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Physician Aid In Dying: Physician-Assisted Suicide As A Constitutionally Protected Liberty Interest Under The Nebraska Constitution, Emily Newcomb

Nebraska Law Review

“Every life is different from any that has gone before it, and so is every death.”1 Although advancements in technology and healthcare have saved and prolonged countless lives, there is one part of humanity that can never be fully cured: death. Death is not what it used to be—it is no longer normally a common, family communal, or even religious event.2 Modern dying takes place in a hospital while attached to machines that attempt to prolong life but seem to simultaneously take patients further and further away from dying with dignity. As these technologies that prolong life evolve, so do …

Reinterpreting The Ministerial Exception In Our Lady Of Guadalupe School V. Morrissey-Berru, Robert Drust

Nebraska Law Review

Employees enjoy protections under federal anti-discrimination statutes from adverse employment action or retaliation against them based on protected classes, such as disability, race, sex, and religion. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prevents discrimination in employment based on race, color, sex, national origin, or religion.1 It also creates an exemption for religious institutions to discriminate in employment based on religion.2 Unlike Title VII, other anti-discrimination statutes do not carry this religious exemption.3 As a result, courts have created methods for determining whether a religious institution is exempt from these statutes. One such way is the “ministerial exception” fashioned out …

Volume 101, Issue 4: Masthead & Contents

Nebraska Law Review

No abstract provided.

Integration Of Environmental Sustainability And Decision Making: Case Studies Of Civil Infrastructure, Sussan Moussavi

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Sustainable development is important in the planning and design of critical civil infrastructure systems. However, decision making related to these systems currently lacks meaningful sustainability considerations. To fill this gap, this research explores the life cycle impacts of wastewater and energy infrastructure using case studies, life cycle assessment methodologies, and stakeholder discussions. Environmental and economic impacts, which are more commonly quantified, as well as more difficult to quantify societal factors, are explored. The goal of this research is to help inform decision making and facilitate the consideration of the three pillars of sustainability (e.g., economic, environmental, and social) during the …

Intensification Differentially Affects The Delivery Of Multiple Ecosystem Services In Subtropical And Temperate Grasslands, Shishir Paudel, Nuria Gomez-Casanovas, Elizabeth H. Boughton, Samuel D. Chamberlain, Pradeep Wagle, Brekke L. Peterson, Rajen Bajgain, Patrick J. Starks, Jefferey Basara, Carl J. Bernacchi, Evan H. Delucia, Laura E. Goodman, Prasanna H. Gowda, Ryan Reuter, Jed P. Sparks, Hilary M. Swain, Xiangming Xiao, Jean L. Steiner

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

Intensification, the process of intensifying land management to enhance agricultural goods, results in “intensive” pastures that are planted with productive grasses and fertilized. These intensive pastures provide essential ecosystem services, including forage production for livestock. Understanding the synergies and tradeoffs of pasture intensification on the delivery of services across climatic regions is crucial to shape policies and incentives for better management of natural resources. Here, we investigated how grassland intensification affects key components of provisioning (forage productivity and quality), supporting (plant diversity) and regulating services (CO2 and CH4 fluxes) by comparing these services between intensive versus extensive pastures in subtropical …

Portfolio For Metr 180: Climate Change, Energy, And The Environment, Ross Dixon

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

METR 180 explores several global change topics: energy, technology, population, environment, and climate. When they finish METR 180, students should be have basic knowledge of the Earth system and how humans interact with it and they should be able to understand the scientific process, how scientists understand elements of the Earth system, and how this contrasts with skepticism of science. One major challenge of the course is that it is taken by a wide range of students with different backgrounds and different goals for taking the course. The goal of this portfolio is to continue to develop METR 180 to …

What’S “Controversial” About Esg? A Theory Of Compelled Commercial Speech Under The First Amendment, Sean J. Griffith

Nebraska Law Review

This Article uses the Securities and Exchange Commission’s SEC’s recent foray into Environmental, Social, and Governance ESG to illuminate ambiguities in First Amendment doctrine. Situating mandatory disclosure regulations within the compelled commercial speech paradigm, it identifies the doctrinal hinge as “controversy.” Rules compelling commercial speech receive deferential judicial review, provided they are purely factual and uncontroversial. The Article argues that this requirement operates as a pretext check, preventing regulators from exceeding the plausible limits of the consumer protection rationale.

