Faculty Scholarship

Showing 521 - 530 of 733 Items

Inventing Prizes: A Historical Perspective on Innovation Awards and Technology Policy

Date: 2015-01-01

Creator: B. Zorina Khan

Access: Open access

Prizes for innovations are currently experiencing a renaissance, following their marked decline during the nineteenth century. Debates about such incentive mechanisms tend to employ canonical historical anecdotes to motivate and support the analysis and policy proposals. Daguerre's "patent buyout," the Longitude Prize, inducement prizes for butter substitutes and billiard balls, the activities of the Royal Society of Arts and other "encouragement" institutions-all comprise potentially misleading case studies. The article surveys and summarizes extensive empirical research using samples drawn from Britain, France, and the United States, including "great inventors" and their ordinary counterparts, and prizes at industrial exhibitions. The results suggest that administered systems of rewards to innovators suffered from a number of disadvantages in design and practice, which might be inherent to their nonmarket orientation.


Institutions and democratic invention in 19th-century America: Evidence from "great inventors," 1790-1930

Date: 2004-05-01

Creator: B. Zorina Khan, Kenneth L. Sokoloff

Access: Open access



Separation of internal and interaction dynamics for NLS-described wave packets with different carrier waves

Date: 2008-11-01

Creator: Martina Chirilus-Bruckner, Christopher Chong, Guido Schneider, Hannes Uecker

Access: Open access

We give a detailed analysis of the interaction of two NLS-described wave packets with different carrier waves for a nonlinear wave equation. By separating the internal dynamics of each wave packet from the dynamics caused by the interaction we prove that there is almost no interaction of such wave packets. We also prove the validity of a formula for the envelope shift caused by the interaction of the wave packets. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


Resistance to dislodgement: habitat and size-specific differences in morphology and tenacity in an intertidal snail

Date: 1993-01-01

Creator: G. C. Trussell, A. S. Johnson, S. G. Rudolph, E. S. Gilfillan

Access: Open access

The authors quantified 1) shell size (defined as the maximum projected surface area, MPSA); 2) shell shape; 3) foot area; 4) maximum force to dislodge a snail in shear; and 5) tenacity (force per foot area required to dislodge) of the herbivorous Littorina obtusata. Wave-exposed snails were smaller (lower average MPSA), and were shorter and had larger foot area and greater dislodgement force than did protected snails of similar MPSA. The greater dislodgement force at the exposed site was due to larger foot area, not to greater tenacity. -from Authors


Two-loop graviton scattering relation and IR behavior in N = 8 supergravity

Date: 2008-12-11

Creator: Stephen G. Naculich, Horatiu Nastase, Howard J. Schnitzer

Access: Open access

We derive an ABDK-like relation between the one- and two-loop four-graviton amplitudes in N = 8 supergravity. Specifically we show that the infrared-divergent part of the two-loop amplitude is one-half the square of the one-loop amplitude, suggesting an exponential structure for IR divergences. The difference between the two-loop amplitude and one-half the square of the full one-loop amplitude is therefore finite, and expressible in a relatively simple form. We give arguments for generalizations to higher loops and n-point functions, suggesting that the exponential of the full one-loop amplitude may be corrected, to low orders, by only simple finite terms. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


Recent increases in global HFC-23 emissions

Date: 2010-01-01

Creator: S. A. Montzka, L. Kuijpers, M. O. Battle, M. Aydin, K. R., Verhulst, E. S. Saltzman, D. W. Fahey

Access: Open access

Firn-air and ambient air measurements of CHF3 (HFC- 23) from three excursions to Antarctica between 2001 and 2009 are used to construct a consistent Southern Hemisphere (SH) atmospheric history. The results show atmospheric mixing ratios of HFC-23 continuing to increase through 2008. Mean global emissions derived from this data for 2006-2008 are 13.5 ± 2 Gg/yr (200 ± 30 × 1012gCO2- equivalent/yr, or MtCO2-eq./yr), ∼50% higher than the 8.7 ± 1 Gg/yr (130 ± 15 MtCO2-eq./yr) derived for the 1990s. HFC-23 emissions arise primarily from over-fluorination of chloroform during HCFC-22 production. The recent global emission increases are attributed to rapidly increasing HCFC-22 production in developing countries since reported HFC-23 emissions from developed countries decreased over this period. The emissions inferred here for developing countries during 2006-2008 averaged 11 ± 2 Gg/yr HFC-23 (160 ± 30 MtCO2-eq./yr) and are larger than the ∼6 Gg/yr of HFC-23 destroyed in United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Clean Development Mechanism projects during 2007 and 2008. © Copyright 2010 by the American Geophysical Union.


