Digital Commons Network^™

Study On The Influence Of Road Geometry On Vehicle Lateral Instability, Yanna Yin, Huiying Wen, Lu Sun, Wei Hou

Articles

According to the accident analysis of vehicles in the curve, the skidding, rollover, and lateral drift of vehicles are determined as means to evaluate the lateral stability of vehicles. -e utility truck of rear-wheel drive (RWD) is researched, which is high accident rate. Human-vehicle-road simulation models are established by CarSim. -rough the orthogonal experiment method, the effects of different road geometries, speed, and interaction factors between road geometries on vehicle lateral stability are studied. In this paper, skidding risk of the vehicle is characterized by the Side-way Force Coefficient (SFC). Rollover risk of the vehicle is characterized by lateral acceleration …

Isolation And Characterization Of A Novel Thermo-Solvent-Stable Lipase From Pseudomonas Brenneri And Its Application In Biodiesel Synthesis, Priyanka Priyanka, Gemma K. Kinsella, Gary T. Henehan, Barry J. Ryan

Articles

Pseudomonads are one of the most studied species of bacteria as they display remarkable metabolic and physiological versatility. This enables them to colonize a wide variety of terrestrial and aquatic habitats, generating biotechnologically interesting enzymes. Here, the partial purification and characterization of a novel, extracellularly-produced, lipase from Pseudomonas brenneri is described. The partially purified lipase was active over a broad pH range (5.0–9.0) and was stable at 70 °C for 45 min. The lipase displayed significant stability, and in some cases activation, in the presence of organic solvents with log P≥2.0. Such stability characteristics indicated that this lipase could potentially …

Cleanpage: Fast And Clean Document And Whiteboard Capture, Jane Courtney

Articles

The move from paper to online is not only necessary for remote working, it is also significantly more sustainable. This trend has seen a rising need for the high-quality digitization of content from pages and whiteboards to sharable online material. However, capturing this information is not always easy nor are the results always satisfactory. Available scanning apps vary in their usability and do not always produce clean results, retaining surface imperfections from the page or whiteboard in their output images. CleanPage, a novel smartphone-based document and whiteboard scanning system, is presented. CleanPage requires one button-tap to capture, identify, crop, and …

Against Fascism: Toward A Latcritical Legal Genealogy, Elizabeth M. Iglesias

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No abstract provided.

A Lexical Frequency Analysis Of Irish Sign Language, Robert G. Smith, Markus Hofmann

Articles

Word frequency has a significant impact on language acquisition and fluency. It is often a point of reference for the teaching and assessing of a language and indeed, as a control for psycholinguistic studies. This paper presents the results of the first objective frequency analysis of lexical tokens from the Signs of Ireland corpus. We investigate the frequency of fully lexical, partly lexical and non-lexical signs in Irish Sign Language as they are presented in the corpus. We confirm the accuracy of the lexical gloss frequency data with a supplementary corpus subset that is tagged for grammatical class and additional …

Practical Model For Improved Classification Of Trace Chemical Residues On Surfaces In Active Spectroscopic Measurements, Cara P. Murphy, John P. Kerekes, Derek A. Wood, Anish K. Goyal

Articles

No abstract provided.

Practical Model For Improved Classification Of Trace Chemical Residues On Surfaces In Active Spectroscopic Measurements, Cara P. Murphy, John Kerekes, Derek Wood, Anish Goyal

Articles

Trace chemical detection and classification in stand-off reflection-based spectro- scopic data is challenging due to the variability of measured data and the lack of physics-based models that can accurately predict spectra. Most available models assume that the chemical takes the form of spherical particles or uniform thin films. A more realistic chemical presentation that could be encountered is that of a nonuniform chemical film that is deposited after evaporation of the solvent that contained the chemical. We present an improved signature model for this type of solid film. The proposed model, called sparse transfer matrix, includes a log-normal distribution of …

Lawyers Democratic Dysfunction, Leah Litman

Articles

As part of the symposium on Jack Balkin and Sandy Levinson’s Democracy and Dysfunction, this Article documents another source of the dysfunction that the authors observe—elite lawyers’ unwillingness to break ranks with other elite lawyers who participate in the destruction of various norms that are integral to a well-functioning democracy. These network effects eliminate the possibility of “soft” sanctions on norm violators such as withholding future professional advancement. Thus, rather than enforcing norms and deterring norm violations, the networks serve to insulate norm violators from any meaningful accountability.

