The Indian patent system and indigenous R&D

This paper examines some of the theoretical assumptions governing a model patent system and highlights the features of the new Indian Patent Act compared to these assumptions. An attempt has also been made to analyze and project data on foreign patent registrations in India both prior to and after the passing of the new Act. A tentative inference is that the new Act has not significantly affected the number of foreign patents seeking protection in India. A case has also been made out justifying the use of patent statistics in R & D programme formulation both at the macro- and micro-levels.     

Antral and duodenal disaccharidases in patients of duodenal ulcer and non-ulcer dyspepsia

Duodenal ulcer is a common disease and is considered acid-peptic disease. Duodenal ulcer patients are known to have higher incidence of antral gastritis and duodentitis than general population. Thus one can expect some alteration in the enzyme products of mucosal cells of antrum and duodenum in this condition. The present study was planned in 30 patients of duodenal ulcer and 30 of non-ulcer dyspepsia. After overnight fast, upper gastrointestinal endoscopy was done using forward viewing fibreoptic endoscope. Two pairs of biopsies were taken from the antrum and two from the descending duodenum using standard biopsy forceps. One pair of biopsy from each site was taken in 10% formal saline for histopathological examination. One pair of biopsies from each site was collected in saline for the measurement of disaccharidases by Dahlquist method. Activities of lactase, sucrase and maltase were significantly higher in descending duodenum mucosa as compared to antral mucosa in both groups. Activities of these enzymes in antrum and duodenum of both groups did not differ significantly. No significant difference was found in disaccharidases in antrum and descending duodenum in patients with or without histological gastritis. This study suggests that the disaccharidases do not change in antrum and duodenum of ulcer patients as compared to the patients with non-ulcer dyspepsia.     

Spelling performance of English consonants among students whose first language is Arabic

The purpose of the present study was to examine the influence of some aspects of the Arabic phonological system on spelling English words. In Study 1, the spelling performance of Arabic students from grades four and six was compared with English students in cognate phoneme pairs which exist across both languages (/d/ and /t/), and pairs in which only one of the phonemes exists in Arabic (/b/ and /p/, /f/ and /v/) using a spelling test which contained words with the target phonemes. The findings showed that the Arabic participants performed similarly to the English participants on the phonemes /t/ and /d/, but they tended to spell the phonemes /b/, /p/, /f/, and /v/ using their cognate pairs more often than the English participants did. In Study 2, the spelling performance of Arabic students was compared across grades 4, 6, 8, and 10 for the same target phonemes. The analyses showed no difference between the Arabic participants in how often they confused the target phonemes with their cognate pairs across the different grade levels, except for the phonemes /p/ and /v/, for which the effect size was small. The findings of this study demonstrate the importance of phonology in spelling, as well as the influence of the first language on spelling in a second language. They also indicate that Arabic students continue to be dependent on phonological processes when spelling English words even as they grow older.     

Hardy-weinberg equilibrium and the foundations of evolutionary genetics 3. Incorporating Mutation and Migration

The year 2008 marked the 150th anniversary of the debut of the concept of natural selection as a mechanism of adaptive evolution through the reading of papers by Darwin and Wallace to the Linnaean Society. It also marked the 100th anniversary of the enunciation of the principle defining the inertial state of populations from a genetic viewpoint through the independent publication of papers on the topic by G H Hardy and W Weinberg. In this series, we examine the significance of the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium as a basic model of population genetics that forms the foundation for evolutionary genetics. In Part 3 of this series, we begin to relax some of the assumptions of the basic model underlying the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium, and analyse the situations where either mutation or migration occur in an otherwise ideal large population.