Digital Commons Network^™

Crushing The Contents Of Valbenazine Capsules For Potential Addition To Soft Foods Or Administration Via Gastrostomy Tube, Martha Sajatovic

Faculty Scholarship

Purpose: One-capsule, once-daily valbenazine is approved for tardive dyskinesia and under evaluation for chorea associated with Huntington's disease, conditions in which patients often experience dysphagia. In vitro studies were conducted to assess the suitability of crushing the contents of valbenazine capsules (40 and 80 mg) for mixing with soft foods or liquids or administration via a gastrostomy tube (G-tube). Methods: In study 1, the dissolution of whole valbenazine capsules and crushed capsule contents were measured serially for 1 hour. In study 2, valbenazine recovery was evaluated after crushed contents were mixed with soft foods, buffer solutions (pH range, 1.2–6.8), and …

Essence As Algorithm: Public Perceptions Of Ai-Powered Avatars Of Real People, James Hutson, Jay Ratican, Colleen Biri

Faculty Scholarship

This paper investigates the intersection of generative AI, Large Language Models (LLM), and robotics. Exemplified by systems like ChatGPT and technological marvels such as Ameca the Robot, the combination of technologies will allow humans to transcend the limitations of death. Through digital necromancy, a practice encompassing the technological resurrection of deceased individuals, the ability to not only passively see recordings of loved ones but to interact with them is made possible, leading to ethical and psychological considerations. Therefore, examining these trends extends into the motives underlying engagement with both incorporeal and corporeal reproductions of individuals, with reasons ranging from memory …

Prevalence And Factors Associated With Pre-Hospital Delay Among Acute Stroke Patients At Mulago And Kiruddu National Referral Hospitals, Kampala: A Cross-Sectional Study, Chris Burant, Martha Sajatovic

Faculty Scholarship

Background: Despite advancements in acute stroke care, acute stroke patients present late for care resulting in high mortality and poor functional outcomes. This study determined the prevalence of pre-hospital delay and associated factors among adult acute stroke patients in Uganda. Methods: In a hospital based, cross-sectional study, one hundred and forty-three study participants with confirmed acute stroke presenting to the emergency units of Mulago and Kiruddu national referral hospitals were enrolled. Using an interviewer-administered questionnaire, details on sociodemographics, onset of stroke, arrival at the tertiary facility, health system and clinical factors were collected. Descriptive statistics and modified Poisson regression analyses …

Team-Based Learning In The Internal Medicine Clerkship Didactics, Madeline Garb, Melissa Jenkins, Elaine Cruz

Faculty Scholarship

Background: Active-learning approaches, such as team-based learning, are infrequently used in internal medicine clerkship didactics even though there is increasing evidence to suggest medical students prefer it over traditional lecture-based learning. In this study, five team-based learning sessions were incorporated into three blocks of a 12-week internal medicine clerkship. Methods: The goal of this quasi-experimental study was to compare learner engagement, satisfaction and preference between team-based learning and lecture-based learning in the internal medicine clerkship didactics. Outcomes were compared using the Classroom Engagement Survey, a satisfaction questionnaire and the Team-Based Learning Student Assessment Instrument (TBL-SAI). Findings: There was a statistically …

Low-Cost, 3d Printed Irradiation System For In Vitro Photodynamic Therapy Experiments, Chris Acquah, Zachary Pabis, Sourav Kanti Seth, Liraz Levi, Carlos E. Crespo-Hernández

Faculty Scholarship

The development of a suitable irradiation setup is essential for in vitro experiments in photodynamic therapy (PDT). While various irradiation systems have been developed for PDT, only a few offer practical and high-quality setups for precise and reproducible results in cell culture experiments. This report introduces a cost-effective illumination setup designed for in vitro photodynamic treatments. The setup consists of a commercially available light-emitting diode (LED) lamp, a cooling unit, and a specially designed 3D-printed enclosure to accommodate a multiwell plate insert. The LED lamp is versatile, supporting various irradiation wavelengths and adjustable illumination fields, ensuring consistent and reliable performance. …

Limitations And Possibilities Of Digital Restoration Techniques Using Generative Ai Tools: Reconstituting Antoine François Callet’S Achilles Dragging Hector’S Body Past The Walls Of Troy, Charles O'Brien, James Hutson, Trent Olsen, Jay Ratican

