In summary, taking a few minutes to review the above documents and using the specific clause in your contracts will go a long way toward making sure you get a title that you can transfer to another buyer without concern. I am seeing deficient title work and defects in over 40% of REO closings that we do and it is such a problem that we do what I call shadowing the closings using our attorneys to review the title work of the REO closing agents. As an example, the most common mistake is not paying an existing water bill at closing as the bill is not yet a lien so it doesn't appear in a lien search. Just one of these bills was over $2,400 alone so be careful and review you closing documents or have your own attorney do it for you. 1 INCREASING BURDEN OF CHRONIC ILLNESS AND EVER-AGING GLOBAL POPULATION With the ever-aging global population and the growing burden of chronic illness, there is an increased reliance on the healthcare system (particularly the biopharmaceutical industry) in order or one to achieve and sustain a high quality of life. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the burden of human diseases have been rapidly increasing for decades with this trend predominantly contributed by population growth and environmental degradation. Marine bioprospecting is the search for novel compounds from natural sources in the marine environment. These activities have increased a great deal in the last few years likely in part due to the continued technological advances enabling further oceanic exploration, acknowledgement of the rich generic diversity in the marine biome, as well as the pressure from industry to produce given various blockbuster drugs going off patent. Today, about 18,000 natural products have been reported from marine organisms belonging to about 4,800 named species. The number of natural products from marine species is growing at a rate of 4% per year. The increase in the rate of discoveries is largely the result of technological advances in exploring the ocean and the genetic diversity it contains. Advances in technologies for observing and sampling the deep ocean, such as submersibles and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), have opened up previously unexplored areas to scientific research. Since 1999, the number of patents of genetic material from marine species has increased at the rate of 12% per year. Marine species are about twice as likely to yield at least one gene in a patent than their terrestrial counterparts. Bioprospecting typically requires the collection of a very limited amount of biomass for the initial discovery. Although further collections may be required after a promising discovery has been made, bioprospecting generally does not involve threats to biodiversity comparable to the large biomass removals involved in harvesting resources for food or mineral exploitation. 3 THE SUCCESS OF NATURAL COMPOUNDS IN DRUG DISCOVERY AND BIOPHARMACEUTICAL BACK DROP Biopharmaceuticals are one of the most impressive achievements of modern science. Many biopharmaceuticals offer high efficacy and few side effects. And there is much more to come: radically new concepts are making it to the market, and the advances keep coming at a rapid pace. The success of natural compounds in drug discovery is unparalleled: for antimicrobial and anticancer therapies, for example, more than 70% of new chemical entities introduced during the period 1981-2002 originated from natural products. It has been estimated by the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) that 1% of samples from marine animals tested in the laboratory reveal anti-tumor potential (which compares favorably with just 0. In the last few decades, advances in informatics, automation and imaging technology have made it possible to screen 100,000s - 1,000,000s of small molecules against a specific biological target or cellular assay per day, compared with 10s-100s of compounds tested on animals over many months previously. Growing awareness of the limitations of historically valuable approaches, and breakthroughs in robotics technologies, such as those used in separation and structure determination, have made screening mixtures of structurally complex natural product molecules easier, and have expanded the potential role of natural chemical diversity in the drug discovery process Australia is one of only 17 mega-diverse countries in the world and is renowned for the uniqueness of its biota. Australia has several features proving attractive to investors and researchers in the natural products area. This includes, not least, access to a diverse and unique biota. More generally, the features of Australia conducive to research and commercial activity include its robust system of law and stable democratic system of government, its stable and resilient economy, transparent and efficient regulatory environment, comprehensive intellectual property protections and high scientific and technological capacity. Australia has remained relatively isolated over time compared to most countries. Consequently, Australia has a high proportion of endemic species - that is, species not occurring naturally elsewhere. For example, in the case of mammals, approximately 83% are endemic to Australia. Australia's unique marine environment contains the world's largest areas and highest diversity of tropical and temperate seagrass species and of mangrove species; some of the largest areas of coral reefs; exceptional levels of biodiversity for a wide range of marine invertebrates; and it is estimated that around 80% of the southern marine species occur nowhere else in the world. 3% of the world's population, Australia contributes 2. 5% of the world's medical research and 2. 9% of global scientific publications (Invest Australia, 2007, p. In 2005, Australia ranked eighth in the OECD in terms of the proportion of researchers in the total labor force. On a per capita basis, Australia has a research output twice the OECD average. In terms of biotechnology research, Australia has several dedicated biotechnology research institutes. Australia's biotechnology industry is steadily growing, with activity across biotechnology fields including biomedicine, agricultural biotechnology, industrial biotechnology and environmental biotechnology. The Australian Government is a staunch advocate of the domestic pharmaceutical industry and has been very supportive in implementing initiatives to grow this sector. By any measure, Australian Government support for research and development in the biopharmaceutical industry has been and looks to continue to be strong.