Digital Commons Network^™

Transferring Jerusalem To Moscow: Maksim Grek’S Letter And Its Afterlife, Justin Willson

Faculty Scholarship

Few debates in late seventeenth-century Muscovy were as heated as the controversy over the naming of the Resurrection “New Jerusalem” Monastery (1656). This essay draws attention to an overlooked sixteenth-century source, a letter by the Greek-born Slavic translator Maksim Grek (d. 1556), which played an important role in shaping the Church’s thinking. Maksim’s letter helps to explain why Jerusalem ideology took a very different path in Russia than it did in Western Europe, and why replications of the Holy Sepulcher are only very rarely encountered in Muscovy. Maksim’s letter introduces several themes which foreshadow the course of the later debate: …

Facilitators And Barriers To Reunification Among Housing Unstable Families, Robert L. Fischer, David Crampton

Faculty Scholarship

Housing unstable families with child welfare system involvement face multiple challenges to successfully reunifying with their families. This explanatory qualitative study followed up on findings from a county-sponsored Pay for Success (PFS) RCT. The study focused on understanding the facilitators and barriers to reunification, bringing together the perspectives of a random sample of 16 housing-unstable caregivers whose children were in foster care, their PFS program workers, and their child welfare caseworkers. We conducted in-depth, in-person interviews with 52 participants. Major facilitators of reunification included strong client motivation, PFS program workers empowering and advocating for clients, the program's ability to meet …

Minimal Auxiliary Basis Set Approach For The Electronic Excitation Spectra Of Organic Molecules, Zehao Zhou, Shane M. Parker

Faculty Scholarship

We report a minimal auxiliary basis model for time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) with hybrid density functionals that can accurately reproduce excitation energies and absorption spectra from TDDFT while reducing cost by about \change{two} orders of magnitude. Our method, dubbed TDDFT-ris, employs the resolution-of-the-identity technique with just one $s$-type auxiliary basis function per atom for the linear response operator, where the Gaussian exponents are parametrized across the periodic table using %using tabulated atomic radii with a single global scaling factor. By tuning on a small test set, we determine a single functional-independent scale factor that balances errors in excitation energies …

A Novel Sorbicillinoid Compound As A Potent Anti‐Inflammation Agent Through Inducing Nlrp3 Protein Degradation, Fangfang Wang, Youwei Zhang

Faculty Scholarship

Background and Purpose: Chronic inflammation is pathogenic and contributes to human diseases, causing a significant threat to public health. The NLR family pyrin domain‐containing protein 3 (NLRP3) is the best‐characterized factor regulating inflammation. Therefore, targeting NLRP3 has the potential to treat inflammatory diseases and improve human health. Experimental Approach: Lipopolysaccharide was used to induce inflammation in cell cultures. Lipopolysaccharide/d‐galactosamine and dextran sulfate sodium salt were used to induce acute liver inflammation and ulcerative colitis respectively in C57BL/6J mice. Western blotting, immunofluorescence, immunoprecipitation, quantitative PCR and enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) were used to evaluate the activation of the inflammatory response in …

Digital Twins And Cultural Heritage Preservation: A Case Study Of Best Practices And Reproducibility In Chiesa Dei Ss Apostoli E Biagio, James Hutson, Joe Weber, Angela Russo

Faculty Scholarship

The use of digital twin technologies to preserve cultural heritage has become increasingly common over the past two decades. Evolving from the use of virtual environments (VE) and digital reconstructions that required multiple phases of workflow and multiple software applications and various hardware to output a useable experience to the immediacy of 3D artificial intelligence (AI) generative content and the latest generation of photogrammetric scanning, non-specialists are now able to more easily create digital twins. At the same time, the destruction of cultural heritage has accelerated due to geopolitical instability, seen in examples such as the invasion of Ukraine by …

The Liability Trap: Why The Alec Anti-Esg Bills Create A Legal Quagmire For Fiduciaries Connected With Public Pensions, David J. Berger, David H. Webber, Beth M. Young

Faculty Scholarship

Two proposed bills barring public pensions from considering environmental, social, and governance investment criteria create massive legal risk for any pension fiduciary or service provider. The American Legislative Exchange Council “boycott bill” and the “fiduciary duty” bill, if adopted, would impose irreconcilable legal requirements on such fiduciaries, and subject them to compliance with arbitrary and unworkable legal demands.

