Digital Commons Network^™

A Simple Micromilled Microfluidic Impedance Cytometer With Vertical Parallel Electrodes For Cell Viability Analysis, Jason Eades, Julianne F. Audiffred, Micah Fincher, Jin Woo Choi, Steven A. Soper, William Todd Monroe

Faculty Publications

Microfluidic impedance cytometry has been demonstrated as an effective platform for single cell analysis, taking advantage of microfabricated features and dielectric cell sensing methods. In this study, we present a simple microfluidic device to improve the sensitivity, accuracy, and throughput of single suspension cell viability analysis using vertical sidewall electrodes fabricated by a widely accessible negative manufacturing method. A microchannel milled through a 75 µm platinum wire, which was embedded into poly-methyl-methacrylate (PMMA), created a pair of parallel vertical sidewall platinum electrodes. Jurkat cells were interrogated in a custom low-conductivity buffer (1.2 ± 0.04 mS/cm) to reduce current leakage and …

Plea Bargaining's Uncertainty Problem, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

While commentators roundly condemn plea bargaining, the criticism can be as muddled as the practice itself. Critics’ primary target is the “trial penalty.” But a differential between guilty-plea and trial sentences seems inevitable in any system that allows defendants to concede guilt. And, as a new wave of “progressive prosecutors” is demonstrating, gaps between (unusually lenient) plea offers and long (potential) post-trial sentences are not only a strong incentive to plead guilty but also a powerful tool for reducing American penal severity. Other critiques point to flaws that parallel those found in the broader system, overlooking that plea bargaining is …

Crypto Assets And The Problem Of Tax Classifications, Eric D. Chason

Faculty Publications

To date, Internal Revenue Service (I.R.S.) guidance on cryptocurrencies has been thin. When the I.R.S. has issued guidance, it occasionally mishandles the technical details (such as confusing air drops and hard forks). More personnel (and personnel with greater technical expertise) would allow the I.R.S. to keep pace with the explosive growth of cryptocurrency. Nevertheless, the I.R.S. could better leverage its existing resources by focusing on select issues and seeking enabling legislation from Congress. Specifically, the I.R.S. should focus on crypto issues occurring on a system-wide basis and not requiring taxpayer-specific considerations.

For example, determining whether Bitcoin is a “security” under …

Is A Genetic Diathesis For Poor Nutrition Becoming More Crucial Due To The Uniformity Of Covid Social Stress?, M. Catherine Desoto

Faculty Publications

The important role of nutrition in proper neural functioning and mental health has seen wider acceptance, but is still sadly under recognized given the existent body of research. This Special Issue was designed to unite authoritative information on this topic in one volume. This editorial provides an overview of the issue, and suggests that the combination of social isolation, lack of exercise, and remaining indoors that overtook industrialized societies during 2020 are specific factors expected to change the Gene × Environment interactions for anxiety and depression. Importantly, the recent environmental changes may make biological diatheses for nutritional deficiencies even more …

Emotions In Crisis: Consequences Of Ceremonial Refugee Camp Visits To Bhutanese Refugee Camps In Nepal, Kamryn Warren

Faculty Publications

Research on refugee resettlement frequently overlooks the larger context of the experience of forced migration. As a result, the micro-level interactions between refugees and the bureaucrats who make resettlement decisions are obscured. We can better understand the socio-political dynamics between refugees and the officials deciding their resettlement cases if we approach encounters between refugees and migration officials during ceremonial visits as sites of emotional exchange. This article examines the complex socio-political emotional exchanges of power and vulnerability that underpin the refugee resettlement process through an ethnographic analysis of Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal.

Discerning The Effect Of The Relationship Between Disclosure And Responsiveness On Depression, Anxiety, And Compassion Fatigue Among Veterinarians, Carrie Reif-Stice, Sarah Smith-Frigerio, Cheryl Auch Lawson, Steven Venette

Faculty Publications

OBJECTIVE

Previous scholarship has posited that veterinarians experience more anxiety, depression, and compassion fatigue symptoms than the general population. Disclosure of psychological stressors, combined with positive responsiveness, may reduce psychological symptoms. The goal of this study was to test the relationships between disclosure, responsiveness, compassion fatigue, anxiety, and depression.

SAMPLE

230 veterinarians from a private Facebook online support group.

