Instrumental analysis students analyze commercial soft drinks in three successive laboratory experiments. First, UV multicomponent analysis is used to determine caffeine and benzoic acid in Mello YelloTM using the spectrophotometer's software and manually by the simultaneous equations method. The following week, caffeine, benzoic acid and aspartame are determined in a variety of soft drinks by reversed-phase liquid chromatography using 45% methanol/55% aqueous phosphate, pH 3.0, as the mobile phase. In the third experiment, the same samples are analyzed by capillary electrophoresis using a pH 9.4 borate buffer. Students also determine the minimum detection limits for all three compounds by both LC and CE. The experiments demonstrate the analytical use and limitations of the three instruments. The reports and prelab quizzes also stress the importance of the chemistry of the three compounds, especially the relationships of acid/base behavior and polarity to the LC and CE separations.

Academic technology transfer in its current form began with the passage of the Bayh–Dole Act in 1980, which allowed universities to retain ownership of federally funded intellectual property. Since that time, a profession has evolved that has transformed how inventions arising in universities are treated, resulting in significant impact to US society. While there have been a number of articles highlighting benefits of technology transfer, now, more than at any other time since the Bayh–Dole Act was passed, the profession and the impacts of this groundbreaking legislation have come under intense scrutiny. This article serves as an examination of the many positive benefits and evolution, both financial and intrinsic, provided by academic invention and technology transfer, summarized in Table 1.

Patents: Universities are right to partner I disagree with your groundless suggestion that partnerships between universities and patent firms are "unseemly" (Nature 501, 471-472; 2013). Such partnerships stand to increase the rewards and level of protection for inventors, which are, after all, the purposes of a patent. Some critics argue that a university's mission should be to disseminate knowledge-in which case, universities are free simply to publish their inventions without patenting them or to seek a patent and offer a free licence. But others choose to patent their inventions to recoup their research dollars and reward their inventors, as the US Bayh-Dole Act encourages. Companies such as Intellectual Ventures in Bellevue, Washington (of which I am founder and vice-chairman), facilitate these choices. Intellectual Ventures has acquired rights to thousands of university patents and in the past ten years has paid about US$110 million to universities and government researchers, $510 million to independent inventors and more than $720 million to smaller companies. The organization also works with university researchers to launch new businesses. For example, our work with Duke University's Center for Metamaterials and Integrated Plasmonics in Durham, North Carolina, has produced two spin-off companies that have raised tens of millions in venture capital. Universities are important engines of innovation and sources of pioneering technology, but they are not designed to file costly, lengthy lawsuits.

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