Digital Commons Network^™

A Comprehensive Review Of The Application Of Cold Plasma Technology In Lignocellulosic Biomass Pretreatment, Rasaq S. Abolore, Swarna Jaiswal, Amit K. Jaiswal

Articles

Lignocellulosic biomass (LCB) is a promising feedstock for the sustainable production of biofuels and other biobased products, owing to its abundance, low cost, and minimal competition with food crops for resources. It is mainly composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin, forming a complex biomass matrix. Its utilization is hindered by its complex structure and pretreatment is required to break down the chemical resistance caused by the strong association between the cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin structures. Conventional methods such as acid and alkali pretreatment are used frequently but they require the use of high temperatures, high pressure, and corrosive chemicals. This …

A Critical Review Of Consumer Perception And Environmental Impacts Of Bioplastics In Sustainable Food Packaging, Junjie Lin, Amit K. Jaiswal, Swarna Jaiswal

Articles

As awareness of environmental issues deepens and the demand for sustainability grows among societies, businesses, and consumers, minimizing the environmental impact of food packaging has become increasingly important. Bioplastics offer a promising solution due to their use of renewable resources (such as plants), their biodegradability, and their ability to retain the protective properties of traditional plastics. This review discusses recent advancements and trends in sustainable food packaging, emphasizing the role of bioplastics. Several typical types of bioplastics are introduced, along with an analysis of their advantages and limitations. Furthermore, this study investigates consumers' attitudes toward bioplastic food packaging, emphasizing their …

Feedback Loops: Challenge & Recovery, Patrick Barry

Articles

About halfway through the course on feedback I teach to law students, I tell them to take out their calendar and look over their recent schedule. How many days in the previous few weeks, I ask them, felt like "challenge days"? I explain that challenge days are days when you have to perform at a high level, whether because a major task requires a lot of your energy and mental bandwidth-studying for a big test, preparing for a tough negotiation, dealing with an unexpected family crisis-or because the time available to handle a lot of minor tasks seems cruelly inadequate. …

Physicists As Environmental Experts, Rachel Rothschild

Articles

The question of which scientists are qualified to provide expert guidance in legal controversies is a perennial debate among scholars, judges, and lawyers. Scientists who participate in legal disputes can achieve enormous power and influence, not only over the case at hand but over long-term developments in legal doctrine. While these issues arise in many areas of the law, environmental litigation has been a particularly active site of contestations over epistemic authority. Courts have frequently relied on scientists to understand whether the government is justified in regulating pollution and who may be liable for environmental and public health harms.

This …

Examining State Climate Superfund Legislation, Madison Calhoun, Rachel Rothschild, Jonathan Binder, Elenda Mihaly, Justin Mankin, Ben Lippard, Mary Wood

Articles

There has been an influx of “climate superfund” bills introduced and adopted in state legislatures across the country. Modeled after the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), these laws are designed to recover costs from large emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to pay for climate adaptation infrastructure. Following CERCLA’s strict liability framework, major polluters in New York and Vermont would be required to pay into state-managed funds in proportion to their shares of total GHG emissions; California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Oregon have proposed similar bills. On March 19, 2025, the Environmental Law Institute hosted a …

Hypnosis And Mindfulness Audio Recordings For Reducing Fatigue In Individuals With Multiple Sclerosis: A Randomized Controlled Study, Mark P. Jensen, Susan Robles, Michael G. Nash, Susanne May, Dwan M. Ehde, Melissa A. Day, Owen Gottlieb, Laurence I. Sugarman, Kevin N. Alschuler

Articles

Background

Fatigue is a common problem in individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS).

Objective

The objective was to evaluate the effects on fatigue of having 4 weeks of

access to audio recordings of therapeutic hypnosis (HYP) and mindfulness meditation

(MM) practices.

