Digital Commons Network^™

The Folklore Of Unfairness, Luke Herrine

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The Federal Trade Commission Act's ban on "unfair ... acts and practices" would, on its face, seem to give the FTC an awesome power to define proper treatment of consumers in changing conditions. But even in a world of widespread corporate surveillance, ongoing racial discrimination, impenetrably complex financial products, pyramid schemes, and more, the unfairness authority is used rarely, mostly in egregious cases of wrongdoing. Why? The standard explanation is that the more expansive notion of unfairness was tried in the 1970s, and it failed spectacularly. The FTC of this era was staffed by bureaucrats convinced of their own moral …

Playing At The Crossroads Of Religion And Law: Historical Milieu, Context And Curriculum Hooks In Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb

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This chapter presents the use of Lost & Found – a purpose-built tabletop to mobile game series – to teach medieval religious legal systems. The series aims to broaden the discourse around religious legal systems and to counter popular depiction of these systems which often promote prejudice and misnomers. A central element is the importance of contextualizing religion in period and locale. The Lost & Found series uses period accurate depictions of material culture to set the stage for play around relevant topics – specifically how the law promoted collaboration and sustainable governance practices in Fustat (Old Cairo) in twelfth-century …

An Extracellular Lipase From Amycolatopsis Mediterannei Is A Cutinase With Plastic Degrading Activity, Yeqi Tan, Gary T. Henehan, Gemma K. Kinsella, Barry J. Ryan

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An extracellular lipase from Amycolatopsis mediteranei (AML) with potential applications in process biotechnology was recently cloned and examined in this laboratory. In the present study, the 3D structure of AML was elucidated by comparative modelling. AML lacked the ‘lid’ structure observed in most true lipases and shared similarities with plastic degrading enzymes. Modelling and substrate specificity studies showed that AML was a cutinase with a relatively exposed active site and specificity for medium chain fatty acyl moieties.

AML rapidly hydrolysed the aliphatic plastics poly(ε-caprolactone) and poly(1,4-butylene succinate) extended with 1,6-diisocyanatohexane under mild conditions. These plastics are known to be slow …

Biomolecules As Model Indicators Of In Vitro And In Vivo Cold Plasma Safety, Caitlin Heslin, Daniela Boehm, Brendan F. Gilmore, Julianne Megaw, Theresa A. Freeman, Noreen Hickok, Patrick J. Cullen, Paula Bourke

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The potential applications for cold plasma in medicine are extensive, from microbial inactivation and induction of apoptosis in cancer cells to stimulating wound healing and enhancing the blood coagulation cascade. The safe bio-medical application of cold plasma and subsequent effect on complex biological pathways requires precision and a distinct understanding of how physiological redox chemistry is manipulated. Chemical modification of biomolecules such as carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids treated with cold plasma have been characterized, however, the context of how alterations of these molecules affect cell behavior or in vivo functionality has not been determined. Thus, this study examines the cytotoxic …

Research On Medical Question Answering System Based On Knowledge Graph, Zhixue Jiang, Chengying Chi, Yun Yun Zhan

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To meet the high-efficiency question answering needs of existing patients and doctors, this system integrates medical professional knowledge, knowledge graphs, and question answering systems that conduct man-machine dialogue through natural language. This system locates the medical field, uses crawler technology to use vertical medical websites as data sources, and uses diseases as the core entity to construct a knowledge graph containing 44,000 knowledge entities of 7 types and 300,000 entities of 11 kinds. It is stored in the Neo4j graph database, using rule-based matching methods and string-matching algorithms to construct a domain lexicon to classify and query questions. This system …

Silver(I) And Copper(Ii) Complexes Of 1,10-Phenanthroline-5,6-Dione Against Phialophora Verrucosa: A Focus On The Interaction With Human Macrophages And Galleria Mellonella Larvae, Marcela Q. Granato, Thaís P. Mello Thaís P. Mello, Renata S Nascimento, Marcos D. Pereira, Thabatta L.S.A. Rosa, Maria C.V. Pessolani, Malachy Mccann Malachy Mccann, Michael Devereux, Marta H. Branquinha

