Digital Commons Network^™

Do Sex Offender Registration And Notification Laws Affect Criminal Behavior?, J. J. Prescott, Jonah E. Rockoff

Articles

Sex offenders have become the targets of some of the most far-reaching and novel crime legislation in the U.S. Two key innovations in recent decades have been registration and notification laws which, respectively, require that convicted sex offenders provide valid contact information to law enforcement authorities, and that information about sex offenders be made public. Using the evolution of state law during the 1990s and 2000s, we study how registration and notification affect the frequency of reported sex offenses and the incidence of such offenses across victims. We find evidence that registration reduces the frequency of sex offenses by providing …

Citizens United And The Corporate Form, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In Citizens United vs. FEC, the Supreme Court struck down a Federal statute banning direct corporate expenditures on political campaigns. The decision has been widely criticized and praised as a matter of First Amendment law. But it is also interesting as another step in the evolution of our legal views of the corporation. This article argues that by viewing Citizens United through the prism of theories about the corporate form, it is possible to see that the majority and the dissent departed from previous Supreme Court jurisprudence on the First Amendment rights of corporations. It is also possible to then …

Losing It, William I. Miller

Articles

You are in your sixties, even fifties, and you are walking by a shop window, or in some area in which a security monitor shows a scan of the line you are in. You sneak a look. You see someone in the space where you should be but you do not recognize the interloper. Then, after an unseemly lag of a second or two you are forced to remake your own acquaintance; it seems you no longer know yourself at first sight. The you behind your eyes believes you look like you did twenty years ago, and it assumes that …

The Price Of Pay To Play In Securities Class Actions, Adam C. Pritchard, Stephen J. Choi, Drew T. Johnson-Skinner

Articles

We study the effect of campaign contributions to lead plaintiffs—“pay to play”—on the level of attorney fees in securities class actions. We find that state pension funds generally pay lower attorney fees when they serve as lead plaintiffs in securities class actions than do individual investors serving in that capacity, and larger funds negotiate for lower fees. This differential disappears, however, when we control for campaign contributions made to offcials with infuence over state pension funds. This effect is most pronounced when we focus on state pension funds that receive the largest campaign contributions and that associate repeatedly as lead …

Formation Of Infrared Windows Of Transparency In One-Dimensional Silicon Photonic Crystals, Anna Baldycheva, Vladmir A; Tolmachev, Tatiana S. Perova, Kevin Berwick

Articles

The optical properties of three-component one-dimensional photonic crystal (1-D PC) structures were investigated by modeling them as two-component PCs with an additional regular t-layer, using the gap map approach and the transfer matrix method. Numerical results demonstrate that the introduction of the t-layer affects the properties of the high-order photonic band gaps, replacing them with transmission bands and creating regions of transparency over certain wavelength ranges. For the first time, a map of the transmission bands for a three-component 1-D PC was generated. This map constitutes a unique design tool for infrared optical filters for silicon-based photonic integrated …

Using An Adaptive Scenarios Approach To Establish Strategies For Tomorrow’S Workplace, Ruth Saurin, John Radcliffe

Articles

This paper aims to demonstrate that it is important to have a methodological process that is reflexive and flexible to achieve fluid interactions that add rigour and energy to the overall process of a built environment project. Therefore, it outlines three phases of the Prospective Through Scenarios futures process used in a study called the “Workplace of the Future”. It also discusses how and why the methodology evolved during the course of the project with participant feedback as the main source of information for the analysis. Furthermore, novel qualitative futures techniques have been applied to a discipline that is usually …

Geolearn - Multi-Media Resources, Audrey Martin

Articles

This paper examines the potential of pedagogically designed video demonstrations in supporting the learning requirements of students in the Spatial Information Sciences (DSIS). Currently, over three hundred full and part-time students in the College of Engineering and Built Environment undertake a module in Land Surveying each semester and although these students range in discipline and academic level (NQAI 6 - 8), they all share a need for basic information and instruction in the area of practical land-surveying techniques. To accommodate this highly practical subject area, fifty per cent of contact time is normally dedicated to group-based field exercises, the results …

Perspective: Massachusetts' Health Care Reform And Emergency Department Utilization, Christopher Chen, Gabriel Scheffler, Amitabh Chandra

Articles

No abstract provided.

Transparency Is The New Opacity: Constructing Final Regulation After The Crisis, Caroline Bradley

Articles

No abstract provided.