Methods

A total of 333 individuals with MS and fatigue were randomly assigned to

one of the three treatment conditions for 28 weeks: (1) access to therapeutic HYP audio

recordings, (2) access to MM audio recordings, or (3) no access to recordings

(treatment as usual or TAU). Fatigue impact (primary outcome) and other outcomes

were assessed at 4, 16, and …

Notice Pleading’S Quiet Return, Alexander A. Reinert

Articles

Fifteen years ago, the Supreme Court announced two significant civil procedure decisions – Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007), and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009). Together, Iqbal and Twombly marked a new approach to pleading in federal courts. No longer would courts apply the forgiving notice pleading standard, in force since the 1938 adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In its place, the Court introduced plausibility pleading, inviting district courts to apply their “judicial experience and common sense” to decide whether a claim was “plausible.” Commentators expressed alarm, predicting that the new standard …

Thermotherapy Has Sexually Dimorphic Responses In App/Ps1 Mice., Samuel A Mcfadden, Mackenzie R Peck, Lindsey N Sime, Makayla F Cox, Erol D Ikiz, Caleigh A Findley, Kathleen Quinn, Yimin Fang, Andrzej Bartke, Erin R Hascup, Kevin N Hascup

Articles

A thermoregulatory decline occurs with age due to changes in muscle mass, vasoconstriction, and metabolism that lowers core body temperature (Tc). Although lower Tc is a biomarker of successful aging, we have previously shown this worsens cognitive performance in the APP/PS1 mouse model of Alzheimer's disease (AD). We hypothesized that elevating Tc with thermotherapy would improve metabolism and cognition in APP/PS1 mice. From 6-12 months of age, male and female APP/PS1 and C57BL/6 mice were chronically housed at 23 or 30°C. At 12 months of age, mice were assayed for insulin sensitivity, glucose tolerance, and spatial cognition. Plasma, hippocampal, and …

Confocal Raman Spectroscopy Coupled With In Vitro Permeation Testing To Study The Effects Of Formalin Fixation On The Skin Barrier Function Of Reconstructed Human Epidermis, Hichem Kichou, Franck Bonnier, Amanda C. Caritá, Hugh Byrne, Igor Choupra, Emilie Munnier

Articles

Confocal Raman Spectroscopy is recognised as a potent tool for molecular characterisation of biological specimens. There is a growing demand for In Vitro Permeation Tests (IVPT) in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic areas, increasingly conducted using Reconstructed Human Epidermis (RHE) skin models. In this study, chemical fixation of RHE in 10% Neutral Buffered Formalin for 24 hours has been examined for storing RHE samples at 4°C for up to 21 days. Confocal Raman Spectroscopy, combined with Principal Components Analysis, revealed the molecular-level effects of fixation, notably in protein and lipid conformation within the stratum corneum and viable epidermis. IVPT by means …

Sexual Dimorphism, Altered Hippocampal Glutamatergic Neurotransmission, And Cognitive Impairment In App Knock-In Mice., Caleigh A Findley, Samuel A Mcfadden, Tiarra Hill, Mackenzie R Peck, Kathleen Quinn, Kevin N Hascup, Erin R Hascup

Articles

BACKGROUND: It is well established that glutamatergic neurotransmission plays an essential role in learning and memory. Previous studies indicate that glutamate dynamics shift with Alzheimer's disease (AD) progression, contributing to negative cognitive outcomes.

OBJECTIVE: In this study, we characterized hippocampal glutamatergic signaling with age and disease progression in a knock-in mouse model of AD (APP

METHODS: At 2-4 and 18+ months old, male and female APP

RESULTS: Glutamate recordings support elevated stimulus-evoked glutamate release in the DG and CA3 of young APP

CONCLUSIONS: These findings confirm a sex-dependent hyper-to-hypoactivation glutamatergic paradigm in APP

Toxic Battery: Pollution As A Dignitary Tort, Amber Polk

Articles

No abstract provided.

