Digital Commons Network^™

Electrodeposition From A Graphene Bath: A Sustainable Copper Composite Alloy In A Graphene Matrix, Hayley Richardson, Charles Bopp, Bao Ha, Reeba Thomas, Kalathur S.V. Santhanam

Articles

The leaching effect of metals has led to the introduction of government regulations for the safety of the environment and humans. This has led to the search for new alloys with long-lasting sustainability. Herein, we wish to report a new brass alloy containing carbon with a remarkable sustainability produced by electrodeposition from a graphene quantum dots bath. The electrochemical measurements were carried out using cyclic voltammetry, potentiodynamic analysis, and Tafel measurements, and the deposits were characterized by X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF), Raman imaging, X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to understand the surface morphology …

Fluoroscopic Demonstration Of Thoracic Tumor Immobilization With High Frequency Percussive Ventilation, Ina M Sala, Beverly Maurer, Cristian Solano, Ronald Levitin, Thomas M Guerrero

Articles

Purpose: The purpose of this first-in-man study is to directly measure thoracic tumor immobilization by high frequency percussive ventilation (HFPV).

Methods: In an IRB approved protocol (IRB # 2017-046) we screened patients with conspicuous lung tumors that exhibited motion >10 mm to undergo kV fluoroscopy with HFPV. Two sets of consecutive AP (anterior posterior) fluoroscopy frames were acquired during multiple breathing cycles for free- and HFPV- breathing. All images were acquired using our kV source/panel of the therapeutic linear accelerator. Percussions were delivered via the intrapulmonary percussive ventilation device (IPV-2C) and phasitron (Percussionaire Corp., Sagle, Idaho). The baseline settings for …

Data: The Good, The Bad And The Ethical, John D. Kelleher, Filipe Cabral Pinto, Luis M. Cortesao

Articles

It is often the case with new technologies that it is very hard to predict their long-term impacts and as a result, although new technology may be beneficial in the short term, it can still cause problems in the longer term. This is what happened with oil by-products in different areas: the use of plastic as a disposable material did not take into account the hundreds of years necessary for its decomposition and its related long-term environmental damage. Data is said to be the new oil. The message to be conveyed is associated with its intrinsic value. But as in …

Evaluating Instructional Designs With Mental Workload Assessments In University Classrooms, Luca Longo, Giuliano Orru'

Articles

Cognitive cognitive load theory (CLT) has been conceived for improving instructional design practices. Although researched for many years, one open problem is a clear definition of its cognitive load types and their aggregation towards an index of overall cognitive load. In Ergonomics, the situation is different with plenty of research devoted to the development of robust constructs of mental workload (MWL). By drawing a parallel between CLT and MWL, as well as by integrating relevant theories and measurement techniques from these two fields, this paper is aimed at investigating the reliability, validity and sensitivity of three existing self-reporting mental workload …

Mathematical Model Of The Role Of Asymptomatic Infection In Outbreaks Of Some Emerging Pathogens, Nourridine Siewe, Bradford Greening Jr., Nina H. Fefferman

Articles

Preparation for outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases is often predicated on beliefs that we will be able to understand the epidemiological nature of an outbreak early into its inception. However, since many rare emerging diseases exhibit different epidemiological behaviors from outbreak to outbreak, early and accurate estimation of the epidemiological situation may not be straightforward in all cases. Previous studies have proposed considering the role of active asymptomatic infections co-emerging and co-circulating as part of the process of emergence of a novel pathogen. Thus far, consideration of the role of asymptomatic infections in emerging disease dynamics have usually avoided considering …

State Of The Art In Composition, Fabrication, Characterization, And Modeling Methods Of Cement-Based Thermoelectric Materials For Low-Temperature Applications, Xiaoli Liu, Ruchita Jani, Esther Orisakwee, Conrad Johnston, Piotr Chudzinski, Ming Qu, Brian Norton, Niall Holmes Dr., Jorge Kohanoff, Lorenzo Stella, Hongxi Yin, Kazuaki Yazawa

Articles

The worldwide energy crisis and environmental deterioration are probably humanity’s greatest challenges. Thermoelectricity, which allows for the mutual conversion between thermal and electrical energy, has become a promising technology to alleviate this challenge. Increasingly more research focuses on how to fabricate and apply thermoelectric materials for harvesting energy and regulating the indoor thermal environment. However, only a few studies have focused on cementitious materials with thermoelectric potential. Thermoelectric cement is a composite material in which particular additives can enhance the thermoelectric performance of ordinary cement. By potentially replacing traditional construction materials with thermoelectric cement in building applications, electricity could be …