Alabama's Water Crisis Essay: Alabama Legal Issues Series, Heather Elliott

Articles

Alabama faces a major and expanding water crisis. Population growth and economic development are putting more pressure on water resources already strained by recent droughts, and such droughts are likely to become more frequent and more severe in the future. Disputes with neighboring states over shared water resources threaten Alabama's use of interstate waters to meet future needs. And Alabama's current legal regime is wholly inadequate to meet these challenges. The failures of Alabama's state water law could be corrected with one statute. The State Legislature should act swiftly to adopt a comprehensive water management statute based on the Regulated …

Clement Clay Torbert And Alabama Law Reform Alabama Legal Issues Series, Tony A. Freyer, Paul M. Pruitt Jr., Volney Riser

Articles

No abstract provided.

Rural Hospital Ownership: Medical Service Provision, Market Mix, And Spillover Effects, Jill R. Horwitz, Austin Nichols

Articles

Objective. To test whether nonprofit, for-profit, or government hospital ownership affects medical service provision in rural hospital markets, either directly or through the spillover effects of ownership mix. Data Sources/Study Setting. Data are from the American Hospital Association, U.S. Census, CMS Healthcare Cost Report Information System and Prospective Payment System Minimum Data File, and primary data collection for geographic coordinates. The sample includes all nonfederal, general medical, and surgical hospitals located outside of metropolitan statistical areas and within the continental United States from 1988 to 2005. Study Design. We estimate multivariate regression models to examine the effects of (1) hospital …

Prediction-Based Virtual Instance Migration For Balanced Workload In The Cloud Datacenters, Shibu Daniel, Minseok Kwon

Articles

Datacenters in the cloud today provide virtualized resources of CPU, memory, disk, and networks so that millions of users can use the services at the same time in an efficient and scalable way. One of the major challenges in these datacenters is load balancing and shifting. As a huge number of requests are sent to a particular datacenter or a group of servers are asked to process more than their fair share, some of the servers are overloaded, slowed down, hot spots are created, and even hardware failures may occur. This unbalanced load in the end deteriorates the performance of …

Analyst Forecast Accuracy And Firm Growth, Philip Siegel, Jeffrey Lessard, Khondkar Karim

Articles

This study examines the affect of business segment industry specialization as a supplement to portfolio complexity on forecast error and Tobin’s Q. After controlling for diversification and growth potential, forecast error is negatively related to business segment industry specialization. Diversification (high growth firms) increases (decreases) forecast error. High growth, focused firms are associated with noncomplex portfolios and business segment industry specialization. Within a simultaneous equation model, forecast error does not predict the firm’s Tobin Q ratio; however, Tobin’s Q does predict whether analysts forecast accurately.

Moving Away From Programming And Towards Computer Science In The Cs First Year, James Heliotis, Richard Zanibbi

Articles

After completing a pilot study using the Python programming language to transition to Java within our first-year introductory programming sequence, our department opted to make a more radical change. We assert that our students are better served in their first year of study by a focus on problems in computer science and their solutions, rather than programming. Our new introductory sequence emphasizes algorithm development and analysis, object-oriented design, and testing. As in our pilot, programming is first done in Python, switching to Java when object-oriented design and static typing become advantageous. Students reported liking the problem focus of the courses, …

An Evaluation Of A Novel Instrument For Measuring Macular Pigment Optical Density: The Mps 9000, James Loughman, Grainne Scanlon, John Nolan, Veronica O'Dwyer, Stephen Beatty

Articles

Purpose:  Of the antioxidants found in the human retina, only the macular carotenoid quantities can be estimated noninvasively (albeit in a collective fashion), thus facilitating study of their role in that tissue. The aim of this study was to evaluate concordance between macular pigment optical density (MPOD) values recorded on a commercially available instrument, the MPS 9000, with those of an already validated heterochromatic flicker photometry instrument. Also, we assessed and compared test–retest variability for each instrument.