Articles

Phialophora verrucosa is a dematiaceous fungus that causes mainly chromoblastomycosis, but also disseminated infections such as phaeohyphomycosis and mycetoma. These diseases are extremely hard to treat and often refractory to current antifungal therapies. In this work, we have evaluated the effect of 1,10-phenanthroline-5,6-dione (phendione) and its metal-based complexes, [Ag (phendione)2]ClO4 and [Cu(phendione)3](ClO4)2.4H2O, against P. verrucosa, focusing on (i) conidial viability when combined with amphotericin B (AmB); (ii) biofilm formation and disarticulation events; (iii) in vitro interaction with human macrophages; and (iv) in vivo infection of Galleria mellonella larvae. The combination of AmB with each of the test compounds promoted …

Maternal Feeding Practices And Toddlers’ Fruit And Vegetable Consumption: Results From The Dit - Coombe Hospital Birth Cohort In Ireland, Xiyao Liu, Qianling Zhou, Keara Clarke, Katherine Younger, Meijing An, Zhouyinuo Li, Yang Tan, John Kearney

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Health benefits of fruit and vegetable have been well recognized. However, insufficient consumption of fruit and vegetable is prevalent among toddlers, and has become a global public health issue. Maternal feeding practices are potential factors influencing toddlers’ dietary intake, including fruit and vegetable intake. This study was conducted to explore the influence of maternal feeding practices on toddlers’ fruit and vegetable consumption in Ireland.

Advancing Our Understanding Of Corneal Herpes Simplex Virus-1 Immune Evasion Mechanisms And Future Therapeutics, Emily Greenam, Sophie Gallagher, Rana Khalil, Conor C. Murphy, Joan Ní Gabhann-Dromgoole

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Herpes stromal keratitis (HSK) is a disease that commonly affects the cornea and external eye and is caused by Herpes Simplex Virus type 1 (HSV-1). This virus infects approximately 66% of people worldwide; however, only a small portion of these people will develop symptoms in their lifetime. There is no cure or vaccine available for HSV-1; however, there are treatments available that aim to control the inflammation caused by the virus and prevent its recurrence. While these treatments are beneficial to those suffering with HSK, there is a need for more effective treatments to minimise the need for topical steroids, …

The Role Of Demographic And Clinical Characteristics On Risk Of Covid-19 Related Infection And Mortality, A. O'Shea, M. Youssef, M. Connolly, A. Al Lawati, S.I. Shah, S. Walsh, D. Mccartney, J. Faul

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Since the emergence of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) which causes Covid-19, global health systems have struggled to cope with the rising number of related infections, acute admissions and mortalities. Poorer clinical outcomes have been observed amongst older patients with Covid-19 and males, and in those who are obese or who have darker skin(1) . Additionally, poorer outcomes including increased mortality have been associated with low vitamin D status(2,3) . The current observational study aimed to elucidate the association between patient demographic, anthropometric, clinical and biometric characteristics and Covid-19 disease severity and mortality.

Do You Want Some Sauce On That? Factors Influencing Dietary Habits Among The Irish Construction Workforce, Aileen Kennedy, Colm O'Gorman, Kenneth Lee

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This paper presents an explanatory logic and an empirical illustration of how Stones’s strong structuration theory, specifically the methodological brackets of agent’s conduct and agent’s context analysis can be applied within case study research. The value of strong structuration theory, and the methodological bracketing tool, is its proximity to empirical research and the provision of robust guidelines which enable researchers to resolve the methodological challenges of combining structure and agency within research designs. We demonstrate the application of methodological bracketing as a tool for analysing structure and agency interactions within management research. The contribution of the paper is its explication …

