Digital Commons Network^™

Psychology And The Legislative Future Of In Vitro Fertilization, Kerry L. Macintosh

Faculty Publications

In LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine, P.C.,¹ three couples that had undergone in vitro fertilization (hereinafter IVF) sued a fertility clinic and hospital after their stored embryos were lost in an accident.² The plaintiffs included claims under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act (hereinafter Act), which imposes liability for a wrongful act, omission, or negligence that causes the death of a “minor child.”³ The trial court dismissed the wrongful death claims, holding that the embryos were not children.⁴ The Alabama Supreme Court, however, reversed the dismissal, reasoning that the lost embryos qualified as unborn …

Negotiating Quotidian Justice In The Science Classroom, Christopher Irwin, Joshua Ellis

Faculty Publications

In this conceptual paper, we explore how science teachers might enact social justice through their everyday science instruction. Drawing on empirical literature and our own K-12 teaching experience, we develop a heuristic for mapping classroom discourses to engage in action and reflection to change both the world of the classroom community, and the world beyond the school. We suggest how this heuristic can be used for justice-oriented science teaching independently of (or as a supplement to) any existing frameworks for science teaching to promote social justice. Our proposed model for social justice through disciplinary science teaching frames justice not as …

How Do You Represent "Those People?", Neil Fulton

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Rational Investing Or Speculative Fever?: Spacs, Robinhood, And Digital Assets—Securities Markets Or Casinos?, Thomas Lee Hazen

Faculty Publications

This Article focuses on one of the recurring themes, not only in Professor Markham’s most recent volume but also in the earlier ones as well—speculation in the financial markets. The 2010–2020 decade set the stage for a new round of speculative activity starting in 2021. In the Article that follows, I reflect on a new wave of speculation and three current examples of speculative activity. The Article concludes that regulators should be cautious about over-regulation of special-purpose acquisition companies (“SPACs”) and gamified trading. The article also supports the regulation of digital assets (cryptocurrencies and NFTs) as securities.

Measuring And Modelling Functional Moat Area In Perennially Ice-Covered Lake Fryxell, Antarctica, Michael S. Stone, Mark R. Salvatore, Hilary A. Dugan, Madeline E. Myers, Peter T. Doran

Faculty Publications

The perennially ice-covered lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDVs), Antarctica, are an important reservoir of liquid water in an arid and largely frozen environment. During the austral summer, the margins of these ice covers melt, forming a “moat” of liquid water and thin ice, allowing exchange between lake waters and the atmosphere to occur and serving as an interface between lake, soil, and stream ecosystems. The size of these moats varies from year to year. Here, we have established the first published record of moat area changes at MDVs’ Lake Fryxell through time using manual traces of the moat …

Contribution Of Campaign Gnss Toward Parsing Subsidence Rates By Time And Depth In Coastal Bangladesh, Michael S. Steckler, Md Hasnat Jaman, Céline Jo Grall, Steven L. Goodbred, Carol A. Wilson, Bar Oryan

Faculty Publications

Coastal regions are vulnerable to rising seas, increasing storm magnitude, and decimation of ecologically-fragile areas. Deltas are particularly sensitive to the balance between sea-level rise, land subsidence and sedimentation that determine relative elevation. Bangladesh has been highlighted as being at risk from sea-level rise. Integrating measurements from different methods can approach a more complete understanding of factors controlling areally and temporally varying subsidence rates. To augment our compilation of rates from stratigraphic wells, historic buildings, vertical strainmeters, RSET-MH, and continuous Global Navigation Satellite System, we resurveyed 48 geodetic monuments in coastal Bangladesh ∼18 years after the monuments were installed. A …

Distorted Narratives In The Treatment Program Complex, Evelyn Lia Malavé

Faculty Publications

Problem-solving courts and alternatives to incarceration have been both celebrated as successful attempts to address the factors that lead to defendants’ involvement in the criminal legal system and critiqued as ineffective reforms that worsen mass incarceration. Specifically, critiques of the “treatment program complex” have tended to focus on how it harms defendants by exposing them to higher levels of incarceration if they fail to complete court mandates. But these critiques have failed to account for another way the treatment program complex harms defendants: by suppressing their voices regarding what kind of help they need and how they are affected by …

Felix Frankfurter, Collector Of People, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