Bio-Binder—Innovative Asphalt Technology, Amir Tabakovic

Articles

The global road network spans 16.3 million km [1], of which 5 million km is in the EU. These road networks fulfil major economic and social goals by facilitating the movement of goods and people throughout the EU, and are therefore of the utmost importance to the economic and social life of the EU [2]. National governments invest heavily in their road networks, e.g., in 2014, EUR 53.33 billion was invested in the development and maintenance of the EU road network [3]. Each year, the world produces 1.6 trillion tonnes of asphalt [4], of which 218 million tonnes is produced …

Labor Redemption In Work Law, Andrew Elmore

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People with criminal records are not a protected class under Title VII, and many employers fear that hiring people with criminal records invites negligent hiring liability. Ban the Box privacy laws delay but may not deter overbroad criminal background checks. This Article challenges this standard account by shifting focus to the state in imposing arbitrary barriers to work. I expose a dignity interest in the removal of these unnecessary barriers, or "labor redemption." I find foundations of labor redemption in successful constitutional challenges to denials of public employment and occupational licenses. Labor redemption is also, increasingly, a statutory right, in …

Do Greenhouse Gases Impact Our Respiratory System? A Study Of The Effect Of Greenhouse Gas Emissions On Respiratory Disease Related Mortality In Ireland, Anushree Priyadarshini, Christina Kenny

Articles

Respiratory-related deaths are one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality every year in the developed world. Previous research outlines that greenhouse gas emission levels have a negative effect on respiratory health and can cause worsening of symptoms. This study examines the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on respiratory disease related mortality in Ireland from 2007-2017 using Statbank data from Central Statistics Office, Ireland. Analysis shows that over the last decade, while greenhouse gases emissions in Ireland have reduced by 1.1%, respiratory disease related mortality has increased on an average by 2.1%. Results indicate that greenhouse gas emis- sions …

On The Generation, Structure, And Semantics Of Grammar Patterns In Source Code Identifiers, Christian D. Newman,, Reem S. Alsuhaibani, Michael J. Decker, Anthony Peruma, Dishant Kaushik, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Emily Hill

Articles

Identifier names are the atoms of program comprehension. Weak identifier names decrease developer productivity and degrade the performance of automated approaches that leverage identifier names in source code analysis; threatening many of the advantages which stand to be gained from advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Therefore, it is vital to support developers in naming and renaming identifiers. In this paper, we extend our prior work, which studies the primary method through which names evolve: rename refactorings. In our prior work, we contextualize rename changes by examining commit messages and other refactorings. In this extension, we further consider data …

A Conceptual Model To Explain Dark Matter And Dark Energy, Jonathan Blackledge

Articles

This paper considers a conceptual model that attempts to explain ‘Dark Matter’ and‘Dark Energy’. The model is based on considering a gravitational field to be the result of a mass (aHiggs field) scattering pre-existing cosmic background space-time waves or ‘Uber-waves’. The term‘Uber’ is used to denote an outstanding or supreme example of a particular kind of gravitationalwave with cosmic-scale wavelengths that are far in excess of those associated with the gravitationalwaves generated by accelerating masses. Such waves are taken to be the very lowest frequencycomponents associated with the spectrum of space-time waves generated by the ‘Big Bang’ andare supported by …

The Life And Death Of Confederate Monuments, Jessica Owley, Jess Phelps

Articles

Confederate monuments have again received increased attention in the aftermath of George Floyd's tragic death in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020. Momentum and shifting public opinion are working toward the removal of these problematic monuments across the country. This Article seeks to provide insight for monument-removal advocates: specifically focusing on the legal issues associated with the "death" or removal of these monuments, how property law shapes and defines these efforts, and briefly examining what happens to these statues after removal. Our exploration of Confederate monuments reveals that some removal efforts occur outside of legally created processes. Both public and …

A Review Of Bleeding Risk With Impella-Supported High-Risk Percutaneous Coronary Intervention, George W. Vetrovec, Amir Kaki, Thom G. Dahle

