Digital Commons Network^™

Fully Coupled Fluid Structure Interaction Simulation Of Bioprosthetic Heart Valves: A Numerical And Experimental Analysis, Masod Sadipour

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Aortic stenosis impacts approximately 7% of the global population. In the past decade, the role of computational modeling has been becoming considerably important in the design of BHVs. To obtain reliable solutions in computational modeling, it is essential to consider accurate properties of bioprosthetic heart valves (BHVs), such as density and mechanical properties. Previous computational studies assumed (bovine pericardium) BP used in BHVs density was comparable to water or blood. Yet, BP is subjected to multiple treatments like fixation and anti-calcification. In Chapter 2, I measured BP density and its effect on BHV leaflet stress and strain. In the second …

Impeachment Vs. Indictment: How To Handle Criminality In The Executive Branch, Tiffany R. Murphy

Denver Law Review

Whether a sitting president can be prosecuted while in office has been a debated question with no clear answer. During Watergate and the Whitewater investigations, special and independent counsels struggled to decide whether to indict a sitting president. On one side, the Department of Justice (DOJ) guidelines prohibited indictment, on the other, prosecutors were concerned with potential harm to the rule of law if there was no indictment. In most circumstances, a president who engaged in criminal activities should face impeachment, as the Constitution mandates, rather than be subject to criminal proceedings while in office. The only exception is if …

Revitalizing Executive Branch Disqualification: Heeding An Inperfectly Learned Watergate Lesson, Alan B. Sternstein

Denver Law Review

This country has recently witnessed firsthand that in the consent of the governed, upon which the legitimacy of democratic government stands, also resides democracy’s innate vulnerability—its dependence on a broad fidelity of its citizens to the institutions and norms by which they agreed to be governed. Battered, though not broken, what has protected American democracy through challenges, present and past, were what are often referred to as guardrails of democracy. Although long-term efforts to rectify the nation’s economic dislocations and entrenched power, and to assimilate its continuing demographic changes, are needed to achieve stronger democratic stability, it is to democracy’s …

The Rural Post-Graduation Plan Development Model: Advancing Student College Choice By Centering Rural Communities, Steve Jenks

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

College choice models have been used since the 1980s to try and explain the processes and influences high school students use to decide if and which college to attend after graduation. These models focused solely on college attendance and lacked attention to the nuanced needs and resources found in rural communities. In this three-paper dissertation, a new, rural-centric model is proposed, tested, critiqued, and revised. The first paper proposes a new conceptual model of Rural Post-Graduation Plan Development using a critique and synthesis of prior college choice models, Critical Rural Theory, Funds of Knowledge, and socio-ecological models. The second paper …

Vol. 100, No. 4: Full Issue, Denver Law Review

Denver Law Review

No abstract provided.

Depoliticizing Federal Prosecution, Bruce A. Green

Denver Law Review

There is broad agreement that federal prosecutors should not use their power to pursue partisan political objectives, but there is stark disagreement about how to prevent them from abusing their power in this way. Geoffrey Berman, a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, recently argued that U.S. Attorneys should have complete autonomy and independence from the Attorney General and administration. Attorney General Bill Barr, in contrast, has insisted that Attorneys General should have full control over prosecutors so the administration can be held politically accountable. Neither view fully addresses the problem. Barr minimizes the significant risk …

Buddhist Nationalism: Rising Religious Violence In South Asia, Eva Chappus, Benjamin Nourse

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

Buddhist nationalism has contributed to expanding religious violence in many South Asian countries. The roots of this violent form of nationalism are complex and multi-faceted, making a clear solution difficult to achieve. Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Burma are some of the most pressing and violent case studies in South Asia today and can illustrate the reliance of Buddhist nationalists on ethnoreligious identities to relegate non-Buddhists to second-class status, to the point of massive acts of violence and aggression. This paper seeks to illuminate the complex social history driving the rise of Buddhist nationalism in these countries, particularly strong military-religion relationships, …

I Felt Unfettered And Alive: A Musical Narrative Inquiry Into Identity Through Commissioning And Performing New Music For Solo Classical Guitar, Libby Myers

The 21st Century Guitar

This paper discusses how commissioning new music served as a means of musical narrative inquiry into the performance of the authorʼs identity. Traditionally, musicology has centred on the identities of composers; their lives, working practices and philosophies. Meanwhile, the identities of performers have remained inaudible. Challenging this conventional narrative, the commission project foregrounds experiences of identity and subjectivity of the author as performer-researcher. This paper introduces the innovative methodology of musical narrative inquiry used in this project, in which lived narratives of identity are told and re-told in collaboration with the composer to explore what it means to be, or …

Guitars With Ambisonic Spatial Performance (Gasp): An Immersive Guitar System, Duncan Werner, Emma Fitzmaurice, Bruce Wiggins, Matthew Hart

The 21st Century Guitar

The GASP project investigates the design and realisation of an Immersive Guitar System. It brings together a range of sound processing and spatialising technologies and applies them to a specific musical instrument ‒ the Electric Guitar. GASP is an ongoing innovative audio project, fusing the musical with the technical, combining the processing of each stringʼs output (which we called timbralisation) with spatial sound. It is also an artistic musical project, where space becomes a performance parameter, providing new experimental immersive sound production techniques for the guitarist and music producer. Several ways of reimagining the electric guitar as an immersive sounding …