Felix Frankfurter engaged, intensely, with people—they were the treasures that he hunted down, evaluated, and collected. This essay, written on the great occasion of Brad Snyder’s Frankfurter biography, considers some of Frankfurter’s most treasured people. One group is people who made Frankfurter, including Frankfurter himself, Henry L. Stimson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Another group is Justice Frankfurter’s three great U.S. Supreme Court colleagues: Justices Hugo L. Black, Robert H. Jackson, and William O. Douglas. A third group is biographers who Frankfurter admired and pushed: Harlan Buddington Phillips, Mark DeWolfe Howe, Jr., McGeorge Bundy, Alexander Bickel, Andrew L. Kaufman, and Philip …

What The Warhol Court Got Wrong: Use As An Artist Reference And The Derivative Work Doctrine, Jessica Silbey, Eva E. Subotnik

Faculty Publications

In Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, the Supreme Court conflated “use as an artist reference” with preparing a “derivative work." It did so on the erroneous assumption that permission to use a copyrighted work as an artist reference is a license to prepare a derivative work. But copyright law does not necessarily deem all uses of references for making new art to be the preparation of a derivative work. In other words, not all adaptations of an original work are infringing. Some may be neither derivative works nor substantially similar copies, and some may …

Current Developments In Tax Malpractice: Basics And Beyond, Jacob L. Todres

Faculty Publications

It was always assumed that “tax malpractice” referred to a situation in which an error occurred with respect to some tax provision or in a tax-related administrative or legal proceeding. However, several recent cases have expanded this thinking, introducing the possibility that tax malpractice may also occur where damages include an increase in taxes—irrespective of whether there was an error that directly involved tax law. Beginning with a discussion of the evolving definition of that term as seen in the New York cases of Serino v. Lipper and Bloostein v. Morrison Cohen LLP and whether these cases may have returned …

Formalizing Compliance To Reduce Board Exposure To Civil And Criminal Liability, Cheryl L. Wade

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Fraternities and sororities (Greek-letter organizations or “GLOs” as used herein) are nonprofit organizations that present uniquely complex issues when considering the GLO directors’ ability to oversee and manage the organizations’ potential exposure to criminal and civil liability. Legal analysis of the fiduciary obligations of nonprofit directors borrows from, and analogizes to, the law of directorial fiduciary duty in the for-profit context. There are, however, important structural differences between for-profit and nonprofit firms that require consideration when thinking about how GLO boards operate. The potentiality of criminal and civil liability for a GLO is uniquely driven by the misconduct of …

The Stories We (Don’T) Tell: Using Case Briefing To Explore Bias And Oppression In The Law, Ashley B. Armstrong

Faculty Publications

Traditional case briefing focuses on the text of the opinion—how courts frame and resolve legal issues. This Essay explores how to teach case briefing to investigate bias and oppression in the law. By discussing socio-historical context during class or assigning reimagined judicial opinions alongside the original opinion, teaching case briefing this way asks students to consider the stories that judges don’t tell (and why). This Essay proffers two examples that illustrate these approaches: United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218 (1973) and Williams v. Walker-Thomas Furniture Co., 350 F.2d 445 (1965).

The Private Litigation Impact Of New York's Green Amendment, Evan Bianchi, Sean Di Luccio, Martin Lockman, Vincent Nolette

Faculty Publications

The increasing urgency of climate change, combined with federal environmental inaction under the Trump Administration, inspired a wave of environmental action at the state and local level. Building on the environmental movement of the 1970s, activists have pushed to amend more than a dozen state constitutions to include “green amendments”—self-executing individual rights to a clean environment. In 2022, New York activists succeeded, and New York’s Green Amendment (the NYGA) now provides that “Each person shall have a right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment.”