Faculty Scholarship

Digital restoration offers new avenues for conserving historical artworks, yet presents unique challenges. This research delves into the balance between traditional restoration methods and the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, using Antoine François Callet’s portrayal of Achilles Dragging Hector’s Body Past the Walls of Troy as a case study. The application of Easy Diffusion and Stable Diffusion 2.1 technologies provides insights into AI-driven restoration methods such as inpainting and colorization. Results indicate that while AI can streamline the restoration process, repeated inpainting can compromise the painting’s color quality and detailed features. Furthermore, the AI approach occasionally introduces unintended …

Healthaichain: Improving Security And Safety Using Blockchain Technology Applications In Ai-Based Healthcare Systems, Naresh Kshetri, James Hutson, Revathy G

Faculty Scholarship

Blockchain as a digital ledger for keeping records of digital transactions and other information, it is secure and decentralized technology. The globally growing number of digital population every day possesses a significant threat to online data including the medical and patients’ data. After bitcoin, blockchain technology has emerged into a general-purpose technology with applications in medical industries and healthcare. Blockchain can promote highly configurable openness while retaining the highest security standards for critical data of medical patients. Referred to as distributed record keeping for healthcare systems which makes digital assets unalterable and transparent via a cryptographic hash and decentralized network. …

Digitizing The Cultural Capital: Harnessing Digital Humanities For Heritage Preservation In Bujumbura, Burundi, James Hutson, Pace Ellsworth, Matt Ellsworth, Jean Bosco Ntungirimana

Faculty Scholarship

In an era where the erosion of cultural heritage is increasingly prevalent, there exists a critical imperative to explore and implement innovative methods for the preservation and revitalization of cultural identities, as exemplified by the urgent situation in Bujumbura, Burundi. Central to this study is the exploration of innovative digital methodologies for archiving a wide spectrum of cultural artifacts, including both notable and everyday heritage elements, in Bujumbura. Traditional approaches to biographical and historical profiling have predominantly focused on official records and significant events, often neglecting the richness of personal experiences and everyday interactions that substantially shape cultural identities. To …

Individuality And The Collective In Ai Agents: Explorations Of Shared Consciousness And Digital Homunculi In The Metaverse For Cultural Heritage, James Hutson, Jay Ratican

Faculty Scholarship

The confluence of extended reality (XR) technologies, including augmented and virtual reality, with large language models (LLM) marks a significant advancement in the field of digital humanities, opening uncharted avenues for the representation of cultural heritage within the burgeoning metaverse. This paper undertakes an examination of the potentialities and intricacies of such a convergence, focusing particularly on the creation of digital homunculi or changelings. These virtual beings, remarkable for their sentience and individuality, are also part of a collective consciousness, a notion explored through a thematic comparison in science fiction with the Borg and the Changelings in the Star Trek …

Reclaiming Regulatory Intermediation For The Public, Daniel E. Walters

Faculty Scholarship

Managerial governance is often operationalized through outsourcing the regulatory function from public institutions—for example, administrative agencies—to private organizations. In virtually any sector, it is possible to identify private “regulatory intermediaries” that step between public agencies and regulated parties to perform tasks traditionally played by government actors—for example, the development of regulatory standards, auditing, compliance assurance, enforcement, and more. Although this reliance on private regulatory intermediaries may in some cases be highly advantageous to government institutions since it may sometimes allow government agencies to do more regulatory work than their own resources and capacity might allow—it comes at significant costs of …

How Discriminatory Censorship Laws Imperil Public Education, Jonathan Feingold, Joshua Weishart

Faculty Scholarship

“Discriminatory censorship laws” regulate classroom conversations about racism, gender identity, and other topics targeted in the backlash against efforts toward inclusive classrooms and curricula. This policy brief examines the proliferation of these laws and their impact on K-12 schools, including the creation of hostile learning environments that expose students and educators to a heightened threat of race- and sex-based harassment and to formal sanctions and social ostracization. The laws also foster a climate of fear and anxiety among educators, effectively coercing them to shun critical inquiry and thought on targeted topics and more generally. The result is a curriculum that …

Ai And The Creative Process: Part Three, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

Article discussing the effects of artificial intelligence on the creative process in the art world.

Ai And The Creative Process: Part Two, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

Article discussing the effects of artificial intelligence on the creative process in the art world.

Copyright Fiduciaries: Problems And Solutions, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

Andrew Gilden & Eva E. Subotnik, Copyright’s Capacity Gap, 57 U.C. Davis L. Rev. __ (forthcoming, 2023), available at SSRN (Aug. 9, 2023).