Applied to securities regulation, the compelled commercial speech paradigm requires the SEC to justify disclosure mandates as a form of investor …

Subsurface Trespass: Private Remedies And Public Regulation, Joseph A. Schremmer

Nebraska Law Review

There is a growing literature examining when subsurface invasions from activities like tunneling, horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing, and waste disposal will constitute actionable subsurface trespasses. Liability for subsurface trespass has become an important question for many reasons, including that a significant climate-change technology, carbon dioxide sequestration, hinges on the ability to inject massive quantities of carbon dioxide underneath the land of many owners. To date, the subsurface trespass scholarship has paid relatively little attention to two topics downstream of liability: private remedies for trespassing subsurface activities.

This Article provides a high level accountof the role of, and relationship between, private …

Exclusionary Rules And Deterrence After Vega V. Tekoh: The Trend Toward A More Consistent Approach Across The Fourth And Fifth Amendments, Eugene R. Milhizer

Nebraska Law Review

The sound and fury of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions announced in the 2022 term obscured Vega v. Tekoh, in which the Court held that a violation of the Miranda rights warning and waiver requirements does not provide a basis for claiming a denial of rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. While Tekoh’s rejection of Miranda protections for § 1983 claims may ultimately prove to be significant, of far greater potential import is the Court’s rationale in support of its holding, which was premised on its assessment of the inadequacy of deterrent benefits that would be obtained by allowing …

Rethinking The Status And Temporal Occurrence Of The American Woodcock In Nebraska Because Of Its Unusual Life History, Joel G. Jorgensen, Stephen J. Brenner

Nebraska Bird Review

Historical distribution and range expansion -- We reviewed existing information to evaluate conclusions by previous authors (e.g., Sharpe et al. 2001, Silcock and Jorgensen 2023) that woodcock have expanded their range west since settlement of Nebraska by Euro-Americans. We also provide additional context about the species’ distribution over time using regional resources.

Temporal occurrence and abundance -- We used data from woodcock outfitted with satellite transmitters 2021-2022 and compared it with occurrence data from two sources, eBird (eBird.org 2023) from all years through 2022 and the SFRs in the Nebraska Bird Review 1994–2019. We chose not to use SFR data …

Inventory, Operations, And Safety At Free Right-Turn Ramps, Aemal Khattak, Jonathon Camezind, Mm Shakui Haque

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

This research focused on traffic safety and operational performance of rural, minor approach stop-controlled intersections with free right-turn (FRT) ramps. The objectives of the research were to:

• Create a statewide inventory of rural FRT ramp intersections and provide to the Nebraska Department of Transportation (NDOT),
• Using NDOT 10-year crash data, conduct statistical safety analysis of rural FRT intersections extending ¼-mile in each direction from the intersection,
• Study vehicular operations at rural intersections with and without FRT ramps including a comparison of vehicular conflicts, and
• Develop guidelines for operations and safety tradeoffs to assist with NDOT projects on maintaining similar locations, …

Bola3 And Nfu1 Link Mitoribosome Iron-Sulfur Cluster Assembly To Multiple Mitochondrial Dysfunctions Syndrome, Hui Zhong, Alexandre Janer, Oleh Khalimonchuk, Hana Antonicka, Eric Shoubridge, Antoni Barrientos

Department of Biochemistry: Faculty Publications

The human mitochondrial ribosome contains three [2Fe-2S] clusters whose assembly pathway, role, and implications for mitochondrial and metabolic diseases are unknown. Here, structure-function correlation studies show that the clusters play a structural role during mitoribosome assembly. To uncover the assembly pathway, we have examined the effect of silencing the expression of Fe-S cluster biosynthetic and delivery factors on mitoribosome stability. We find that the mitoribosome receives its [2Fe-2S] clusters from the GLRX5-BOLA3 node. Additionally, the assembly of the small subunit depends on the mitoribosome biogenesis factor METTL17, recently reported containing a [4Fe-4S] cluster, which we propose is inserted via the …

Toward Automated Irrigation Management With Integrated Crop Water Stress Index And Spatial Soil Water Balance, Sandeep Bhatti, Derek M. Heeren, Susan A. O’Shaughnessy, Christopher M. U. Neale, Jacob Larue, Steve Melvin, Eric Wilkening, Geng Bai

