Digital Commons Network^™

The Quest For Influence: Examining Russia's Public Diplomacy Mechanisms In Africa, Isaac Antwiboasiako

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This article examines Russian public diplomacy mechanisms in Africa. These include the intentional use of historical ties, various aid programmes in education and health, the targeted use of international broadcasting and digital media, and the exploitation of anti-Western sentiments on the continent. Russia employs these to win the hearts and minds of African publics for its national interest. The article first explores Moscow’s public diplomacy in general and analyses the challenges Russia faces in Africa, which has become a ‘dumping ground’ for public diplomacy campaigns by the US, the EU and its members, the UK, and China. The article argues …

Strategies For Reducing Vascular And Bleeding Risk For Percutaneous Left Ventricular Assist Device-Supported High-Risk Percutaneous Coronary Intervention, George W. Vetrovec, Amir Kaki, Jason Wollmuth, Thom G. Dahle Md

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In patients at high risk for haemodynamic instability during percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), practitioners are increasingly opting for prophylactic mechanical circulatory support, such as the Impella® heart pump (Abiomed, Danvers, MA, USA). Though Impella-supported high-risk PCI (HRPCI) ensures haemodynamic stability during the PCI procedure, access-related complication rates have varied significantly in published studies. Reported variability in complication rates relates to many factors, including anticoagulation practices, access and closure strategy, post-procedure care and variations in event definitions. This article aims to outline optimal strategies to minimize vascular and bleeding complications during Impella-supported HRPCI based on previously identified clinical, procedural and postprocedural …

The Eudemonic And Hedonic Impacts Of Attending Live And Virtual Music And Art Events, Philippa Kirwan, Samantha Morris

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This paper examines the under-investigated well-being impacts of arts and music events attendance, in both a live and virtual capacity. Using eudaimonia and hedonia as a measure for well-being, three objectives were investigated; 1) Do live arts and music events meet attendees eudemonic and hedonic needs? 2) Do virtual arts and music events meet attendees eudemonic and hedonic needs? 3) How do live and virtual music and art events compare in meeting attendees eudemonic and hedonic needs? The study focused on attendee’s experiences having attended both live and virtual events. Using nine semi-structured interviews this research found that live music …

Juridical Discourse For Platforms, Thomas E. Kadri

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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has created a private "Supreme Court," or so he says. Since 2021, his company's Oversight Board has issued verdicts on a smattering of Facebook's decisions about online speech. Cynics frame the Board as a Potemkin village, but defenders invoke analogies to separation of powers to claim that this new body empowers the public and restrains the company. Some are even calling for a single "platform supreme court" to rule over the entire industry.

Juridical discourse for platforms is powerful, but it can also be deceptive. This Response explores how juridical discourse has legitimized and empowered Facebook's …

Employer Collaboration In Developing Graduate Employability: A Pilot Study In Ireland, Miriam O'Regan, Aiden Carthy, Colm Mcguiness, Philip Owende

Articles

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact on student work readiness outcomes of collaboration with employers in developing and delivering tailored graduate employability workshops in socioemotional skills for work (SES4Work).

Design/methodology/approach – Framed by the CareerEDGE model of graduate employability, the authors piloted a five-session module for near graduates in five disciplines. The research included an online employer survey (n 5 128), employer interviews (n 5 21) and tailored workshops for near graduates, culminating in a mock competency-based interview. Using a pre/post-test design, participants (n 5 24) also completed the CareerEDGE Employability Development Profile (EDP) …

State Digital Services Taxes: A Good And Permissible Idea (Despite What You Might Have Heard), Young Ran (Christine) Kim, Darien Shanske

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Tax systems have been struggling to adapt to the digitalization of the economy. At the center of the struggles is taxing digital platforms, such as Google or Facebook. These immensely profitable firms have a business model that gives away “free” services, such as searching the web. The service is not really free; it is paid for by having the users watch ads and tender data. Traditional tax systems are not designed to tax such barter transactions, leaving a gap in taxation.