Towards An Iot-Enabled Digital Earth For Sdgs: The Data Quality Challenge, Msb Syed, Paula Kelly, Paul Stacey, Damon Berry

Articles

Digital Earth (DE), a technology offering real-time visualisation of Earth's processes, has shown promising results in aiding decision-making for a sustainable world, raising awareness about individual impacts on our planet, and supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) agenda. However, both DE and SDGs face a common obstacle: Data Quality (DQ). This review investigates the challenge of DQ in the context of DE for SDGs and explores how IoT can address this challenge and extend the reach of DE to support SDGs. Furthermore, the study discusses three core aspects; first, the potential of IoT as a data source …

Theistic Illiberal Constitutionalism: A Review Of Adrian Vermeule’S Common Good Constitutionalism, Kyron J. Huigens

Articles

Adrian Vermeule’s Common Good Constitutionalism drew a remarkable amount of attention from constitutional law scholars when it was published in 2020. About eighteen months later, Vermeule published a piece complaining that the critics had missed the point, that they had ignored the natural law jurisprudence that grounds the work. He was correct. This Review addresses Vermeule’s natural law jurisprudence, emphasizing the fact that it is a religious natural law jurisprudence. His arguments are in the tradition of ScholasticismAristotelian logic incorporated into Christian theology by St. Thomas Aquinas. Scholasticism is a remarkably weak foundation for constitutional jurisprudence. It is a vast …

Antitrust After The Coming Wave, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

A coming wave of general-purpose technologies, including artificial intelligence ("AI"), robotics, quantum computing, synthetic biology, energy expansion, and nanotechnology, is likely to fundamentally reshape the economy and erode the assumptions on which the antitrust order is predicated. First, AI-driven systems will vastly improve firms' ability to detect (and even program) consumer preferences without the benefit of price signals, which will undermine the traditional information-producing benefit of competitive markets. Similarly, these systems will be able to determine comparative producer efficiency without relying on competitive signals. Second, AI systems will invert the salient characteristics of human managers, whose intentions are opaque but …

The Origins Of The Major Questions Doctrine, Rachel Rothschild

Articles

In a series of recent cases, the Supreme Court has invoked the newly named “major questions doctrine” to strike down agency regulations that protect public health and the environment. Several Justices have argued that while the name “major questions” may be new, these decisions are simply the latest iteration in a longstanding effort of the courts to curtail the explosive growth of the administrative state since 1970. The first paradigmatic example of this line of cases is the 1980 “Benzene” case, in which the Supreme Court set aside the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)’s new workplace standards for the …

Blurring Boundaries: A Proposed Research Agenda For Ethical, Legal, Social, And Historical Studies At The Intersection Of Infectious And Genetic Disease, Seethal Jose, Juli Bollinger, Gail Geller, Jeremy Greene, Leslie Meltzer Henry, Brian Hutler, Eric Thomas Juengst, Jeffrey Kahn, Anna Mastroianni, Graham Mooney

Articles

Contemporary understanding of the mechanisms of disease increasingly points to examples of “genetic diseases” with an infectious component and of “infectious diseases” with a genetic component. Such blurred boundaries generate ethical, legal, and social issues and highlight historical contexts that must be examined when incorporating host genomic information into the prevention, outbreak control, and treatment of infectious diseases.

Multi-Generation Queer Families: Foregrounding The Lgbtqia+ Children Of Lgbtqia+ People, Bella Mancini Pori, Edward Stein

Articles

In the last several years, state legislatures have passed a disturbing array of anti-queer laws that target queer (especially trans) children. The basic fear animating these laws is that exposure to LGBTQ people or LGBTQ supportive ideas will somehow turn straight children queer. LGBTQ activists have responded to the concern that exposure to queer people or ideas will make children queer by arguing that sexual orientations are innate or immutable. This immutability argument is problematic, first, because it avoids confronting the normative judgment at the heart of the fear of a queer child by failing to say that there is …

The Sufficiency Of Disclosure Of Ai Inventions, Mateo Aboy, Aparajita Lath, Timo Minssen, Kathleen Liddell

Articles

• The complex and data-driven nature of artificial intelligence (AI) raises questions for the sufficient disclosure of patent applications in this field. What are the European patent disclosure requirements for AI inventions?

