledger technologies

The expansion of modern agriculture and global biodiversity decline: an integrated assessment

The world is banking on a major increase in food production, if the dietary needs and food preferences of an increasing, and increasingly rich, population are to be met. This requires the further expansion of modern agriculture, but modern agriculture rests on a small number of highly productive crops and its expansion has led to a significant loss of global biodiversity. Ecologists have shown that biodiversity loss results in lower plant productivity, while agricultural economists have linked biodiversity loss on farms with increasing variability of crop yields, and sometimes lower mean yields. In this paper we consider the macro-economic consequences of the continued expansion of particular forms of intensive, modern agriculture, with a focus on how the loss of biodiversity affects food production. We employ a quantitative, structurally estimated model of the global economy, which jointly determines economic growth, population and food demand, agricultural innovations and land conversion. We show that even small effects of agricultural expansion on productivity via biodiversity loss might be sufficient to warrant a moratorium on further land conversion

Global population growth, technology and Malthusian constraints: a quantitative growth theoretic perspective

We structurally estimate a two-sector Schumpeterian growth model with endogenous population and finite land reserves to study the long-run evolution of global population, technological progress and the demand for food. The estimated model closely replicates trajectories for world population, GDP, sectoral productivity growth and crop land area from 1960 to 2010. Projections from 2010 onwards show a slowdown of technological progress, and, because it is a key determinant of fertility costs, significant population growth. By 2100 global population reaches 12.4 billion and agricultural production doubles, but the land constraint does not bind because of capital investment and technological progress

Metacognitive Training Modified for Negative Symptoms (MCT-N):A feasibility study

OBJECTIVE: Although patients often prioritize the treatment of negative symptoms, few psychological interventions targeting negative symptoms exist. This study attempts to fill this gap by piloting a modified metacognitive training programme, specifically targeted at negative symptoms (MCT-N), with a group of patients with prominent negative symptoms.METHOD: We adopted a mixed methods case series design, providing detailed quantitative data on changes over time, to focus on potential mechanisms underlying the intervention, in combination with qualitative interviews.RESULTS: The intervention showed good feasibility as demonstrated by the attendance rate, the positive feedback from participants and the multidisciplinary team, and the improvements on negative symptoms observed following the intervention. Multilevel modelling showed that depression, internalized stigma and reflective functioning explained the variance in negative symptoms.DISCUSSION: The pilot study indicated that the intervention has high feasibility and that improvements in negative symptoms can be partially explained by improvements on depression, stigma and reflective functioning.</p