Digital Commons Network^™

Humanizing The Base Of The Pyramid: Exploring The Influence Of Resource (Dis)Advantages On Value Creation, Ted London, Lisa Jones Christensen, Tyson Mackey, Alison Mackey, Heather Esper, Andrew Grogan-Kaylor

Faculty Publications

Base of the pyramid (BoP) scholarship emphasizes the potential for enterprises to generate profits by enhancing the wellbeing of the impoverished, often by selling socially-beneficial products (SBPs). Yet, many such BoP enterprises have experienced mixed results. We argue that this may stem from insufficient attention to how BoP consumers value SBPs and other products. We frame SBPs as a type of human capital investment and thus use human capital theory to study how the consumption of SBPs does or does not create value for consumers. Specifically, we use a novel data set from rural India to measure value creation in …

Access To Primary Care And Health Care Fragmentation, Sharona Hoffman, Ishani Ganguli

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the growing crisis of long primary care wait times and the health care fragmentation that is associated with them. Patients who feel ill or are worried about new symptoms must often wait weeks or longer for appointments. In the wake of excessive wait times for primary care physician (PCP) appointments, patients increasingly turn to convenience care models such as urgent care centers, retail clinics, direct-to-consumer telemedicine, and at-home testing. While these alternatives offer prompt attention, they sacrifice other core functions of primary care and may exacerbate poor health outcomes and inequities. The Article argues that long wait …

Correcting The Record: Responding To Some Legal Arguments About The 2026 Billionaire Tax Act, David Gamage, Brian D. Galle, Darien Shanske

Faculty Publications

If adopted by California voters in November of 2026, the 2026 California Billionaire Tax Act (CBTA) would impose a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of California billionaires, payable in five annual installments of 1% over 5 years (plus a small deferral charge). Critics have raised several arguments suggesting that the Act would not bring in the expected $100 billion in projected revenues because, the critics say, key parts of the Act are unconstitutional and would be subject to legal challenge. In fact, the supposed new legal challenges critics identify are mostly just very old arguments that courts have …

Expert Report On The California 2026 Billionaire Tax: Revenue, Economic, And Constitutional Analysis, David Gamage, Brian D. Galle, Emmanuel Saez, Darien Shanske

Faculty Publications

This report summarizes key provisions of the California Billionaire Tax Act. It also answers some frequently asked questions.

Gambling Away Stability: Sports Betting’S Impact On Vulnerable H, Scott R. Baker, Justin Balthrop, Mark J. Johnson, Jason Kotter, Kevin Pisciotta

Faculty Publications

We estimate the causal effect of online sports betting on households’ investment, spending, and debt management decisions using household transaction data and a staggered difference-in-differences framework. Following legalization, sports betting spreads quickly, with both the number of participants and frequency of bets increasing over time. This increase does not displace other gambling or consumption but significantly reduces savings, as risky bets crowd out positive expected value investments. These effects concentrate among frequent bettors and low-savings households. Our findings highlight the potential adverse effects of online sports betting on vulnerable households.

The Trial Of Socrates, Jonathan Van Patten

Faculty Publications

In many important ways, the trial of Socrates was not just the trial of the century, nor even the trial of the millennium. It predated the trial of Jesus, which is important for many other reasons, but Socrates’ contribution to how we think about justice and the rule of law is without equal. This Article explores the ways that this fifth-century B.C. trial, located geographically on the margin of what came to be known as the West, is at the center of what makes us a civilization. It is not simply about the drama, nor the politics of free inquiry, …

Participation, Danielle M. Pillet-Shore

Faculty Publications

What does it take to participate in direct, naturally occurring social interaction? Conversation analytic (CA) studies reveal that “participation”—who participates, when, and how—is dynamic and locally, multimodally achieved by the people involved. Particularly in social situations when people are concurrently accessible to one another’s naked senses (Goffman, 1964), co-participation is enabled and performed through embodied and vocal resources including talk, gaze, facial displays, body orientation/posture, proximity, and gestures (e.g., M. H. Goodwin, 1999; C. Goodwin & M. H. Goodwin, 2005; Pillet-Shore, 2010; Sidnell, 2009). Using a multimodal CA lens, this chapter illuminates how “participation” is achieved in real-time, naturally occurring …