• One challenge is that, prior to training, AI systems can be considered generic models. But after training, they transform into specialized AI systems to solve a particular problem. This transformation requires training data, making it an integral part of the AI system’s definition. But to what extent is the disclosure of the training data or training process necessary for patent disclosure?

• The Boards of Appeal of the European Patent …

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Defining Relevant Markets In Digital Ecosystems, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

Traditional market definition focuses on the substitutability of two products or geographies. In digital ecosystems, competition often occurs in important ways that elide definition in conventional substitutability terms. This Article considers three kinds of economic rivalry that do not fit the conventional market definition mold: (1) Single-side competition: In two sided markets, firms may compete on just one side of the market. For example, Google and Facebook compete for the same advertisers, but their users on the other side of the market do not necessarily think of the offerings (social media and universal search) as substitutes; (2) Ecosystem competition: Technology …

Sex-Dependent Differences In Vulnerability To Early Risk Factors For Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Results From The Aurora Study, Stephanie Haering, Antonia V. Seligowski, Sarah D. Linnstaedt, Vasiliki Michopoulos, Stacey L. House, Francesca L. Beaudoin, Xinming An, Thomas C. Neylan, Robert A. Swor

Articles

No abstract provided.

Sidestepping Substance: How Administrative Law Plays An Outsized Role In Shaping Environmental Policy And Why Recalibration Is Necessary, Sanne H. Knudsen

Articles

Administrative law and environmental law are companion fields. Still, they are not interchangeable. They promote different values. And yet, sometimes when courts resolve environmental disputes by relying on administrative doctrines, courts elevate the values of administrative law over those codified in environmental statutes. This is particularly concerning when courts rely on judicially-created administrative law doctrines to sidestep congressional intent as expressed by the substantive aims of environmental statutes.

To reduce the risk of sidestepping—whether inadvertent or intentional—this Article critically examines how administrative law doctrines can undermine environmental law. Drawing on prominent case examples, including the Supreme Court decision in Sackett …

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

Articles

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 vulnerable …

Microglial Piezo1 Mechanosensitive Channel As A Therapeutic Target In Alzheimer's Disease, Erol D Ikiz, Erin R Hascup, Chilman Bae, Kevin N Hascup

Articles

Microglia are the resident macrophages of the central nervous system (CNS) that control brain development, maintain neural environments, respond to injuries, and regulate neuroinflammation. Despite their significant impact on various physiological and pathological processes across mammalian biology, there remains a notable gap in our understanding of how microglia perceive and transmit mechanical signals in both normal and diseased states. Recent studies have revealed that microglia possess the ability to detect changes in the mechanical properties of their environment, such as alterations in stiffness or pressure. These changes may occur during development, aging, or in pathological conditions such as trauma or …

Achille Mbembe, "Brutalism", Atreyee Majumder

Articles

Book Review: Achille Mbembe, Brutalism (Duke University Press 2024)

Why We Should Stop Talking About Violent Offenders: Storytelling And Decarceration, Mira Edmonds

Articles

The movement to decarcerate risks foundering because of its failure to grapple with so-called violent offenders, who make up nearly half of U.S. prisoners. The treatment of people serving sentences for offenses categorized as violent is a primary reason for the continued problem of mass incarceration, despite widespread awareness of the phenomenon and significant bipartisan interest in its reduction. People convicted of “violent offenses” are serving historically anomalous and excessively long sentences, are generally denied clemency and compassionate release, and are excluded from a wide array of legal reform and policy changes with decarceral aims. Keeping these people in prison …

Beyond The Human: Crossovers For An Onto-Epistemological Bifurcation, Ester Toribio-Roura