In this forthcoming article, Andrew Gilden and Eva Subotnik begin an important conversation about an underexplored area of copyright law. Their focus is copyright law’s inconsistent treatment of mental capacity. Under copyright law, copyright authors can produce valuable copyrighted work but those same authors may lack the legal capacity to make decisions about if, when, or how to exploit that work. For example, children and people with mental illness or disability can be copyright authors, but …

Phase Shift Between Joint Rotation And Actuation Reflects Dominant Forces And Predicts Muscle Activation Patterns, R. D. Quinn, Hillel J. Chiel

Faculty Scholarship

During behavior, the work done by actuators on the body can be resisted by the body's inertia, elastic forces, gravity, or viscosity. The dominant forces that resist actuation have major consequences on the control of that behavior. In the literature, features and actuation of locomotion, for example, have been successfully predicted by nondimensional numbers (e.g. Froude number and Reynolds number) that generally express the ratio between two of these forces (gravitational, inertial, elastic, and viscous). However, animals of different sizes or motions at different speeds may not share the same dominant forces within a behavior, making ratios of just two …

Synthesizing Sentience: Integrating Large Language Models And Autonomous Agents For Emulating Human Cognitive Complexity, Jay Ratican, James Hutson, Daniel Plate

Faculty Scholarship

The paper aims to present a novel methodology for emulating the intricacies of human cognitive complexity by ingeniously integrating large language models with autonomous agents. Grounded in the theoretical framework of the modular mind theory-originally espoused by Fodor and later refined by scholars such as Joanna Bryson—the study seeks to venture into the untapped potential of large language models and autonomous agents in mirroring human cognition. Recent advancements in artificial intelligence, exemplified by the inception of autonomous agents like Age in GPT, auto GPT, and baby AGI, underscore the transformative capacities of these technologies in diverse applications. Moreover, empirical studies …

Vaccine Development, The China Dilemma, And International Regulatory Challenges, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the role played by China in the development of international regulatory standards at the intersection of intellectual prop- erty, international trade, and public health. It begins by briefly discussing the role China has played in the global health arena during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article then highlights the difficulty in determining how best to engage with the country in the development of new international regula- tory standards. It shows that the preferred method of engagement will likely depend on one’s perspective on China’s potential contributions and hin- drances: a perspective that focuses on global competition—in the economic, …

A Crazy Quilt: Infanticide In The United States, Susan Ayres

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter builds on previous research to present a sampling of cases in the US, primarily in the twenty-first century, in order to show the harshness and disparity in criminal charges, defences and sentences. The broad term ‘infanticide’ is used for child-murder cases, and the more specific term ‘neonaticide’ is used for the killing of a child in the first 24 hours after birth. This chapter also describes the more recent use of genetic genealogy to solve cold cases of neonaticide. It concludes by considering how the absence of an infanticide offence and expanded defences results in an incoherent, unjust …

Bending The Rules Of Evidence, Edward K. Cheng, G. Alexander Nunn, Julia Simon-Kerr

Faculty Scholarship

The evidence rules have well-established, standard textual meanings—meanings that evidence professors teach their law students every year. Yet, despite the rules’ clarity, courts misapply them across a wide array of cases: Judges allow past acts to bypass the propensity prohibition, squeeze hearsay into facially inapplicable exceptions, and poke holes in supposedly ironclad privileges. And that’s just the beginning.

The evidence literature sees these misapplications as mistakes by inept trial judges. This Article takes a very different view. These “mistakes” are often not mistakes at all, but rather instances in which courts are intentionally bending the rules of evidence. Codified evidentiary …

Silencing Litigation Through Bankruptcy, Pamela Foohey, Christopher K. Odinet

Faculty Scholarship

Bankruptcy is being used as a tool for silencing survivors and their families. When faced with claims from multiple plaintiffs related to the same wrongful conduct that can financially or operationally crush the defendant over the long term—a phenomenon we identify as onslaught litigation—defendants harness bankruptcy’s reorganization process to draw together those who allege harm and pressure them into a swift, universal settlement. In doing so, they use the bankruptcy system to deprive survivors of their voice and the public of the truth. This Article identifies this phenomenon and argues that it is time to rein in this destructive use …

The Ever-Shifting Ground Of Pretrial Detention Reform, Jenny E. Carroll

Faculty Scholarship

In the past six decades, pretrial detention systems have undergone waves of reform. Despite these efforts, pretrial jail populations across the country continue to swell. The causes of such growth in jail populations are difficult to pinpoint, but some are more readily apparent: Fear over rising crime rates, judicial reluctance to release accused persons, and monetary burdens associated with release have all contributed to increased detention pretrial across criminal legal systems in the United States. This article examines various pretrial detention reform efforts and highlights the need for greater research in the area.