One response, pioneered in Europe, has been the creation of a wholly new tax to target digital platforms: the …

Against A Deconstitutionalisation Of International Law In Times Of Populism, Pandemic, And War, Anne Peters

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On 24th February 2022, the international landscape changed. The German chancellor called it a ‘Zeitenwende’, an epochal change. Russia invaded its neighbour Ukraine, a state that has struggled with corruption and oligarchy but which might nevertheless be qualified as having a democratic and liberal system of government. Russia thereby violated one of the basic principles of international law, the prohibition on the use of force, and in the course of this unlawful war is committing countless grave violations of human rights and humanitarian law, and commits atrocities amounting maybe even to genocide.

Revolutionary Visions: Jewish And Politics In Latin American Film, Mirna Vohnsen

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Stephanie Pridgeon’s Revolutionary Visions, a book that deals with the intersection of Jews and revolutionary politics in films from Latin America, is a welcome addition to the growing scholarship on Latin American Jewish studies. As the author herself notes, the cinematic depiction of Jewish experiences with revolutionary movements in Latin America has not received, until now, the scholarly attention it deserves, a neglect that Pridgeon has set out to remedy in her volume. The book brings to our attention the significance of the Latin American revolutionary culture of the 1960s and 1970s not only to Jewish life in the region …

Open-Source Clinical Machine Learning Models: Critical Appraisal Of Feasibility, Advantages, And Challenges, Keerthi B. Harish, W. Nicholson Price Ii, Yindalon Aphinyanaphongs

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Machine learning applications promise to augment clinical capabilities and at least 64 models have already been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. These tools are developed, shared, and used in an environment in which regulations and market forces remain immature. An important consideration when evaluating this environment is the introduction of open-source solutions in which innovations are freely shared; such solutions have long been a facet of digital culture. We discuss the feasibility and implications of open-source machine learning in a health care infrastructure built upon proprietary information. The decreased cost of development as compared to drugs and …

Inclusion And Belonging In Irish Higher Education For Black And Minority Ethnic Students, Fionnuala Darby

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Using Critical Race Theory (CRT) as an analytical prism, this study interrogates the sense of belonging and inclusion experienced by Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) students on one higher education campus in Ireland. The most important story told within the study is as simple as it is complicated. The simple part is that the BME students felt that the campus was inclusive and that they experienced a sense of belonging. The complicated part is that the findings are premised in a normative assumption of whiteness as evidenced by numerous and incremental moments of exclusion in the daily experience of microaggressions, …

An Evidence Review Of Behavioural Economics In The Justice Sector, Brian Barry, Lucia Morales, Aiden Carthy

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Behavioural economics combines elements of economics and psychology to better understand how and why people behave the way they do in the real world. While behavioural economics originally sought to better understand economic decision-making, it has since grown in scope and application, and it is increasingly used by governments, government departments and other organisations to shape and implement public policies in a range of policy areas. This Review considers the application of behavioural economics theories and concepts (commonly referred to as behavioural insights) to the justice sector in a range of areas of justice policy in different jurisdictions. Areas of …

Advances In 3d Culture Systems For Therapeutic Discovery And Development In Brain Cancer, Janith Wanigasekara, Patrick J. Cullen, Paula Bourke, Brijesh Tiwari, James F. Curtin

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This review focuses on recent advances in 3D culture systems that promise more accurate therapeutic models of the glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) tumor microenvironment (TME), such as the unique anatomical, cellular, and molecular features evident in human GBM. The key components of a GBM TME are outlined, including microbiomes, vasculature, extracellular matrix (ECM), infiltrating parenchymal and peripheral immune cells and molecules, and chemical gradients. 3D culture systems are evaluated against 2D culture systems and in vivo animal models. The main 3D culture techniques available are compared, with an emphasis on identifying key gaps in knowledge for the development of suitable platforms …