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Decision support systems intended for precision irrigation aim at reducing irrigation applications while optimizing crop yield to achieve maximum crop water productivity (CWP). These systems incorporate on-site sensor data, remote sensing inputs, and advanced algorithms with spatial and temporal characteristics to compute precise crop water needs. The availability of variable rate irrigation (VRI) systems enables irrigation applications at a sub-field scale. The combination of an appropriate VRI system along with a precise decision support system would be ideal for improved CWP. The objective of this study was to compare and evaluate two decision support systems in terms of seasonal applied …

Toward Automated Irrigation Management With Integrated Crop Water Stress Index And Spatial Soil Water Balance, Sandeep Bhatti, Derek M. Heeren, Susan A. O’Shaughnessy, Christopher M. U. Neale, Jacob Larue, Steve Melvin, Eric Wilkening, Geng Bai

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Decision support systems intended for precision irrigation aim at reducing irrigation applications while optimizing crop yield to achieve maximum crop water productivity (CWP). These systems incorporate on-site sensor data, remote sensing inputs, and advanced algorithms with spatial and temporal characteristics to compute precise crop water needs. The availability of variable rate irrigation (VRI) systems enables irrigation applications at a sub-field scale. The combination of an appropriate VRI system along with a precise decision support system would be ideal for improved CWP. The objective of this study was to compare and evaluate two decision support systems in terms of seasonal applied …

Exploring The Intersection Of Biology And Design For Product Innovations, Ajay P. Malshe, Salil Bapat, Kamlakar Rajurkar, Ang Ang, Jean-Marc Linares

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

Design, development, productization, and applications of advanced product concepts are pressing for higher multifunctionality, resilience, and maximization of available resources equitably to meet the growing and continuing demands of global customers. These demands have further accelerated during the recent COVID- 19 pandemic and are continuing to be a challenge. Engineering designs are one of the most effective ways to endow products with functions, resilience, and sustainability. Biology, through millions of years of evolution, has met these acute requirements under severe resource and environmental constraints. As the manufacturing of products is reaching the fundamental limits of raw materials, labor, and resource …

Emotional Responses To Covid-19 Stressors Increase Information Avoidance About An Important Unrelated Health Threat, Christopher Gustafson, Kate Brooks, Syed Imran Ali Meerza, Amalia Yiannaka

Department of Agricultural Economics: Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic, like other crises, has had direct and indirect impacts on individuals, many of which have been negative. While a large body of research has examined the impacts of COVID-19 on people’s lives, there is little evidence about how COVID-19 affects decision-making broadly. Emotional responses to COVID-19-related stressors, such as illness and income loss, provide a pathway for these stressors to affect decision-making. In this study, we examine linkages between exposure to COVID-19-related stressors—focusing on temporally specific local case counts and loss of income due to the pandemic—and decisions to access information about antimicrobial resistance (AMR), another critically …

Feral Swine As Indirect Indicators Of Environmental Anthrax Contamination And Potential Mechanical Vectors Of Infectious Spores, Rachel M. Maison, Maggie R. Priore, Vienna R. Brown, Michael Bodenchuk, Bradley R. Borlee, Richard Bowen, Angela M. Bosco-Lauth

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

U.S. government work

Audio-Technica Strategic Audit, Caleb Druckemiller

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Audio-Technica is a multinational audio equipment design and manufacturing company specializing in the production of headphones, microphones, and turntables. The company has been a gold standard for professional use since its inception and has recently ventured into consumer markets. Using both internal and external analysis tools, this audit aims to evaluate how Audio-Technica has established itself in the highly competitive audio equipment industry. Specific techniques include Porter’s Five Forces and PESTEL analyses. After conducting this examination of Audio-Techinca and its industry environment, strategic recommendations will be made to best position the company moving forward.

Union Pacific Railroad Company Strategic Audit, Alison Steger

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Union Pacific Railroad Company (Union Pacific, UP, UPRR) is a freight railroad based in Omaha, Nebraska, servicing 23 states in America, with additional ports and country interchanges. The 160-year history of this railroad began with Abraham Lincoln and continues into 2023, with the recent announcement of CEO Lance Fritz’s departure. A PESTEL analysis provides an in-depth look at UP's external operating environment, and Porter’s Five Forces industry analysis assesses the industry's competitive environment. Analyses of Union Pacific's competitive advantages, essential resources, and projected roadblocks are followed by strategic recommendations for UP to remain a Class I freight railroad industry leader.

