Sharing research data by depositing it in connection with a published article or otherwise making data publicly available sometimes raises intellectual property questions in the minds of depositing researchers, their employers, their funders, and other researchers who seek to reuse research data. In this context or in the drafting of data management plans, common questions are (1) what are the legal rights in data; (2) who has these rights; and (3) how does one with these rights use them to share data in a way that permits or encourages productive downstream uses? Leaving to the side privacy and national security laws that regulate sharing certain types of data, this Perspective explains how to work through the general intellectual property and contractual issues for all research data.

This perspective explains the mechanics of copyright and scholarly publishing and warns authors who support open-access publishing about a new pseudo open-access publishing model in which authors pay but publishers still retain commercial reuse rights.

There is currently unprecedented interest in quantifying variation in thermal physiology among organisms, especially in order to understand and predict the biological impacts of climate change. A key parameter in this quantification of thermal physiology is the performance or value of a rate, across individuals or species, at a common temperature (temperature normalisation). An increasingly popular model for fitting thermal performance curves to data-the Sharpe-Schoolfield equation-can yield strongly inflated estimates of temperature-normalised rate values. These deviations occur whenever a key thermodynamic assumption of the model is violated, i.e., when the enzyme governing the performance of the rate is not fully functional at the chosen reference temperature. Using data on 1,758 thermal performance curves across a wide range of species, we identify the conditions that exacerbate this inflation. We then demonstrate that these biases can compromise tests to detect metabolic cold adaptation, which requires comparison of fitness or rate performance of different species or genotypes at some fixed low temperature. Finally, we suggest alternative methods for obtaining unbiased estimates of temperature-normalised rate values for meta-analyses of thermal performance across species in climate change impact studies.

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Outdated copyright laws around the world hinder research

The elucidation of the CRISPR (clustered, regularly interspaced, short palindromic repeats) adaptive immune system endogenous to most microbial life has culminated in progress in a diversity of scientific disciplines. The concurrently promising and eccentric nature of its theoretically plausible applications has wrought enthusiasm in the research community globally, potentiating advancements in human and animal health, ecological stability, and economic wellbeing, that would hitherto be considered the unattainable fancies of a futurist. It may be supposed that the tomes of science fiction are the true books of prophecy. Here, we narrate the scientific dialogue regarding CRISPR/Cas biotechnologies, from the happenstantial initial observation of the locus to the litany of intriguing contemporary endeavors. We discuss the mechanistic underpinnings in detail, and the corpulent body of literature on CRISPR-based biotech is digested into a germane and informative review. CRISPR applications such as microbiome engineering in order to enhance the human immune system beyond the fortitude of the wild type, bacterial genome editing in industrial and medical aspects, conquering antibiotic resistance, the development of novel antimicrobial techniques, the harvesting of solventogenic microbes, the development of antifungal therapies, and investigation of the genetic properties of fungi, are here represented, and the authors posit unconventional, and at times gainfully tangential, thoughts and concepts in order to encourage a reflective disposition towards this sophisticated device of nature: a panacea in progress, such that the most impassive and technical writing still carries the ring of poetry.

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