Articles

Building upon recent studies in new materialisms and feminist critical posthumanism with a focus on human and more-than-human relationships, this paper examines how the posthuman paradigm, by postulating the queering of identit(ies) via entanglement with the more-than-human (including technology), and by offering a critical examination of diverse modes of existence within a broader ecological context, can foster more inclusive and ethically sound ways of being in the world. Although posthumanism encompasses a wide range of perspectives and theories, including transhumanism, at its core, it challenges traditional notions of humanism, blurring the boundaries between what is human and what is more-than-human, …

Dual-Systems And Fuzzy-Trace Theory Predictions Of Covid-19 Risk Taking In Young Adults, Sarah M. Edelson, Valerie F. Reyna, Bridget B. Hayes, David M. N. Garavito

Articles

Risk-reduction behaviors are the first line of defense in viral epidemics. Choosing to not engage in risk-reduction behaviors produced millions of preventable deaths from COVID-19. Understanding why this happens and how to predict it is important for theory development and public policy. We took four approaches to this problem: experimentally varying theory-driven predictors (social rewards, transmission risk, and mandatory/voluntary regulations) in choice scenarios, further probing choices in specific scenarios predicted to elicit risk taking, conducting hierarchical regressions with demographic and theory-driven predictors for both scenario types, and conducting corresponding regressions for self-reported protective behaviors. The sample consisted of 247 young …

Biosensor-Enhanced Organ-On-A-Chip Models For Investigating Glioblastoma Tumor Microenvironment Dynamics, Gayathree Thenuwara, Bilal Javed, Baljit Singh, Furong Tian

Articles

Glioblastoma, an aggressive primary brain tumor, poses a significant challenge owing to its dynamic and intricate tumor microenvironment. This review investigates the innovative integration of biosensor-enhanced organ-on-a-chip (OOC) models as a novel strategy for an in-depth exploration of glioblastoma tumor microenvironment dynamics. In recent years, the transformative approach of incorporating biosensors into OOC platforms has enabled real-time monitoring and analysis of cellular behaviors within a controlled microenvironment. Conventional in vitro and in vivo models exhibit inherent limitations in accurately replicating the complex nature of glioblastoma progression. This review addresses the existing research gap by pioneering the integration of biosensor-enhanced OOC …

Arsenic Contamination Needs Serious Attention: An Opinion And Global Scenario, Abhijnan Bhat School Of Food Science And Environmental Health, Kamna Ravi Health, Engineering & Materials Sciences (Hems) Hub, Furong Tian Nanolab Research Centre, Baljit Singh Micra Biodiagnostics Technology Gateway

Articles

Arsenic (As) contamination is a serious global concern, polluting our natural resources, including water and soil, and posing a danger to the environment and public health. Arsenic is present in the groundwater of several countries and this contaminated water is used for irrigation, drinking, and food preparation, which poses the greatest threat to public health. Nearly 106 countries are affected by groundwater arsenic contamination and an estimated 230 million individuals worldwide are exposed to its adverse health effects, including increased cancer risks, associated cardiovascular disease and diabetes, skin lesions, neurological effects, kidney damage, and foetal or cognitive development-related complications. Arsenic …

Bioaccumulation Of Сr, Zn, Pb And Cu In Ambrosia Artemisiifolia L. And Erigeron Canadensis L., Volodymyr Laptiev, Samuel Obeng Apori, Michelle Giltrap, Furong Tian, Nataliia Ryzhenko

Articles

The city of Dnipro, a prominent industrial hub in Ukraine, is recognized for its particularly its significant industrial development. This study focused on two prevalent plant species, Ambrosia artemisiifolia L. and Erigeron canadensis L., within the vicinity. Sampling was conducted at points located 12.02 km away from the emission sources associated with battery production and recycling plants in Dnipro. Analysis of heavy metal concentrations such as, Cr, Cu, Pb, and Zn was conducted using atomic emission spectrometry from the soil and plants tissues of Ambrosia artemisiifolia L. and Erigeron canadensis L. The translocation coefficient (TF) was calculated for both plant …