Digital Commons Network^™

Using Cyanobacteria And Other Phytoplankton To Assess Trophic Conditions: A Qpcr-Based, Multi-Year Study In Twelve Large Rivers Across The United States, Chiqian Zhang, Kyle D. Mcintosh, Nathan Sienkiewicz, Erin A. Stelzer, Jennifer L. Graham, Jingrang Lu

Faculty Publications

Phytoplankton is the essential primary producer in fresh surface water ecosystems. However, excessive phytoplankton growth due to eutrophication significantly threatens ecologic, economic, and public health. Therefore, phytoplankton identification and quantification are essential to understanding the productivity and health of freshwater ecosystems, as well as the impacts of phytoplankton overgrowth (such as cyanobacterial blooms) on public health. Microscopy is the gold standard for phytoplankton assessment but is time-consuming, has low throughput, and requires rich experience in phytoplankton morphology. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) is accurate and straightforward with high throughput. In addition, qPCR does not require expertise in phytoplankton morphology. Therefore, …

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, …

Speech Regulation And Tobacco Harm Reduction, Jonathan Adler, Jacob James Rich

Faculty Publications

Regulation of commercial speech is a major component of federal regulation of tobacco products. Since adoption of federal tobacco legislation, the Food and Drug Administration has asserted regulatory authority over ENDS and other vaping products as “tobacco products,” subjecting them to the same regulatory regime as traditional tobacco products even though such projects appear to pose less of a threat to public health. Such regulation, and the restriction on truthful speech in particular, may be having negative consequences for public health. Barring producers from informing consumers about the relative risks of vaping products and their potential to reduce smoking eliminates …

Drivers Of Diatom Production And The Legacy Of Eutrophication In Two River Plume Regions Of The Northern Gulf Of Mexico, Jeffrey W. Krause, Adam D. Boyette, Israel A. Marquez, Rebecca A. Pickering, Kanchan Maiti

Faculty Publications

In the northern Gulf of Mexico (nGoM), the Louisiana Shelf (LS) and Mississippi Bight (MB) subregions are influenced by eutrophication to varying degrees. Despite recognition that dissolved silicon may regulate diatom productivity in the nGoM, there is only one published data set reporting biogenic silica (bSiO2) production rates for each subregion. We report that bSiO2 production rates on the LS and MB are high and appear to be controlled by different nutrients among seasons. Despite exceptional upper trophic level biomass regionally, which suggests significant primary production by diatoms (as in other systems), gross euphotic-zone integrated bSiO2 production rates are lower …

Dissolved Organic Carbon Dynamics And Fluxes In Mississippi-Atchafalaya Deltaic System Impacted By An Extreme Flood Event And Hurricanes: A Multi-Satellite Approach Using Sentinel-2/3 And Landsat-8/9 Data, Bingqing Liu, Eurico J. D’Sa, Francesca Messina, Melissa M. Baustian, Kanchan Maiti, Victor H. Rivera-Monroy, Wei Huang, Ioannis Y. Georgiou

Faculty Publications

Transport of riverine and wetland-derived dissolved organic carbon (DOC) spanning tidal wetlands, estuaries, and continental shelf waters functionally connects terrestrial and aquatic carbon reservoirs, yet the magnitude and ecological significance of this variable and its spatiotemporal linkage remains uncertain for coastal deltaic regions, such as Mississippi River Delta Plain, which includes Mississippi (MR) and Atchafalaya (AR) rivers and estuaries with vast expanses of wetlands and coastal forests. We examined DOC dynamics and fluxes in this large river-dominated wetland-estuarine system for the period between 2019 and 2021 that included an extreme river flood event in 2019, two major hurricanes (Barry in …

Global Sea Surface Cyclogeostrophic Currents Derived From Satellite Altimetry Data, Yuhan Cao, Changming Dong, Alexandre Stegner, Brandon J. Bethel, Chunyan Li, Jihai Dong, L. Haibin, Jingsong Yang

Faculty Publications

Sea surface currents (SSC) derived from the sea surface height anomalies (SSHA) as measured by multi-satellite altimeters are widely used for various applications including studies on ocean dynamics, marine ecology, and climate change. However, present SSC products estimated on the assumption of an idealized geostrophic balance is biased. To overcome this idealization, this study considers flow curvature in the estimation of sea surface velocities in the global ocean, with the computation scheme validated using numerical model results. It is demonstrated that the inclusion of curvature into SSC estimations significantly changes SSC dynamic features in terms of kinetic energy, enstrophy (the …

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 …

Lighting Energy Load Prediction Framework Using Agent-Based Simulation And Artificial Neural Network Models, Sorena Vosoughkhosravi, Seddigheh Norouziasl, Amirhosein Jafari

