Digital Commons Network^™

The Obvious Violation Exception To Qualified Immunity: An Empirical Study, Bailey D. Barnes

Faculty Publications

Qualified immunity shields government officials from civil suits for discretionary actions, as long as the violated right is not clearly established. A right is deemed established when every reasonable official would understand it based on precedent, placing it beyond debate, such that only the plainly incompetent may be held liable. Consequently, even when an act infringes on one's civil rights, a court may deny relief owing to a lack of factually comparable precedent. However, in 2020, the Supreme Court indicated its distrust for overreliance on precedent in certain contexts. In Taylor v. Riojas, the Court held that prison officials violated …

Extraterritoriality's Empire: How Self-Determination Limits Extraterritorial Lawmaking, Evan J. Criddle

Faculty Publications

In recent years, a growing number of countries have courted controversy by regulating activities outside their borders. They have used extraterritorial lawmaking to cultivate competitive global markets, strengthen or weaken data privacy, combat foreign terrorism and military aggression, promote human rights abroad, and suppress political dissent at home. This Article explores whether extraterritorial lawmaking can be reconciled with the right to self-determination under international law. I argue that the right to self-determination entitles each national polity to determine the laws and institutions by which it is governed within its territory. Extraterritorial lawmaking violates the right to self-determination when it subjects …

Law Schools Should Substantially Increase Instruction In Mediation Representation, John Lande

Faculty Publications

American law schools generally focus 10% or less of their mediation curriculum on mediation representation. As shown in a survey of faculty teaching mediation and an analysis of course syllabi in this article, most of the instruction focuses on the role of a mediator.

This is a problem for several reasons. New graduates represent clients in mediation much more frequently than they mediate. Clients usually need professional advice to evaluate their cases and develop strategies, which mediators cannot provide. This is precisely the important service that attorneys can provide, but we teach students very little about what to do when …

Toward A Better Understanding Of Mail Balloting: The Case Of U.S. Labor Union-Representation Elections, Rafael Gely, Leonard Bierman, Timothy Chandler

Faculty Publications

The issue of how people vote in elections is important and timely. This Article examines this issue from the perspective of whether people vote by mail - i.e., mail balloting - or in person on a designated election day i.e., in-person voting. It explores the pros and cons of mail balloting versus in-person voting from a general political perspective and in the context of elections for labor union representation in the United States. It presents heretofore unreported data on the use of mail balloting in union-representation elections. It then draws lessons from these data concerning how mail balloting-which has increased …

Prescribed Fire Regimes Influence Responses Of Fungal And Bacterial Communities On New Litter Substrates In A Brackish Tidal Marsh, Viet Q. Dao, Crystal N. Johnson, William J. Platt

Faculty Publications

Processes modifying newly deposited litter substrates should affect fine fuels in fire-managed tidal marsh ecosystems. Differences in chemical composition and dynamics of litter should arise from fire histories that generate pyrodiverse plant communities, tropical cyclones that deposit wrack as litter, tidal inundation that introduces and alters sediments and microbes, and interactions among these different processes. The resulting diversity and dynamics of available litter compounds should affect microbial (fungal and bacterial) communities and their roles in litter substrate dynamics and ecosystem responses over time. We experimentally examined effects of differences in litter types produced by different fire regimes and litter loads …

Regulation Of Bacterial Virulence Genes By Pecs Family Transcription Factors, George C. Nwokocha, Arpita Ghosh, Anne Grove

Faculty Publications

Bacterial plant pathogens adjust their gene expression programs in response to environmental signals and host-derived compounds. This ensures that virulence genes or genes encoding proteins, which promote bacterial fitness in a host environment, are expressed only when needed. Such regulation is in the purview of transcription factors, many of which belong to the ubiquitous multiple antibiotic resistance regulator (MarR) protein family. PecS proteins constitute a subset of this large protein family. PecS has likely been distributed by horizontal gene transfer, along with the divergently encoded efflux pump PecM, suggesting its integration into existing gene regulatory networks. Here, we discuss the …

Return To Eden: God’S Design For Human Sexuality In The Song Of Songs, Richard M. Davidson

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Regulating Crypto Intermediaries, Eric D. Chason

