Digital Commons Network^™

A Corpus-Based Comparison Of Keywords And Themes From The Book Of Mormon And The Bible, Brett James Hashimoto, Joshua Cowley

Faculty Publications

The Book of Mormon has been studied for its thematic, literary, and theological content using almost exclusively qualitative methods (e.g., Turley, 2019; Morrill, 2017). However, scholars have conducted little analysis comparing it to the Bible, even though those who view it as scripture consider it directly comparable in purpose. (e.g., The Book of Mormon, 2015; McConkie, 1985). The present study applies quantitative linguistic analysis to statistically derive the distinctive language from the two volumes of scripture and identifies the key themes and language from the two books. To accomplish this, corpora of The King James Version of the Bible (66 …

Native Forbs Provide Pollinator Resources And Improve Forage Nutrient Composition, Animal Performance, And Pasture Productivity, Jessica L. Prigge, Eric Bisangwa, Jonathan D. Richwine, Virginia R. Sykes, Jennie Lz Ivey, Patrick D. Keyser

Faculty Publications

Pollinator declines and expectations for more sustainable agriculture, including pasture-based enterprises, bring attention to strategies to enhance the habitat value of grazing lands. We evaluated native warm-season grass (NWSG) pastures with (FORB) and without (CONT) interseeded native forbs in 2021–2023. An analysis was conducted using R with the significance set at p ≤ 0.05. The grass appeared to be weakened predominantly by grazing management practices. Forb density and mass had an inverse relationship in seasons two and three. Total forage mass declined in response to increased grazing days and weakened stands. The forage nutritive compositions differed, with more stable, season-long …

How The Police Released Body-Worn Camera Footage Matters, Angelo Kevin Brown

Faculty Publications

Body-worn cameras (BWC) policies can have a significant impact on police-community relations in various ways, which this chapter will examine. BWCs have been implemented internationally, especially in the developed world. This chapter will primarily focus on law enforcement policies within the United States of America (USA). BWCs have become very common among law enforcement officers, including police officers, sheriff deputies, state patrol, and federal agents. No national law forces law enforcement to wear BWCs. Since no national policy outlines when footage can or cannot be released to the public, which leaves states and municipalities to deal with the legality and …

Sound Marks, Deborah R. Gerhardt, Jon J. Lee

Faculty Publications

A lion roars just before a film rolls. A doughboy giggles. A giant green man laughs a hearty, "Ho, Ho, Ho." These iconic sounds are all federally registered as trademarks. They identify specific brands and distinguish their products and services from the competition. Human brains treat sounds like these as categorization tools and cognitive shortcuts—ideal trademark symbols. But what about the sounds your favorite toys or electronic devices make? Or those made by a fictional character in the latest blockbuster?

This Article tackles these issues and others. We push back against the widely-held belief that all unconventional trademarks—product designs, colors, …

Legal Gender Recognition In Nepal And Comparative Context, Holning S. Lau, Mara Malagodi

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court of Nepal was a groundbreaker when it ruled in Pant v. Nepal (2007) that people have the right to change their gender on identity documents based on “self-feelings” and “self-determination” rather than medical or other criteria; at the time, no other national apex court or government had so clearly prioritized self-determination for gender identity. Pant, however, centered “third gender” persons (neither male nor female), and now the Court is considering the case of a transgender woman, Ms. Kapali, who seeks to be identified as female on her documents and is challenging authorities that rejected her requests. …

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 …

In-House Counsel(Or): The Case For Providing Integrated Mental Health Support Services To Law Students, Eric W. Shannon

Faculty Publications

While some American law schools currently provide onsite mental health support services to their student populations, many still do not. This essay is the first to argue that all law schools should provide onsite mental health support services to their students—ideally, by way of a mental health professional integrated within the law school’s staff (an “integrated mental health professional,” or “IMHP”) who is familiar not only with the unique pressures of law school generally, but also with the school-specific environment. It explores current data on law student well-being as well as external considerations including ABA recommendations and standards for law …

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 …

Gender Regrets: Banning Abortion And Gender-Affirming Care, Noa Ben-Asher, Margot J. Pollans

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In the spring of 2023, the New York Times published a piece entitled “How a Few Stories of Regret Fuel the Push to Restrict Gender Transition Care.” It features Chloe Cole, who lived as a transgender boy for several years but now identifies as a cisgender woman. Cole has become a poster child for the idea that gender-affirming care (“GAC”) for minors may lead to later regret and should therefore be restricted by the state. Cole, who has been travelling the country as part of a conservative lawmaking effort to ban GAC, received a standing ovation after Florida Governor …