Methods:  Macular pigment optical density at 0.5 retinal eccentricity was measured using two different heterochromatic flicker photometers, the MPS 9000 and the Macular …

Opinions, Implications, And Confusions, Leonard M. Niehoff

Articles

The law of defamation is haunted by ancient common law principles, such as the distinction between libel per se and libel per quad, that contribute nothing to our current jurisprudence beyond providing opportunities for misunderstanding and perplexity. Unfortunately, more contemporary doctrines have further complicated the field by sowing fresh confusions. This article explores two such doctrines-the principle that a defamation claim cannot rest upon an opinion and the principle that a defamation claim can rest upon unstated implications- and suggests that there are troublesome contradictions both within them and between them. In short, this article respectfully proposes that these two …

Pretrial Incentives, Post-Conviction Review, And Sorting Criminal Prosecutions By Guilt Or Innocence, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

The fundamental problem with false convictions is that they are unobserved, and in general, unobservable. We don't spot them when they happen-if we did, they wouldn't happen-and in most cases we can't identify them after the fact. We have no general reliable test for innocence or guilt; if we did, we'd use it at trial. As result, we often say that we don't know for sure whether a convicted criminal defendant is innocent or guilty, or even that we can't know for sure. But this isn't exactly true-or rather, its truth depends on who we mean by "we."

Child Pornography And Community Notification: How An Attempt To Reduce Crime Can Achieve The Opposite, J. J. Prescott

Articles

Community notification laws, designed to reduce the frequency of sex offenses by alerting potential victims to nearby threats and by encouraging citizen monitoring of potential recidivists, may make sense in the context of traditional sex offenses and sex offenders. But child pornography crimes and the individuals who commit them are different, and they differ from archetypal sex crimes and criminals in ways that may unintentionally cause community notification laws to facilitate crime rather than inhibit it. Child porn offenses typically involve money or trade, and their commission hinges on successfully conspiring with others. Markets and information are necessary building blocks …

Toward A Unified Theory Of Exclusionary Vertical Restraints, Daniel A. Crane, Graciela Miralles

Articles

The law of exclusionary vertical restraints-contractual or other business relationships between vertically related firms-is deeply confused and inconsistent in both the United States and the European Union. A variety of vertical practices, including predatory pricing, tying, exclusive dealing, price discrimination, and bundling, are treated very differently based on formalistic distinctions that bear no relationship to the practices' exclusionary potential. We propose a comprehensive, unified test for all exclusionary vertical restraints that centers on two factors: foreclosure and substantiality. We then assign economic content to these factors. A restraint forecloses if it denies equally efficient rivals a reasonable opportunity to make …

Foreword: Rulemaking, Democracy, And Torrents Of E-Mail, Nina A. Mendelson

Articles

This Foreword is meant as an initial foray into the question of what agencies should do with mass public comments, particularly on broad questions of policy. Part I discusses the extent to which congressional control, presidential control, and agency procedures themselves can ensure that agency decisions are democratically responsive. In view of shortcomings in both congressional and presidential control, I underscore the need to focus closely on rulemaking procedures as a source of democratic responsiveness. The possibility that agencies may be systematically discounting certain public submissions raises difficulties, and I present some examples. Part II makes a preliminary case that …

Ability To Pay, John A. E. Pottow

Articles

The landmark Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 ("Dodd-Frank") transforms the regulation of consumer credit in the United States. Many of its changes have been high-profile, attracting considerable media and scholarly attention, most notably the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB"). Even specific consumer reforms, such as a so-called "plain vanilla" proposal, drew hot debate and lobbying firepower. But when the dust settled, one profoundly transformative innovation that did not garner the same outrage as plain vanilla or the CFPB did get into the law: imposing upon lenders a duty to assure a borrower's ability to repay. Ensuring a borrower's …

Readers' Copyright, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

My goal in this project is to reclaim copyright for readers (and listeners, viewers, and other members of the audience). I think, and will try to persuade you, that the gradual and relatively recent disappearance of readers’ interests from the core of copyright’s perceived goals has unbalanced the copyright system. It may have prompted, at least in part, the scholarly critique of copyright that has fueled copyright lawyers’ impression that “so many in academia side with the pirates.” It may also be responsible for much of the deterioration in public support for copyright. I argue here that copyright seems out …

After The Spill Is Gone: The Gulf Of Mexico, Environmental Crime, And Criminal Law, David M. Uhlmann

Articles

The Gulf oil spill was the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, and will be the most significant criminal case ever prosecuted under U.S. environmental laws. The Justice Department is likely to prosecute BP, Transocean, and Halliburton for criminal violations of the Clean Water Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which will result in the largest fines ever imposed in the United States for any form of corporate crime. The Justice Department also may decide to pursue charges for manslaughter, false statements, and obstruction of justice. The prosecution will shape public perceptions about environmental crime, for reasons that are …

Intellectual Property, Innovation, And The Future: Toward A Better Model For Educating Leaders In Intellectual Property Law, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

Intellectual property (IP) sits at the center of the global economy. Today, producers and users of intellectual property come from both developed and developing nations. Intellectual property matters as much to China and India as it does to Germany and the United States. This reality has driven a monumental demand for lawyers who have expertise in intellectual property law. These lawyers are the new leaders in intellectual property law.