Take Time To Play! A Library, University, And Community Organization Partnership To Enhance Children’S Learning And Wellbeing, Carolyn White Gamtso, Karyn Isleb, Marisa Rafal

Faculty Publications

This lightning talk described the collaborative work of the Founder/President of NH Toy, the Head of Youth Services at the Manchester (NH) City Library (MCL), and the Professional Studies Librarian at the UNH Library-Manchester to coordinate a series of student-led enrichment events for local children and their families at the public library. The play days included an American Sign Language (ASL) story time presented by members of the UNH Manchester ASL Club, and an Earth Day craft event with recycled materials led by members of the college’s Student Government. This university/library/community collaboration provided all participants with the time and the …

Amalie Joachim: Reminiscences Of Childhood, Robert W. Eshbach

Faculty Publications

This bilingual edition presents Reminiscences of Childhood, the autobiographical narrative of the Austrian operatic singer Amalie Joachim (née Schneeweiss), in Nina Joachim’s English translation together with the original German text. Written for her daughters, the memoir recounts Joachim’s family background in Carinthia and Styria; her early musical training and exposure to domestic chamber music; the political and personal upheavals of the revolutions of 1848; the death of her father and the family’s subsequent poverty; and her first theatrical engagements in Troppau and Hermannstadt. The narrative offers a vivid first-person account of musical life, female artistic formation, family survival, provincial theatre, …

Research Initiative For Northeast Grazing Soils (Rings) Soil Carbon Data Report, Karla M. Jarecke, Joseph P. Amsili, Alexandra Contosta, Caitlin Hicks Pries, Kelsey H. Jensen, Morgan Mcclure, Alexander Steiner, Eric Von Wettberg, Mojtaba Zeraatpisheh

Faculty Publications

The Research Initiative for Northeast Grazing Soils (RINGS) is a multi-institutional collaboration with a mission to advance the understanding of soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics in grazing systems across the northeastern United States. RINGS distributed a survey between October 2025 and June 2026 to researchers and practitioners across the Northeast to identify where SOC data has been collected and the basic field and lab methods used. The survey asked participants to describe existing soil datasets collected on land directly or indirectly impacted by grazing livestock. The survey was distributed to colleagues of RINGS researchers that work at university, corporate and …

Regulatory History And Judicial Review, Todd Phillips, Anthony L. Moffa

Faculty Publications

The Administrative Procedure Act requires federal agencies to simply "incorporate in the rules adopted a concise general statement of their basis and purpose" after they receive comments from the public, and the Supreme Court ruled in Overton Park that courts are to adjudicate whether rules are arbitrary and capricious based on agencies' contemporaneous rationales. Judge-created doctrines incentivize agencies to rely on these "concise" statements to elucidate their rationales, and as a result, rulemaking preambles have ballooned in size as agencies seek to insulate themselves from critical courts.

This article contends that although the APA's statutory requirement is in tension with …

The Non-Punishment Principle And Restorative Justice, Rachel J. Wechsler

Faculty Publications

The non-punishment principle is a legal norm that has increasingly gained legitimacy over the past quarter-century within international, regional, and domestic law on human trafficking. At its core, this principle opposes the punishment of human trafficking victims for unlawful conduct they engage in as a consequence of their trafficking victimization. Little is known about the presence and operation of the non-punishment principle within U.S. law. This Article fills this gap as the first to comprehensively map and analyze the principle’s instantiation across state and federal law.

From this new map, three key themes emerge. First, the non-punishment principle has a …

Taxing Dynasties, David Gamage, Brian D. Galle, Bob Lord

Faculty Publications

The estate tax and the broader wealth-transfer-tax system are even more broken than is commonly understood. Over the past two decades, researchers and policy experts have identified a handful of key tactics that mega-rich families use to pass wealth from generation to generation without paying tax. These tax dodges are notorious enough to be known by their acronyms, such as the IDGT and the GRAT. Scholars and policymakers have proposed reforms to block these tactics, or at least to make them more difficult.