Faculty Publications

Lighting is responsible for 17% of the total electricity consumption in commercial buildings in the United States. Investigating the lighting energy load provides the potential for more energy-saving in commercial buildings. Nonetheless, the development of lighting load prediction models has received limited attention in extant literature. This study proposes a framework to predict the lighting schedule and load in office buildings by integrating an agent-based model into an artificial neural network model. A small office building is used as a case study to simulate lighting load based on occupancy information using an agent-based model. Then, an artificial neural network model …

Interrelationship-Based Information Delivery Manual Development For Smart City Infrastructure Systems, Moeid Shariatfar, Yong Cheol Lee, Ahmad Mohammad Ahmad, Salim Ferwati

Faculty Publications

Smart cities are comprised of various infrastructure systems interacting with heterogeneous context information that frequently causes critical challenges in data sharing, exchange, and integration of infrastructure components. The complicated structure of the infrastructure 3D models and the unraveled relationships of their functional, operational features remain elusive, hindering their seamless interactions. To ameliorate this issue, this paper proposes an interrelationship-based model view definition approach using an urban-level ontology that improves consistent data interoperability at the urban scale. The study includes the modularization of each infrastructure data conducted based on their functionalities and the development of an ontological structure for a smart …

Floodsafehome: Evaluating Financial Benefits And Savings Of Freeboard For Improved Decision-Making In Flood Risk Mitigation, Carol J. Friedland, Yong Cheol Lee, Rubayet Bin Mostafiz, Jiyoung Lee, Shifat P. Mithila, Robert V. Rohli, Md Adilur Rahim, Ehab Gnan, Monica Teets Farris

Faculty Publications

Freeboard—elevation of a structure above the base flood elevation (BFE)—is a critical component in mitigating or avoiding flood losses. However, the unrevealed benefits and savings of freeboard installation have prevented communities from adopting this approach. To improve decision-making for residents, prospective residents, and other stakeholders in flood-vulnerable communities and enhance flood risk mitigation strategies, this study presents the methodology underlying a new webtool, FloodSafeHome, that estimates comprehensively the economic benefits and savings of freeboard installation for new construction of residential buildings. Specifically, the proposed evaluation framework has been designed to calculate monthly savings for individual buildings by assessing freeboard cost, …

Ontology For Experimentation Of Human-Building Interactions Using Virtual Reality, Chanachok Chokwitthaya, Yimin Zhu, Weizhuo Lu

Faculty Publications

Scientific experiments significantly enhance the understanding of human-building interactions in building and engineering research. Recently, conducting virtual reality (VR) experiments has gained acceptance and popularity as an approach to studying human-building interactions. However, little attention has been given to the standardization of the experimentations. Proper standardization can promote the reusability, replicability, and repeatability of VR experiments and accelerate the maturity of this emerging experimentation method. Responding to such needs, the authors proposed a virtual human-building interaction experimentation ontology (VHBIEO). It is an ontology at the domain level, extending the ontology of scientific experiments (EXPO) to standardize virtual human-building interaction experimentation. …

Finding And Using Federal Information Relevant To People With Disabilities, Isabella Folmar, Blake Robinson

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Demystifying The Elusive Quest For Cyber Insurance Protection: The Need For New Contract Language, Deborah L. Johnson

Faculty Publications

Cyberattacks and electronic data breaches are on the rise, and the costs associated with those breaches can be astronomical. In response, the insurance industry has created a specialty market for cyber coverage. However, despite the number of cyber insurance policies currently offered on the market, insurers frequently deny claims for cyber coverage under both these specialty and traditional policies. Examining the evolution of cyberattacks, data breaches, and the massive harm they can cause to businesses, this Article explores the legal and market obstacles to obtaining adequate cyber insurance coverage and offers potential solutions to policyholders and insurers to satisfy this …

Litigating Partial Autonomy, Cassandra Burke Robertson

Faculty Publications

Who is responsible when a semi-autonomous vehicle crashes? Automobile manufacturers claim that because Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) require constant human oversight even when autonomous features are active, the driver is always fully responsible when supervised autonomy fails. This Article argues that the automakers’ position is likely wrong both descriptively and normatively. On the descriptive side, current products liability law offers a pathway toward shared legal responsibility. Automakers, after all, have engaged in numerous marketing efforts to gain public trust in automation features. When drivers’ trust turns out to be misplaced, drivers are not always able to react in a …

The Shape Of Consumer Contracts, Andrea Boyack

Faculty Publications

Modern consumer contracts are the bane of contract law and theory. Freedom of contract justifications are premised on party autonomy and transactional efficiency, but theories justifying contract enforcement fail to explain why the law should treat company-crafted terms as presumptively binding on consumers. Consumer protection advocates point out that lower thresholds for manifesting assent endorsed by the recent Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts may result in consumers being bound to terms of which they were reasonably unaware. Other scholars point out that mere knowledge of company terms and conditions does almost nothing to protect consumers in any case …