Articles

Complex, high-risk percutaneous coronary intervention (HR-PCI) is increasingly being performed, often with mechanical circulatory support (MCS), though to date, there are limited randomised data on the efficacy of MCS for HR-PCI. The majority of MCS is provided by intra-aortic balloon pumps, but increasingly Impella® (Abiomed, Danvers, MA, USA) heart pumps are being used. While the Impella pumps provide greater increases in cardiac output, these devices require large bore access, which has been associated with an increased risk of bleeding and vascular complications. Decisions regarding the use of Impella are often based on risk–benefit considerations, with Impella-related bleeding risk being a …

Stereotactic Radiosurgery For Hemorrhagic Symptomatic Cerebral Cavernous Malformations: An International Multicenter Study, Hideyuki Kano, Rachel Jacobs, Huai-Che Yang, Cheng-Chia "Justin" Lee, Ahmed Nabeel, Khaled Abdelkarim, Reem Emad, Amr El-Shehaby, Wael Reda, Sameh Tawadros, Piettar Khalil, Roman Liscak, Khumar Guseynova, Charles Touchette, David Mathieu, Lydia Ren, Jason P Sheehan, Nasser Mohammed, Herwin Speckter, Muayad Almahariq, Inga Grills, Caleb E Feliciano, Rafael Rodriguez-Mercado, L Dade Lunsford

Articles

INTRODUCTION: Stereotactic radiosurgery has been used for treating cavernous malformation. METHODS: Between 1988 and 2018, Gamma KnifeR SRS was performed in 762 evaluable patients with symptomatic CCMs There were 262 (34%) CCM in the brainstem, 148 (19%) in basal ganglia or thalamus, and 372 (49%) in lobar locations. Most patients had experienced 2 or more hemorrhages associated with new neurological deficits. The median CM volume was 1.2 cm3 (range, 0.01-28.9), and the median margin dose was 14.0 Gy. RESULTS: After SRS, 158 patients (21%) had an imaging confirmed new hemorrhage at a median follow-up of 49 months. The hemorrhagefree survival …

Lightgwas: A Novel Machine Learning Procedure For Genome-Wide Association Study, Ambrozio Bruno, Luca Longo, Lucas Rizzo

Articles

This paper proposes a novel machine learning procedure for genome-wide association study (GWAS), named LightGWAS. It is based on the LightGBM framework, in addition to being a single, resilient, autonomous and scalable solution to address common limitations of GWAS implementations found in the literature. These include reliance on massive manual quality control steps and specific GWAS methods for each type of dataset morphology and size. Through this research, LightGWAS has been contrasted against PLINK2, one of the current state-of-the-art for GWAS implementations based on general linear model with support to firth regularisation. The mean differences measured upon standard classification metrics, …

Neurophysiological Correlates Of Dual Tasking In People With Parkinson's Disease And Freezing Of Gait, Conor Fearon, John Butler, Saskia Waechter, Isabelle Killane, Simon Kelly, Richard B Reilly, Timothy Lynch

Articles

Freezing of gait in people with Parkinson's disease (PwP) is associated with executive dysfunction and motor preparation deficits. We have recently shown that electrophysiological markers of motor preparation, rather than decision-making, differentiate PwP with freezing of gait (FOG +) and without (FOG -) while sitting. To examine the effect of locomotion on these results, we measured behavioural and electrophysiological responses in PwP with and without FOG during a target response time task while sitting (single-task) and stepping-in-place (dual-task). Behavioural and electroencephalographic data were acquired from 18 PwP (eight FOG +) and seven young controls performing the task while sitting and …

A Comparative Analysis Of Rule-Based, Model-Agnostic Methods For Explainable Artificial Intelligence, Giulia Vilone, Lucas Rizzo, Luca Longo

Articles

The ultimate goal of Explainable Artificial Intelligence is to build models that possess both high accuracy and degree of explainability. Understanding the inferences of such models can be seen as a process that discloses the relationships between their input and output. These relationships can be represented as a set of inference rules which are usually not explicit within a model. Scholars have proposed several methods for extracting rules from data-driven machine-learned models. However, limited work exists on their comparison. This study proposes a novel comparative approach to evaluate and compare the rulesets produced by four post-hoc rule extractors by employing …

Covid-19 Reflections On Resilience And Reform In The Child Welfare System, Robert Latham, Kele M. Stewart

Articles

No abstract provided.