An Active Biodegradable Layer-By-Layer Film Based On Chitosan-Alginate-Tio2 For The Enhanced Shelf Life Of Tomatoes, Kalpani Y. Perera, Shubham Sharma, Brendan Duffy, Shiviani Pathania, Amit K. Jaiswal, Swarma Jaiswal

Articles

This work aims at developing biodegradable active chitosan-alginate layer-by-layer bio-nanocomposite film with TiO₂NPs using the solvent casting method followed by CaCl₂ crosslinking for food packaging applications. The developed films enhanced the tensile strength and elongation at break by 14.76 and 2 folds (p < 0.05) respectively. The UV barrier properties of CH-SA-0.3%TiO₂ film increased by 88.6%, while the film transparency decreased by 87.23%. All films showed antimicrobial activity against foodborne pathogens E. coli, S. aureus, S. typhi, and L. monocytogene. The film with 0.1%TiO₂ showed the complete killing of gram-positive bacteria. The CH-SA-0.1%TiO₂ film was completely biodegraded during the …

African Governments’ Foreign Publics Engagement: Public Diplomacy In African Perspective, Isaac Antwiboasiako

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Scholars over the years have delved into the discourse of states’ foreign publics engagement in achieving their foreign policy objectives. This analysis is done generally with the western perspective of public diplomacy with recent Asian scholarship evolving. As a result, this study aims to reflect on public diplomacy from an African perspective. Therefore, it analyses how African governments have engaged their foreign publics (foreign governments and their citizens) to attract foreign aid, tourism, and investments in their nation-building and development trajectory. The article explores African public diplomacy mechanisms such as diasporas, nation branding, cultural diplomacy, and many others. It also …

Democracy Harms And The First Amendment, Deborah Pearlstein

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The First Amendment tolerates—has long tolerated—the regulation of certain kinds of false speech. Indeed, regulable lies are not limited to traditionally less-protected categories of speech like defamation and commercial deception. They include an array of other established speech regulations, administered by government institutions every day, from criminal laws barring perjury and other lies to government officials, to disciplinary measures by elected bodies sanctioning members for false or otherwise objectionable speech. Yet while it is easy to identify the kinds of lies that existing doctrinal categories make regulable for the personal, physical, or reputational harms they inflict on individuals¸ it has …

One-Pot Synthesis Of N-Rich Porous Carbon For Efficient Co2 Adsorption Performance, Qiyun Yu, Jiali Bai, Muslum Demir, Bilge N. Altay, Xin Hu, Linlin Wang

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N-enriched porous carbons have played an important part in CO2 adsorption application thanks to their abundant porosity, high stability and tailorable surface properties while still suffering from a non-efficient and high-cost synthesis method. Herein, a series of N-doped porous carbons were prepared by a facile one-pot KOH activating strategy from commercial urea formaldehyde resin (UF). The textural properties and nitrogen content of the N-doped carbons were carefully controlled by the activating temperature and KOH/UF mass ratios. As-prepared N-doped carbons show 3D block-shaped morphology, the BET surface area of up to 980 m2/g together with a pore volume of 0.52 cm3/g …

Collaborative Constructions: Designing High School History Curriculum With The Lost & Found Game Series, Owen Gottlieb, Shawn Clybor

Articles

This chapter addresses design research and iterative curriculum design for the Lost & Found games series. The Lost & Found card-to-mobile series is set in Fustat (Old Cairo) in the twelfth century and focuses on religious laws of the period. The first two games focus on Moses Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, a key Jewish law code. A new expansion module which was in development at the time of the fieldwork described in this article that introduces Islamic laws of the period, and a mobile prototype of the initial strategy game has been developed with support National Endowment for the Humanities. The …

Ma'ii And Nanaboozhoo Fistfight In Heaven, Tamera Begay, Matthew Fletcher

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In the form of a cute, cuddly, and innocent waabooz, Nanaboozhoo munched on the chewy, bitter Tłohdá’ákáłiitsoh he found everywhere in this⁣ land, far from his own. Although, it was a bit dry. In this land, Dinétah,⁣ Nanaboozhoo thought he could see forever. There were few trees. The sky⁣ was bright blue and limitless. The air smelled like a kind of dirt he had never⁣ experienced. And, boy howdy, was it dry. He couldn’t smell water for the⁣ life of him. But there was water, to be sure, or else there wouldn’t be this⁣ bush.