Faculty Publications

Early 2024 produced a dramatic rebound in cryptocurrency markets as Bitcoin hit an all-time high price in March 2024. This surge was fueled in large part by judicial and regulatory action. After years of denials and a high-profile defeat in court, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) finally approved the first exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for Bitcoin in January 2024. Many believe that these approvals will lead to a greater shift of investment funds into crypto. Crypto regulation is not, however, ready for this shift. While ETFs have clear treatment under current law, other institutions lack the same clarity or …

In Situ Assembly Enabling Adhesive-Free Bonding Of Large Area Electronic Sensors To Concrete For Structural Health Monitoring, Emmanuel Ogunniyi, Han Liu, Austin Downey, Simon Laflamme, Caroline Bennett, William Collins, Hongki Jo, Paul Ziehl

Faculty Publications

Cracks developed in concrete infrastructure are one of the primary mechanisms that degrade their structural integrity, which may result in structural failures. Previous research on soft elastomeric capacitors (SEC) has shown their viability for structural health monitoring of structural materials, including concrete, steel, and fiberglass composites. The SEC, or its derivative version with a corrugated geometry termed corrugated SEC or cSEC, is a parallel plate capacitor. Prior work demonstrated that it was possible to directly paint the electrode interfacing with the structural material onto the structure and adhere the rest of the pre-fabricated sensor onto the wet interface, thereby eliminating …

Machine Learning For Automated Classification Of Lung Collagen In A Urethane-Induced Lung Injury Mouse Model, Khalid Hamad Alnafisah, Amit Ranjan, Sushant P. Sahu, Jianhua Chen, Sarah Mohammad Alhejji, Alexandra Noël, Manas Ranjan Gartia, Supratik Mukhopadhyay

Faculty Publications

Dysregulation of lung tissue collagen level plays a vital role in understanding how lung diseases progress. However, traditional scoring methods rely on manual histopathological examination introducing subjectivity and inconsistency into the assessment process. These methods are further hampered by inter-observer variability, lack of quantification, and their time-consuming nature. To mitigate these drawbacks, we propose a machine learning-driven framework for automated scoring of lung collagen content. Our study begins with the collection of a lung slide image dataset from adult female mice using second harmonic generation (SHG) microscopy. In our proposed approach, first, we manually extracted features based on the 46 …

Allura Red Ac Is A Xenobiotic. Is It Also A Carcinogen?, Lorne J. Hofseth Ph.D., James Hébert Scd, Elizabeth Angela Murphy, Erica Trauner, Athul Vikas, Quinn Harris, Alexander A. Chumanevich

Faculty Publications

Merriam-Webster and Oxford define a xenobiotic as any substance foreign to living systems. Allura Red AC (a.k.a., E129; FD&C Red No. 40), a synthetic food dye extensively used in manufacturing ultra-processed foods and therefore highly prevalent in our food supply, falls under this category. The surge in synthetic food dye consumption during the 70s and 80s was followed by an epidemic of metabolic diseases and the emergence of early-onset colorectal cancer in the 1990s. This temporal association raises significant concerns, particularly given the widespread inclusion of synthetic food dyes in ultra-processed products, notably those marketed toward children. Given its interactions …

Allura Red Ac Is A Xenobiotic. Is It Also A Carcinogen?, Lorne J. Hofseth, James R. Hébert Scd, Elizabeth Angela Murphy, Erica Trauner, Athul Vikas, Quinn Harris, Alexander A. Chumanevich

Faculty Publications

Merriam-Webster and Oxford define a xenobiotic as any substance foreign to living systems. Allura Red AC (a.k.a., E129; FD&C Red No. 40), a synthetic food dye extensively used in manufacturing ultra-processed foods and therefore highly prevalent in our food supply, falls under this category. The surge in synthetic food dye consumption during the 70s and 80s was followed by an epidemic of metabolic diseases and the emergence of early-onset colorectal cancer in the 1990s. This temporal association raises significant concerns, particularly given the widespread inclusion of synthetic food dyes in ultra-processed products, notably those marketed toward children. Given its interactions …

Production Box Cost Estimating Relationships For Dod Avionics, Carla J. Cisneros, Edward D. White, Brandon M. Lucas, Jonathan D. Ritschel, Robert D. Fass, Shawn M. Valentine

