International copyright law must be based on an assessment of what types and levels of protection best further the purposes of copyright law. But constructing the international copyright regime is ...difficult as the international system must wrestle with copyright dilemmas that exist at the national level as well as broader challenges facing international law. This paper delineates the connection between international copyright law and the generation and distribution of knowledge by discussing two recent examples of (possible) unconventional international copyright rulemaking, namely, norms generated by Internet Service Providers in responding to infringement claims, and norms arising out of digital rights management systems.
One possible solution to mitigate the negative influences of conflict which has been proposed in the literature is to subject the relevant parties to education. Education can take two forms: ...increasing an individual's human capital on the one hand, increasing her social capital on the other hand. Using a stylized model of a two-individual economy, we derive that increasing an individual's social capital will lead her to reduce her conflict effort, whereas increasing her human capital can induce her to increase her conflict effort. We then analyze which conditions need to be present to induce the individuals to invest into their social capital.
One possible solution to mitigate the negative influences of conflict which has been proposed in the literature is to subject the relevant parties to education. Education can take two forms: ...increasing an individual's human capital on the one hand, increasing her social capital on the other hand. Using a stylized model of a two-individual economy, we derive that increasing an individual's social capital will lead her to reduce her conflict effort, whereas increasing her human capital can induce her to increase her conflict effort. We then analyze which conditions need to be present to induce the individuals to invest into their social capital.
In recent debates, morality or social norms have been proposed as an instrument to reduce conflict behavior. As the argument goes, moral people will not engage in socially not-tolerated behavior or, ...less so than amoral people. Analyzing this question in the framework of contest theory, we find that if morality can discriminate between appropriation and defense, it is an effective instrument to lower socially unwanted behavior and support the enforcement of property rights. If it cannot discriminate between these different conflict efforts, strategic effects due to a one-sided increase in morality might actually lead to total increased conflict effort in the economy.
Multifunctional mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN) have attracted substantial attention with regard to their high potential for targeted drug delivery. For future clinical applications it is ...crucial to address safety concerns and understand the potential immunotoxicity of these nanoparticles. In this study, we assess the biocompatibility and functionality of multifunctional MSN in freshly isolated, primary murine immune cells. We show that the functionalized silica nanoparticles are rapidly and efficiently taken up into the endosomal compartment by specialized antigen-presenting cells such as dendritic cells. The silica nanoparticles showed a favorable toxicity profile and did not affect the viability of primary immune cells from the spleen in relevant concentrations. Cargo-free MSN induced only very low immune responses in primary cells as determined by surface expression of activation markers and release of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as Interleukin-6, -12 and -1β. In contrast, when surface-functionalized MSN with a pH-responsive polymer capping were loaded with an immune-activating drug, the synthetic Toll-like receptor 7 agonist R848, a strong immune response was provoked. We thus demonstrate that MSN represent an efficient drug delivery vehicle to primary immune cells that is both non-toxic and non-inflammagenic, which is a prerequisite for the use of these particles in biomedical applications.