“The Times They Are A Changin’”: Generational Comparisons Of The Civil Rights Movement With The Current-Day Climate Movement, Robin Boyle-Laisure

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Bob Dylan’s famous song lyric, capturing the spirit of the 1960s, is just as apropos today: “The times they are a changin’” (1964). The civil rights movement changed history by securing legislation and court decisions advancing the constitutional rights of black people (Dalton 2008, 7). The movement took flight at a time when the Baby Boomer generation was politically active and seeking social change. As outlined in the introduction to this book, the generations and their birth years are as follows: Silents (1925–45); Baby Boomers (1946–64); Gen X (1965–80); Millennials (1981–95); and Gen Z (1996–2013). Baby Boomers “experienced the …

Contextualizing The Triggering Event: Colonial White Supremacy, Anti-Blackness, And Black Lives Matter In Italy And The United States, Renee Nicole Allen

Faculty Publications

In the summer of 2020, spurred by George Floyd’s murder and amid a worldwide pandemic, Black Lives Matter demonstrations peaked in the United States. The viral nature of the police violence that caused Floyd’s death was a triggering event for transnational Black Lives Matter protests. Around the world, millions took to the streets to demand justice. In Italy, a resounding demand that “Black Lives Matter” filled the streets during solidarity protests that occurred in Milan, Naples, and Rome. Less than six months later, in September 2020, the fatal civilian beating of Willy Monteiro Duarte, a Black Italian, revealed the necessity …

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 …

Teaching Positive Psychology Lessons In An Intensive English Program, Carolee Rogers, Benjamin L. Mcmurry, Dan Dewey

Faculty Publications

This article investigates the effectiveness of positive psychology interventions (PPIs) in an intensive English program for non-matriculated university students. Interventions based on the PERMA model were implemented through weekly 65-minute lessons given during the first class of each week. These were followed by short daily activities during the rest of the week. Using positive psychology topics as the content, students concurrently engaged in language learning activities. Each participant was asked to complete a questionnaire at the end of the semester consisting of five open-ended questions relating to the PPIs, the lessons, the activities, the topics, and how they felt the …

Here-, There-, And Every Where-: Exploring The Role Of Pronominal Adverbs In Legal Language, David Chandler, Brett James Hashimoto

Faculty Publications

Many have claimed that pronominal adverbs, such as hereby, thereafter, and wherein, are a frequent, distinctive, and problematic in their use in legal language (Tiersma, 1999; Mellinkoff, 2004). The purpose of this study is to examine those claims empirically. In the present study, the prevalence of PAs in legal registers is compared to more general registers of contemporary American English to determine the extent to which these words are distinctly legal. The study will also explore why different types of PAs may be (in)frequent in specific legal registers to better understand their use. The frequency of PAs was extracted from …

Parent Motivations For Enrolling Their Young Children In Early Childhood Programs: An Application Of The Theory Of Planned Behaviour, Rachel A. Mcgovern, Camilla Hodge, Edward Ruddell

Faculty Publications

This study used the theory of planned behaviour to identify and determine the relative influence of factors influencing parents’ decisions to enrol their young children (3 to 5 years old) in early childhood programs at a specific museum venue. An eliciting questionnaire was distributed to museum members with at least one child 3–5 years old to elicit outcome expectancies, normative beliefs, and control beliefs, and these responses were developed into items for the main questionnaire. Regression and correlation analyses were conducted to determine factors associated with parents’ intention to enrol their children. Parents across socioeconomic and educational backgrounds indicated they …

Use Of Machine Learning Approaches To Predict Transition Of Retention In Care Among People Living With Hiv In South Carolina: A Real-World Data Study, Ruilie Cai, Xueying Yang Ph.D., Yunqing Ma, Hao H. Zhang, Bankole Olatosi Ph.D., Sharon Weissman, Xiaoming Li Ph.D., Jiajia Zhang Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Maintaining retention in care (RIC) for people living with HIV (PLWH) helps achieve viral suppression and reduce onward transmission. This study aims to identify the best machine learning model that predicts the RIC transition over time. Extracting from the enhanced HIV/AIDS reporting system, this study included 9765 PLWH from 2005 to 2020 in South Carolina. Transition of RIC was defined as the change of RIC status in each two–year time window. We applied seven classifiers, such as Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, eXtreme Gradient Boosting and Long–short–term memory, for each lagged response to predict the subsequent year's RIC transition. Classification …

