Digital Commons Network^™

Commensality And Connection: How Shared Food Experiences Connect Characters In Philip Pullmans His Dark Materials, The Book Of Dust And ‘Lyra’ Stories, Susan Anna Grace

Articles

Commensality is an inherently social activity that shapes society and enacts social dynamics. Consequently, these shared exchanges can reveal much about the society and the individuals who engage in the act. This thesis explores commensality in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, The Book of Dust Series and companion texts to the novels. The research investigates how commensal exchanges create and maintain connections between characters across the collection. In doing so, it considers how literary characters differ from real-life humans and how the existing body of knowledge on commensality can be applied to literary figures. A qualitative approach was …

Theory Of The Nudnik: The Future Of Consumer Activism And What We Can Do To Stop It, Yonathan A. Arbel, Roy Shapira

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How do consumers hold sellers accountable and enforce market norms? This Article contributes to our understanding of consumer markets in three ways. First, the Article identifies the role of a small subset of consumers-the titular "nudniks"-as engines of market discipline. Nudniks are those who call to complain, speak with managers, post online reviews, and file lawsuits. Typified by an idiosyncratic utility function and certain unique personality traits, nudniks pursue action where most consumers remain passive. Although derided in courtrooms and the court of public opinion, we show that nudniks can solve consumer collective action problems, leading to broad market improvements. …

Pollution Prevention Via Recovery Of Cerium (Iv) Oxide In Optics Company, Eugene Park, William Gallagher, Sydor Optics, Flint Creek Resources

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Pollution prevention methods were applied at an optics manufacturer in an effort to improve recovery of a valuable polishing component, cerium oxide (ceria), 77% of which was lost to dragout and sewer discharge. Centrifugation and microfiltratiion were evaluated to develop a process that would increase recovery of used ceria, which would then be sent back to the ceria supplier for reclamation and reuse. Full-scale implementation included a high-speed centrifuge that operates continuously with a microfiltration system through recirculation in a single process tank. Sydor Optics has improved ceria recovery from 23% to 48%, saving thousands of dollars annually.

Undergraduate Textbook Representations Of Meiosis Neglect Essential Elements, Leslie Kate Wright, Grace Elizabeth C. Dy, Dina L. Newman

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The process of meiosis is an essential topic that secondary and postsecondary students struggle with. The important meiosis-related concepts of homology, ploidy, and segregation can be described using the DNA Triangle framework, which connects them to the multidimensional nature of DNA (chromosomal, molecular, and informational levels). We have previously established that undergraduate biology students typically fail to describe and/or link appropriate levels to their explanations of meiosis. We hypothesize that students' understanding mirrors the resources they are given – in other words, textbook figures often lack many of the important connections that experts include when talking about meiosis. Prior work …

Missing In Action: The International Crime Of The Slave Trade, Patricia Viseur Sellers, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum

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The slave trade prohibition is among the first recognized and least prosecuted international crimes. Deftly codified in, inter alia, the 1926 Slavery Convention, the 1956 Supplementary Convention, Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions (AP II), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the norm against the slave trade — the precursor to slavery — stands as a peremptory norm, a crime under customary international law, a humanitarian law prohibition and a non-derogable human right. Acts of the slave trade remain prevalent in armed conflicts, including those committed under the Islamic State …

Nonlinear Photon Pair Generation In A Highly Dispersive Medium, David J. Starling, Jacob Poirier, Michael Fanto, Jeffrey A. Steidle, Christopher C. Tison, Gregory A. Howland, Stefan F. Preble

Articles

Photon pair generation in silicon photonic integrated circuits relies on four wave mixing via the third order nonlinearity. Due to phase matching requirements and group velocity dispersion, this method has typically required TE polarized light. Here, we demonstrate TM polarized photon pair production in linearly uncoupled silicon resonators with more than an order of magnitude more dispersion than previous work. We achieve measured rates above 2.8 kHz and a heralded second order correlation of . This method enables phase matching in dispersive media and paves the way for novel entanglement generation in silicon photonic devices

"With Age Comes Wisdom:" A Qualitative Review Of Elder Perspectives On Healthy Aging In The Circumpolar North., Britteny M. Howell, Jennifer R. Peterson

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No abstract provided.

