Digital Commons Network^™

Role Of Courts In Ensuring Water Justice In India: Brasilia Declaration On Water Justice And Beyond, Gayathri D. Naik

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Water being a scarce resource, questions of its allocation and distribution, coupled with concerns of its depletion have troubled policy makers, legislators, and judges alike. While, over the years there has been significant development on the discussion surrounding the rights-duty paradigm of water resources, by establishing the obligation of states, discussion surrounding a certain value-based approach to guide the minds of important stakeholders in creating and enforcing policy has gained far less traction comparatively. It is in this context that this paper explores an alternative justice-based approach to water, drawing from the works of Amartya Sen on capabilities and more …

Post-Grant Adjudication Of Drug Patents: Agency And/Or Court?, Arti K. Rai, Saurabh Vishnubhakat, Jorge Lemus, Erik Hovenkamp

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The America Invents Act of 2011 (AIA) created a robust administrative system-the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB)-that provides a route for challenging the validity of granted patents outside of district courts. Congress determined that administrative adjudication of the validity of initial patent grants could be cheaper and more scientifically accurate than district court adjudication of such validity.

For private economic value per patent, few areas of technology can match the biopharmaceutical industry. This is particularly true for small-molecule drugs. A billion-dollar drug monopoly may be protected from competition by a relatively small number of patents. Accordingly, the social cost …

Robert Cover’S Love Of Stories: A Rumination On His Wanting To Discuss The Brothers Karamazov With Me Across Five Conversations During The Last Five Years Of His Life, With An Application To The Chauvin Murder Trial Of 2021, Richard H. Weisberg

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The field of Law and Literature, perhaps more than any other area of legal studies, has been touched deeply by Robert Cover’s life and work. My interactions with Bob over the last half dozen years of his tragically short life provide an insight, recounted in a somewhat personal vein here, into his profound engagement with stories, with the most enduring part of that revitalized inter-discipline. I specify and illustrate five conversations I had with him during conferences, family interactions, or long New Haven walks beginning in 1981 and ending the day before his untimely death in the Summer of …

Re: Safety, Tolerability, And Efficacy Of Liris 400 Mg In Women With Interstitial Cystitis/Bladder Pain Syndrome With Or Without Hunner Lesions, R Evans, A Kohan, R Moldwin, D Radecki, T Geib, K M. Peters

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Editorial Comment: The lidocaine-releasing intravesical system (LiRIS) is a passive, nonresorbable intravesical system inserted cystoscopically and designed to provide continuous, controlled release of lidocaine into the bladder over a 2-week period, after which it is removed. There was a positive anticipation that this treatment system might provide symptomatic relief for at least a segment of patients with interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS), based on the logic of the rationale and from results in 2 small studies, 1 of which was presented at the American Urological Association annual meeting in 2016,1 showing positive results in patients with Hunner lesions (HL). This …

The Impact Of Nutrition And Gastrointestinal Symptoms On Health-Related Quality Of Life In Survivorship After Oesophageal Cancer Surgery, Sarah Bennett, Conor F. Murphy, Michelle Fanning, John V. Reynolds, Suzanne Doyle, Claire L. Donohoe

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Summary

Background and Aims Oesophagectomy is the primary curative treatment for oesophageal cancer but is associated with considerable postoperative morbidity and mortality. To better understand the aetiology of impaired health-related quality of life (HRQL) in oesophageal cancer survivors (OCS), this study sought to determine the longitudinal changes in nutritional status, nutrition-impact symptoms (NIS), and HRQL in this cohort, and to determine which variables have the greatest impact on postoperative HRQL decline.