The main legal problems the bills create fall into four categories:

(1) the unworkable distinction between “pecuniary” and “non-pecuniary,” a distinction so blurry that the bills are self-contradictory, as we demonstrate;

(2) the clash between the bills’ definition of materiality and that …

Small Molecule Inhibitors Of 15-Pgdh Exploit A Physiologic Induced-Fit Closing System, Wei Huang, Hongyun Li, Janna G. Kiselar, Stephen P. Fink, Sagar Regmi, Alexander Day, Yiyuan Yuan, Mark R. Chance, Sanford D. Markowitz, Derek J. Taylor

Faculty Scholarship

15-prostaglandin dehydrogenase (15-PGDH) is a negative regulator of tissue stem cells that acts via enzymatic activity of oxidizing and degrading PGE2, and related eicosanoids, that support stem cells during tissue repair. Indeed, inhibiting 15-PGDH markedly accelerates tissue repair in multiple organs. Here we have used cryo-electron microscopy to solve the solution structure of native 15-PGDH and of 15-PGDH individually complexed with two distinct chemical inhibitors. These structures identify key 15-PGDH residues that mediate binding to both classes of inhibitors. Moreover, we identify a dynamic 15-PGDH lid domain that closes around the inhibitors, and that is likely fundamental to the physiologic …

Of Life Beyond Domination: Capability Determination, Surfacing, Norm Play, Jeremy Bendik-Keymer

Faculty Scholarship

“Surfacing” is the process of rediscovering one’s sense of self-determination from within a context of enduring domination, including systems of enduring domination, such as racism, capitalism, and patriarchy. “Enduring domination” is the afterlife of domination that carries on into the conditions and mentality of anyone affected by domination, even indirectly. This article riggs together a concept from the Capability Approach to human development, a process from intersectional, epistemic justice work, and some broad possibilities within social practice art around norm play and subversion to fill out a practice of wondering that helps its participants surface. It serves as a contribution …

Museums And The Metaverse: Emerging Technologies To Promote Inclusivity And Engagement, James Hutson, Piper Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past two decades, museums have increasingly sought to build connections with the community and increase inclusivity of visitors. At the same time, emerging technologies, such as extended reality (XR) and virtual museums (VM) are increasingly adopted to engage with different generational expectations but also for the purposes of supporting inclusivity and neurodiverse populations. First such technologies were adopted to augment exhibitions in the physical museum space for edutainment. Since then, XR has expanded from room-size environments (CAVEs) and augmented exhibitions to the creation of entire virtual museums, such as The Museum of Pure Form and The Virtual Museum …

Architecting The Metaverse: Blockchain And The Financial And Legal Regulatory Challenges Of Virtual Real Estate, James Hutson, Guarango Banerjee, Naresh Kshetri, Kurt Odenwald, Jeremiah Ratican

Faculty Scholarship

There has been disagreement over the value of purchasing space in the metaverse, but many businesses including Nike, The Wendy’s Company, and McDonald’s have jumped in headfirst. While the metaverse land rush has been called an “illusion” given underdeveloped infrastructure, including inadequate software and servers, and the potential opportunities for economic and legal abuse, the “real estate of the future” shows no signs of slowing. While the current virtual space of the metaverse is worth $6.30 billion, that is expected to grow to $84.09 billion by the end of 2028. But the long-term legal and regulatory considerations of capitalizing on …

A Proposed Meta-Reality Immersive Development Pipeline: Generative Ai Models And Extended Reality (Xr) Content For The Metaverse, Jay Ratican, James Hutson, Andrew Wright

Faculty Scholarship

The realization of an interoperable and scalable virtual platform, currently known as the “metaverse,” is inevitable, but many technological challenges need to be overcome first. With the metaverse still in a nascent phase, research currently indicates that building a new 3D social environment capable of interoperable avatars and digital transactions will represent most of the initial investment in time and capital. The return on investment, however, is worth the financial risk for firms like Meta, Google, and Apple. While the current virtual space of the metaverse is worth $6.30 billion, that is expected to grow to $84.09 billion by the …

Working With (Not Against) The Technology: Gpt3 And Artificial Intelligence (Ai) In College Composition, James Hutson, Daniel Plate

Faculty Scholarship

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) for improvement of writing is commonplace with word-processing software and cloudbased writing assistants such as Grammarly and Microsoft Word. However, more and more options are cropping up that move beyond assistance with grammar, spelling, and punctuation to complete essay generation. The free availability of AI essay generators has led to lamenting the coming death of college writing. But AI has been used in the previously noted examples for decades without such a reaction. In fact, the idea that the use of essay generating software is synonymous with academic dishonesty is as passé as worries …