PROCEDURES

Veterinarians from a private Facebook online support group were administered a cross-sectional survey using established scales measuring disclosure, responsiveness, compassion fatigue, anxiety, and depression. All scales reported strong reliability and validity.

RESULTS

Pearson correlations and mediation models were used to …

Integrated Ion-Exchange Membrane Resin Wafer Assemblies For Aromatic Organic Acid Separations Using Electrodeionization, Matthew L. Jordan, Grzegorz Kokoszka, Hishara Keshani Gallage Dona, Dodangodage Ishara Senadheera, Revati Kumar, Yupo J. Lin, Christopher G. Arges

Faculty Publications

Aromatic acids, such as p-coumaric acid, are valuable chemical intermediates that are used in the specialty chemical industries because they are precursors to phenylpropanoid compounds. The separation of p-coumaric acid from fermentation broths is a critical step in the biochemical production process and more broadly the circular carbon economy. Electrodeionization (EDI) has been applied toward separations of low-carbon chain acids, but purifying p-coumaric acid has been challenging due to fouling and irreversible binding with ion-exchange membranes and resins. Here, we report a new membrane wafer assembly (MWA) consisting of laminated ion exchange membranes to porous ionomer-binder resin wafers for EDI. …

On Limitations Of Uniplex Networks For Modeling Multiplex Contagion, Nicholas W. Landry, Jimi Adams

Faculty Publications

Many network contagion processes are inherently multiplex in nature, yet are often reduced to processes on uniplex networks in analytic practice. We therefore examine how data modeling choices can affect the predictions of contagion processes. We demonstrate that multiplex contagion processes are not simply the union of contagion processes over their constituent uniplex networks. We use multiplex network data from two different contexts- (1) a behavioral network to represent their potential for infectious disease transmission using a "simple"epidemiological model, and (2) users from online social network sites to represent their potential for information spread using a threshold-based "complex"contagion process. Our …

Microplastics In Mainstem Mississippi River Fishes, Ahmed K. Gad, Kerrin Toner, Mark C. Benfield, Stephen R. Midway

Faculty Publications

Microplastics are ubiquitous in Earth’s ecosystems and many efforts have begun to understand their distributions. Large rivers, like the Mississippi River, provide a unique system in which to look at large-scale patterns of microplastic distribution. In this study, we sampled four species of widely-distributed fishes from five sites along the mainstem Mississippi River, from Minnesota to Louisiana, United States. Microplastics were found in all fish species and at all sites; however, microplastics increased in occurrence in the Lower Mississippi River. Fragments were the most common morphologies and polypropylene was the most common polymer detected. We also examined the hypothesis that …

Dual Targeting Of Mtor/Il-17a And Autophagy By Fisetin Alleviates Psoriasis-Like Skin Inflammation, Tithi Roy, Sergette Banang-Mbeumi, Samuel T. Boateng, Emmanuelle M. Ruiz, Roxane Cherille N. Chamcheu, Lin Kang, Judy A. King, Anthony L. Walker, Bolni Marius Nagalo, Konstantin G. Kousoulas, Stephane Esnault, Shile Huang, Jean Christopher Chamcheu

Faculty Publications

Psoriasis is a chronic autoimmune inflammatory skin disorder characterized by epidermal hyperplasia and aberrant immune response. In addition to aberrant cytokine production, psoriasis is associated with activation of the Akt/mTOR pathway. mTOR/S6K1 regulates T-lymphocyte activation and migration, keratinocytes proliferation and is upregulated in psoriatic lesions. Several drugs that target Th1/Th17 cytokines or their receptors have been approved for treating psoriasis in humans with variable results necessitating improved therapies. Fisetin, a natural dietary polyphenol with anti-oxidant and anti-proliferative properties, covalently binds mTOR/S6K1. The effects of fisetin on psoriasis and its underlying mechanisms have not been clearly defined. Here, we evaluated the …

Antibody-Dependent Enhancement Activity Of A Plant-Made Vaccine Against West Nile Virus, Haiyan Sun, Dhiraj Acharya, Amber M. Paul, Huafang Lai, Junyun He, Fengwei Bai, Qiang Chen

Faculty Publications

West Nile virus (WNV) causes annual outbreaks globally and is the leading cause of mosquito-borne disease in Unite States. In the absence of licensed therapeutics, there is an urgent need to develop effective and safe human vaccines against WNV. One of the major safety concerns for WNV vaccine development is the risk of increasing infection by related flaviviruses in vaccinated subjects via antibody-dependent enhancement of infection (ADE). Herein, we report the development of a plant-based vaccine candidate that provides protective immunity against a lethal WNV challenge mice, while minimizes the risk of ADE for infection by Zika (ZIKV) and dengue …

Externalities,Scarcity And Abundance, Brett M. Frischmann, Giovanni B. Ramello

Faculty Publications

Introduction: Do externalities work and matter differently in a world of scarcity vs. a world of abundance? In this article, we critically examine the economic phenomena of externalities. The concept of externality, an important idea in economics and law, is useful in exploring the complex and dynamic relationships between resource supply and human flourishing within various sociotechnical systems.