Legitimacy And Agency Implementation Of Title Ix, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Articles

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits sex discrimination by programs receiving federal education funding. Primary responsibility for administering that statute lies in the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education (OCR). Because Title IX involves a subject that remains highly controversial in our polity (sex roles and interactions among the sexes more generally), and because it targets a highly sensitive area (education), OCR’s administration of the statute has long drawn criticism. The critics have not merely noted disagreements with the legal and policy decisions of the agency, however. Rather, they have attacked the agency’s decisions …

A Small But Mighty Docket: Select Criminal Law And Procedure Cases From The Supreme Court's 2019-20 Term, Eve Brensike Primus, Jeremy Shur

Articles

With its 2019-20 Term disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Supreme Court released just 53 signed decisions, the fewest decisions in a Term since the Civil War. But the Court's lighter docket still featured important criminal law and procedure cases touching on what constitutes reasonable individualized suspicion, the necessity of jury unanimity, and the proper form of the insanity defense.

Provost’S Learning Innovation Grant (Plig) For 2019, Esa M. Rantanen

Articles

This grant allowed for a redesign of the PSYC 714 “Graduate Engineering Psychology” course, offered by the Department of Psychology about every two years since 2013, for online delivery. The grant was awarded on March 29, 2019. Full Project Plan report was submitted on Aug. 16, 2019. The majority of the course redesign work was completed during the fall semester 2019 (2191), including creation of several software programs to support the lab exercises designed for the course. The Preliminary Findings report was submitted on Jan. 10, 2020, and the PSYC 714 course was offered online in the spring semester of …

The Use Of Three-Dimensional Conjugate Cfd To Enhance Understanding Of, And To Verify, Multi-Modal Heat Transfer In Dynamic Laboratory Test Walls, Rakshit D. Muddu, Timothy Patrick O'Leary, Ronan Hogan, Anthony James Robinson, Aimee Byrne

Articles

This work describes the use of conjugate computational fluid dynamics (C-CFD) to simulate controlled laboratory based dynamic heat transfer tests on building components. This study proposes that conjugate CFD simulation can be used to evaluate the influence of combined convective and conductive heat transfer in multi-state building components. To this end, a solid wall and cavity wall were tested with a Calibrated Hotbox and subject to variable temperature conditions leading to combined convective and conductive heat transfer. The varying temperature of the heat source was monitored and used as the input boundary condition in the simulation model, which included a …

Student Observations Of Postsecondary Classroom Instruction: Accessibility Challenges And Collaborative Feedback., Yasmine R. Jassal, Stephanie W. Cawthon, Sara Schley

Articles

For deaf students, accessible classroom design is often provided through external services such as interpreters or speech-to-text providers. An approach based in Universal Design for Learning (UDL), though, seeks to engage students in learning by creating classroom spaces with accessibility integrated into the pedagogical approach. Realizing these goals requires participation from one of the most valuable, yet underused, resources: the students themselves. To that end, this paper examines a student-faculty collaborative approach to increasing accessibility for deaf students in postsecondary classrooms. Results of this study suggest that student observers are able to provide concrete and constructive feedback on strategies to …

Characterization And Antimicrobial Activity Of Biodegradable Active Packaging Enriched With Clove And Thyme Essential Oil For Food Packaging Application, Shubham Sharma, Sandra Barkauskaite, Brendan Duffy, Amit Jaiswal, Swarna Jaiswal

Articles

Bioactive packaging contains natural antimicrobial agents, which inhibit the growth of microorganisms and increase the food shelf life. Solvent casting method was used to prepare the Poly (lactide)-Poly (butylene adipate-co-terephthalate) (PLA-PBAT) film incorporated with the thyme oil and clove oil in various concentrations (1 wt%, 5 wt% and 10 wt%). The clove oil composite films depicted less green and more yellow as compared to thyme oil composite films. Clove oil composite film has shown an 80% increase in the UV blocking efficiency. The tensile strength (TS) of thyme oil and clove oil composite film decreases from 1.35 MPs (control film) …

Interactive Video Vignettes (Ivvs) To Help Students Learn Genetics Concepts, Dina L. Newman, Jean Cardinale, L Kate Wright

Articles

any video resources exist to teach Mendelian genetics, but most consist of passive delivery of information rather than active construction of knowledge by users. We have created two interactive video vignettes (IVVs) that can be used together or separately to introduce students to core concepts of genetics, using principles of active learning (e.g., elicit-confront-resolve, directed feedback, reflection). These online resources are free and can be assigned as homework for students to complete outside of class. Each IVV features a realistic scenario of undergraduate students investigating genetic phenomena by collecting and analyzing data. During the IVVs, the user is integrated into …