Methods Data, derived from St. James' Hospital, Dublin, included patients who underwent oesophagectomy from October 2017 to May 2019 and attended clinic preoperatively and 6 months postoperatively. A subset …

Potential Interactions Between Metal-Based Phenanthroline Drugs And The Unfolded Protein Response Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress Pathway, Tadhg O'Leary, Pauraic Mccarron, Michael Devereux, Steve Meaney

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The unfolded protein response has recently been implicated as a mechanism by which 1,10-phenanthrolinecontaining coordination compounds trigger cell death. We explored the interaction of two such compounds —one containing copper and one containing manganese—with endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress. Pretreatment with anisomycin significantly enhanced the cytotoxic activity of both metal-based compounds in A2780, but only the copper-based compound in A549 cells. The effects of pretreatment with tunicamycin were dependent on the nature of the metal center in the compounds. In A2780 cells, the cytotoxic action of the copper compound was reduced by tunicamycin only at high concentration. In contrast, in A549 …

Efficacy Of Plasma Activated Saline In A Co‑Culture Infection Control Model, Evanthia Tsoukou, Paula Bourke, Daniela Boehm

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Plasma activated liquids have demonstrated antimicrobial effects and receive increasing attention due to the potential to strengthen the armoury of novel approaches against antibiotic resistant bacteria. However, the antibacterial activity and cytotoxic effects of these solutions need to be understood and balanced before exposure to humans. In this study, the antibacterial effects of plasma activated saline (PAS) were tested against Gram negative and positive bacteria, and HaCaT keratinocytes were used for cytotoxicity studies. For the first time, a co-culture model between these bacteria and eukaryotic cells under the influence of PAS has been described. Exposure of saline to plasma resulted …

Hyperbranched Poly(Β-Amino Ester)S (Hpaes) Structure Optimisation For Enhanced Gene Delivery: Non-Ideal Termination Elimination, Yinghao Li, Zhonglei He, Jing Lyu, Xianqing Wang, Bei Qiu, Irene Lara-Saez, Jing Zhang, Ming Zeng, Qian Xu, Sigen Sigen A., James Curtin, Wenxin Wang

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Growing at an impressive pace, gene therapy has emerged as a prospective segment in the biotechnology field and presents a bright outlook, given the increasing investments in R&D and the mounting incidence of genetic disorders [1]. Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for gene therapy, estimated at 1.2 billion dollars in the year 2022, is projected to reach a revised size of 2.7 billion dollars by 2026, according to the Cision PR Newswire. However, the lack of efficient gene delivery vectors still hinders the large-scale manufacturing of gene therapy agents. Viral vectors, such as the adeno-associated virus, lentivirus, retrovirus, …

First Long-Time Airborne Fungal Spores Study In Dublin, Ireland (1978–1980), Moisés Martínez-Bracero, Emma Markey, Jerry Hourihane Clancy, John Sodeau, David J. O'Connor

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Ambient fungal spores within the atmosphere can contribute to a range of negative human, animal and plant health conditions and diseases. However, trends in fungal spore seasonality, species prevalence, and geographical origin have been significantly understudied in Ireland. Previously unpublished data from the late 1970s have recently been collected and analysed to establish historical fungal spore trends/characteristics for Dublin. Historical spore concentrations were largely dominated by Alternaria, Ascospores, Basidiospores, Botrytis, Cladosporium, Erysiphe and Rusts. The main fungal spore season for Dublin commenced in April with the fructification of Scopulariopsis and Ganoderma. However, the vast majority of other spore types did …

Airborne Fungal Spore Review, New Advances And Automatisation, Moisés Martínez-Bracero, Emma Markey, Jerry Hourihane Clancy, Eoin Mcgillicuddy, Gavin Sewell, David J. O'Connor

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Fungal spores make up a significant portion of Primary Biological Aerosol Particles (PBAPs) with large quantities of such particles noted in the air. Fungal particles are of interest because of their potential to affect the health of both plants and humans. They are omnipresent in the atmosphere year-round, with concentrations varying due to meteorological parameters and location. Equally, differences between indoor and outdoor fungal spore concentrations and dispersal play an important role in occupational health. This review attempts to summarise the different spore sampling methods, identify the most important spore types in terms of negative effects on crops and the …