Hydra: Lessons From The World's Largest Darknet Market, Priyanka Goonetilleke, Alex Knorre, Artem Kuriksha

Faculty Scholarship

Research Summary

We present a comprehensive description of Hydra, the largest darknet marketplace in the world until its shutdown in April 2022. We document the main features of Hydra such as dead-drop delivery, feedback and reputation system, escrow, and dispute resolution. Using data scraped from the platform, we quantitatively examine the scale and the structure of the marketplace. We find that it has been highly competitive, geographically covering at least 69% of the Russian population and trading a wide variety of drugs, while also allowing the wholesale trade of drugs and precursors. The dead-drop delivery system used on Hydra was …

Cisg (2023 Survey), Wayne Barnes

Faculty Scholarship

This survey article discusses cases during the prior year, which are decided based on one or more provisions of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). The CISG is a United Nations treaty that provides a uniform international sales law. It was adopted in Vienna in 1980 and went into effect in 1988. The CISG governs contracts for the international sale of goods between businesses located in different countries that have ratified the treaty. It has been adopted by 95+ countries, including major trading nations like the United States, China, and most European countries. …

Enterprise, Liability, And Insolvency: An Essay In Honor Of Aaron Twerski, Edward Janger

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Prosecutorial Mutiny, Cynthia Godsoe, Maybell Romero

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Beyong Brackeen: Active Efforts Towards Antiracist Child Welfare Policy, Andrea Martin

Faculty Scholarship

Due to structural racism, legal protections afforded to families of children in the foster care system have been significantly eroded and continue to be challenged. The latest attempt to dismantle child welfare protections for a historically marginalized group was a prolonged attack on the Indian Child Welfare Act. Motivated in part by the racist belief that they are unfairly disadvantaged in adopting American Indian children, American Indian adversaries reached the pinnacle of their incessant attack on the law’s constitutionality and its heightened requirements. Fortunately, in Haaland v. Brackeen, the United States Supreme Court upheld the law’s important protections for …

Amazon's Pricing Paradox, Rory Van Loo, Nikita Aggarwal

Faculty Scholarship

Antitrust scholars have widely debated the apparent paradox of Amazon seemingly wielding monopoly power while offering low prices to consumers. A single company’s behavior thereby helped spark an intellectual renaissance as scholars debated why Amazon’s prices were so low, whether antitrust enforcers should intervene, and, eventually, how the field should be reformed for the era of large online platforms. One of the few things that all parties have agreed upon amidst those contentious conversations is that Amazon offers low prices. This Article challenges that assumption by demonstrating that Amazon charges higher prices than commonly understood. More importantly, unraveling the disconnect …

Continuous Reproductive Surveillance, Michael Ulrich, Leah R. Fowler

Faculty Scholarship

The Dobbs opinion emphasizes that the state’s interest in the fetus extends to “all stages of development.” This essay briefly explores whether state legislators, agencies, and courts could use the “all stages of development” language to expand reproductive surveillance by using novel developments in consumer health technologies to augment those efforts.

Exploring The Effectiveness Of Virtual Reality Role-Playing In Debating Repatriation Of Artworks In Active Learning Art History Classes, James Hutson, Trent Olsen

Faculty Scholarship

This paper addresses the pressing issue of repatriation debates for artworks, heightened by notable instances like the return of the Benin Bronzes and discussions around the Elgin Marbles. Given the challenges in conducting effective classroom debates on such sensitive topics due to the pandemic, generational shifts in learning preferences, and increased student anxiety, this study identifies a gap in the integration of active learning strategies in a virtual setting. The primary aim of this research is to examine the efficacy of virtual reality role-playing games (VR-RPGs) in enhancing student engagement, immersion, presence, and learning outcomes within a virtual learning environment …

Prevalence Of Adulteration In Dietary Supplements And Recommendations For Safe Supplement Practices In Sport, Andrew R. Jagim, Patrick Harty, Jacob L. Erickson, Grant M. Tinsley, Dan Garner, Andrew J. Galpin

Faculty Scholarship

The prevalence of dietary supplement use among athletes continues to rise with 60–80% of athletes often reporting current or previous use of dietary supplements. While select dietary ingredients have been shown to improve acute performance and enhance training adaptations over time, it is important to still consider the risk vs. reward for athletes before opting to consume a dietary supplement. Previous work has indicated that certain dietary supplements may pose risks for inadvertent doping, may be susceptible to mislabelling, could be banned by certain governing bodies of sport, or pose health risks for certain populations. The purpose of the current …