In this Article, we present new analysis, backed by new empirical findings, to show that these proposed …

Fda After Loper Bright, Erika Lietzan

Faculty Publications

Loper Bright, which overruled the Chevron decision from 1984, tells us that a court should determine the meaning of all statutory provisions for itself, rather than deferring to the views of the federal agencies that implement those provisions. But the overruling of Chevron may have less of an impact on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration than conventional wisdom supposes. Most challenges to FDA action do not concern its statutory interpretations. And the agency prevailed in most cases involving statutory interpretation, before the Chevron doctrine took hold. After 1984, when the doctrine did apply, the agency often lost cases at …

Why Ai May Be Your Best Negotiation And Mediation Coach, John Lande

Faculty Publications

This article explores the role of artificial intelligence (AI) tools as negotiation and mediation coaches.  Drawing on research from negotiation, mediation, and consumer behavior, the article explains why bots can sometimes coach more effectively than humans.  In this role, they offer on-demand support that can help users prepare strategically and reflect honestly.  This support is especially valuable when seeking help from a human would feel too risky or awkward.

The article cautions against use of AI for roles requiring emotional intelligence, discretion, or legitimacy, such as negotiators, mediators, or arbitrators.  It distinguishes between AI as a thinking partner and AI …

Convergence Of High Throughput Experimentation And Machine Learning To Rapidly Advance Application-Specific Polymer Development, Mashrafee Aryan, Daniel Struble, Felix Campbell, Saroj Upreti, S. M.Ashik Abedin, Aahil Khambawla, Jeetain Mittal, Michael S. Dimitriyev, Emily B. Pentzer, Svetlana A. Sukhishvili, Xiaodan Gu, Boran Ma

Faculty Publications

Machine learning (ML) has heavily influenced the way scientific study is done with demonstrated successes in nearly every field. However, furthering performance and explainability of ML models in increasingly complex systems and with increasingly demanding outcomes requires a significant influx of high-quality data. To that end, this Review covers some of the techniques, instrumentation, and methodologies that have shown promise for significantly accelerating the discovery of polymer materials, optimization of their properties, and elucidation of property–application relationships through high throughput (HT) experimentation, characterization, and analysis. Attention is given to not only ML, but also to hardware advancements and their synergy …

Rosenwald Rural School Libraries, Suzanne Marie Stauffer

Faculty Publications

The Rosenwald Rural School Libraries Program was created as an adjunct to the Rosenwald Rural Schools Program, which funded the construction of 4,977 rural Black school buildings in fifteen Southern states, 395 of them in Louisiana. However, it soon became apparent that providing textbooks was not enough to promote literacy and develop self-directed reading among students. The officers and agents of the Fund realized fairly early in the Rural Schools Program that there was a want of reading materials in the South in general. Beginning in 1927, the Rosenwald Fund began providing collections of graded fiction and non-fiction books to …

Who's Afraid Of Copyright And Ai?, Deborah R. Gerhardt

Faculty Publications

Copyright and AI need not be a copyright no man’s land. Recent decisions by the Copyright Office have gotten so much media attention that many creators are unsure if they can secure copyright protection if they use AI as a creative tool. The proposed creative control paradigm can help us all tackle the challenge of determining when works created with the assistance of AI are copyrightable. Instead of relying on long-established nuanced precedent for protecting works generated with new technology, the Copyright Office asserts that any content generated with assistance from AI tools is unprotectable. This position is radically inconsistent …

Facts, Policy, And Discretion, F. Andrew Hessick, Carissa Byrne Hessick

Faculty Publications

Presidents, prosecutors, and judges often announce policies on how they will make discretionary decisions. These policies have met the criticism that discretion must be the product of an assessment of the particular facts of a case. Decisionmakers cannot base discretionary decisions on policy considerations, nor can they adopt policies stating how they intend to exercise their discretion. To do so, the argument goes, does not constitute an exercise of discretion, but rather an abdication of it.