However, the power of the NYGA and similar green amendments turns on judicial …

Optimizing Privacy And Utility Tradeoffs For Group Interests Through Harmonization, Bishwas Mandal, George Amariucai, Shuangqing Wei

Faculty Publications

We propose a novel problem formulation to address the privacy-utility tradeoff, specifically when dealing with two distinct user groups characterized by unique sets of private and utility attributes. Unlike previous studies that primarily focus on scenarios where all users share identical private and utility attributes and often rely on auxiliary datasets or manual annotations, we introduce a collaborative data-sharing mechanism between two user groups through a trusted third party. This third party uses adversarial privacy techniques with our proposed data-sharing mechanism to internally sanitize data for both groups and eliminates the need for manual annotation or auxiliary datasets. Our methodology …

Initial Exploration Of Zero-Shot Privacy Utility Tradeoffs In Tabular Data Using Gpt-4, Bishwas Mandal, George Amariucai, Shuangqing Wei

Faculty Publications

We investigate the application of large language models (LLMs), specifically GPT-4, to scenarios involving the tradeoff between privacy and utility in tabular data. Our approach entails prompting GPT-4 by transforming tabular data points into textual format, followed by the inclusion of precise sanitization instructions in a zero-shot manner. The primary objective is to sanitize the tabular data in such a way that it hinders existing machine learning models from accurately inferring private features while allowing models to accurately infer utility-related attributes. We explore various sanitization instructions. Notably, we discover that this relatively simple approach yields performance comparable to more complex …

Electrical Energy Harvesting By Connected Form Stable Phase Change Material Composites, Chengbin Yu, Guoqiang Li

Faculty Publications

Over the years, thermoelectric energy harvesting has been becoming a topic of intensive research and thermoelectric power generator has been utilized in various energy harvesting applications. However, a thermoelectric device is required to harvest energy, which has relatively low efficiency and high cost. To overcome such a common problem, the objective of this study is to generate electrical energy without using thermoelectric devices. To this end, an advanced energy harvester composed of two different phase change material composites was explored. It was hypothesized that based on the well-known Seebeck effect, stable electrical energy output would be feasible without a thermoelectric …

Review Of Artificial Neural Networks For Wind Turbine Fatigue Prediction, Alshannaq, Aly Mousaad Aly

Faculty Publications

Wind turbines have emerged as a prominent renewable energy source globally. Efficient monitoring and detection methods are crucial to enhance their operational effectiveness, particularly in identifying fatigue-related issues. This review focuses on leveraging artificial neural networks (ANNs) for wind turbine monitoring and fatigue detection, aiming to provide a valuable reference for researchers in this domain and related areas. Employing various ANN techniques, including General Regression Neural Network (GRNN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Cuckoo Search Neural Network (CSNN), Backpropagation Neural Network (BPNN), Particle Swarm Optimization Artificial Neural Network (PSO-ANN), Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), and nonlinear autoregressive networks with exogenous inputs (NARX), …

Field Monitoring Of Bridge Link Slab Performance Under Long-Term And Live Load Effects, A. M. Okeil, M. Canales

Faculty Publications

Several details to eliminate bridge expansion joints have been proposed, and employed, in bridge construction. Expansion joints are known to require regular maintenance and are the cause of a host of problems including damage to girder ends and substructure components in the vicinity of the joints. The link slab detail is one of these alternatives that eliminates bridge expansion joints without introducing full bridge girder continuity. It has been gaining wide acceptance in North America and is becoming a standard construction detail. A bridge over the Ouachita River in Louisiana, US, employed the link slab detail to connect prestressed concrete …

Instrumentation And Strain Monitoring Of Bfrp Bars In Pedestrian Bridge Deck Link Slab, A. Elsafty, A. Okeil, J. Fletcher, T. Fowler, D. Jones, S. Nolan

Faculty Publications

Eliminating bridge deck expansion joints is considered a feasible alternative for addressing problems associated with deck joints, which results in reduced maintenance and improved bridge-deck design life. Link slabs introduce partially continuity for bridge girders and improve the seismic performance, wind and storm wave loads resistance. It also leads to lower cost, improved riding quality, and improved structural integrity, and may lead to longer spans. The goal of this study is to monitor the performance of a link slab employed in a pedestrian bridge where Basalt Fiber Reinforced Polymer (BFRP) bars were used for its reinforcement. The pedestrian bridge was …

Conning The Crypto Conman: End-To-End Analysis Of Cryptocurrency-Based Technical Support Scams, Bhupendra Acharya, Muhammad Saad, Antonio Emanuele Cinà, Lea Schönherr, Hoang Dai Nguyen, Adam Oest, Phani Vadrevu, Thorsten Holz