Teacher Collaboration And Elementary Arts Integration: Policy And Possibility, Tara L. Carpenter, Mark A. Graham, Corinna Peterken, Mikaela Cannon, Anna Harris

Faculty Publications

Arts education can be an important part of the elementary child’s experience. However, keeping the arts in schools is often a challenge because of funding concerns and competing academic priorities. An important strategy in arts education advocacy and policy is arts integration. Arts integration creates a rationale for the arts based on the enhancement of the educational experience for all students and the potential to engage underserved or less engaged students with academic disciplines through the arts. This article examines teacher experiences within a statewide program that funds arts specialists in elementary schools with the requirement that they integrate the …

Plea Bargains: Efficient Or Unjust?, Jeffrey Bellin, Erin Blondel, John Flynn, Elana Fogel, Anjelica Hendricks, Carissa Byrne Hessick

Faculty Publications

The vast majority of state and federal cases end in plea bargains. The practice has eased backlogs and may benefit some defendants — but the trade-offs, some say, are too steep. Is there a better way?

Accelerating A Software Defined Satnav Receiver Using Multiple Parallel Processing Schemes, Logan Reich, Sanjeev Gunawardena, Michael Braasch

Faculty Publications

Excerpt: Satnav SDRs present many benefits in terms of flexibility and configurability. However, due to the high bandwidth signals involved in satnav SDR processing, the software must be highly optimized for the host platform in order to achieve acceptable runtimes. Modules such as sample decoding, carrier replica generation, carrier wipeoff, and correlation are computationally intensive components that benefit from accelerations.

Machine Learning Prediction Of Dod Personal Property Shipment Costs, Tiffany Tucker, Torrey J. Wagner, Paul Auclair, Brent T. Langhals

Faculty Publications

U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) personal property moves account for 15% of all domestic and international moves - accurate prediction of their cost could draw attention to outlier shipments and improve budget planning. In this work 136,140 shipments between 13 personal property shipment hubs from April 2022 through March 2023 with a total cost of $1.6B were analyzed. Shipment cost was predicted using recursive feature elimination on linear regression and XGBoost algorithms, as well as through neural network hyperparameter sweeps. Modeling was repeated after removing 28 features related to shipment hub location and branch of service to examine their influence …

Atmospheric Meteorological Effects On Forecasting Daily Lightning Occurrence At Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Jon Saul, Torrey J. Wagner, Eric G. Mbonimpa, Brent T. Langhals

Faculty Publications

As the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy Space Center increase their launch rate, any process that could assist in the automation of the currently-manual lightning forecast would be valuable. This work examines the possibility of machine-learning assistance with the daily lighting forecast which is produced by the 45th Weather Squadron. A dataset consisting of 34 lightning, pressure, temperature and windspeed measurements taken from 334 daily weather balloon (rawinsonde) launches in the timeframe 2012-2021 was examined. Models were created using recursive feature elimination on logistic regression and XGClassifier algorithms, as well as Bayesian and bandit optimization of neural network …

Crypto In Real Estate Finance, R. Wilson Freyermuth, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato

Faculty Publications

Blockchain and cryptocurrencies have ushered in a digital gold rush. But all that glitters is not gold. The latest fad is the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to purchase and finance real estate. Typically, crypto real estate transactions begin with the transfer of title for a residential property into a dedicated business entity, such as a limited liability company. Thereafter, an NFT is ‘minted’ and used to represent the ownership interest in that entity. The real property is then marketed online specifying that, to acquire it, one simply purchases the relevant NFT via a blockchain transfer. Crucially, buyers are expected …

The Future Is Now: Copyright Protection For Works Created By Artificial Intelligence, Gary Myers

Faculty Publications

Creativity was once considered a primarily, if not exclusively, human endeavor. People create art, literature, and music, while machines handle mechanical tasks, like a typewriter or camera. The world has changed, and in the current year those changes are disrupting conventional ideas about authorship and creativity. Developments in the power and robustness of artificial intelligence ( or AI) have made it possible for a wide array of creative AI-generated works to be created. Early developments, such as IBM Deep Blue's mastery of the game of chess, were still somewhat mechanical in nature, as they were based on the computer analyzing …

Red-Flag Laws, Civilian Firearms Ownership And Measures Of Freedom, Royce De R. Barondes

Faculty Publications

This essay provides context for an assessment of a part of the recently-enacted Bipartisan Safer Communities Act--federal legislation funding state red-flag procedures, which allow for seizures of firearms from persons who have not committed crimes.