Is There A Delaware Effect For Controlled Firms?, Edward Fox

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The impact of Delaware incorporation on firm value remains a central question in corporate law. Despite the difficulty scholars have had in agreeing on an answer to this question, there is a consensus that Delaware has long enjoyed stable and important advantages in the expertise of its judiciary and its extensive case law. These advantages are believed to be particularly important for firms with a controlling shareholder. This Article attempts to empirically measure the effect of Delaware incorporation on these controlled firms and thus helps us understand the market value of Delaware’s judiciary and case law. It finds, surprisingly, that …

The New Public/Private Equilibrium And The Regulation Of Public Companies, Elisabeth De Fontenay, Gabriel Rauterberg

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This Symposium Article examines how the public/private divide works today and maps out some of the potential implications for major issues in securities law. Classic debates in securities law were often predicated on the idea that public companies are a coherent class of firms that differ markedly from private companies. For more than fifty years after the adoption of the federal securities laws, this view was justified. During that period, the vast majority of successful and growing private firms eventually accepted the regulatory obligations of being public in order to access a wider and deeper pool of capital, among other …

Beyond Plea Bargaining: A Theory Of Criminal Settlement, Richard Lorren Jolly, J.J. Prescott

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Settlement is a term rarely used in criminal law. Instead, people speak almost exclusively of plea bargaining—i.e., enforceable agreements in which a defendant promises to plead guilty in exchange for a prosecutor’s promise to seek leniency in charging or at sentencing. But a traditional plea agreement is just the most visible instance of a much broader class of possible criminal settlement agreements. In terms of their fundamentals, criminal settlements are indistinguishable from their civil counterparts: through either an atomized or comprehensive bargain, parties exchange what they have for what they want, advancing their respective interests in cost minimization, risk mitigation, …

Beyond Bail, Jenny E. Carroll

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From the proliferation of community bail funds to the implementation of new risk assessment tools to the limitation and even eradication of monetary bail, reform movements have altered the landscape of pretrial detention. Yet, reform movements have paid little attention to the emerging reality of a post-monetary-bail world. With monetary bail an unavailable or disfavored option, courts have come to rely increasingly on nonmonetary conditions of release. These nonmonetary conditions can be problematic for many of the same reasons that monetary bail is problematic and can inject additional bias into the pretrial system.

In theory, nonmonetary conditions offer increased opportunities …

The New Eugenics, Samuel R. Bagenstos

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During the first third of the Twentieth Century, the eugenics movement played a powerful role in the politics, law, and culture of the United States. The fear of “the menace of the feebleminded,” the notion that those with supposedly poor genes “sap the strength of the State,” and other similar ideas drove the enthusiastic implementation of the practices of excluding disabled individuals from the country, incarcerating them in ostensibly beneficent institutions, and sterilizing them. By the 1930s, with the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany, eugenic ideas had begun to be discredited in American public discourse. And after the Holocaust, …

Democracy, Distrust, And Presidential Immunities, Evan H. Caminker

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This Essay sketches how Ely's representation-reinforcement theory of judicial interpretation might frame presidential immunity doctrines and compares that frame to the Court's current approach. To what extent might various forms of presidential immunity, or exceptions thereto, be grounded in principles of democratic accountability rather than presidential efficacy? I conclude that a plausibly constructed Elyan paradigm provides an argument for immunity in many settings but also for exceptions to that immunity in narrow but important circumstances. More specifically: immunity can protect the President's ability to focus on serving her view of the national interest, without being unduly chilled or sidetracked by …

Kings, Lords And Courts In Anglo-Norman England, Robert Hirshon

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This is an important book, filling a significant gap in scholarship on late Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman law, lordship, and administration. Its primary focus is on the hundred court and its relationship to lords’ local courts. Nicholas Karn argues (204) that, following the creation of shires and hundreds across England in the tenth century, by the middle of the eleventh “the unitary model of the hundred was starting to break down, and decay accelerated and became general into the twelfth century.” Lords either “claimed whole hundreds themselves, or they created lesser units which were originally subsets of hundreds and which were …

Taxing Parents: Welfarist Theories, Shannon Mccormack

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The Internal Revenue Code (the "Code") taxes parents inequitably. Couples with a sole earner are undertaxed compared to couples with dual earners and to single parents. Legal tax scholarship (including my own) has identified the many inequities that result from this sole-earner bias and have called for its elimination. But while these arguments have been sufficient for some, they do remain susceptible to the criticism that they are theoretically incomplete.