Translanguaging In World Language Higher Education, Alessia Barbici Wagner

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

Increased global migration and a myriad of other social and political factors has made today’s universities more diverse than ever. As a result, teachers in higher education regularly find multilingual learners from a variety of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds in their classrooms and must consider this diversity in their teaching. One of the ways that teaching can better serve today’s multilingual and multicultural student population is through translanguaging. The objective of this dissertation is to investigate the intentional and unintentional use of translanguaging by multilingual language learners and world language instructors in higher education. Additionally, this qualitative case study …

A Novel Graph Neural Network-Based Framework For Automatic Modulation Classification In Mobile Environments, Pejman Ghasemzadeh

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Automatic modulation classification (AMC) refers to a signal processing procedure through which the modulation type and order of an observed signal are identified without any prior information about the communications setup. AMC has been recognized as one of the essential measures in various communications research fields such as intelligent modem design, spectrum sensing and management, and threat detection. The research literature in AMC is limited to accounting only for the noise that affects the received signal, which makes their models applicable for stationary environments. However, a more practical and real-world application of AMC can be found in mobile environments where …

Rehybridization Dynamics Into The Pericyclic Minimum Of An Electrocyclic Reaction Imaged In Real-Time, Y. Liu, D. M. Sanchez, M. R. Ware, E. G. Champenois, J. Yang, J. P. F. Nunes, A. Attar, Martin Centurion, J. P. Cryan, R. Forbes, K. Hegazy, M. C. Hoffmann, F. Ji, M.-F. Lin, D. Luo, S. K. Saha, X. Shen, X. J. Wang, T. J. Martínez, T. J. A. Wolf

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Faculty Publications

Electrocyclic reactions are characterized by the concerted formation and cleavage of both σ and π bonds through a cyclic structure. This structure is known as a pericyclic transition state for thermal reactions and a pericyclic minimum in the excited state for photochemical reactions. However, the structure of the pericyclic geometry has yet to be observed experimentally.We use a combination of ultrafast electron diffraction and excited state wavepacket simulations to image structural dynamics through the pericyclic minimum of a photochemical electrocyclic ring-opening reaction in the molecule α-terpinene. The structural motion into the pericyclic minimum is dominated by rehybridization of two carbon …

Measuring Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion, Quality Improvement Center For Workforce Development

Workforce Analytics Resources

What is Diversity?

Diversity refers to the degree of differences in the composition of the workforce in terms of such constructs as race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, religion, disability, age, national origin, language, or other social identities. Though there are certainly other types of employee differences worth assessing (e.g., acquired diversity characteristics, such as education, skills, personality, preferences, attitudes), the focus here is on inherent social identities, especially those that are related to differences in representation, power, and privilege. Note that diversity is a characteristic of a group, not an individual.

How is Diversity Measured?

To …

Disrupting Routine: The Expansion Of Precedent, Olena Yarmolyuk, Olena Yarmolyuk

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

Iconic architecture has presented a preferential nature to the establishment of architectural work. Academically, only the architectural a-side is presented to students. It is used as a means to develop, measure, and identify good work. Meanwhile, the architectural B-side is deliberately hidden away and censored by the profession. It exploits the perverse - displaying all of architecture’s failures, glitches, and anomalies.1 However, the notion of the a and b sides also presents problematic consequences. Prescribing architecture as either a or b side is problematic - it creates a divide between iconic architecture and all the other works deemed ‘insignificant’. Even …

Pathways From Individual Characteristics To Subjective Consequences Of Sex: The Mediating Role Of Risky Sexual Encounters, Lisa Crockett, Kristin L. Moilanen, Meredith L. Cartwright

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Objectives: This study examined associations between young adults’ psychological characteristics and psychosocial consequences of sex, and whether risky sexual encounters mediated these associations.

Methods: College students (N=265; M_age=19.49) completed questionnaires concerning risky sexual relationships, behaviors, situations, and psychosocial consequences during their most recent encounter and over the last year.

Results: Sexual restraint indirectly predicted positive consequences of the most recent encounter via risky sexual behaviors. Sexual restraint and permissiveness predicted positive and negative consequences over the past year via risky relationships.