Faculty Publications

The authors use historical information obtained from the Cost Assessment Data Enterprise to estimate recurring production unit cost for DoD avionics via cost estimating relationships (CERs). The specific modeled responses include mean unit cost, median unit cost, and the 100th production unit cost (T100) utilizing learning curve theory. For T100, the authors adopt both a multiplicative and an additive error for CER comparison. Recommended CERs consist of the mean unit cost and the T100 utilizing a multiplicative error. Moreover, results reveal that weight has a significant effect on cost as well as a potential underaccounting of real price change or …

The Elephant In The Dark Room: A Response To Fair Notice, The Rule Of Law And Reforming Qualified Immunity, Teressa E. Ravenell

Faculty Publications

In response to Professor Chapman’s Fair Notice, the Rule of Law, and Reforming Qualified Immunity, this article examines the viability of Chapman’s proposal to reform qualified immunity by focusing on the “fair notice” rationale. Chapman argues that government officials should not be shielded from liability in cases where they acted in bad faith, violated criminal laws, or engaged in conduct malum in se. This article explores whether such a proposal could meaningfully alter qualified immunity litigation and concludes that significant procedural and historical barriers make this reform unlikely to succeed.

Comparing The Health Information Practices Of Sapphic People By Age Group And Generation, Vanessa Lynn Kitzie

Faculty Publications

This qualitative research examines how sapphic people (i.e., umbrella term inclusive of lesbian, bisexual, and pansexual trans femmes, mascs, nonbinary people, and ciswomen) in South Carolina navigate informational barriers within healthcare systems. An information practices lens that examines how sapphic people create, seek, use, and share information to achieve desired healthcare outcomes describes such navigation. The research focuses on how intersectional identities, with a particular emphasis on age and considerations of race/ethnicity, geography, and gender, mediate these practices and their outcomes. The research uses participant data from semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 34 sapphic people about their health information …

High-Fidelity Machine Learning Techniques For Driver Drowsiness Detection, Yasser Ismail, Ebenezer Essel, Abeer Abdelhamid, Mahmoud Darwich, Fahmi Khalifa, Fred Lacy

Faculty Publications

It is devastating that daily, there is an ample number of car crashes that cause damage to automobiles, onboard passengers get injured, and others tend to lose their lives. Road crashes are fast rising across the globe and have drawn many road safety commissions and concerned individuals to discuss ways to reduce this menacing situation drastically. With the introduction of artificial intelligence and technological advancement, the government and state commissions have beckoned on the various universities and research institutions to develop methods to curb the rise of automobile crashes. Some causes of these crashes include drunk driving and drowsiness, the …

Finite Element Modeling And Analysis Of Rc Shear Walls With Cutting-Out Openings, Islam M. Saad, Mohamed Emara, Ayman El-Zohairy, Sherif El-Beshlawy

Faculty Publications

In recent decades, reinforced concrete (RC) shear walls have been one of the best structural solutions to resist lateral load in high-rise buildings. Shear wall openings are essential for preparations and architectural requirements, which weaken the wall, reducing bearing capacity, energy absorption, and stiffness while also causing stress concentrations. This paper presents a comprehensive finite element (FE) investigation of the behavior and performance of RC shear walls with openings and subjected to lateral loads. The study aims to evaluate the influence of various parameters, such as opening location, size, wall aspect ratio, axial load, and concrete strength, which affect the …

Beyond Covid: Towards A Transdisciplinary Synthesis For Understanding Responses And Developing Pandemic Preparedness In Alaska, Taylor P. Van Doren, Ryan A. Brown, Guangqing Chi, Patricia Cochran, Katie Cueva, Laura Eichelberger, Ruby Fried, Stacey Fritz, Micah B. Hahn, Ron Heintz, Davin Holen, Andrey N. Petrov

Faculty Publications

Pandemics are regularly occurring events, and there are foundational principles of pandemic preparation upon which communities, regions, states, and nations may draw upon for elevated preparedness against an inevitable future infectious disease threat. Many disciplines within the social sciences can provide crucial insight and transdisciplinary thinking for the development of preparedness measures. In 2023, the National Science Foundation funded a conference of circumpolar researchers and Indigenous partners to reflect on COVID-19-related research. In this article, we synthesise our diverse social science perspectives to: (1) identify potential areas of future pandemic-related research in Alaska, and (2) pose new research questions that …