Deep Residual Policy Reinforcement Learning As A Corrective Term In Process Control For Alarm Reduction: A Preliminary Report, Ammar N. Abbas, Georgios C. Chasparis, John Kelleher

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Conventional process controllers (such as proportional integral derivative controllers and model predictive controllers) are simple and effective once they have been calibrated for a given system. However, it is difficult and costly to re-tune these controllers if the system deviates from its normal conditions and starts to deteriorate. Recently, reinforcement learning has shown a significant improvement in learning process control policies through direct interaction with a system, without the need of a process model or the system characteristics, as it learns the optimal control by interacting with the environment directly. However, developing such a black-box system is a challenge when …

When Teachers Misgender: The Free Speech Claims Of Public School Teachers, Caroline Mala Corbin

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No abstract provided.

Assessment Of Ligament Viscoelastic Properties Using Raman Spectroscopy, Andy Cui, Ervin Nippolainen, Rubina Shaikh, Jari Torniainen, Aapo Ristaniemi, Mikko Finnilä, Rami K. Korhonen, Simo Saarakkala, Walter Herzog, Juha Töyräs, Isaac O. Afara

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Injuries to the ligaments of the knee commonly impact vulnerable and physically active individuals. These injuries can lead to the development of degenerative diseases such as post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA). Non-invasive optical modalities, such as infrared and Raman spectroscopy, provide means for quantitative evaluation of knee joint tissues and have been proposed as potential quantitative diagnostic tools for arthroscopy. In this study, we evaluate Raman spectroscopy as a viable tool for estimating functional properties of collateral ligaments. Artificial trauma was induced by anterior cruciate ligament transection (ACLT) in the left or right knee joint of skeletally mature New Zealand rabbits. The …

Promoting Vaccine Innovation, Mirit Eyal-Cohen, Ana Santos Rutschman

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As society grows to understand the need to promote innovation, policymakers try to employ an arsenal of policy tools, from traditional intellectual property ("JP") to newer tools such as grants, regulatory vouchers, and prizes. This Article argues that these frameworks crowd out certain types of investments in innovation projects that have a high social value. Vaccine innovation is a case in point. Despite the immense socioeconomic benefit of vaccines, existing policies have been limited in fostering investments in this space. This is because they fail to directly address the relevant bottleneck issues distinct to vaccine development.

This Article offers a …

Alienating Criminal Procedure, Amy F. Kimpel

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No abstract provided.

The Criminal Legal System Doesn't Care About Your Mental Illness: A Review Of The Other Dr. Gilmer: Two Men, A Murder, And An Unlikely Fight For Justice Review, Fredrick Vars

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No abstract provided.

Using Feature Selection With Machine Learning For Generation Of Insurance Insights, Ayman Taha, Bernard Cosgrave, Susan Mckeever

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Insurance is a data-rich sector, hosting large volumes of customer data that is analysed to evaluate risk. Machine learning techniques are increasingly used in the effective management of insurance risk. Insurance datasets by their nature, however, are often of poor quality with noisy subsets of data (or features). Choosing the right features of data is a significant pre-processing step in the creation of machine learning models. The inclusion of irrelevant and redundant features has been demonstrated to affect the performance of learning models. In this article, we propose a framework for improving predictive machine learning techniques in the insurance sector …

The Dynamic Impact Of Biomass And Natural Resources On Ecological Footprint In Brics Economies: A Quantile Regression Evidence, Abraham Ayobamiji Awosusi, Tomiwa Sunday Adebayo, Mehmet Altuntaş, Ephraim Bonah Agyekum, Hossam Zawbaa, Salah Kamel

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Many emerging economies, including the BRICS economies, are having difficulty meeting the Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs) objectives. Consequently, this research discusses the creation of an SDG framework for the BRICS economies, which can be utilized as a model for other blocs. To achieve this purpose, this research probes into the effect of biomass energy usage on ecological footprint in the BRICS economies between 1992 and 2018, considering the roles of gross capital formation, natural resources, and globalization. The novel Methods of Moments-Quantile-Regression (MMQR) approach with fixed effects is used, the outcomes of which reveal that in all quantiles (10th to …