When Bonfá Meets Villa: Creative Processes In The Elaboration Of A Guitar Arrangement To Manhã De Carnaval By Luiz Bonfá (1922-2001), José D. T. Dos Santos

The 21st Century Guitar

This paper presents part of an artistic research where the focus is on elaboration of guitar arrangements. In the scope of the study here, my aim was to understand the implications of an ecological approach to music making based on the identification and use of guitar affordances. In particular, the elaboration of an arrangement of the song Manhã de Carnaval, by the Brazilian composer Luiz Bonfá (1922-2001). The process was informed by existing perspectives on arrangement (Sadie & Tirell, 2001), affordances (Gibson, 1977), tacit knowledge (Polanyi, 1966) and embodied meaning (Merleau-Ponty, 1968). Throughout the arrangement, excerpts of the music of …

Modes Of Listening In The Interpretation Of Electroacoustic Music, Lauren Wilson

The 21st Century Guitar

A cursory look through the literature on modes of listening reveals a wealth of different ways to attend to oneʼs sonic environment. Authors in the literature describe various, nuanced modes to frame oneʼs listening, and yet the terms also have central commonalities. In this essay, I explain that bringing these authors into dialogue with one another in a way that emphasizes these commonalities provides a rich interpretive tool, particularly for electroacoustic music. These different listenings ultimately compose my analysis, and I suggest that consciously engaging with modes of listening can shape listener experiences of electroacoustic music in analytically fruitful ways. …

The Weaponization Of Attorney’S Fees In An Age Of Constitutional Warfare, Rebecca Aviel, Wiley Kersh

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

If you want to win battles in the culture war, you enact legislation that regulates firearms, prohibits abortions, restricts discussion of critical race theory, or advances whatever other substantive policy preferences represent a victory for your side. But to win the war decisively with an incapacitating strike, you make it as difficult as possible for your adversaries to challenge those laws in court. Clever deployment of justiciability doctrines will help to insulate constitutionally questionable laws from judicial review, but some of the challenges you have sought to evade will manage to squeak through.

To fully disarm your opponents in an …

Municipal Failures, Nancy Leong

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Calls for reforming the civil rights enforcement regime often focus on individual government officers. Recent years have brought demands to abolish qualified immunity—a defense that protects individual officers from liability so long as they did not violate clearly established law—and to end indemnification—a practice in which government employers satisfy judgments against their employees.

This Article focuses instead on liability directly against municipalities and draws attention to a promising and underused avenue for recovery: the theory of municipal failure to supervise. It presents two original data sets—one including every municipal liability case decided in 2019, and the other including every case …

United States V. Vaello-Madero: A "Shameful" Failure To Protect Needy American Citizens Living In The U.S. Territories, Carolyn Fergus-Callahan

Denver Law Review Forum

No abstract provided.

Mahanoy Area School District V. B.L.: Keeping Off Campus Speech Off Limits, Matthew Knaster

Denver Law Review Forum

No abstract provided.

Municipal Liability: Tensions In The Tenth Circuit, Timothy M. Tymkovich

Denver Law Review

Municipal liability is important to parties but complicated to litigate, with multiple types of claims falling within the municipal liability realm. This Article is a roadmap for litigators and judges in municipal liability cases in the Tenth Circuit. It clarifies the pleading requirements and elements for various types of municipal liability claims. It also highlights some unresolved issues in municipal liability litigation and tensions within the Tenth Circuit and among the other circuits.

Purposivist Reasoning In Federal Civil Procedure, Lumen N. Mulligan, Emily Pennington

Denver Law Review

This invited Article both reviews the Tenth Circuit’s stance on the circuit split addressing repleading counterclaims in amended answers and observes broader interpretive-approach trends in Federal Rules of Civil Procedure cases. In Sinclair Wyoming Refining Co. v. A & B Builders, Ltd., the Tenth Circuit holds that, absent prejudice to the opposing party, the failure to replead a counterclaim in an amended answer does not constitute abandonment; thus, taking the so-called permissive side of a circuit split on this question. In so doing, the Tenth Circuit adopts a purposivist approach to interpretation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In …

Treatise Tactics, Amy J. Griffin

Denver Law Review

A judge’s choice of authority is generally governed only by the unwritten social norms of the judiciary, norms which do not exist in canonical textual form and thus are not always visible. Stare decisis norms, those that dictate which judicial opinions are binding on judges, are the subject of endless discussion while the norms that govern the use of non-binding (optional) authority receive little attention by comparison. The selection of optional authority is deemed relatively insignificant, guided by a vague set of tips that are not specifically grounded in theory or empirical data. I conducted an original study of published …

Tenth Circuit Database Project: 2021-2022 Yearbook, Pelecanos

Denver Law Review

This Note is the product of the Tenth Circuit Database Project, and it analyzes one year of Tenth Circuit data from April 2021 through March 2022. The Project uses two databases, including one that was specifically designed for Denver Law Review and the Tenth Circuit Database Project. The information is displayed using an unconventional approach. It is crafted as a yearbook that compares the Tenth Circuit to a high school. Although the presentation is playful, the Note is a nascent attempt at manipulating the data in a meaningful way. Ultimately, the Note finds several interesting trends in the data, including …