This Article argues that this criticism misunderstands discretion. Discretionary decisions must rest on reasons, and reasons necessarily appeal to principles and policies that are …

Gendered Words And Patent Grant Rates: A Textual Analysis, Deborah R. Gerhardt, Miriam Marcowitz-Bitton, W. Michael Schuster, Avshalom Elmalech, Omri Suissa, Moshe Mash

Faculty Publications

Text is a vehicle to convey information that reflects the writer’s linguistic style and communication patterns. By studying these attributes, we can discover latent insights about the author and their underlying message. This article uses such an approach to better understand patent applications and their inventors.

While prior research focuses on patent metadata (i.e., filing year or gendered inventor names), we employ machine learning and natural language processing to extract hidden information from the words in patent applications. Through these methods, we find that inventor gender can often be identified from textual attributes—even without knowing the inventor’s name. This ability …

Health Care Fraud And The End Of Chevron, Joan H. Krause

Faculty Publications

What do the Environmental Protection Agency’s “plantwide” definition of a “stationary” pollution source,” a National Marine Fisheries Service determination of who pays for fishing boat observers, and a Department of Health and Human Services rule governing the marketing of prescription drugs have in common? In short, a government agency’s interpretation of a federal statute. All three cases go to the heart of the administrative state: the ability of an agency, staffed by experts in the field, to interpret static statutory language to offer practical guidance to an ever-evolving industry.

The same is true of health care fraud, although it is …

Desperation Finance: Merchant Cash Advances In Bankruptcy And Beyond, Kara J. Bruce

Faculty Publications

Over the last several years, Merchant Cash Advances (“MCAs”) have risen in prominence as a form of short-term financing for distressed small businesses. MCA transactions are distinct from most small-business lending because they are not structured as loans at all. Rather, in exchange for a lump sum of cash, the merchant purports to sell to the funder an unidentified percentage of its future receipts or receivables. This structure allows funders to sidestep the application of lending regulations and usury protections, but it strains the foundations of commercial law and generates a host of interpretive challenges.

Bankruptcy, district, and circuit courts …

Civil Death By A Thousand Cuts, Eisha Jain

Faculty Publications

Commentators have leveled trenchant critiques of collateral consequences of criminal conviction, analogizing them to a form of “civil death.” This Essay develops the related concept of “civil death by a thousand cuts” in two senses. First, penalties such as voting bans or deportation after a conviction are often just the tip of the iceberg. Second, a system of far-flung, intertwined civil and criminal penalties portends the death of a civil society capable of recognizing and mediating excessive penalties. Recognizing how these penalties operate—and how difficult they can be to address—is a critical step toward creating a more proportionate criminal legal …

The Trademark Bargain: Registration As Disclosure, Dustin Marlan

Faculty Publications

This Article highlights the central—and under-theorized—role that disclosure plays within trademark law. By loose analogy, the patent disclosure requirement is a cornerstone of patent law, embodying the “patent bargain” where an inventor must disclose their invention in exchange for a twenty-year monopoly. This quid pro quo is believed to stimulate the progress of science and technology, making patent disclosure the very pulse of the patent regime. However, the fundamental importance of disclosure in trademark law remains underexplored. Like patents, trademark law imposes a rigorous bargain—to obtain the enhanced rights granted by federal registration, trademark owners must first make significant disclosures …

Grandmothers Of Invention: A Commentary On Fifty Years Of Hazards And Disasters Research And Practice In The United States, Susan L. Cutter, Kathleen Tierney

Faculty Publications

This commentary highlights the role of “grandmothers of invention”: women in the United States who were the first to enter the field of hazards and disasters as core researchers and who played key roles in advancing the science and practice of hazards/disasters research since 1975. We examine the evolution and transformation of the field from the perspective of the women who were initially entering a male-dominated field. The innovations in theory, concepts, tools, topics, and mentoring the next generation of scholars and practitioners are highlighted. Notably, emphasis on these women's singular and collective influence on practice and policy highlights the …

