Digital Commons Network^™

Assessment Of Nitrate And Phosphate Concentrations In Discharge Water From Ditch Networks Across Different Peatland Use Types: Implications For Sustainable Peatland Use Management, Samuel Obeng Apori, Michelle Giltrap, Julie Dunne, Furong Tian

Articles

Peat soils, when drained and transformed for different land uses, can release pollutants such as nitrate and phosphate into nearby water bodies and ecosystems through ditch networks. However, there have been limited studies to ascertain the extent and impact of these nutrient releases under various peatland use types. A total of fifty-four water samples were collected between October 2021 and January 2022 from five industrial cutaway bogs, twenty-five grasslands, and twenty-four forest plantations. The water samples were subsequently examined for nitrate–nitrogen and phosphate–phosphorus using the HACH DR890 colorimeter. This study showed that the nitrate–nitrogen concentration of the discharge water ranged …

The Use Of E. Coli Phylogrouping And Microbial Source Tracking (Non-Species Specific, Human-Specific, Bovine-Specific Bacteroidales Markers) To Elucidate Hydro(Geo)Logical Contamination Mechanisms In Southeastern Ontario, Canada, Madeleine Kelly, Paul Hynds, R. Stephen Brown, Kevin Mcdermott, Ioan Petculescu, Anna L. Majury

Articles

In Ontario, monitoring, maintenance, and treatment of private drinking systems (e.g. wells) are the responsibility of the well owner. Fecal contamination of drinking water threatens public health, particularly in rural communities which are often fully reliant on unregulated private groundwater as a primary drinking water source. Private well users face a higher risk of acute gastrointestinal illness compared to those served by municipally operated systems (Murphy et al., 2016). Accordingly, the current study sought to characterize the fecal indicator, E. coli, isolated from southeastern Ontario private groundwater wells, including phylogroups and host source. Results were examined in the context of …

Overview Of Antimicrobial Resistant Eskapee Pathogens In Food Sources And Their Implications From A One Health Perspective, Naomi Oyenuga, José Francisco Cobo Díaz, Avelino Alvarez-Ordóñez, Elena Alexandra Alexa

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No abstract provided.

A Model Defense Of Due Process Balancing, Kyron J. Huigens

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Judicial balancing has been subjected to a standard list of objections for decades, without anyone's offering a comprehensive and persuasive response. This Article fills that gap. Balancing is not embedded in an invidious instrumentalism, such as utilitarianism, that saps law of its moral salience; it does not depend on the quantification or commensuration of manifestly qualitative legal interests; it is not arbitrary, result-oriented, or mere opinion; it does not invade the province of the legislature; and--most importantly--it does not risk balancing constitutional rights away by treating them as mere interests.

The defense consists of a model. Models do not prove; …

Sails Symposium Launch On International Law Scholarship: What We Write, Where We Publish, And Why It Matters, Kathleen Claussen, Melissa J. Durkee, Rebecca Ingber, Steven Arrigg Koh

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No abstract provided.

Situating The Modern Public Trust Doctrine In Trust Law: The Duty Of Loyalty And The Case For Bifurcated, De Novo Judicial Review, Edward A. Zelinsky

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This article situates the modern public trust doctrine (PTD) in contemporary trust law. Grounding the PTD in trust law leads to two important corollaries. First, the PTD planted in trust law imposes upon government actors and agencies trust law’s fiduciary duty of loyalty. In the context of the PTD, that duty of loyalty runs to the public as the beneficiary of the PTD. Second, faced with plausible claims that this fiduciary duty of loyalty to the public has been violated, courts should apply trust law’s de novo standard of review to those administrative and legislative decisions alleged to impair public …

Improving The Affirmative Disclosure Of Agency Legal Materials, Bernard W. Bell, Cary Coglianese, Michael E. Herz, Margaret B. Kwoka, Orly Lobel

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It is axiomatic that in a democratic society the law must be broadly accessible. Administrative agencies produce a plethora of materials imposing legal obligations on commercial or individual actors in the private sector. Other materials bind the agencies themselves in ways that affect the rights or interests of private parties. Still other materials provide the public with information about how agencies interpret and apply the statutes and rules they administer, or how agencies seek to deploy their discretion or take other actions that can affect private individuals or organizations. This Article focuses on improving the public availability of all of …