Methods: First, we define the basic concept and explain why it is fundamental to economic analysis of complex social environments Second, we briefly survey the intellectual history of externalities with the goal of tying together a few different strands of economic theory …

Framing Esports’ Jedi Issues: A Case Study In Media Irresponsibility, David Painter, Brittani Sahm

Faculty Publications

Purpose: This investigation analyzes Asian, European, and North American coverage of esports’ justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) issues as a case study of media organizations’ communications on these topics.

Design/methodology/approach: This quantitative content analysis describes coverage of esports’ race, gender, age, and social class issues to draw inferences about media organizations’ abilities to meet their social responsibilities when reporting on organizational JEDI issues.

Findings: There were significant differences across continents; however, most stories only mentioned gender and age, seldom noting esports’ race or social class issues.

Research limitations/implications: Although all stories analyzed were published in English, the findings extend …

Flood Risk Assessment For Residences At The Neighborhood Scale By Owner/Occupant Type And First-Floor Height, Ayat Al Assi, Rubayet Bin Mostafiz, Carol J. Friedland, Md Adilur Rahim, Robert V. Rohli

Faculty Publications

Evaluating flood risk is an essential component of understanding and increasing community resilience. A robust approach for quantifying flood risk in terms of average annual loss (AAL) in dollars across multiple homes is needed to provide valuable information for stakeholder decision-making. This research develops a computational framework to evaluate AAL at the neighborhood level by owner/occupant type (i.e., homeowner, landlord, and tenant) for increasing first-floor height (FFH). The AAL values were calculated here by numerically integrating loss-exceedance probability distributions to represent economic annual flood risk to the building, contents, and use. A simple case study for a census block in …

Moderation Effect Of Community Health On The Relationship Between Racial/Ethnic Residential Segregation And Hiv Viral Suppression In South Carolina: A County-Level Longitudinal Study From 2013 To 2018, Fanghui Shi, Jiajia Zhang Ph.D., Xueying Yang Ph.D., Xiaowen Sun, Zhenlong Li, Chengbo Zeng, Huan Ning, Sharon Weissman, Bankole Olatosi Ph.D., Xiaoming Li Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Background: Viral suppression is the ultimate goal of the HIV treatment cascade and a primary endpoint of antiretroviral therapy. Empirical evidence found racial/ethnic disparities in viral suppression among people living with HIV (PWH), but the evidence of the relationship between racial/ethnic residential segregation and place-based viral suppression is scarce. Further exploring potential structural moderators in this relationship has substantial implications for healthcare policymaking and resource allocation. The current study aimed to investigate the spatial-temporal disparities in the HIV viral suppression rate across 46 counties in South Carolina from 2013 to 2018. We also examined the impact of racial/ethnic residential segregation …

Demographic And Career Trends Of Expatriate Student Affairs Professionals, Patricia Witkowsky, Osasohan Agbonlahor

Faculty Publications

Career opportunities for U.S.-educated student affairs professionals to work outside of the U.S. in student affairs have become increasingly available over the past two decades. The purpose of this study was to determine demographics of U.S.-educated expatriate student affairs professionals and their motivations to work abroad, which remains a unique experience in the landscape of student affairs professional experiences. Using a national recruitment approach of social media, networks, and snowball sampling, 43 self-initiated expatriate student affairs professionals participated in the survey to determine their demographics and motivations to work abroad. Results include the personal and educational backgrounds of respondents as …

Engineering At-Home Dilution And Filtration Methods To Enable Paper-Based Colorimetric Biosensing In Human Blood With Cell-Free Protein Synthesis, Tyler J. Free, Ryan W. Tucker, Katelyn M. Simonson, Sydney A. Smith, Caleb M. Lindgren, William G. Pitt, Bradley C. Bundy