Medicaid Managed Care Restrictions On Medications For The Treatment Of Opioid Use Disorder, Maureen T. Stewart, Christina M. Andrews Ph.D., Sage R. Feltus, Dominic Hodgkin, Constance M. Horgan, Cindy Parks Thomas, Thuong Nong

Faculty Publications

Objective: To examine whether Medicaid managed care plan (MCP) utilization management policies for buprenorphine–naloxone and injectable naltrexone are related to key state Medicaid program policy decisions. Data Sources and Study Setting: We abstracted data on state Medicaid regulatory and policy information from publicly available sources and publicly available insurance benefit documentation from all 241 Medicaid MCPs operating in 2021. Study Design: In this cross-sectional study, we used bivariate and multivariate analyses to examine whether Medicaid MCP prior authorization and quantity limits on receipt of buprenorphine and injectable naltrexone were associated with key state Medicaid choices to leverage federal funds to …

Human Mobility And The Infectious Disease Transmission: A Systematic Review, M. Naser Lessani, Zhenlong Li, Fengrui Jing, Shan Qiao Ph.D., Jiajia Zhang Ph.D., Bankole Olatosi Ph.D., Xiaoming Li Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Recent decades have witnessed several infectious disease outbreaks, including the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, which had catastrophic impacts on societies around the globe. At the same time, the twenty-first century has experienced an unprecedented era of technological development and demographic changes: exploding population growth, increased airline flights, and increased rural-to-urban migration, with an estimated 281 million international migrants worldwide in 2020, despite COVID-19 movement restrictions. In this review, we synthesized 195 research articles that examined the association between human movement and infectious disease outbreaks to understand the extent to which human mobility has increased the risk of infectious disease outbreaks. …

Risk Perception, Cooperation, And Emotional Distress During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Exploring Adaptive Risk Perception, Haiping Liao, Rebecca L. Monk, James Gaskin, Jin-Liang Wang

Faculty Publications

During the COVID-19 pandemic, while risk perception may promote public cooperation with pandemic prevention, it may also increase emotional distress and thus endanger mental health. This study aimed to examine whether there is an adaptive risk perception pattern that fits both needs of pandemic control and mental health protection. Two waves of Chinese participants (N sample 1 = 1633, N sample 2 = 1899) completed the Scale of Pandemic Risk Perception, the Scale of Public Cooperation with Pandemic Prevention, the Epidemic Worry Scale, and the Positive and Negative Affective Schedule during Feb 3rd to 5th, and during Feb 18th to …

Gender Difference On Internal Equity: Evidence From The Hospitality Industry In Ghana, Patricia Peprah

Faculty Publications

It is a hypothetical position that employees in the hospitality industry in Ghana experience salary disparities based on the gender of the employee. Pay disparities exist because of unconscious biases in areas such as hiring, promotions, performance reviews, and salary decisions. In ensuring equal pay for equal work to fulfill the International Labor Organization (ILO) convention, this study investigated the internal equity pay of the employees in Ghana's hospitality industry based on equal work. This quantitative association study adopted a self-constructed research instrument to measure internal equity pay and randomly selected 350 respondents in the hospitality industry in Ghana to …

Managing Differences In The Family, Alina M. Baltazar

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Heritable Genome Editing, And The Future Of Novel Reproductive Technologies, Kerry L. Macintosh

Faculty Publications

This Article compares human reproductive cloning (HRC) and
heritable genome editing (HGE) to identify factors that encourage bans
on novel reproductive technologies. HRC drew legislative opposition
in part because it involved asexual reproduction and was incorrectly
associated with copying. HGE and other technologies that involve
sexual reproduction do not have those problematic qualities. HRC also
became entangled with research in which human embryos were cloned
to be harvested for their stem cells. HGE did not because scientists
learned how to create and edit pluripotent stem cells without creating
embryos. However, the legal history of HRC predicts that reproductive
technologies strongly …

Re/Descheduling Marijuana Through Administrative Action, Scott P. Bloomberg, Alexandra Harriman, Shane Pennington

Faculty Publications

In October 2022, President Biden requested that the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General initiate a procedure to review how marijuana is scheduled under the federal Controlled Substances Act (“CSA”). The announcement was historic. After more than fifty years of federal prohibition, decades of advocacy and litigation from reform groups, and dozens of stalled efforts in Congress, a President finally decided to wield the Executive Power with an eye towards rescheduling or descheduling marijuana. But just how far does that power go? Given President Biden’s request, the question is in serious need of scholarly attention.
This …

Long Overdue: The Need For An Examination Of The Specter Of Racial Bias In The Federal Death Penalty System, John Nidiry, Ruth Friedman