Abolishing Peremptory Challenges: A Fair Price To Pay For Just Jury Selection, Micheal Kilbourn

Denver Law Review

This Comment addresses the opportunity to abolish peremptory challenges in Colorado. A recap of the history of racism and inequality in the United States provides context for a discussion about the present state of this society in terms of fairness within our criminal legal system. This Comment discusses the widely recognized need for remediation of racial discrimination and bias rooted throughout the criminal punishment process but acutely exemplified by jury selection in that setting. An exploration of a recent attempt by the Supreme Court of Colorado’s Rules of Criminal Procedure Committee to catalyze a revision to the state’s Rule of …

People Ex Rel. K.C. V. K.C.: Icwa Is For All Native Children, Katelyn Elrod

Denver Law Review

In 1978, Congress enacted the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) to address a national issue—child welfare agencies were removing American Indian and Alaska Native children from their homes and placing them in non-Native homes at alarming rates. Systemic bias against Native cultures fueled these removals, which resulted in Native children being stripped of their identities and tribes struggling to pass on their histories and traditions with a dwindling number of Native children in the community. Under ICWA, however, courts must apply certain procedural safeguards in cases involving families with “Indian children.” In People ex rel. K.C. v. K.C., the Colorado …

Strategic Considerations For Going En Banc In The Tenth Circuit, Bobby R. Baldock, Joel M. Carson Iii, Bryston C. Gallegos

Denver Law Review

The vast majority of decisions of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit are rendered by a panel of three judges. But sometimes, all active members of the court, and any senior judge who was part of the original three-judge panel, will sit together to decide a particular issue. This process is called “en banc” review. Parties often ask the Tenth Circuit to “go en banc,” as it has been colloquially dubbed, but the court rarely entertains such requests. The substantial disparity between the total number of appeals in the Tenth Circuit each year, the number of en …

Reference Frames In Human Sensory, Motor, And Cognitive Processing, Dongcheng He

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Reference-frames, or coordinate systems, are used to express properties and relationships of objects in the environment. While the use of reference-frames is well understood in physical sciences, how the brain uses reference-frames remains a fundamental question. The goal of this dissertation is to reach a better understanding of reference-frames in human perceptual, motor, and cognitive processing. In the first project, we study reference-frames in perception and develop a model to explain the transition from egocentric (based on the observer) to exocentric (based outside the observer) reference-frames to account for the perception of relative motion. In a second project, we focus …

Small Gtpase Regulated Intracellular Protein Trafficking In Endothelium, Caitlin Francis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Intracellular protein trafficking is the movement of membrane-bound organelles to and from requisite locations within the cell. Small GTPases are a critical component to the spatiotemporal accuracy of intracellular trafficking pathways as they determine the specificity and direction of organelle transport. There exists over 150 small GTPases categorized into 5 sub-families and are employed across all cell types. Despite their universal expression and relevance to cellular function, small GTPases remain incompletely understood across tissue types. In various instances, the trafficking pathway of a particular Rab in one cell type may belong to a completely disparate pathway in another cell type. …

Moving From Theory To Practice: Examining Teaching Mathematics For Social Justice In An Elementary School Classroom, Krystal Giles

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Teaching mathematics for social justice is a distinctive approach to mathematics education that seeks to have students use mathematics to navigate their identities, understand their lived experiences, examine inequities, and become agents of change. Current research provides a rich explanation of what teaching mathematics for social justice entails. Still, there is a need for research that studies how to move from theory to practice. The purpose of this research study is to examine the experience of teaching mathematics for social justice within my fifth-grade mathematics classroom for myself and my students, analyze the extent to which students’ ethnic and academic …

The Impact Of Foreign Aid On Internal Stability: A Case Study Of Costa Rica And Venezuela, Sierra P. Tanner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the relationship between foreign aid and the internal stability of recipient countries. Foreign aid programs have been an important tool through which countries can receive support in development efforts. Through extensive case study and process tracing analysis of twelve foreign aid projects in Venezuela and Costa Rica, this thesis examines the question: Does foreign aid impact the internal stability of the recipient state? Although Costa Rica and Venezuela have different levels of internal stability, patterns emerge associating different types of aid projects with outcomes in both countries. The research finds that the impact of foreign aid on …

The Decision To Confess Falsely Twenty-Five Years Later: Windows And Walls In Empirical Psychological And Legal Scholarship, Richard A. Leo

Denver Law Review

No abstract provided.

Revisiting The Yellow Dog Contract Of Mandatory Arbitration: The Federal Arbitaration Act And Employment Rights Twenty-Five Years After Gilmer, Katherine Van Wezel Stone

Denver Law Review

No abstract provided.

The New Private Law Thirty Years After, Martha M. Ertman

Denver Law Review

No abstract provided.

Vol. 100, No. 3: Full Issue, Denver Law Review

Denver Law Review

No abstract provided.