Feigned Consensus: Usurping The Law In Shaken Baby Syndrome/Abusive Head Trauma Prosecutions, Keith A. Findley, D. Michael Risinger, Patrick D. Barnes, Julie A. Mack, David A. Moran, Barry C. Scheck, Thomas L. Bohan

Articles

Few medico-legal matters have generated as much controversy--both in the medical literature and in the courtroom--as Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS), now known more broadly as Abusive Head Trauma (AHT). The controversies are of enormous significance in the law because child abuse pediatricians claim, on the basis of a few non-specific medical findings supported by a weak and methodologically flawed research base, to be able to “diagnose” child abuse, and thereby to provide all of the evidence necessary to satisfy all of the legal elements for criminal prosecution (or removal of children from their parents). It is a matter, therefore, in …

Exploring The Potential Of Defeasible Argumentation For Quantitative Inferences In Real-World Contexts: An Assessment Of Computational Trust, Lucas Rizzo, Pierpaolo Dondio, Luca Longo

Articles

Argumentation has recently shown appealing properties for inference under uncertainty and conflicting knowledge. However, there is a lack of studies focused on the examination of its capacity of exploiting real-world knowledge bases for performing quantitative, case-by-case inferences. This study performs an analysis of the inferential capacity of a set of argument-based models, designed by a human reasoner, for the problem of trust assessment. Precisely, these models are exploited using data from Wikipedia, and are aimed at inferring the trustworthiness of its editors. A comparison against non-deductive approaches revealed that these models were superior according to values inferred to recognised trustworthy …

Taxes As Pandemic Controls, Ashley C. Craig, James R. Hines Jr.

Articles

Tax policy can play important roles in limiting the spread of communicable disease and in managing the economic fallout of a pandemic. Taxes on business activities that bring workers or customers into close contact with each other offer efficient alternatives to broad regulatory measures, such as shutdowns, that have been effective but enormously costly. Corrective taxation also helps raise the revenue required to cover elevated government expenditure during a pandemic. Moreover, the restricted consumer choice that accompanies a pandemic reduces the welfare cost of raising tax revenue from higher-income taxpayers, making it a good time for deficit closure. Current U.S. …

Recording Of Endoscopy And Fluoroscopy Of The Vocal Tract With Sound (Or Its Absence): A Disappointment, Robert J Shprintzen, Pablo Antonio Ysunza

Articles

There is an old say: “The devil knows more for being old than for being the devil”. One of the advantages of being old and observing clinical practice and clinical research advance is that successful procedures and methods can be selected and put into practice. Indeed, it is possible to define when practices we thought could be used by our peers simply by being reported in the literature have proven to be doubtful hopes that leave us trying to find out what went wrong. Such is the case with imaging procedures of the vocal tract during speech tasks.

Thermoformed Containers Based On Starch And Starch/Coffee Waste Biochar Composites, Carlos Diaz, Rahul Ketan Shah, Tyler Evans, Thomas A. Trabold, Kathleen Draper

Articles

Biodegradable containers support zero-waste initiatives when alternative end-of-life scenarios are available (e.g., composting, bio digestion). Thermoplastic starch (TPS) has emerged as a readily biodegradable and inexpensive biomaterial that can replace traditional plastics in applications such as food service ware and packaging. This study has two aims. First, demonstrate the thermoformability of starch/polycaprolactone (PCL) as a thermoplastic material with varying starch loadings. Second, incorporate biochar as a sustainable filler that can potentially lower the cost and enhance compostability. Biochar is a stable form of carbon produced by thermochemical conversion of organic biomass, such as food waste, and its incorporation into consumer …

Brightness Matching In Optical See-Through Augmented Reality, Michael Murdoch

Articles

A visual experiment using a beam-splitter-based optical see-through augmented reality (OST-AR) setup tested the effect of the size and alignment of AR overlays with a brightness-matching task using physical cubes. Results indicate that more luminance is required whenARoverlays are oversized with respect to the cubes, showing that observers discount theARoverlay to a greater extent when it is more obviously a transparent layer. This is not explained by conventional color appearance modeling but supports an AR-specific model based on foreground-background discounting. The findings and model will help determine parameters for creating convincingARmanipulation of realworld objects.