The global demand for intellectual property law-trained lawyers triggered a "big bang" in the creation of advanced intellectual property law programs (IP Programs) at American law schools. The new leaders in …

The Move From Protectionism To Outward-Looking Industrial Development: A Critical Juncture In Irish Industrial Policy?, Paul Donnelly, John Hogan

Articles

This paper utilises a new framework for examining critical junctures to help us understand whether the changes to Irish industrial policy at the end of the 1950s constituted a critical juncture, breaking cleanly with what came before, or were a continuation of policy pathways previously established. The framework is made up of three elements, which must be identified in sequence, for us to be able to declare a critical juncture. Irish industrial policy is examined here, as it constitutes a core tenet of wider economic policy.

Encyclopedia Of Music In Ireland: Jonathan Nangle, Adrian Smith

Articles

Encyclopedia of Music in Ireland entry on the Irish composer Jonathan Nangle

Phenolic Composition, Antioxidant Capacity And Antibacterial Activity Of Selected Irish Brassica Vegetables, Amit Jaiswal, Gaurav Rajauria, Nissreen Abu-Ghannam, Shilpi Gupta

Articles

Vegetables belonging to the Brassicaceae family are rich in polyphenols, flavonoids and glucosinolates, and their hydrolysis products, which may have antibacterial, antioxidant and anticancer properties. In the present study, phenolic composition, antibacterial activity and antioxidant capacity of selected Brassica vegetables, including York cabbage, Brussels sprouts, broccoli and white cabbage were evaluated after extraction with aqueous methanol. Results obtained showed that York cabbage extract had the highest total phenolic content, which was 33.5, followed by 23.6, 20.4 and 18.4 mg GAE/g of dried weight (dw) of the extracts for broccoli, Brussels sprouts and white cabbage, respectively. All the vegetable extracts had …

Effect Of Processing Conditions On Phytochemical Constituents Of Edible Irish Seaweed Himanthalia Elongata., Sabrina Cox, Nissreen Abu-Ghannam, Shilpi Gupta

Articles

Seaweed iswell recognized as an excellent source of phytochemicals. This study was a preliminary screening to investigate the effects of various food processing methods on the phytochemicals of Himanthalia elongata. Hydrothermal processing was carried out until an edible texture was achieved. The total phenolic content (TPC) of fresh H. elongata was 175.27 mg gallic acid equivalent (GAE)/100 g fresh weight (FW) while boiling significantly reduced the TPC to 25.4 mg GAE/100 g FW
(P < 0.05).A drying pretreatment before boiling reduced the cooking time therefore leading to less leaching of antioxidants upon boiling. In terms of extract, drying of H. elongata followed by boiling had the most significant effect on the phytochemicals as TPC increased by 174%. Boiled extracts had the most effective 2, 2-diphenyl- 1-picrylhydrazyl scavenging activity (EC50 of 12.5 mg/mL). As a comparison, seaweed subjected to the same treatments was studied in terms of antimicrobial activity.Overall, extracts fromfresh H. elongata achieved the highest inhibition.

Efficacy Of Biocides Used In The Modern Food Industry To Control Salmonella Enterica, And Links Between Biocide Tolerance And Resistance To Clinically Relevant Antimicrobial Compounds, Orla Condell, Carol Iversen, Shane Cooney, Karen Power, Ciara Walsh, Catherine Burgess, Seamus Fanning

Articles

Biocides play an essential role in limiting the spread of infectious disease. The food industry is dependent on these agents, and their increasing use is a matter for concern. Specifically, the emergence of bacteria demonstrating increased tolerance to biocides, coupled with the potential for the development of a phenotype of cross-resistance to clinically important antimicrobial compounds, needs to be assessed. In this study, we investigated the tolerance of a collection of susceptible and multidrug-resistant (MDR) Salmonella enterica strains to a panel of seven commercially available food-grade biocide formulations. We explored their abilities to adapt to these formulations and their active …