Faculty Publications

Diagnostic blood tests can guide the administration of healthcare to save and improve lives. Most clinical biosensing blood tests require a trained technician and specialized equipment to process samples and interpret results, which greatly limits test accessibility. Colorimetric paper-based diagnostics have an equipment-free readout, but raw blood obscures a colorimetric response which has motivated diverse efforts to develop blood sample processing techniques. This work uses inexpensive readily-available materials to engineer user-friendly dilution and filtration methods for blood sample collection and processing to enable a proof-of-concept colorimetric biosensor that is responsive to glutamine in 50 µL blood drop samples in less …

Ecological Validity Of Don't Remember And Don't Know For Distinguishing Accessibility-Versus Availability-Based Retrieval Failures In Older And Younger Adults: Knowledge For News Events, Sharda Umanath, Jennifer H. Coane, Mark J. Huff, Tamar Cimenian, Kai Chang

Faculty Publications

With pursuit of incremental progress and generalizability of findings in mind, we examined a possible boundary for older and younger adults’ metacognitive distinction between what is not stored in memory versus merely inaccessible with materials that are not process pure to knowledge or events: information regarding news events. Participants were asked questions about public events such as celebrity news, tragedies, and political events that were widely experienced in the previous 10–12 years, responding “I don’t know” (DK) or “I don’t remember” (DR) when retrieval failed. Memories of these events are relatively recently acquired in rich, naturalistic contexts and are likely …

Transition-Denial And Structural Adjustment: Causation And Culpability In The Cuban Economy Culpability In The Cuban Economy, Jose Gabilondo

Faculty Publications

In 2020, Cuba implemented the Tarea Ordenamiento (Tarea), the most significant economic reform since the construction of the socialist economy after the Revolution. Signaling an eclectic brand of Cuban socialism, the Tarea clears away three decades of tried and failed economic doctrines, drawing a new fiscal border around state enterprises, nodding to market realities, and preparing the island for greater insertion into the world economy. While the political economy of post-Castro Cuba has changed in this way, the United States continues to subject the island to an unprecedented program of unilateral sanctions, universally condemned as a breach of human rights, …

Dual Fiduciaries: Unicorns, Corporate Law And The New Frontier, Anat Alon-Beck

Faculty Publications

Legal and regulatory structures influence the shift in equities in the United States from public markets to private markets, entrepreneurial opportunities and new firm formation. There is a rise in the number of “unicorn” firms, which are privately held venture-capital backed startups that are valued at $1 billion or more. The number of unicorns in the United States and overseas has grown exponentially over the last few years. This chapter discusses the rise of the unicorns and with it the increasing importance of corporate governance and fiduciary duties. There are new vertical and horizontal conflicts among common and preferred shareholders …

Comprehensive List Satirical News Websites, Salvatore Attardo

Faculty Publications

Index of Satirical News Websites created by Dr. Salvatore Attardo.

Understanding Meteorological Changes Following Severe Defoliation During A Strong Hurricane Landfall: Insights From Hurricane Michael (2018), Shannon A. Nelson, Paul W. Miller

Faculty Publications

Despite prompting persistent meteorological changes, severe defoliation following a tropical cyclone (TC) landfall has received relatively little attention and is largely overlooked within hurricane preparedness and recovery plan-ning. Changes to near-track vegetation can modify evapotranspiration for months after tropical cyclone passage, thereby altering boundary layer moisture and energy fluxes that drive the local water cycle. This study seeks to understand poten-tial spatial and temporal changes in defoliation-driven meteorological conditions using Hurricane Michael (2018) as a testbed. In this sensitivity study, two Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model simulations, a normal-landscape and a post-TC scenario, are compared to determine how a …

Design And Field-Scale Demonstration Of The Buoyant-Kill Process For Restoring Integrity Of Wells With Sustained Casing Pressure, Efecan Demirci, Andrew Wojtanowicz

Faculty Publications

Sustained Casing Pressure (SCP) is the persistent casinghead pressure resulting from the well’s annular integrity loss and migration of gas above the leaking cement sheath. Downhole—intervention methods for SCP removal employ workover rigs to access and plug off the leaking annulus at depth from within the well. The inexpensive rig-less method of Buoyant Kill involves surface injection of immiscible heavy fluid at the casinghead into the well’s annulus to replace the annular fluid column above the gas-leaking cement and stop gas migration. Laboratory and pilot-size testing have shown feasibility of the method. Presented here, is a field-scale demonstration experiment conducted …