Investigation Of The Combustion Of Exhaust Gas Recirculation In Diesel Engines With A Particulate Filter And Selective Catalytic Reactor Technologies For Environmental Gas Reduction, Megavath Vijay Kumar, Alur Veeresh Babu, Ch. Rami Reddy, A. Pandian, Mohit Bajaj, Hossam Zawbaa, Salah Kamel

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The Diesel Engine, invented by the German engineer Rudolf Diesel, was a marvelous creation that changed the way the automobile industry worked. It is an internal combustion engine that compresses air to elevate its pressure and temperature so high that the atomized diesel fuel undergoes combustion almost instantaneously when it is sprayed into the combustion chamber. The Major advantage of a Compression Ignition (CI) engine compared to a Spark Ignition (SI) engine is the higher compression ratio achieved in the former, making it more efficient. This makes diesel engines more suitable for heavy-duty vehicles, which require more torque to overcome …

An Improved Wild Horse Optimization Algorithm For Reliability Based Optimal Dg Planning Of Radial Distribution Networks, Mohammed Hamouda Ali, Salah Kamel, Mohamed H. Hassan, Marcos Tostado-Véliz, Hossam Zawbaa

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This paper introduces a novel technique for optimal distribution system (DS) planning with distributed generation (DG) systems. It is being done to see how active and reactive power injections affect the system’s voltage profile and energy losses. DG penetration in the power systems is one approach that has several advantages such as peak savings, loss lessening, voltage profile amelioration. It also intends to increase system reliability, stability, and security. The main goal of optimal distributed generation (ODG) is a guarantee to achieve the benefits mentioned previously to increase the overall system efficiency. For extremely vast and complicated systems, analytical approaches …

An Audio Processing Pipeline For Acquiring Diagnostic Quality Heart Sounds Via Mobile Phone, Davoud Shariat Panah, Andrew Hines, Joseph Mckeever, Susan Mckeever

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Recently, heart sound signals captured using mobile phones have been employed to develop data-driven heart disease detection systems. Such signals are generally captured in person by trained clinicians who can determine if the recorded heart sounds are of diagnosable quality. However, mobile phones have the potential to support heart health diagnostics, even where access to trained medical professionals is limited. To adopt mobile phones as self-diagnostic tools for the masses, we would need to have a mechanism to automatically establish that heart sounds recorded by non-expert users in uncontrolled conditions have the required quality for diagnostic purposes. This paper proposes …

Financial Uncertainty From A Dual Shock At Global Level–Insights From Kuwait, Talal A.N.M.S. Alotaibi, Lucia Morales

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Global stock markets experienced a dual shock in 2020 due to the impact of the global health crisis, parallel to a simultaneous shock derived from the Saudi Arabia and Russia oil price war. The dual shock fueled oil market volatility with lasting effects as the global economy is immersed in an energy crisis combined with high inflationary pressures exacerbated by heightened energy costs. This research paper implemented GARCH and FIGARCH models on daily returns from 31 December 2015, to 9 December 2021, to examine volatility persistence and long memory processes. The world’s most prominent economies are represented by the G7, …

Current Account Imbalances, Real Exchange Rates, And Nominal Exchange Rate Variability, Adnan Velic

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This paper globally analyzes the bivariate relation between large current account imbalances and the real exchange rate over diferent degrees of nominal exchange rate variability. Employing both linear and nonlinear panel estimation procedures, we typically fnd an inverse long-run link between large imbalances and the real exchange rate at lower nominal exchange rate rigidity levels. This is in contrast to the often non-existent or positive comovement that materializes under lower nominal exchange rate variation. Our results thus suggest that greater nominal exchange rate adjustment can induce a stabilizing “current account”-“real exchange rate” relation. Meanwhile, current account adjustment speeds up with …