What’S Going On? Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Dispute Resolution Initiatives In The U.S., Robyn Weinstein

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Over the course of my career, I have worked for and managed community dispute resolution centers, overseen a court-annexed dispute resolution program, and run a law school mediation clinic (my current position). In each post, I have been in a position of power over a different "gateway" or entry point into the field of dispute resolution. In these roles, and especially in my work overseeing a court-annexed ADR program, I became increasingly aware of who applied (and did not apply); who was appointed (and was not appointed); and who was selected (and not selected) for work as a mediator and …

Antisocial Innovation, Christopher Buccafusco, Samuel N. Weinstein

Articles

Innovation is a form of civic religion in the United States. In the popular imagination, innovators are heroic figures. Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, and (for a while) Elizabeth Holmes were lauded for their vision and drive, and seen to embody the American spirit of invention and improvement. For their part, politicians rarely miss a chance to trumpet their vision for boosting innovative activity. Popular and political culture alike treat innovation as an unalloyed good. And the law is deeply committed to fostering innovation, spending billions of dollars a year to make sure society has enough of it. But this sunny …

Dobbs And Democracy, Melissa Murray, Katherine A. Shaw

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In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Alito justified the decision to overrule Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey with an appeal to democracy. He insisted that it was “time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” This invocation of democracy had undeniable rhetorical power: it allowed the Dobbs majority to lay waste to decades’ worth of precedent, while rebutting charges of judicial imperialism and purporting to restore the people’s voices. This Article interrogates Dobbs’s claim to vindicate principles of democracy, examining both the intellectual pedigree …

Making Sense Of Abatement As A Tort Remedy, Anthony J. Sebok

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Controversy over public nuisance in recent high profile cases invites the question of whether, and to what extent, it is limited by its roots in tort law. This article, which was prepared for the 2023 Clifford Symposium on “New Torts” focuses on causes of action in which the state seeks to enjoin the defendant by requiring that it abate the consequences of the invasion of a public right. In the most controversial of these public nuisance actions, such as lead paint and opioids, the wrongful conduct that is remedied by the injunctive relief has already ceased, and the state does …

Regulating Driving Automation Safety, Matthew Wansley

Articles

Over forty thousand people die in motor vehicle crashes in the United States each year, and over two million are injured. The careful deployment of driving automation systems could prevent many of these deaths and injuries, but only if it is accompanied by effective regulation. Conventional vehicle safety standards are inadequate because they can only test how technology performs in a controlled environment. To assess the safety of a driving automation system, regulators must observe how it performs in a range of unpredictable, real world edge cases. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is trying to adapt by experimenting …

Antitrust Regulation Of Copyright Markets, Jacob Noti-Victor, Xiyin Tang

Articles

Late last year, a federal court sided with the Department of Justice and blocked the planned merger of book publishers Simon & Schuster and Penguin Random House. The decision was a rare collision between antitrust law and the deeply consolidated copyright content industries. Over the course of the past decade, acquisitions and mergers in the recording, music publishing, and audiovisual space have left just a handful of juggernaut content producers in their wake. Moreover, new technology companies that have entered the content-creation and distribution markets have begun to leverage their scale to further their own industry consolidation.

This Article examines …

Foreclosure Sales As Fraudulent Transfers, David G. Carlson

Articles

The Supreme Court has declared that noncollusive, regularly conducted foreclosure sales are not “constructive” fraudulent transfers voidable by a bankruptcy trustee Uniform state legislation ratifies this instinct for private creditor enforcements. But collusive or irregular foreclosure sales or sales that are intended to hinder, delay, or defraud creditors are subject to creditor attack, even though unsecured creditors are not proper parties to the foreclosure process. In such cases, unsecured creditors can cloud the title obtained from foreclosure in the cases of collusion, irregularity or fraudulent intent. This article examines precisely when foreclosure sales can be avoided by unsecured creditors of …

Data Justice In Education: Toward A Research Agenda, Luci Pangrazio, Glenn Auld, Julianne Lynch, Carly Sawatzki, Gavin Duffy, Shelley Hannigan, Jo O'Mara