3d Mammalian Cell Culture Models In Toxicology Testing, Janith Wanigasekara, Brijesh K. Tiwari, James Curtin

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3D cell culture can be successfully used as an alternative to laboratory animals, and as a cost effective and time-saving tissue culture technique, which also reduces the trial period for drug testing.

The Application Of Evolutionary Algorithms In Multi-Objective Design And Optimization Of Air Cooled Heatsinks, Younis Osama Abdelsalam, Sajad Alimohammadi, Tim Persoons

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Genetic algorithms (GAs) are considered to be one of the main types of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) and are being increasingly used in various engineering design applications. To a large extent, plate-fin heatsinks are used in the thermal management of compact electronic equipment and data centers. The shape optimization of the heatsinks is not rigorously investigated during the design process of high power electronics. Any improvements in the effectiveness of the heatsinks impact the energy consumed by large-scale information communication technology (ICT) facilities including data centers and telecommunication systems and promote a more sustainable use of raw materials. This paper investigates …

Smart Cities At Play: Technology And Emerging Forms Of Playfulness, Konstantinos Papangelis, Michael Saker, Catherine Jones

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Editorial. No abstract is available.

Fraying The Knot: Marital Property, Probate, And Practical Problems With Tribal Bans, Suzianne D. Painter-Thorne

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In the summer of 2015, marriage equality advocates celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which struck down state prohibitions on same-sex marriage.The Court found that “[t]he right of same-sex couples to marry . . . is part of the liberty promised by the Fourteenth Amendment.” Two years earlier, the Court had struck down parts of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), finding that the federal government could not discriminate against same-sex married partners. With these two decisions, the Court ensured that the marriages of same-sex couples would be recognized by the federal government and in …

Who’S Afraid Of Uber?, Jeremy Kidd

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Ride-sharing has disrupted the transportation-for-hire industry, breaking down barriers to entry that have protected entrenched incumbents for decades. The disruption has led to calls for increased regulation, along with criticisms about the effect of innovation on consumer safety, market stability, rule of law, and other areas. That disruption, however, has also led to tremendous benefits to consumers as they are freed from a regulatory regime that limited their transportation choices and forced them to pay higher prices for lower quality service. The same type of disruptive innovation is upon us in almost every area of our economy. How we deal …

The Effects Of Anti-Immigrant Laws In The U.S. On Victims Of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, And Human Trafficking: A Gender-Based Human Rights Analysis, Caroline Bettinger-López, Jamila Flomo, Amanda Suarez

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No abstract provided.

The Free Sea: The American Fight For Freedom Of Navigation, Bernard H. Oxman

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No abstract provided.

Lumping, Fairness, And Single People, Michael C. Pollack

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This essay explores the distributional impact that three forms of lumping have on single people without children: seat-assignment and seat-bargaining on public transportation, work-hour allocation, and single-family zoning. The first two involve lumps pursued by individuals outside of any legal regime; the last involves lumping by law. In all three, I submit, we tend to choose to devalue—or perhaps do not even perceive—the costs faced by the single person, and to assign relatively juiced-up value to the costs faced by those with families. The result in these arenas is that both society and law routinely externalize (hidden) costs onto single …

Corporate Law And The Myth Of Efficient Market Control, William Wilson Bratton, Simone M. Sepe

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In recent times, there has been an unprecedented shift in power from managers to shareholders, a shift that realizes the long-held theoretical aspiration of market control of the corporation. This Article subjects the market control paradigm to comprehensive economic examination and finds it wanting.

The market control paradigm relies on a narrow economic model that focuses on one problem only: management agency costs. With the rise of shareholder power, we need a wider lens that also takes in market prices, investor incentives, and information asymmetries. General equilibrium (GE) theory provides that lens. Several lessons follow from reference to this higher-order …

Capturing The City’S Heritage On-The-Go: Design Requirements For Mobile Crowdsourced Cultural Heritage, Bas Hannewijk, Federica Lucia Vinella, Vassilis-Javed Khan, Ioanna Lykourentzou, Konstantinos Papangelis, Judith Masthoff

Articles

Intangible Cultural Heritage is at a continuous risk of extinction. Where historical artefacts engine the machinery of intercontinental mass-tourism, socio-technical changes are reshaping the anthropomorphic landscapes everywhere on the globe, at an unprecedented rate. There is an increasing urge to tap into the hidden semantics and the anecdotes surrounding people, memories and places. The vast cultural knowledge made of testimony, oral history and traditions constitutes a rich cultural ontology tying together human beings, times, and situations. Altogether, these complex, multidimensional features make the task of data-mapping of intangible cultural heritage a problem of sustainability and preservation. This paper addresses a …