First, it assesses Maryland’s experience during the first year of implementing these procedures. The essay details computations, extrapolating from Maryland’s first-year experience, showing that adoption of these statutes causes blameless persons to be subject to being killed by the government at a rate comparable to or in excess of the murder rate.

Second, the essay identifies an overlooked impact of this federal legislation. The legislation’s …

The Case Of The Missing Device Patents, Or: Why Device Patents Matter, Erika Lietzan, Kristina M. L. Acri, Evan Weidner

Faculty Publications

A company that earns premarket approval of its medical device is entitled to an extension of one patent claiming the device, to make up for some of the time it spent doing premarket research. Yet, surprisingly, a mere thirteen percent of those eligible for this extension (also known as patent term "restoration") ask for one. In contrast, most drug companies entitled to this same patent extension ask for one.

In this Article, we attribute the imbalance largely to differences between the two regulatory frameworks. In brief, because the FDA classifies and regulates devices based on what they do and how …

Solutions Still Searching For A Problem: A Call For Relevant Data To Support "Evergreening" Allegations, Erika Lietzan, Kristina M. L. Acri

Faculty Publications

For years pharmaceutical policymaking discussions have been revolving around allegations of supposed “evergreening” by pharmaceutical companies, and policymakers have considered a range of significant policy reforms — including to antitrust law and drug regulatory law — to address this purported problem. This paper evaluates empirical data offered to substantiate “evergreening” and explains that these data — though mostly accurate — do not support proposed policy changes.

The “evergreening” claim is that by securing additional patents and FDA-related exclusivities after approval of their new drugs, brand drug companies enjoy a period of exclusivity in the market that is longer than the …

Private Environmental Nudges, Anthony Moffa

Faculty Publications

Environmentalist outcry against single-use plastics has rapidly translated into municipal and state policy. Bans and taxes on plastic bags, and, to a lesser extent, polices targeting plastic food/drink containers and plastic straws, have popped up all over the country. Many large national corporations, including Starbucks, Disney, and Hyatt to name a few, have also taken steps to reduce the amount of single-use plastics that their customers add to the waste stream.

Two ongoing discussions in the environmental law scholarship parallel these innovations in policy. The first re-examines the proper role for subnational governments in environmental policymaking, reviving a debate about …

From Comprehensive Liability To Climate Liability: The Case For A Climate Adaptation Resilience And Liability Act (Carla), Anthony Moffa

Faculty Publications

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) created a uniquely broad and powerful scheme of statutory liability for environmental cleanup of contaminated sites. CERCLA famously imposes strict, retroactive, joint and severable liability. One might wonder, especially through the lens of contemporary partisanship, how such a powerful, comprehensive liability scheme passed through Congress in 1980. In large part, CERCLA’s passage can be attributed to historical context that may appear wholly unique at first blush. Now, the world confronts another watershed of environmental history and past actors face a potential flood of liability. Much of the situation is different in …

“Correct Provision Can Be Made For Their Wants: The Reading Rooms Of The Santa Fe Railroad, Suzanne Stauffer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Bamboo Nanocellulose/Montmorillonite Nanosheets/Polyethyleneimine Gel Adsorbent For Methylene Blue And Cu(Ii) Removal From Aqueous Solutions, Xuelun Zhang, Feng Li, Xiyu Zhao, Jiwen Cao, Shuai Liu, You Zhang, Zihui Yuan, Xiaobo Huang, Cornelis F. De Hoop, Xiaopeng Peng, Xingyan Huang

Faculty Publications

In recent years, the scarcity of pure water resources has received a lot of attention from society because of the increasing amount of pollution from industrial waste. It is very important to use low-cost adsorbents with high-adsorption performance to reduce water pollution. In this work, a gel adsorbent with a high-adsorption performance on methylene blue (MB) and Cu(II) was prepared from bamboo nanocellulose (BCNF) (derived from waste bamboo paper) and montmorillonite nanosheet (MMTNS) cross-linked by polyethyleneimine (PEI). The resulting gel adsorbent was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), field emission scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopic (XPS), etc. …

Design, Alpha Testing, And Beta Testing Of A 3-D Printed Open-Hardware Portable Cryopreservation Device For Aquatic Species, William M. Childress, Yue Liu, Terrence R. Tiersch

Faculty Publications

Efforts in development of germplasm repositories to preserve genetic resources of aquatic species are impeded globally by a lack of standardized, inexpensive, reproducible, and portable cryopreservation technologies. The present work demonstrates a 3-D printed standardizable freezing device that can be used with nitrogen vapor shipping dewars for on-site sperm cryopreservation for aquatic species and be distributed as open-hardware. This device could hold 22 French straws (0.25-mL or 0.5-mL) and a quick-release ring design could eject straws directly into a canister inside a dewar by pressing a button after freezing. The final prototypes produced cooling rates of 1 to 68°C/min for …