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Educational institutions increasingly rely on digital platforms to deliver content and learning, monitor attendance, communicate with stakeholders, and evaluate institutional performance. Despite the efficiency and accessibility gains they offer, digital platforms are powered by personal data which, through a process of datafication, can be used to track, monitor, and profile staff and students. The insights drawn from this data can be used to shape educational and professional futures. This article examines how datafication has become a social justice issue in education, discussing the implications for well-being, decision-making, governance, and power in education. Using Hintz and colleagues framework for data justice, …

An Exploration Of Fibre Intake And Bowel Function In A Sample Of Adults At An Irish University Campus, Ellen Lynch, Sophie Mulligan, Suzanne L. Doyle

Articles

Background: Bowel dysfunction can significantly impair quality of life. Adequate fibre intake is associated with good bowel health but intakes have been reported to be low in Ireland. Aim: This study aimed to gather data on fibre intake and bowel habits in a cohort of adults at a university campus in Dublin, Ireland. Methods: An online questionnaire was developed by adapting validated tools to assess habitual fibre intake and bowel function. The questionnaire was circulated through mailing lists and advertised via QR codes on campus in February/March 2023. Data was analysed using SPSS, p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: In total, 275 valid responses were received. Low fibre intakes (< 19 g/day) were found in 50.5% of participants. A significantly higher proportion of males had low fibre intake compared to females (62.2% vs 44.8%, p = 0.039). Nearly a third (30.2%) of respondents experienced mild symptoms of bowel dysfunction, and 13.1% experienced moderate to severe symptoms. An inverse relationship was observed between fibre intake (g/day) and bowel dysfunction (p = 0.033). Conclusions: In this cohort, low fibre intakes and some degree of bowel dysfunction were prevalent. Public health campaigns to increase fibre intake could prove to be a cost-effective way to improve bowel function and health amongst adults in Ireland.

Coffee: Lighting Its Complex Ground Truth And Percolating Its Molecular Brew, Róża Paterek, Sive Geoghegan, Bernadette S. Creaven, Aoife Power

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Coffee is one of the most widely traded commodities worldwide and its popularity is only increasing. The International Coffee Organisation (ICO) reported a 6% increase in global production in 2020 to 10.5 million tonnes. Coffee production is quite involved (from sowing to harvesting, processing, packaging, and storage); consequently, the industry faces major challenges in terms of the assessment of its quality, flavour, and the components which contribute to coffee's characterisation, as well as the sustainability of coffee production and global trade. This has prompted multiple studies on the nature of the aroma and taste of the many varieties of coffee …

An Image Processing Approach For Real-Time Safety Assessment Of Autonomous Drone Delivery, Assem A. Abdelhak, Dan Moss, Alan Hicks, Susan Mckeever

Articles

The aim of producing self-driving drones has driven many researchers to automate various drone driving functions, such as take-off, navigation, and landing. However, despite the emergence of delivery as one of the most important uses of autonomous drones, there is still no automatic way to verify the safety of the delivery stage. One of the primary steps in the delivery operation is to ensure that the dropping zone is a safe area on arrival and during the dropping process. This paper proposes an image-processing-based classification approach for the delivery drone dropping process at a predefined destination. It employs live streaming …

A Global Model-Agnostic Rule-Based Xai Method Based On Parameterized Event Primitives For Time Series Classifiers, Ephrem Tibebe Mekonnen, Luca Longo, Pierpaolo Dondio

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Time series classification is a challenging research area where machine learning and deep learning techniques have shown remarkable performance. However, often, these are seen as black boxes due to their minimal interpretability. On the one hand, there is a plethora of eXplainable AI (XAI) methods designed to elucidate the functioning of models trained on image and tabular data. On the other hand, adapting these methods to explain deep learning-based time series classifiers may not be straightforward due to the temporal nature of time series data. This research proposes a novel global post-hoc explainable method for unearthing the key time steps …

Classifying The Content Of Online Notepad Services Using Active Learning, Mhd Wesam Al-Nabki, Eduardo Fidalgo, Enrique Alegre, Sarah Jane Delany, Francisco Jáñez-Martino

Articles

Pastebin is an online notepad service to share text anonymously. However, it could be misused to propagate suspicious or even illegal activities, like leaking sensitive information or sharing hyperlinks to child sexual abuse material. Due to the high rate of daily upload pastes, manual inspection of this material is not feasible. Conversely, an automatic classifier could identify such activities with little or no human intervention. However, a supervised model may require a significant number of training samples and have to handle distinct text typologies presented in Pastebin. This paper presents a classification approach composed of three cascading supervised classifiers that …

Tax Incentives For Investment Crowdfunding: A Comparative Analysis, Mirit Eyal-Cohen

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No abstract provided.