Faculty Publications

The mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies has led to a surge in wallet-related issues reported by ordinary users on social media platforms. In parallel, there is an increase in an emerging fraud trend called cryptocurrency-based technical support scam, in which fraudsters offer fake wallet recovery services and target users experiencing wallet-related issues.In this paper, we perform a comprehensive study of cryptocurrency-based technical support scams. We present an analysis apparatus called HoneyTweet to analyze this kind of scam. Through HoneyTweet, we lure over 9K scammers by posting 25K fake wallet support tweets (so-called honey tweets). We then deploy automated systems to interact …

Indian Country Lawyers: A South Dakota Survey, Bryce Drapeaux, Hannah Haksgaard

Faculty Publications

South Dakota’s reservations are rural and suffer from a shortage of lawyers. Relatedly, there are very few Native American licensed attorneys in South Dakota. This essay confronts the rural lawyer shortage on South Dakota’s reservations by documenting the lawyers practicing on South Dakota’s reservations. In addition, this essay addresses the access to justice crisis amplified on South Dakota’s reservations by this lawyer shortage. The essay provides some insight into the difficulties of placing more lawyers onto the reservations, while also offering potential pathways to remedy this crisis.

Method For Assessing Coating Uniformity Of Angioplasty Balloons Coated With Poly(Lactic-Co-Glycolic Acid) Nanoparticles Loaded With Quercetin, Allison D. Zieschang, Kevin F. Hoffseth, Tammy R. Dugas, Carlos E. Astete, Dorin Boldor

Faculty Publications

In this study, we aim to quantify coating uniformity and correlate fluorescence intensity to drug loading for drug-coated angioplasty balloons (DCB) coated with 5, 10, 15, or 20 layers of poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) nanoparticles (NPs) entrapped with quercetin. Uniformity was quantified from histograms and horizontal line profiles of microscopic fluorescent images acquired with sample specific parameters, and cracks in the coating were measured and counted. The fluorescence of images acquired with global parameters was correlated with quercetin loading measured via gravimetric/HPLC analysis. More layers on DCBs may be associated with less uniform coatings, as indicated by differences in histogram standard deviations. …

Machine Learning For Automated Sand Transport Monitoring In A Pipeline Using Distributed Acoustic Sensor Data, Harrison Gietz, Jyotsna Sharma, Mayank Tyagi

Faculty Publications

Uncontrolled sand production presents a substantial challenge to wellbore and pipeline integrity and efficiency of hydrocarbon production operations, often leading to equipment damage and compromised productivity. Traditional sand detection methods on the surface alert operators to sanding issues, but they are often a lagging indicator of downhole sanding events and do not provide precise identification of the problematic reservoir zones. Addressing this limitation, this study harnesses a combination of efficient signal processing and machine learning (ML) to analyze data from optical-fiber-based distributed acoustic sensors (DASs), thus serving as the first instance (to the authors' knowledge) of an automated and real-time …

Common Questions And Misconceptions About Protein Supplementation: What Does The Scientific Evidence Really Show?, Jose Antonio, Cassandra Evans, Arny A. Ferrando, Jeffrey R. Stout, Brandi Antonio, Harry Cinteo, Patrick Harty, Shawn M. Arent Ph.D., Cscs*D, Fissn, Facsm, Fnak, Darren G. Candow, Scott C. Forbes, Chad M. Kerksick, Flavia Pereira, Drew Gonzalez, Richard B. Kreider

Faculty Publications

Protein supplementation often refers to increasing the intake of this particular macronutrient through dietary supplements in the form of powders, ready-to-drink shakes, and bars. The primary purpose of protein supplementation is to augment dietary protein intake, aiding individuals in meeting their protein requirements, especially when it may be challenging to do so through regular food (i.e. chicken, beef, fish, pork, etc.) sources alone. A large body of evidence shows that protein has an important role in exercising and sedentary individuals. A PubMed search of “protein and exercise performance” reveals thousands of publications. Despite the considerable volume of evidence, it is …

Parental Support Challenges For K-12 Student Online Engagement, Qi Guo, Charles R. Graham, Jered Borup, Bobbie Sandberg, Richard E. West