Phenology-Dependent Cold Exposure And Thermal Performance Of Ostrinia Nubilalis Ecotypes, Crista B. Wadsworth, Yuta Okada, Erik B. Dopman

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Background Understanding adaptation involves establishing connections between selective agents and beneficial population responses. However, relatively little attention has been paid to seasonal adaptation, in part, because it requires complex and integrative knowledge about seasonally fluctuating environmental factors, the effects of variable phenology on exposure to those factors, and evidence for temporal specialization. In the European corn borer moth, Ostrinia nubilalis, sympatric pheromone strains exploit the same host plant (Zea mays) but may genetically differ in phenology and be reproductively “isolated by time.” Z strain populations in eastern North America have been shown to have a prolonged larval diapause and produce …

Sport Diplomacy And Uk Soft Power: The Case Of Mount Everest, Richard Woodward

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Sport is widely acknowledged as an important contributor to the United Kingdom’s soft power resources. This article aims to broaden and deepen our understanding of sport and soft power in the United Kingdom through a case study of British expeditions to, and the eventual conquest of, Mount Everest. Based on original archival research, the article demonstrates that British state institutions intervened systematically and strategically to expedite, and massage the story of, the ascent of Everest to burnish British prestige and present a favourable image to the world. In doing so, the article provides evidence that sport has been intrinsic to …

Rapid Inference Of Antibiotic Resistance And Susceptibility By Genomic Neighbour Typing, Karel Břinda, Alanna Callendrello, Kevin C. Ma, Derek R. Macfadden, Themoula Charalampous, Robyn S. Lee, Lauren Cowley, Crista B. Wadsworth, Yonatan H. Grad, Gregory Kucherov, Justin O'Grady, Michael Baym, William P. Hanage

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Surveillance of drug-resistant bacteria is essential for healthcare providers to deliver effective empirical antibiotic therapy. However, traditional molecular epidemiology does not typically occur on a timescale that could affect patient treatment and outcomes. Here, we present a method called ‘genomic neighbour typing’ for inferring the phenotype of a bacterial sample by identifying its closest relatives in a database of genomes with metadata. We show that this technique can infer antibiotic susceptibility and resistance for both Streptococcus pneumoniae and Neisseria gonorrhoeae. We implemented this with rapid k-mer matching, which, when used on Oxford Nanopore MinION data, can run in real time. …

Designing And Enforcing Preliminary Agreements, Albert H. Choi, George Triantis

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Preliminary agreements—variously labeled as memoranda of understanding, letters of intent, term sheets, commitment letters, or agreements in principle—are common in complex business transactions. They document an incomplete set of terms that the parties have agreed upon, while anticipating further negotiation of the remaining provisions. They often create legal obligations, particularly a duty to negotiate in good faith. This duty has been the subject of a substantial number of judicial opinions over the past few decades and yet continues to be regarded as a confusing and unpredictable issue in contract law. Legal scholarship is hamstrung in its analysis of the case …

Olmstead V. L.C.: The Supreme Court Case, Samuel R. Bagenstos, Irv Gornstein, Michael Gottesman, Jennifer Mathis

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You have an incredible luxury here at Georgetown Law. You have faculty who are engaged in the world like two of my colleagues on this panel. To my immediate left is Professor Michael Gottesman (Georgetown University Law Center) who argued the case on behalf of Lois and Elaine, and to my next far left, Professor Irv Gornstein (Georgetown University Law Center) who argued the case on behalf of the United States. Between them is Jennifer Mathis (The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law) who has spent, I think, most of her career at the Bazelon Center litigating, and organizing, and …

The New Qui Tam: A Model For The Enforcement Of Group Rights In A Hostile Era, Myriam E. Gilles, Gary Friedman

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The present Administration has made clear it has no interest in enforcing statutes designed to protect workers, consumers, voters, and others. And, as we have chronicled in prior work, the ability of private litigants to enforce these laws has been undercut by developments in the case law concerning class actions—particularly class-banning arbitration clauses. As these critical enforcement methods recede, will alternative methods of prosecuting claims arise? How might they work? Are they politically and fiscally sustainable? We focus here on a promising approach just now coming into view: qui tam legislation authorizing private citizens to bring representative claims on behalf …