"Not for ornament": Patenting activity by nineteenth-century women inventors

Date: 2000-01-01

Creator: B. Zorina Khan

Access: Open access



Efficient and rapid identification of Candida albicans allelic status using SNP-RFLP

Date: 2009-11-01

Creator: Anja Forche, Musetta Steinbach, Judith Berman

Access: Open access

Candida albicans is the most prevalent opportunistic fungal pathogen in the clinical setting, causing a wide spectrum of diseases ranging from superficial mucosal lesions to life-threatening deep-tissue infections. Recent studies provide strong evidence that C. albicans possesses an arsenal of genetic mechanisms promoting genome plasticity and that it uses these mechanisms under conditions of nutritional or antifungal drug stress. Two microarray-based methods, single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and comparative genome hybridization arrays, have been developed to study genome changes in C. albicans. However, array technologies can be relatively expensive and are not available to every laboratory. In addition, they often generate more data than needed to analyze specific genomic loci or regions. Here, we have developed a set of SNP-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) (or PCR-RFLP) markers, two per chromosome arm, for C. albicans. These markers can be used to rapidly and accurately detect large-scale changes in the C. albicans genome including loss of heterozygosity (LOH) at single loci, across chromosome arms or across whole chromosomes. Furthermore, skewed SNP-RFLP allelic ratios are indicative of trisomy at heterozygous loci. While less comprehensive than array-based approaches, we propose SNP-RFLP as an inexpensive, rapid, and reliable method to screen strains of interest for possible genome changes. © 2009 Federation of European Microbiological Societies.


Level-rank duality of untwisted and twisted D-branes of the over(so, ̂) (N)K WZW model

Date: 2007-12-24

Creator: Stephen G. Naculich, Benjamin H. Ripman

Access: Open access

We analyze the level-rank duality of untwisted and ε-twisted D-branes of the over(so, ̂) (N)K WZW model. Untwisted D-branes of over(so, ̂) (N)K are characterized by integrable tensor and spinor representations of over(so, ̂) (N)K. Level-rank duality maps untwisted over(so, ̂) (N)K D-branes corresponding to (equivalence classes of ) tensor representations onto those of over(so, ̂) (K)N. The ε-twisted D-branes of over(so, ̂) (2 n)2 k are characterized by (a subset of ) integrable tensor and spinor representations of over(so, ̂) (2 n - 1)2 k + 1. Level-rank duality maps spinor ε-twisted over(so, ̂) (2 n)2 k D-branes onto those of over(so, ̂) (2 k)2 n. For both untwisted and ε-twisted D-branes, we prove that the spectrum of an open string ending on these D-branes is isomorphic to the spectrum of an open string ending on the level-rank-dual D-branes. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


Conservation as if people also mattered: Policy and practice of community-based conservation

Date: 2013-01-01

Creator: Ashish Kothari, Philip Camill, Jessica Brown

Access: Open access

Community-based conservation is being increasingly recognised as a major global force in the protection and sustainable management of ecosystems and species. Yet documentation of its main achievements and shortcomings, and the key issues it faces, is still at a nascent stage. This paper introduces the concept and experience of two forms of community-based conservation: Collaborative Management of Protected Areas (CMPA), and Indigenous Peoples' and Local Community Conserved Territories and Areas (ICCAs). It explores the emergence of these approaches in the context of global international conservation policy. Reviewing four case studies that were presented at a symposium convened at the Bowdoin College (Maine, USA, in November 2008), and drawing from the discussion during that session, it identifies some key lessons and principles that are likely to be applicable to community-based conservation across the world.