Faculty Publications

This research seeks to understand parental support for online students. Using a survey, this study examined perceptions from 567 parents from eight online K-12 programs in a Midwestern state regarding their support for students’ online affective, behavioral, and cognitive engagement. Guided by the Academic Communities of Engagement Framework, our analysis identified eight main challenges parents faced when supporting their online student: (a) focus; (b) keeping on pace; (c) lack of motivation; (d) lack of organization, learning materials, live sessions, and support from online schools; (e) lack of feedback, support, and communication from teachers; (f) parents in need of additional skills …

Costs And Benefits Of A Risk-Based Pcaob Inspection Regime, Brant E. Christensen, Nathan J. Newton, Michael S. Wilkins

Faculty Publications

We investigate the costs and benefits of the PCAOB’s risk-based inspection regime by studying how auditors respond to engagement-level inspection risk. Using an established inspection selection model, we find evidence that auditors behave consistent with accountability theory when auditing clients with elevated ex-ante inspection risk. Specifically, we observe an increased propensity to report material weaknesses, a decreased propensity to assert that previous material weaknesses have been remediated, increased audit effort, and a decreased likelihood of subsequent financial statement restatement. In general, these outcomes reflect auditors’ attempts to minimize negative inspection outcomes in a way that could be beneficial to investors. …

Language Change At The Intersections Of Movement, Economy, And Orientation, Joseph A. Stanley, Margaret E. L. Renwick, Monica Nesbitt

Faculty Publications

A growing amount of research on North American English varieties shows that many sociolinguistic variables peaked among the Baby Boomer Generation (born approximately 1946–64). By “peak,” we mean that a linguistic phenomenon in one community has reached its point of greatest intensity and is maximally divergent from realizations of that same variable in most other North American communities. Similarly, we also find studies that describe a “cliff” beginning among Generation X (born approximately 1965–82) such that after generations of relative stability, local dialect features are lost. Nesbitt (2021, 359) observes that “the Baby Boomer–Gen X transition appears to be a …

Facilitating Digitization And Reformatting Via Committee Work, Nicole Lewis, Abby Beazer, Marissa Bischoff, Michael F. Gates, Benjamin Harry, Lindsey Memory, Rebecca A. Wiederhold

Faculty Publications

The Reformatting Committee at Brigham Young University Library actively manages and facilitates the digitization of library materials, playing a pivotal role in advancing larger digitization projects. The committee comprises various stakeholders in the digitization and reformatting workflow, each with unique concerns and requirements, allowing the committee to effectively navigate the complexities of the digitization process. This exploration of the committee includes motivations for its formation, an explanation of its documentation, and the benefits gained.

The Reformatting Committee exemplifies a balanced approach to meeting various stakeholders’ expectations and building bridges between departments, thereby advancing the library’s mission in the context of …

From Three-Pillars To Three-Environments: Shifting The Paradigm Of Sustainability In Civil And Construction Engineering, Xiaomei Wang, Andrew South, Clifton Farnsworth, Brett James Hashimoto

Faculty Publications

This research explores the usage of sustainability in literature and presents ‘three environments’ for addressing sustainability in the Civil and Construction Engineering (CCE) disciplines. Scholars have increasingly studied sustainability and sustainable development across CCE disciplines as the importance of sustainability awareness and action in society has increased. However, the vastness of its conceptual breadth and depth in CCE research is difficult to holistically evaluate. As a result, CCE researchers often focus on specific aspects of sustainability applied to discrete contexts, or address sustainability in broad aspirational terms and guiding motivations. This research utilized a rigorous analytical corpus linguistics approach for …

Automated Detection Of On-Farm Irrigation Reservoirs In Two Critical Groundwater Regions Of Arkansas: A Necessary Precursor For Conjunctive Water Management, Daniel D. Shults, John W. Nowlin, Joseph H. Massey, Michele L. Reba

Faculty Publications

In eastern Arkansas, the use of surface water for crop irrigation is steadily increasing in response to declining aquifers. Effective conjunctive water management requires accurate and timely information on the locations, sizes, and numbers of on-farm irrigation reservoirs. A method for remotely locating and characterizing on-farm reservoirs was developed using relative elevation and near-infrared imagery. With 62% accuracy, the method automatically identified 429 irrigation reservoirs within a 1.9-Mha area in less than an hour using an off-the-shelf laptop. Reservoirs not accurately identified (i.e., false negatives) were caused by the presence of vegetation or turbidity within the reservoirs. There were no …