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Purpose – This chapter will explore how Jean Quan was elected as Oakland’s first Asian American and woman mayor and the numerous challenges to lead the city’s governing coalition. Quan sought to build a diverse coalition to run the city. She has devoted her efforts to those in greatest need as she navigates the multiracial and multidynamic politics, and build her administration as progressive, inclusive, and universal.Design – This research uses voting records, U.S. Census data, media accounts, and interviews with local participants to study the research questions for this chapter; how and why did Jean Quan get elected as Mayor, and what has been her approach to leading the city’s governing coalition?Findings – This chapter’s preliminary findings after 18 months in office are that Mayor Quan has stabilized her governing coalition and has gotten back on track to begin to achieve her campaign goals.Research limitations and future research – The major limitation of this chapter’s research is Mayor Quan has been in office only 18 months, which is a short time to study Quan’s governing coalition and whether she will sustain this coalition in the coming years. Future research is needed to study how Quan compares to recent Oakland mayors and to other Asian American local elected leaders of large cities.Impact of research – This research builds upon previous research on Asian Pacific Islander elected officials at the local level and adds to the growing body of research on minority mayors and local elected officials.Value of research – As the United States grows increasingly diverse those who govern its cities have also become more diverse in the 21st century. This research makes an important contribution to the study of a fast growing population APIs and their elected leaders.

This chapter discusses the current landscape for digital asset investing and the many operational risks facing cryptocurrency investors. It also discusses the ongoing progress in the institutionalization of digital asset investment and the risks inherent when investing in cryptocurrencies and blockchain opportunities. Investors considering investing in a public or private fund that invests in digital assets must be aware of the operational risks that may directly impact their investments, including risks from portfolio concentration, illiquidity, hacking, digital asset custody, and digital asset valuations. Operational due diligence reviews of funds and fund managers are critical in assessing operational risks for digital asset investment.

The burgeoning interest over the last decade in technology transfer at universities in the United States has driven contentious debates over patent policy. In this context, biotech patenting has become the poster-child for claims that the proliferation of patenting by universities, and in the private sector, is undermining scientific norms and threatening innovation. Commentators have expressed particular fears about the negative effects of biotech patenting on the public information commons and concerns about emerging “patent anticommons.” This chapter argues that the standard (finite) commons model is being misapplied in the biotech arena because, owing to the complexity of biological processes and the power of existing biotech methods to produce genetic data, biomedical science is, in crucial respects, an unbounded, uncongested common resource. These findings imply that strategic biotech patenting of problem-specific research tools (i.e., single-nucleotide polymorphisms, drug targets) is not economically justified and therefore is irrational.