Using Information Communications Technologies To Implement Universal Design For Learning, David Banes, Anne Hayes, Christopher Kurz, Raja Kashalnagar

Articles

The purpose of this paper is to assist Ministries of Education, their donors and partners, Disabled Persons Organizations (DPOs), and the practitioner community funded by and working with USAID to select, pilot, and (as appropriate) scale up ICT4E solutions to facilitate the implementation of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), with a particular emphasis on supporting students with disabilities to acquire literacy and numeracy skills. The paper focuses primarily on how technology can support foundational skills acquisition for students with disabilities, while also explaining when, why, and how technologies that assist students with disabilities can, in some applications, have positive impacts …

Rhetorical Repetition, Patrick Barry

Articles

When it comes to persuading judges, boardrooms, or even just co-workers, many lawyers shy away from repetition. They remain committed to the idea, often developed in college, that good writing is associated with having (and showing) a big vocabulary. They mistakenly think the best thesaurus wins. This essay explores that error and offers ways to correct it.

Assessment Of Dehydration As A Commercial-Scale Food Waste Valorization Strategy, Jon T. Schroeder, Ava L. Labuzetta, Thomas A. Trabold

Articles

Using a commercially available dehydration unit, this study aimed to valorize various food waste streams from different sources in the Rochester, New York area. Dehydration of the food waste collected for the study helped reduce the weight of the feedstock by 70–90%, as the incoming waste streams were relatively wet. The output was materially characterized against end uses such as cattle feed, fish feed, and compost. The results demonstrated that, other than fertilizer, the remaining five end uses (compost, fish feed, cattle feed, pyrolysis, and pelletized fuel) were potentially compatible with varying waste feedstocks based on the parameters analyzed. Fish …

Living With Machines. Ethical Implications And Imaginative Agency As Local Tactics Of Dwelling And Resistance In Everyday Interactions With Artificial Intelligence, Ester Toribio-Roura

Articles

With the widespread of the Internet of things (IoT), algorithms are increasingly managing our everyday life. From navigating our way in cities to keeping track of our health, artificial intelligence has been beneficial to us in many ways. However, its algorithms can also be detrimental as a consequence of biased human programming. The result is that while technological progress delivers more and more human-like artificial intelligence, humans become dehumanised and therefore, disempowered in their everyday interactions with artificial intelligence.The solution(s) is not single-handed and calls for combined interventions at the macro and micro levels. Whilst reviewing recent top-down developments on …

An Investigation Of The Role Of Spatial Ability In Representing And Solving Word Problems Among Engineering Students, Gavin Duffy, Sheryl A. Sorby, Brian Bowe

Articles

Background

Spatial ability is significantly related to performance in engineering education. Problem solving, an activity that is highly relevant to engineering education, has been linked to spatial ability.

Purpose/Hypothesis

To what extent is spatial ability related to problem solving among engineering students and how do approaches to problem representation and solution vary with spatial ability level?

Design/Method

Three instruments – a spatial ability test, word math problems and accompanying core math competency questions – were administered to two samples of first year engineering students in two different countries. Data were analyzed at the test level to evaluate the relationship of …

Italian Sociologists: A Community Of Disconnected Groups, Aliakbar Akbaritabar, Vincent Traag, Alberto Caimo, Flaminio Squazzoni

Articles

Examining coauthorship networks is key to study scientific collaboration patterns and structural characteristics of scientific communities. Here, we studied coauthorship networks of sociologists in Italy, using temporal and multi-level quantitative analysis. By looking at publications indexed in Scopus, we detected research communities among Italian sociologists. We found that Italian sociologists are fractured in many disconnected groups. The giant connected component of the Italian sociology could be split into five main groups with a mixture of three main disciplinary topics: sociology of culture and communication (present in two groups), economic sociology (present in three groups) and general sociology (present in three …

The Supreme Court, Dischargeability And Actual Fraud, David G. Carlson

Articles

No abstract provided.