Stoichiometry-Controlled Surface Reconstructions In Epitaxial Abo3 Perovskites For Sustainable Energy Applications, Habib Rostaghi Chalaki, Ebenezer Seesi, Gene Yang, Mohammad El Loubani, Dongkyu Lee

Faculty Publications

ABO₃ perovskite oxides are a versatile class of materials whose surfaces and interfaces play essential roles in sustainable energy technologies, including catalysis, solid oxide fuel and electrolysis cells, thermoelectrics, and energy-relevant oxide electronics. The interplay between point defects and surface reconstructions strongly affects interfacial stability, charge transport, and catalytic activity under operating conditions. This review summarizes recent progress in understanding how oxygen vacancies, cation nonstoichiometry, and electronic defects couple to atomic-scale surface rearrangements in representative perovskite systems. We first revisit Tasker’s classification of ionic surfaces and clarify how defect chemistry provides compensation mechanisms that stabilize otherwise polar or metastable …

Pullulan Production From Lignocellulosic Plant Biomass Or Starch-Containing Processing Coproduct Hydrolysates, Thomas P. West

Faculty Publications

The complex polysaccharide pullulan is characterized as a glucose-containing biopolymer that is both water-soluble and neutral in polarity. A variety of commercial applications exist for pullulan, including its utilization as a flocculant, a blood plasma substitute, a food additive, a dielectric material, an adhesive, or a packaging film. The fungus Aureobasidium pullulans has used several hydrolysates derived from plant biomass or starch-containing processing coproducts to support polysaccharide production. These include various plant biomass or processing coproduct streams such as lignocellulosic-containing peat, prairie grass, stalks, hulls, straw, shells, and pods or starch-containing coproducts from the processing of corn, rice, jackfruit seeds, …

Performance Of Shcc Brick Infill And Nsm Reinforcement Systems For Strengthening Rc Deep Beams With Large Openings, Ahmed Badr El-Din, Mohamed Ghalla, Galal Elsamak, Ayman El-Zohairy

Faculty Publications

The presence of large web openings in reinforced concrete (RC) deep beams often disrupts the natural load-transfer mechanism, leading to severe reductions in shear strength and premature failure. This study introduces a novel hybrid strengthening system incorporating strain-hardening cementitious composite (SHCC) bricks, stainless-steel and galvanized-steel sheets, and near-surface-mounted (NSM) steel reinforcements to restore and enhance the shear performance of RC deep beams with large openings. A comprehensive experimental program was conducted on sixteen beams under concentrated loading to evaluate the influence of different infill and strengthening configurations on load capacity, stiffness, ductility, and energy absorption. The results revealed that the …

Using Network Models To Understand Biological Signaling Architecture, Russ White, Emily Brown Reeves, Gerald L. Fudge

Faculty Publications

Engineers have developed abstract network models to better understand the recurring problems faced by communication systems. This paper argues that these models can be generalized to describe biological communications systems given that they share many requirements with human-designed systems, including functional requirements and physical constraints. Leveraging collaboration, biologists and engineers can work together to use well-understood communication systems, designed to carry data across a computer network, as a model for analyzing less well-understood biological communication systems in order to make predictions and uncover previously unknown functionalities. To illustrate this approach, we apply the Recursive Internet Network Architecture model (RINA) to …

Reinforcement Learning-Enabled Control And Design Of Rigid-Link Robotic Fish: A Comprehensive Review, Nhat Dinh, Darion Vosbein, Yuehua Wang, Qingsong Cui

Faculty Publications

With the rising demand for maritime surveys of infrastructure, energy resources, and environmental conditions, autonomous robotic fish have emerged as a promising solution with their biomimetic propulsion, agile motion, efficiency, and capacity for underwater inspection, monitoring, data collection, and exploration tasks in complex aquatic environments. Inspired by fish spines, rigid-link fish robots (RLFRs), a category of robotic fish, are widely utilized in robotics research and applications. Their rigid, actuated joints enable them to reproduce the undulatory locomotion and high maneuverability of biological fishes, while the modular nature of rigid links between joints makes them cost-effective and easy to assemble. This …