Association Of Metabolomic Biomarkers With Sleeve Gastrectomy Weight Loss Outcomes, Wendy Miller, Kathryn Ziegler, Stewart Graham, Michael Maddens, Matthew Sims

Articles

Background: Factors influencing weight loss variability following sleeve gastrectomy (SG) are not well understood. We evaluated the correlation of metabolomic biomarkers with weight loss outcomes. Methods: This prospective study evaluated the metabolomic profile of feces and serum prior to SG and three months post-SG, along with weight loss outcomes at three months post-SG (N=45). Serum and fecal samples were quantitatively profiled using a combination of 1H NMR and DI-LC-MS/MS (AbsoluteIDQ P180 kit (Biocrates, Innsbruck)). Results: Percent total weight loss (%TWL) for the lowest versus the highest weight loss tertiles (T1 vs T3) was 11.1 + 0.8% and 17.0 + 1.3%, …

Enhancing The Visibility Of Vernier Effect In A Tri-Microfiber Coupler Fiber Loop Interferometer For Ultrasensitive Refractive Index And Temperature Sensing, Fangfang Wei, Dejun Liu, Zhe Wang, Zhuochen Wang, Gerald Farrell, Qiang Wu, Gang-Ding Peng, Yuliya Semenova

Articles

In this paper a Vernier effect based sensor is analyzed and demonstrated experimentally in a tri-microfiber coupler (Tri-MFC) and polarization-maintaining fiber (PMF) loop interferometer (Tri-MFC-PMF) to provide ultrasensitive refractive index and temperature sensing. The main novelty of this work is an analysis of parameters of the proposed Tri-MFC-PMF with the objective of determining the conditions leading to a strong Vernier effect. It has been identified by simulation that the Vernier effect is a primary factor in the design of Tri-MFC-PMF loop sensing structure for sensitivity enhancement. It is furthermore demonstrated experimentally that enhancing the visibility of the Vernier spectrum in …

Federal Rule 44.1: Foreign Law In U.S. Courts Today, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

This article presents an in-depth analysis of the latent methodological issues that are as much a cause of U.S. federal court avoidance of foreign law as are judicial difficulties in obtaining foreign legal materials and difficulties in understanding foreign legal orders and languages. It explores Rule 44.1’s inadvertent introduction of a civil-law method into a common-law framework, and the results that have ensued, including an incomplete transition of foreign law from being an issue of fact to becoming an issue of law. It addresses the ways in which courts obtain information about foreign law today, suggesting among others the methodological …

Managerial Incentives To Repeatedly Collude: Frequency, Partners And Governance Rules, Catarina Marvao Dr., Chloé Le Coq

Articles

Cartel recidivism has been discovered among many convicted firms and is often perceived as a result of the limited efficiency of competition policy. The incentives for managers to collude have been linked to the firm’s organizational structure, the corporate culture, and the type of executive compensation packages in place.

To the extent that undetected cartels differ from detected ones in relevant dimensions, the current empirical results on illegal cartels are biased. To tackle this issue, we use a novel dataset of a population of cartels, which were legal in Sweden up until 1993. We contribute to the current debate on …

Eventually Periodic Solutions Of Single Neuron Model, Inese Bula, Michael A. Radin

Articles

In this paper, we consider a non-autonomous piecewise linear difference equation that describes a discrete version of a single neuron model with a periodic (period two and period three) internal decay rate. We investigated the periodic behavior of solutions relative to the periodic internal decay rate in our previous papers. Our goal is to prove that this model contains a large quantity of initial conditions that generate eventually periodic solutions. We will show that only periodic solutions and eventually periodic solutions exist in several cases.

Safety Of Vitamin D2 Mushroom Powder As A Novel Food Pursuant To Regulation (Eu) 2015/2283, John Kearney, Dominique Turck, Jacqueline Castenmiller, Stefaan De Henauw

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Following a request from the European Commission, the EFSA Panel on Nutrition, Novel Foods and Food Allergens (NDA) was asked to deliver a scientific opinion on vitamin D2 mushroom powder as a novel food (NF) pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2015/2283. The NF is an ingredient produced from Agaricus bisporus mushrooms that have been exposed to ultraviolet (UV) light to induce the conversion of provitamin D2 (ergosterol) to vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol). The NF contains concentrations of vitamin D provided by vitamin D2 in the ranges of 1,000–1,300 lg/g. The information provided on the manufacturing process, composition and specifications of the NF …