Conclusions: Psychological characteristics may influence the likelihood of risky sexual encounters, thereby influencing consequences.

Includes supplemental Table …

Hybrid Allele‑Specific Chip‑Seq Analysis Identifies Variation In Brassinosteroid‑Responsive Transcription Factor Binding Linked To Traits In Maize, Thomas Hartwig, Michael Banf, Gisele Passaia Prietsch, Jia‑Ying Zhu, Isabel Mora‑Ramírez, Jos H. M. Schippers, Samantha J. Snodgrass, Arun S. Seetharam, Bruno Huettel, Judith M. Kolkman, Jiashi Yang, Julia Engelhorn, Zhi‑Yong Wang

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Background: Genetic variation in regulatory sequences that alter transcription factor (TF) binding is a major cause of phenotypic diversity. Brassinosteroid is a growth hormone that has major effects on plant phenotypes. Genetic variation in brassinosteroidresponsive cis-elements likely contributes to trait variation. Pinpointing such regulatory variations and quantitative genomic analysis of the variation in TF-target binding, however, remains challenging. How variation in transcriptional targets of signaling pathways such as the brassinosteroid pathway contributes to phenotypic variation is an important question to be investigated with innovative approaches.

Results: Here, we use a hybrid allele-specific chromatin binding sequencing (HASChseq) approach and …

Macro And Micro-Nutrient Accumulation And Partitioning In Soybean Affected By Water And Nitrogen Supply, Ingrid Silva Setubal, Aderson Soares De Andrade Júnior, Silvestre Paulino Da Silva, Artenisa Cerqueira Rodrigues, Aurenívia Bonifácio, Evandro Henrique Figueiredo Moura Da Silva, Paulo Fernando De Melo Jorge Vieira, Rafael De Souza Miranda, Nicolas Cafaro La Menza, Henrique Antunes De Souza

West Central Research and Extension Center, North Platte

This study aimed to investigate the influence of water availability and nitrogen fertilization on plant growth, nutrient dynamics, and variables related to soybean crop yield. Trials were performed in Teresina, Piauí, Brazil, using randomized blocks in a split-split plot arrangement. The plots corresponded to water regimes (full and deficient), the split plots to N fertilization (0 and 1000 kg ha^-1 N-urea), and the split-split plots to harvest times of soybean plants (16, 23, 30, 37, 44, 58, 65, 79 and 86 days after emergence), with three replicates. In general, the accumulation and partitioning of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium …

Implicit Leadership Theories In The Performing Arts, Alison Gillespie

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Within the performing arts industry, the social and financial consequences of leadership failure have proven costly. Additionally, the industry is still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic’s disruption of standard operating procedures. Furthermore, leadership scholarship in the arts indicates that performing arts leaders are challenged by the need to balance artistry with administrative ability in their work (Secore, 2016).

As the performing arts industry endeavors to recover post-pandemic and to prevent future leadership failure, this study seeks to answer the question “what leadership expectations are held by those involved with the performing arts?” To answer this question, summative qualitative content analysis …

The Impacts Of Local Property Taxes On Nebraska's State Legislator Elections And State Legislator Voting, Taylor Gold

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Throughout Nebraska’s history, concerns about the state’s property tax policy are one of, if not the most, discussed policy issues. Despite Nebraska’s emphasis on local fiscal control, state-level policy reforms shape the state’s property tax landscape. This seemingly contradictory emphasis on providing a state-level solution to a local policy problem leads this study to ask whether state legislative officials are held electorally accountable for legislative actions on local property tax and whether they are directly held accountable for changes in local property taxes. This study investigates this potential relationship through novel data collection on Nebraska’s state legislator elections, legislative actions, …

Unobtrusive Data Collection In Clinical Settings For Advanced Patient Monitoring And Machine Learning, Walker Arce

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

When applying machine learning to clinical practice, a major hurdle that will be encountered is the lack of available data. While the data collected in clinical therapies is suitable for the types of analysis that are needed to measure and track clinical outcomes, it may not be suitable for other types of analysis. For instance, video data may have poor alignment with behavioral data, making it impossible to extract the videos frames that directly correlate with the observed behavior. Alternatively, clinicians may be exploring new data modalities, such as physiological signal collection, to research methods of improving clinical outcomes that …