Esg, The Sec Climate Rule, And The Limits Of Securities Regulation, Kenneth M. Rosen

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No abstract provided.

A Scholarly Judge: The Honorable William Holcombe Pryor Jr., Kenneth M. Rosen

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No abstract provided.

Systematic Regulation Of Artificial Intelligence, Yonathan Arbel, Matthew Tokson, Albert Lin

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Today's artificial intelligence ("AI'') systems exhibit increasing capabilities across a remarkable variety of tasks. The rapid growth in AI ability has caught the attention of policymakers, parliaments, and the United Nations. These entities are increasingly looking towards regulating AI, not only in its particular applications, but as a technology. Yet legal scholarship has thus far offered little to this new and critical regulatory conversation, which has instead been dominated by computer scientists and technologists.

This Article begins the project of assessing AI 's broader risks and law 's role in addressing them. These risks are wide ranging-they span harms to …

The Price Of Criminal Law, Russell M. Gold

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Should tax dollars pay for more criminal law, better public schools, or a new community center? Different counties will answer the question differently, but facing these tradeoffs is profoundly important to democratic governance. Nonetheless, because the criminal legal system diffuses power and hides and offioads costs, officials and voters do not have to honestly consider that question. These structural features place a hidden thumb on the scale that gives counties more criminal enforcement than they pay for. That is a problem. Too much enforcement is particularly pernicious in criminal law: Incarceration inflicts tremendous suffering, especially in poor communities of color. …

Exoneration Finance, Kay L. Levine, Russell M. Gold

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The path to financial compensation for the wrongfully convicted can be complex and time-consuming. Exonerees often struggle to make ends meet and function in free society, let alone navigate serpentine processes while waiting years for the recovery they deserve. Securing the assistance of an attorney is often a critical step, but too few lawyers are willing to risk accepting these complicated cases on a contingency-fee basis the only way that exoneree-clients can likely pay their lawyers without outside help.

Litigation finance an important tool for increasing access to justice in tort cases could help close this access to justice gap …

Children's Autonomy Rights Online, Clare Ryan

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No abstract provided.

Inequitable Organ Allocation, Benjamin Mcmichael

Articles

Seventeen people die every day in the United States waiting for an organ transplant, and over 100,000 people are currently on waitlists to receive a donated organ. Given these stark numbers, the allocation policies governing who receives donated organs are both critically important and hotly debated. Congress passed the National Organ Transplant Act in 1984 with the goal of eliminating markets for organs and the promise of equitable access to transplants without regard to geography or socioeconomic status. Despite these laudable goals, recent developments in organ allocation policy have led to multiple lawsuits, congressional inquiries, and an expose in the …

Pricing Corporate Governance, Albert Choi

Articles

Scholars and practitioners have long theorized that by penalizing firms with unattractive governance features, the stock market incentivizes firms to adopt the optimal governance structure at their initial public offerings (IPOs). This theory, however, does not seem to match with practice. Not only do many IPO firms offer putatively suboptimal governance arrangements, such as staggered boards and dual-class structures, but these arrangements have been gaining popularity among IPO firms. This Article argues that the IPO market is unlikely to provide the necessary discipline to incentivize companies to adopt the optimal governance package. In particular, when the optimal governance package differs …

Writing With Ai: University Students’ Use Of Chatgpt, Nikola Crcek, Jakob Patekar

Articles

Background: ChatGPT, a chatbot based on a large language model, captured global attention toward the end of 2022. With its potential to generate comprehensive texts of a variety of genres based on a string of straightforward prompts, it was soon perceived as a threat by many in various fields, including – and in particular – education. Schools across the world began banning its use as instructors started to receive suspiciously well-written essays and assignments from their students.

Aim: This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of use of ChatGPT among university students for written assignments, explore the ways students utilize …