Balancing Loyalties: A Behavioral Study On How The Quality Of Supervisor-Subordinate Relationships Affects Whistleblowing Intentions, Jace B. Garrett, Douglas F. Prawitt, Kyle Sopp

Faculty Publications

While high-quality relationships among employees yield many benefits to organizations, they may have unintended consequences for whistleblowing. In a first experiment, we investigate whether high-quality employee-supervisor relationships reduce employees’ willingness to report supervisor wrongdoing through an internal hotline. We also investigate whether the quality of such relationships mitigates the effect of evidence strength on reporting intention. In a second experiment, we test the robustness of the effects of relationship quality and evidence strength on employees’ willingness to report wrongdoing identified in our first experiment, but to an external auditor. We also examine two factors that may mitigate the negative effect …

The Sabbath In The Old Testament, Dana M. Pike

Faculty Publications

The scriptures consistently depict the significance of sacred space and sacred time in the lives of the Lord’s covenant people. Sacred time is still experienced today, as in the past, through commemorations and celebrations on specific days that are dedicated to God and thus regarded as holy. These days punctuate the passing of ordinary or common time and are intended to help bring focus and clarity to relationships with the divine.

The Impact Of Marginalization On Relations With Law Enforcement And The Criminal Justice System, Angelo Kevin Brown

Faculty Publications

This chapter provides an overview of how critical race theory (CRT) has provided an important context for the racial disparities in the criminal justice system. CRT has promoted teaching the history of the criminal justice system in the United States of America (USA) and abroad from a racial perceptive. CRT scholars emphasize race because of how race and racism have shaped and impacted our society and institutions. CRT has been used to understand issues from police violence, sentencing disparities, school-to-prison pipeline, prison abolitionism, and much more. The CRT framework is especially important when it comes to understanding the disparities and …

The Criminal Side Of Cryptocurrency, Angelo Kevin Brown

Faculty Publications

As cryptocurrency (crypto) has become more and more popular, so has crypto-related crime. There has been a lack of academic research on crypto-related crime, but it is becoming more prevalent in the last couple of years. Crypto-related crime became especially significant in the impact it had on victims and the awareness of these crimes in the media and the government in late 2019 and early 2020 as various criminal organizations and criminal opportunities opened up as cryptocurrency became mainstream. The common crimes related to cryptocurrency include fraud, theft, and money laundering. In 2021 estimates of crypto-related crime were estimated to …

There Is No Such Thing As Circuit Law, Thomas B. Bennett

Faculty Publications

Lawyers and judges often talk about “the law of the circuit,” meaning the set of legal rules that apply within a particular federal judicial circuit. Seasoned practitioners are steeped in circuit law, it is said. Some courts have imagined that they confront a choice between applying the law of one circuit or another. In its strong form, this idea of circuit law implies that each circuit creates and interprets its own body of substantive law that is uniquely applicable to disputes that arise within the circuit’s borders.

This article argues that the notion of circuit law is nonsensical and undesirable …

Judicial Process And Vigilante Federalism, Charles W. "Rocky" Rhodes, Howard M. Wasserman

Faculty Publications

Jon Michaels’ and David Noll’s "Vigilante Federalism" (Cornell Law Review) decries the explosion of state laws that target certain people (women seeking abortions, trans students seeking to use bathrooms, schools trying to teach about race) and rely on private civil litigation by random "any persons" as the exclusive or primary enforcement mechanism. These laws "deputize private actors to wage and win the culture wars," while subordinating marginalized groups.

But Michaels and Noll conflate well-taken substantive constitutional objections to these laws with procedural issues surrounding the private enforcement mechanism, which is neither unique nor constitutionally problematic. States have long authorized private …

Burning Questions: Changing Legal Narratives On Cannabis In Indian Country, Robin M. Rotman, Sam J. Carter

Faculty Publications

In the not-so-distant past, thoughts of Cannabis legalization in the United States were radical. In the present day, the narratives around Cannabis are changing. The term “present day” affixes this Article to early 2023, a snapshot in time. To understand the current legal narratives surrounding Cannabis, and what they might become in the future, it is important to examine the history of Cannabis law and policy in United States. This Article begins by discussing Cannabis regulation in the United States, from the rise of federal regulation to the gradual deregulation by states with tacit federal consent. The Article then examines …