That critique might proceed as follows. Simply establishing that an inequity exists does not create a full argument for legal reform. After all, it might be argued, the Code plays …

An Innovative Approach To Movement Lawyering: An Immigrant Rights Case Study, Christine N. Cimini, Doug Smith

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The role of lawyers in social change movements is more important than ever as communities mobilize around systemic racism, police killings, xenophobia, rising unemployment, and widening economic inequality. The immigrant rights movement is a critical part of these efforts to foment change. This Article leverages an in-depth case study – the rise and fall of the controversial immigration enforcement program known as Secure Communities - to explore how lawyers work as part of a community to challenge power and effectuate change. The dismantling of Secure Communities was widely credited to a relentless campaign to thwart the government’s then-expanding deportation strategy. …

The Rise Of Law And The Fall Of Circular 230: Tax Lawyer Professional Standards, 1985-2015, Michael Hatfield

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This third article focuses on the two issues that dominated discussions of professional responsibility standards for tax lawyers in the 1985-2015 period: return position standards and tax shelter opinions. It opens with consideration of the ABA’s 1965 opinion providing “reasonable basis” as the standard for undisclosed return positions, and then traces the response to that opinion as the response prods the development of the 1985 replacement with its “realistic possibility of success” standard. The Article documents the extensive interaction between Congress, the Treasury Department, and the tax bar over the next 30 years during which penalties are studied and revised …

The End Of Deportation, Angélica Cházaro

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This Article introduces to legal scholarship a new horizon for pro-immigrant scholarship and advocacy: deportation abolition. The ever-present threat of deportation shapes the daily lives of noncitizens. Instead of aiming for a pathway to citizenship, most noncitizens must now contend with dodging the many pathways to banishment. Despite growing threats to immigrant survival, most pro-immigrant scholarship and advocacy that aims to reduce migrant suffering assumes deportation as inevitable. The focus remains on improving individual outcomes by aligning the process of deportation with due process and the rule of law. But considered from the point of view of those facing deportation, …

Presidential Control Of Elections, Lisa Marshall Manheim

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In recent decades, presidents of both political parties have asserted increasingly aggressive forms of influence over the administrative state. During this same period, Congress has expanded the role that the federal government plays in election administration. The convergence of these two trends leads to a troubling but underexamined phenomenon: presidential control of elections. Relying on their official powers, presidents have the ability to affect the rules that govern elections, including elections meant to check and legitimize presidential powers in the first place. This self-serving arrangement heightens the risk of harms from political entrenchment and subordination of expertise. These harms, in …

Catalytic Courts And Enforcement Of Constitutional Education Funding Provisions, Hugh D. Spitzer, Andy Omara

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It is well-recognized that it is easier for judges to enforce constitutional “negative rights” provisions than positive social and economic rights. This article focuses on the challenges of enforcing one specific positive right: the constitutional right of children to attend adequately funded schools. Our article tests on-the-ground judicial implementation of education funding provisions against the general theoretical framework of judicial interaction with the political branches developed by Katharine Young. We analyze how, in multi-year, multi-decision litigation, constitutional court judges in the three jurisdictions we studied actively experimented with the challenging task of forcing, or enticing, reluctant legislative and executive branches …

#Metoo Innovators: Disrupting The Race And Gender Code By Asian Americans In The Tech Industry, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