Faculty Publications

The specter of racial bias in the federal government's administration of the death penalty over the past thirty-five years has been long apparent yet insufficiently scrutinized. Scholars have studied the racially disparate application of capital punishment at the state level and linked those disparities to a history of racialized violence. The federal death penalty, especially with regard to the impact of race, however, remains largely unexamined.
It is time to bridge this gap in the research on racial bias in the criminal justice system and in the implementation of the federal death penalty specifically. There are, as this Article sets …

The Art Of Nfts: Copyright, Contracts, And The Fallacy Of Ownership, Christine S. Davik

Faculty Publications

With cryptocurrency Bitcoin’s prices continuing to hit record highs, overall public interest in NFTs will likely increase significantly as it ordinarily has in the past. But before purchasing an NFT, it is important that consumers understand exactly what they are buying. Many assume their purchase will include the associated art that is shown in the individual NFT marketplace listing, whether it be a CryptoKitty, a Bored Ape, or a single video clip from an NBA game. However, in reality, most buyers are getting little more than a few lines of code on the blockchain. What explains these misconceptions, especially when …

Silence As Consumer Consent: Global Regulation Of Negative Option Contracts, Kaitlin A. Caruso, Prentiss Cox

Faculty Publications

Worldwide, the “subscription economy” has exploded in recent years, especially among online sellers of consumer goods and services. These subscriptions use various contract forms-- but many have one common feature: the negative option. With a negative option contract, once a consumer has signed up, the contract will continue until the consumer actively reaches out to cancel it. These are wildly popular among sellers, as they create continuous income and put inertia on the sellers' side. Unsurprisingly, then, consumers complain in extraordinary numbers about being trapped in agreements that are easy to sign up for but seemingly impossible to cancel. Even …

An Integrated Model For Information Adoption & Trust In Mobile Social Commerce, Fulya Acikgoz, Abdelsalam Busalim, James Gaskin, Shahla Asadi

Faculty Publications

Despite the growing importance of mobile social commerce (ms-commerce), little research has been conducted on the effects of informational and social factors on users’ post-adoption behavior. We, therefore, build on the understanding of mobile social commerce in the UK market and how it affects users’ post-adoption behaviors. Our theoretical model leverages the information adoption model, social support theory, and social influence theory. Data was gathered from 377 ms-commerce users from the UK and analyzed via Partial Least Squares (PLS-SEM). The research findings show that both informational and social factors have a positive impact on information adoption in ms-commerce apps. Furthermore, …

Technological Health: A New Perspective On Individual Well-Being In The Digital Era, Tanner Skousen, J. Andrew Lear

Faculty Publications

An individual’s well-being encompasses various facets, including physical, mental, and social health. This paper proposes that in a technology-dependent world, practitioners and researchers must adopt a “technological health” perspective. Through conceptual inquiry and extensive literature review, we propose the concept of technological health, drawing from related concepts. We present an initial framework that explicates technological health through the dimensions of access to technology, ability to use technology, and autonomy over technology. Practically, this new perspective refocuses our understanding of technological challenges and invites an ideology of diagnoses and treatments to comprehensively address individual-level concerns associated with personal technology use. Academically, …

Interpreting For Boris Pilnyak In New York City During 1931, Albert Parry

Faculty Publications

The following text is an excerpt from Albert Parry’s hitherto unpublished memoirs, Ask That Your Way Be Long: An Autobiography. As becomes evident from reading his obituary in the New York Times (May 8, 1992), Professor Parry led a very colorful and highly interesting life. Having escaped from his hometown of Rostov-on-Don in the midst of the Russian Civil War, and then emigrating to the United States in 1921, he proceeded to develop a successful career for himself as a writer and journalist in New York City during the 1920s and early 1930s, before moving to the Midwest to …

Asynchronous Movement Patterns Between Breeding And Stopover Locations In A Long-Distance Migratory Songbird, Theodore Zenzal, Andrea Contina, Hannah Vander Zanden, Leanne Kuwahara, Daniel Allen, Kristen Covino

Faculty Publications

The species-specific migratory patterns and strategies of many songbirds remain unknown or understudied, as research in animal ecology is biased toward the breeding period, with the fewest studies on the migratory period across taxa. Identifying large-scale spatiotemporal migratory patterns is challenging, as individuals within a species may vary in their migratory behavior and strategies. The Yellow Warbler (Setophaga petechia) is a Nearctic-Neotropical migrant that is relatively well studied during the breeding season, but its species-wide migratory patterns remain understudied. Our aim in studying Yellow Warbler movement ecology was to characterize temporal migration patterns during fall migration. We sought to determine …