Employing Discrete Solid Phases To Represent C-S-H Solid Solutions In The Cemdata07 Thermodynamic Database To Model Cement Hydration Using The Phreeqc Geochemical Software, Niall Holmes Dr., Mark Tyrer, Denis Kelliher

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This paper presents a cement hydration model over time using the cemdata07 thermodynamic database and a series of derived discrete solid phases (DSPs) to represent calcium silicate hydrate (C-S-H) as a binary solid solution with two end-members. C-S-H in cement is amorphous and poorly crystalline with a range of molar Ca/Si ratios from 0.6 to 1.7. It displays strongly incongruent dissolution behaviour, where the release of calcium into solution is several orders of magnitude greater than silicon. It is, therefore, important that any cement hydration model provides a credible account of this behaviour. C-S-H has been described in the cemdata07 …

The Continued Problem Of Url Decay: An Updated Analysis Of Health Care Management Journal Citations, Susan M. Howell, Amber T. Burtis

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Objective: This study updates a 2009 study which examined uniform resource locator (URL) decay in health care management journals and seeks to determine whether continued URL availability relates to publication date, resource type, or top-level domain. The authors also provide an analysis of differences in findings between the two study periods.

Methods: The authors collected the URLs of web-based cited references in articles published in five health care management source journals from 2016 to 2018. The URLs were checked to see if they were still active and then analyzed to determine if continued availability was related to publication date, resource …

Prohibiting Slavery & The Slave Trade, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum

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Slavery and the slave trade stubbornly persist in our time, but they receive insufficient attention in international human rights law. Even when courts adjudicate slavery violations, they often fail to characterize slave trade conduct that nearly always precedes slavery. Courts also characterize acts that meet the definition of slavery or the slave trade only as other human rights harms, such as forced labor or human trafficking. This failure to accurately characterize violations also as slavery and the slave trade perpetuates impunity and denies victims full expressive justice. This Article argues for reviving international human rights law’s prohibitions of slavery and …

A Second Look For Children Sentenced To Die In Prison, Kathryn E. Miller

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Scholars have championed “second look” statutes as a decarceral tool. Second look statutes allow certain incarcerated people to seek resentencing after having served a portion of their sentences. This Essay weighs the advantages and disadvantages of these statutes as applied to children sentenced to die in prison and argues that focusing on this small, discrete group may be a digestible entry point for more conservative states who fear widespread resentencing. Moreover, because early data indicates that children convicted of homicide and released as adults have very low recidivism rates, second look beneficiaries are likely to pose little threat to public …

The Amazing Carrie Menkel-Meadow And What Wins When Passions Collide, Lela Love

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Carrie Menkel-Meadow (sometimes referred to as “Carrie” herein) is famous in the dispute resolution world as one of the field’s founders. Her prolific writing on dispute resolution—negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and the variants of these major processes—evidences an unrivaled passion for the subject. A renaissance thinker, her intellectual explorations also extend to other areas such as women’s rights and restorative justice for victims of egregious wrongs.

Her multiple passions sometimes create dynamic tensions. For example, what happens if mediation norms threaten a woman’s rights? Or if mediators divert the focus of a dispute resolution process to the future, neglecting a horrific …

Carrie Menkel-Meadow: Dispute Resolution In A Feminist Voice, Andrea K. Schneider

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The presence of women in the law has changed the law’s substance, practice, and process. Carrie Menkel-Meadow, whose scholarship centers on this theme, is one such revolutionary woman.