Smart Routing: Towards Proactive Fault Handling Of Software-Defined Networks, Ali Malik, Benjamin Aziz, Mo Adda, Chih-Heng Ke

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In recent years, the emerging paradigm of software-defined networking has become a hot and thriving topic in both the industrial and academic sectors. Software-defined networking offers numerous benefits against legacy networking systems by simplifying the process of network management through reducing the cost of network configurations. Currently, data plane fault management is limited to two mechanisms: proactive and reactive. These fault management and recovery techniques are activated only after a failure occurrence and hence packet loss is highly likely to occur. This is due to convergence time where new network paths will need to be allocated in order to …

In Their Shoes: A Structured Analysis Of Job Demands, Resources, Work Experiences, And Platform Commitment Of Crowdworkers In China, Yihong Wang, Konstantinos Papangelis, Ioanna Lykourentzou, Hai-Ning Liang, Irwyn Sadien, Evangelia Demerouti, Vassilis-Javed Khan

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Despite the growing interest in crowdsourcing, this new labor model has recently received severe criticism. The most important point of this criticism is that crowdworkers are often underpaid and overworked. This severely affects job satisfaction and productivity. Although there is a growing body of evidence exploring the work experiences of crowdworkers in various countries, there have been a very limited number of studies to the best of our knowledge exploring the work experiences of Chinese crowdworkers. In this paper we aim to address this gap. Based on a framework of well-established approaches, namely the Job Demands-Resources model, the Work Design …

Delivering Gender Justice In Academia Through Gender Equality Plans? Normative And Practical Challenges, Sara Clavero, Yvonne Galligan

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This paper employs the concept of epistemic justice to examine the potential for gender equality plans (GEPs) to bring about sustainable transformative change towardsgender equality in higher education. Mindful of both the limitationsand opportunitiesof gender policy interventions,the paper highlights the importance of approaching gender inequality as a problem of justice and power rather than asan issueof “loss of talent.”The paper drawson Fricker's account of epistemic justice as well ason Bourdieu's analysis of power in the academic field, to evaluate seven GEPs in European universities for their potential to transform gender–power relations in academia.

Analysing Gender And Institutional Change In Academia: Evaluating The Utility Of Feminist Institutionalist Approaches, Sara Clavero, Yvonne Galligan

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This article explores research on gender and institutions for the purposes of informing analytical frameworks for research on institutional change with regard to gender equality in higher education. Drawing on feminist institutionalist studies that explore the relationship between gender, institutions and institutional continuity and change, the aim is to evaluate how this body of scholarship can be adapted to an analysis of the dynamics of gender equality plan implementation in universities.

A Validation Study For A New Erosion Model To Predict Erosive Airfoil Defouling, Arthur Rudek, David Muckenhaupt, Thomas Zitzmann, Gerald Russ, Barry Duignan

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A new defouling erosion model for Lagrangian particle tracking is used to predict defouling of amor-phous, heterogeneous coatings such as those typically found in aircraft compressors. The main problem description, the mathematical formulation and the underpinning experiment of the model are presented in a previous communication by the authors. In this work, the Ansys CFX implementation of the model is described and an experiment is presented for the validation of the model. Air flows laden with a number of dry-ice particles are observed in an optically accessible stream channel containing a flat plate target. The defouling process of these particles …

Opinion-Mining On Marglish And Devanagari Comments Of Youtube Cookery Channels Using Parametric And Non-Parametric Learning Models, Sonali Shah, Abhishek Kaushik, Shubham Sharma, Janice Shah

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No abstract provided.

A Conceptual Framework For Digital Civics Pedagogy Informed By The Philosophy Of Information, Estelle Clements

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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to draw on the philosophy of information, specifically the work of Luciano Floridi, to argue that digital civics must fully comprehend the implications of the digital environment, and consequently an informational ontology, to deliver to students an education that will prepare them for full participation as citizens in the infosphere.

Design/methodology/approach – Introducing this philosophy for use in education, the research discusses the ethical implications of ontological change in the digital age; informational organisms and their interconnectivity; and concepts of agency, both organic and artificial in digitally mediated civic interactions and civic …