Latcrit At Twenty-Five And Beyond - Organized Academic Activism And The Long Haul: Designing "Hybridized" Advocacy Projects For An Age Of Global Disruption, Systemic Injustice, And Bottom-Up Progress, Francisco Valdes, Steven W. Bender, Jennifer J. Hill

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On the monumental occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of LatCrit (Latina and Latino Critical Legal Theory, Inc.) as a still thriving and persevering community of critical scholars and activists, this Article offers some reflections on where we have been, where we are now, and where we might go next together as academics and organizers of long-term collective action. Against the current disruptions of a global pandemic, aggravated by planetary climate collapse, disinformation campaigns, and the organized top-down sabotage of U.S. democracy itself, our community responses going forward must be both more democratic and decentralized than ever, as well as …

Creating And Managing Eu Funded Research Networks: An Exploratory Case, Zeta Dooly, Aidan Duane, Aidan O'Driscoll

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The collaborative European funded research and development landscape drives competitiveness among innovative organisations. Recently it has seen the rise of public private partnerships significantly impacting the dynamics of these networks. Thus, the complexity of managing research networks has intensified with the increased diversity of research network members. Additionally, the emergence of the academic entrepreneur has augmented the focus of educational institutions to include innovation and building start-up organisations. The impact of research is scalable if an optimum research network is created and managed effectively. This paper investigates network embeddedness; the nature of relationships, links and nodes within a research network, …

Investigating How Speech And Animation Realism Influence The Perceived Personality Of Virtual Characters And Agents, Sean A. Thomas, Ylva Ferstl, Rachel Mcdonnell, Cathy Ennis

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The portrayed personality of virtual characters and agents is understood to influence how we perceive and engage with digital applications. Understanding how the features of speech and animation drive portrayed personality allows us to intentionally design characters to be more personalized and engaging. In this study, we use performance capture data of unscripted conversations from a variety of actors to explore the perceptual outcomes associated with the modalities of speech and motion. Specifically, we contrast full performance-driven characters to those portrayed by generated gestures and synthesized speech, analysing how the features of each influence portrayed personality according to the Big …

Legal Fiction: Reading Lolita As A Sentencing Memorandum, Christina Frohock

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No abstract provided.

Trends In Biomedical Analysis Of Red Blood Cells – Raman Spectroscopy Against Other Spectroscopic, Microscopic And Classical Techniques, Jakub Dybas, Fatih Celal Alcicek, Aleksandra Wajda, Magdalena Kaczmarska, Anna Zimna, Katarzyna Bulat, Aneta Blat, Tetiana Stepanenko, Tasnim Mohaissen, Ewa Szczesny-Malysiak, David Perez-Guaita, Bayden R. Wood, Katarzyna Maria Marzec

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Application of modern and innovative spectroscopic and microscopic approaches to biomedical analysis opens new horizons and sheds new light on many unexplored scientific territories. In this review, we critically summarize up-to-date Raman-based methodologies for red blood cells (RBCs) analysis used in biology and medicine, and compare them with both classical, as well as other spectroscopic and microscopic approaches. The main emphasis is placed on the advantages, disadvantages and capabilities of each technique for detection of RBC deteriorations and RBC-related diseases. Although currently used classical techniques of medical analysts serve as a gold standard for clinicians in diagnosis of erythropathies, they …

Moral Reflections On Twenty-First Century Tax Policy Trends, Susan Pace Hamill

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No abstract provided.

Power Over Procedure, Russell M. Gold

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American law should better protect people's bodies from being caged than it should protect people's money. And yet in so many ways it does the opposite. Instead of calibrating protections for defendants to the importance of the interest at stake, disparities between pretrial protections in federal civil and criminal procedure instead track differences in race and class between defendants in the two systems. Criminal defendants, for instance, can be locked in cages for two days on a mere accusation by police before a magistrate considers the validity of that deprivation. Civil defendants, by contrast, typically cannot be deprived of their …