Prevailing Issues And Actions In Urban Best Practices Across Latin America And The Caribbean, Fabio Capra-Ribeiro

Faculty Publications

This research examines urban best practices (BPs) across Latin America and the Caribbean to illuminate the prevalent issues and actions associated with these locally implemented initiatives. An analysis of 45 BPs from the UN-Habitat repository was conducted using both quantitative and qualitative methods, organized into three phases. The first phase focused on collecting data such as BP sources, countries of origin, and years of implementation. The second phase identified common problems and actions within the BPs. The third phase involved a cross-sectional analysis to identify significant patterns and trends. The study found that many BPs originated from the Dubai International …

Neurosymbolic Cognitive Methods For Enhancing Foundation Model-Based Reasoning, Kaushik Roy, Siyu Wu, Alessandro Oltramari

Faculty Publications

Foundation models have emerged as powerful tools, exhibiting extraordinary performance across various tasks, such as language processing, visual recognition, code generation, and human-centered engagement. However, recent studies have highlighted their limitations when grounded, abstract, and generalized reasoning capabilities are required. Complex tasks often involve multiple hierarchical reasoning steps, which are typical features of human thinking processes. In fact, in this chapter we claim that cognitively-inspired computational models, such as the so-called Common Model of Cognition, are key to enable complex reasoning within foundation model-based artificial intelligence (AI) systems. We investigate neurosymbolic approaches for mapping AI system components to those of …

Returnees’ Perspectives Of The Adverse Impact Of Forced Displacement On Children, Itunu O. Ilesanmi, Jasmine D. Haynes, Florence O. Ogundimu

Faculty Publications

Conflict-related forced displacement, characterized by the experiences of witnessing violent acts, bombing, torture, separation, and the execution of family members, can severely and negatively impact a child’s social determinants of health (SDOH). These experiences are both direct and indirect forms of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and urgent attention is needed to understand the impact of forced displacement on children, who are a vulnerable group, and to develop interventions for all systems that influence the child. This phenomenological qualitative study involved in-depth interviews based on the experiences of returnees (n = 20), who are parents of children who experienced forced displacement. …

Coarse-Gridded Simulation Of The Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation With Machine Learning, Benjamin F. Akers, Kristina O. F. Williams

Faculty Publications

A numerical method for evolving the nonlinear Schrödinger equation on a coarse spatial grid is developed. This trains a neural network to generate the optimal stencil weights to discretize the second derivative of solutions to the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The neural network is embedded in a symmetric matrix to control the scheme’s eigenvalues, ensuring stability. The machine-learned method can outperform both its parent finite difference method and a Fourier spectral method. The trained scheme has the same asymptotic operation cost as its parent finite difference method after training. Unlike traditional methods, the performance depends on how close the initial data …

Adr In The Ongoing Experiment Of American Law, Carli N. Conklin

Faculty Publications

To engage in the development of American law— past or present—is to engage in a great and ongoing experiment. It is an exercise of the imagination. And one place where American law has been most imaginative is in the field of alternative dispute resolution. It is an area of law that, in its creativity and emphasis on the person as a whole, is particularly well-suited to respond to the guiding question of our constitutional democracy: how might we live well together?

Far From Their Origins: A Transcriptomic Investigation On How 2,4-Di-Tert-Butyl-6-(5-Chloro-2h-Benzotriazol-2-Yl) Phenol Affects Rainbow Trout Alevins, Andreas N.M. Eriksson, Justin Dubiel, Alper James Alcaraz, Jon A. Doering, Steve Wiseman

Faculty Publications

Benzotriazole ultraviolet stabilizers (BUVSs) are a group of widely used chemicals added to a variety of consumer (e.g., plastics) and industrial (e.g., metal coating) goods. Although detected globally as an environmentally persistent pollutant, BUVSs have received relatively little toxicological attention and only recently have been acknowledged to affect development and the endocrine system in vivo. In our previous study, altered behavior, indicative of potential neurotoxicity, was observed among rainbow trout alevins (day 14 posthatching) that were microinjected as embryos with a single environmentally relevant dose of 2,4-di-tert-butyl–6-(5-chloro-2H-benzotriazol-2-yl) phenol (UV-327). In the present follow-up study, we performed whole-transcriptome profiling (RNA sequencing) …