Audio-Visual Caption Evaluation Metric For People Who Are Deaf And Hard Of Hearing, Akhter Al Amin

Articles

While the availability of captioned television programming has increased, the quality of this captioning is not always acceptable to Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) viewers, especially for live or unscripted content, broadcast from local television stations, especially in smaller markets. There is a need for formal metrics to evaluate captioning quality, to enable audits or quality assurance. Although some current caption metrics focus on comparing the textual accuracy (comparing the caption text and accurate transcription of what was spoken), there are other properties of captions that may affect quality or usability judgments. We propose to conduct experiments with DHH …

Enzymatic In-Situ Transesterification Of Neutral Lipids From Simulated Wastewater Cultured Chlorella Emersonii And Pseudokirchneriella Subcapitata To Sustainably Produce Fatty Acid Methyl Esters, Priyanka Priyanka, Gemma K. Kinsella, Gary Henehan, Barry J. Ryan

Articles

Alternative, more sustainable and environmentally positive, sources of energy are one of the current global challenges. One approach to achieving more sustainable sources of energy is to use waste from one system as a raw material for energy production, following the circular biosystem philosophy. This study successfully adopted this approach whereby microalgae strains Chlorella emersonii and Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata were bioprospected and metabolically engineered in simulated wastewater supplemented with glucose to produce neutral lipids. Using a two-step cultivation approach neutral lipid content was enhanced in Chlorella emersonii and Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata biomass. Via in-situ transesterification, these neutral lipids were subsequently bioconverted to …

The Data City, The Idiom And Questions Of Locality, Noel Fitzpatrick

Articles

The paper aims to provide both a radical critique of the “smart city” as a techno-ideological apparatus,that through data analysis and algorithmic forms of governmentality tends to colonize space and time, and an attempt to reframe the very concept of intelligence within the smart cities. Two concepts are presented as tools for such a reframing: locality and idiom, where the first is conceived as openness of meaning generated by a territory, while the latter,analysed througha paradigmatic Irish example (Friel’s play Translations), prepares the ground for the pars construensof the paper. The claim, built by intertwining a set of authors (Ricoeur, …

Aqueous Solution Of Ammonia As Marine Fuel, Alessandro Schönborn

Articles

The ignition of ammonia in aqueous solution was simulated in a two-stroke compression ignition engine model. Zero-dimensional chemical kinetic calculations were used to estimate the ignition timing of fuel air mixtures in homogeneous charge compression ignition and diesel combustion modes. The fuel consisted of a 25% m/m aqueous solution of ammonia and pure ammonia for comparison. Ignition was studied by varying the geometric compression ratio of the engine. To ignite ammonia in aqueous solution a minimum compression ratio of 25 was necessary under homogeneous charge compression ignition combustion conditions, whereas under diesel combustion conditions a minimum compression ratio of 27 …

What The Post-Coronavirus University Will Look Like, Thomas Power

Articles

The opportunity of a crisis is that it forces an industry to re-examine its policies and practices. Since the coronavirus pandemic university leadership teams have been forced to re-examine its policies and practices on teaching, learning, research and funding.

Supporting Disaster Resilience Spatial Thinking With Serious Geogames: Project Lily Pad, Brian Tomaszewski, Amy Walker, Emily Gawlik, Casey Lane, Scott William, Deborah Orieta, Claudia Mcdaniel, Matthew Plummer, Anushka Nair, Nicolas San Jose, Kyle Pecsok, Emma Thomley, Erin Mahoney, Emily Haberlack, David Schwartz

Articles

The need for improvement of societal disaster resilience and response efforts was evident after the destruction caused by the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season. We present a novel conceptual framework for improving disaster resilience through the combination of serious games, geographic information systems (GIS), spatial thinking, and disaster resilience. Our framework is implemented via Project Lily Pad, a serious geogame based on our conceptual framework, serious game case studies, interviews and real-life experiences from 2017 Hurricane Harvey survivors in Dickinson, TX, and an immersive hurricane-induced flooding scenario. The game teaches a four-fold set of skills relevant to spatial thinking and disaster …

Questions Concerning Attention And Stiegler’S Therapeutics, Noel Fitzpatrick

Articles

The article sets out to develop the concept of attention as a key aspect to building the possible therapeutics that Bernard Stiegler’s recent works have pointed to (The Automatic Society, 2016, The Neganthropocene, 2018 and Qu’appelle-t-on Panser, 2018). The therapeutic aspect of pharmacology takes place through processes that are neganthropic; therefore, which attempt to counteract the entropic nature of digital technologies where there is flattening out to the measurable and the calculable of Big Data. The most obvious examples of this flattening out can be seen in relation to the use of natural language processing technologies for …

Share Buybacks And Income Inequality, Thomas Power

Articles

Should you care what companies do with their profits? Two U.S. democratic senators, Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders, in an article in the New York Times, argue that we should all care because what companies do with their profits can damage the economy and jobs.