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This Article focuses on how Asian American women innovators of the #MeToo generation are disrupting the code of conduct in the tech industry. The code is hard-wired into the tech bro culture of mirrortocracy, resulting in hiring practices that perpetuate existing company demographics and statistics that show that Asian American women face 2.91 times the disadvantage compared to white women. In addition, of all gender and racial groups, Asian American female innovators are the least likely to become executives. This Article identifies and explains how these innovators are the disruptors on several fronts. Utilizing everything from judicial means to traditional …

Bridges To A New Era: A Report On The Past, Present, And Potential Future Of Tribal Co-Management On Federal Public Lands, Monte Mills, Martin Nie

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Deep ancestral and traditional connections tie many Native Nations to the federal government’s public lands. The removal of these lands from indigenous control, their acquisition by the federal government, and the federal government’s approach to their management are largely premised upon the erasure or marginalization of those connections. Both physically and legally, Indian tribes have been removed from the landscapes they occupied since time immemorial. Rather than centering, honoring, and using those connections, the current discussion of tribal co-management of federal public lands is mostly bereft of this full legal and historical context.

Compounding these limitations is the considerable discretion …

Promoting Corporate Irresponsibility? Delaware As The Intellectual Property Holding State, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

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This article is about Delaware corporate irresponsibility. Delaware has stealthily become the center of all things intellectual property. As the leader of onshore tax havens since the early 1980s, Delaware attracts multistate corporations to engage in aggressive tax avoidance schemes. Specifically, Delaware has legislatively and methodically attracted the creation of Intellectual Property Holding Companies (IPHCs), enabling companies to avoid paying their share of taxes to sister states on the income generated from the use of Intellectual Property assets. This article traces the rise of Delaware as the intellectual property state and concludes that the benefits Delaware enjoys promote corporate irresponsibility …

The Automated Administrative State: A Crisis Of Legitimacy, Ryan Calo, Danielle Keats Citron

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The legitimacy of the administrative state is premised on our faith in agency expertise. Despite their extra-constitutional structure, administrative agencies have been on firm footing for a long time in reverence to their critical role in governing a complex, evolving society. They are delegated enormous power because they respond expertly and nimbly to evolving conditions. In recent decades, state and federal agencies have embraced a novel mode of operation: automation. Agencies rely more and more on software and algorithms in carrying out their delegated responsibilities. The automated administrative state, however, is demonstrably riddled with concerns. Legal challenges regarding the denial …

Awakening The American Jury: Did The Killing Of George Floyd Alter Juror Deliberations Forever?, Tamara F. Lawson

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In the summer of 2020, the witnessing of George Floyd's death triggered an outpouring of public expression far beyond other cases in modern times. While the experience led some to advocate for reform and participate in antiracism rallies, marches, and campaigns, it also forced many others into internal reflection, awareness, and awakening to the knowledge of a lived experience with police different from their own. The gruesome realities of the video were irreconcilable with those prior beliefs and did not comport with any moral or legal standards of dignity. Prior to witnessing George Floyd's death on video at the hands …

Attitudes Towards Ip Present Among Seattle Craft Breweries, Zahr K. Said

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No abstract provided.

Towards The Point Of Care And Noninvasive Classification Of Bladder Cancer From Urine Sediment Infrared Spectroscopy. Spectral Differentiation Of Normal, Abnormal And Cancer Patients, Monika Kujdowicz, David Perezguaita, Piotr Chłosta, Krzysztof Okon, Kamilla Malek

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Bladder cancer (BC) is the 9th cancer cause of death and one of most cost-intensive in the world. The diagnostic tools are still not at all satisfactory. Herein we evaluated the potential of infrared spectroscopy to detect molecular changes that precede and accompany the carcinogenesis in voided urine sediment. We collected 165 samples from patients being diagnosed for BC and measured them with attenuated total reflectance Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (ATR FTIR). Samples were primarily divided into three groups according to cytology that indicated the presence of normal, abnormal and cancer cells. ATR FTIR spectra of sediments were analyzed with …