Discarded Vehicle Tires And Their Association With Mosquito Vector Abundance Across Socioenvironmental Gradients In New Orleans, La, Rebeca De Jesús Crespo, Alexandros Pavlakis, Jennifer Breaux, Claudia Riegel

Faculty Publications

Discarded vehicle tires serve as habitat for mosquito vectors. In New Orleans, Louisiana, discarded tires are an increasingly important public concern, especially considering that the city is home to many medically important mosquito species. Discarded tires are known to be associated with mosquito abundance, but how their presence interacts with other socioenvironmental gradients to influence mosquito ecology is poorly understood. Here, we ask whether discarded tire distribution could be explained by social factors, particularly median income, home vacancy and human population density, and whether these factors interact with urban heat islands (UHI) to drive mosquito vector assemblages. We surveyed tire …

On The Injectivity Of The Shifted Funk–Radon Transform And Related Harmonic Analysis, Boris Rubin

Faculty Publications

Necessary and sufficient conditions are obtained for injectivity of the shifted Funk–Radon transform associated with k-dimensional totally geodesic submanifolds of the unit sphere Sⁿ in ℝⁿ⁺¹. This result generalizes the well known statement for the spherical means on Sⁿ and is formulated in terms of zeros of Jacobi polynomials. The relevant harmonic analysis is developed, including a new concept of induced Stiefel (or Grassmannian) harmonics, the Funk–Hecke type theorems, addition formula, and multipliers. Some perspectives and conjectures are discussed.

Toward A Comparative Framework For Studies Of Altitudinal Migration, David Vander Pluym, Nicholas A. Mason

Faculty Publications

The study and importance of altitudinal migration has attracted increasing interest among zoologists. Altitudinal migrants are taxonomically widespread and move across altitudinal gradients as partial or complete migrants, subjecting them to a wide array of environments and ecological interactions. Here, we present a brief synthesis of recent developments in the field and suggest future directions toward a more taxonomically inclusive comparative framework for the study of altitudinal migration. Our framework centers on a working definition of altitudinal migration that hinges on its biological relevance, which is scale-dependent and related to fitness outcomes. We discuss linguistic nuances of altitudinal movements and …

First-Order Comprehensive Adjoint Sensitivity Analysis Methodology For Neural Ordinary Differential Equations: Mathematical Framework And Illustrative Application To The Nordheim–Fuchs Reactor Safety Model, Dan Gabriel Cacuci

Faculty Publications

This work introduces the mathematical framework of the novel “First-Order Comprehensive Adjoint Sensitivity Analysis Methodology for Neural Ordinary Differential Equations” (1st-CASAM-NODE) which yields exact expressions for the first-order sensitivities of NODE decoder responses to the NODE parameters, including encoder initial conditions, while enabling the most efficient computation of these sensitivities. The application of the 1st-CASAM-NODE is illustrated by using the Nordheim–Fuchs reactor dynamics/safety phenomenological model, which is representative of physical systems that would be modeled by NODE while admitting exact analytical solutions for all quantities of interest (hidden states, decoder outputs, sensitivities with respect to all parameters and initial conditions, …

Continuing Education For Directors Of Public Companies, Jennifer O'Hare

Faculty Publications

Directors of public companies are responsible for overseeing complex organizations in a rapidly changing business environment, but they are not required to engage in continuing education. This creates a danger that directors will not have the knowledge they need to meet the significant demands of overseeing public companies. To address this, public companies should adopt mandatory continuing education policies for their boards, and the Securities and Exchange Commission should require public companies to disclose basic information about their continuing education programs in their proxy statements.

This is the first scholarly article to address the issue of mandatory continuing education for …

Exploring Forgiveness Through Theologically Informed Education: Lessons From Judaism, Yitzhak Ben Yair, Sarel Ohayon, Natti Ronel, Suzanne Freedman

Faculty Publications

Education serves as the primary line of defense against crime and other psychological difficulties. Children exposed to adversity and emotional challenges may be susceptible to various risks, potentially leading to criminal activities. Forgiveness has been demonstrated as a healing influence in the lives of individuals who have experienced hurt and accumulated negative emotions due to life events. Understanding forgiveness from a young age, in both theory and practice, may facilitate improved relationships and psychological well-being. This article underscores the significance of forgiveness education, advocating for a culturally and theologically sensitive approach. In this article we will offer an example of …