Professor Menkel-Meadow, who I am proud to call my colleague, co-author, and friend (hereinafter referred to as Carrie), began her career in 1977 with a series of simple questions that sparked a breathtaking body of work. Carrie probed the depth of male domination in the realm of law and wondered what changes female representation might engender. In particular, she focused her inquiry on the value orientation each respective gender might bring to …

Minding The Gap: Computing Ethics And The Political Economy Of Big Tech, Ioannis Stavrakakis, Damian Gordon, Paul John Gibson, Dympna O'Sullivan, Anna Becevel

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In 1988 Michael Mahoney wrote that “[w]hat is truly revolutionary about the computer will become clear only when computing acquires a proper history, one that ties it to other technologies and thus uncovers the precedents that make its innovations significant” (Mahoney, 1988). Today, over thirty years after this quote was written, we are living right in the middle of the information age and computing technology is constantly transforming modern living in revolutionary ways and in such a high degree that is giving rise to many ethical considerations, dilemmas, and social disruption. To explore the myriad of issues associated with the …

“Be A Pattern For The World”: The Development Of A Dark Patterns Detection Tool To Prevent Online User Loss, Jordan Donnelly, Alan Dowley, Yunpeng Liu, Yufei Su, Quanwei Sun, Lan Zeng, Andrea Curley, Damian Gordon, Paul Kelly, Dympna O'Sullivan, Anna Becevel

Articles

Dark Patterns are designed to trick users into sharing more information or spending more money than they had intended to do, by configuring online interactions to confuse or add pressure to the users. They are highly varied in their form, and are therefore difficult to classify and detect. Therefore, this research is designed to develop a framework for the automated detection of potential instances of web-based dark patterns, and from there to develop a software tool that will provide a highly useful defensive tool that helps detect and highlight these patterns.

An Evaluation Of Ireland’S Sustainable Freight Transport Policy, Xu Zhang, Eoin Plant, Nikolaos Valantasis Kanellos

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Background: The Irish government has put forth sustainable transport policy measures, yet the emphasis is mainly on the active travel and sustainable mobility for passenger transport. Contrariwise, freight transport has not received equal consideration in policy measures, regulatory frameworks, and support schemes towards the low-carbon transition. This study seeks to address this imbalance. Methods: The paper proposes an adaptation of the ASI framework for freight transport and assesses the applicability of a number of international sustainable transport measures based on their potential sustainability impact if adopted in Ireland. The research applied a Policy Delphi Method to a heterogeneous …

A Framework For Sexism Detection On Social Media Via Byt5 And Tabnet, Arjumand Younus, Muhammad Atif Qureshi

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Hateful and offensive content on social media platforms particularly content directed towards a specific gender is a great impediment towards equality, diversity and inclusion. Social media platforms are facing increasing pressure to work towards regulation of such content; and this has directed researchers in text mining to work towards hate speech identification algorithms. One such attempt is sexism detection for which mostly transformer-based text methods have been proposed. We propose a combination of byte-level model ByT5 with tabular modeling via TabNet that has at its core an ability to take into account platform and language aspects of the challenging task …

An Empirical Comparison Of The Security And Performance Characteristics Of Topology Formation Algorithms For Bitcoin Networks, Muntadher Sallal, Ruairí De Fréin, Ali Malik, Benjamin Aziz

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There is an increasing demand for digital crypto-currencies to be more secure and robust to meet the following business requirements: (1) low transaction fees and (2) the privacy of users. Nowadays, Bitcoin is gaining traction and wide adoption. Many well-known businesses have begun accepting bitcoins as a means of making financial payments. However, the susceptibility of Bitcoin networks to information propagation delay, increases the vulnerability to attack of the Bitcoin network, and decreases its throughput performance. This paper introduces and critically analyses new network clustering methods, named Locality Based Clustering (LBC), Ping Time Based Approach (PTBC), Super Node Based Clustering …

Against Progress: Intellectual Property And Fundamental Values In The Internet Age, Or Cohen Sasson

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No abstract provided.