Racial Differences In Time To Blood Pressure Control Of Aneurysmal Subarachnoid Hemorrhage Patients: A Single-Institution Study, Xiaofei Zhou, Adam Hwan Bates, Uma V. Mahajan, Ansh Desai, Jeffrey Butke, Yifei Duan, Christopher Burant, Kaylee Sarna, Martha Sajatovic, Dhimant Dani, S. Alan Hoffer

Faculty Scholarship

Background and purpose Aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage occurs in approximately 30,000 patients annually in the United States. Uncontrolled blood pressure is a major risk factor for aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage. Clinical guidelines recommend maintaining blood pressure control until definitive aneurysm securement occurs. It is unknown whether racial differences exist regarding blood pressure control and outcomes (HLOS, discharge disposition) in aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage. Here, we aim to assess whether racial differences exist in 1) presentation, 2) clinical course, and 3) outcomes, including time to blood pressure stabilization, for aSAH patients at a large tertiary care medical center. Methods We conducted a retrospective review …

Child Opportunity Index And Hospital Utilization In Children With Traumatic Brain Injury Admitted To The Picu, Monica M. Gray, Kurt C. Stange, Elaine A. Borawski, Steven L. Shein, Katherine N. Slain

Faculty Scholarship

IMPORTANCE: The need to understand how Community-based disparities impact morbidity and mortality in pediatric critical illness, such as traumatic brain injury. Test the hypothesis that ZIP code-based disparities in hospital utilization, including length of stay (LOS) and hospital costs, exist in a cohort of children with traumatic brain injury (TBI) admitted to a PICU using the Child Opportunity Index (COI). DESIGN: Multicenter retrospective cohort study. SETTING: Pediatric Health Information System (PHIS) database. PATIENTS: Children 0-18 years old admitted to a PHIS hospital with a diagnosis of TBI from January 2016 to December 2020 requiring PICU care. To identify the most …

Establishing A Conditional Driver Permit In Texas, Luz E. Herrera, Taylor Garner, Crystal Hernandez, Lisa Mares

Faculty Scholarship

The article presents supporting data to expand access to state-issued driver permits for Texans who cannot provide the required documents to obtain a driver’s license. Part I examines the unlicensed and uninsured population in Texas that these efforts attempt to address. Part II discusses state jurisdiction to issue driver licenses and permits. It discusses existing Texas statutes that authorize the issuance of driver’s licenses and permits. The section also offers examples of other state statutes that have expanded their right to regulate driving privileges beyond Real ID Act requirements. Part III presents a partial economic analysis illustrating potential economic benefits …

Originalism: Erasing Women From The Body Politic, Malinda L. Seymore

Faculty Scholarship

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, the Court relied on originalism to excise women from the Constitution. Originalism is purposefully backward-looking. With cherry-picked history, the Court created a future that looks to the past: a past where unwed pregnancy is shameful and can be redeemed only by secret adoption. Yet the case has revealed originalism as a flawed method, harmed the legitimacy of the Court, and energized those supporting abortion rights.

Testimony To The Senate Judiciary Committee By The Era Project At Columbia Law School And Constitutional Law Scholars On Joint Resolution S.J.Res. 4: Removing The Deadline For The Ratification Of The Equal Rights Amendment, Katherine M. Franke, Laurence H. Tribe, Geoffrey R. Stone, Melissa Murray, Michael C. Dorf

Faculty Scholarship

The Equal Rights Amendment Project at Columbia Law School (ERA Project) and the undersigned constitutional law scholars provide the following analysis of S.J.Res. 4, resolving to remove the time limit for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and declaring the ERA fully ratified.

Gamesmanship In Modern Discovery Tech, Neel Guha, Peter Henderson, Diego A. Zambrano

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter explores the potential for gamesmanship in technology-assisted discovery. Attorneys have long embraced gamesmanship strategies in analog discovery, producing reams of irrelevant documents, delaying depositions, or interpreting requests in a hyper-technical manner. The new question, however, is whether machine learning technologies can transform gaming strategies. By now it is well known that technologies have reinvented the practice of civil litigation and, specifically, the extensive search for relevant documents in complex cases. Many sophisticated litigants use machine learning algorithms – under the umbrella of “Technology Assisted Review” (TAR) – to simplify the identification and production of relevant documents in discovery. …

The Disembodied First Amendment, Nathan Cortez, William M. Sage

Faculty Scholarship

First Amendment doctrine is becoming disembodied—increasingly detached from human speakers and listeners. Corporations claim that their speech rights limit government regulation of everything from product labeling to marketing to ordinary business licensing. Courts extend protections to commercial speech that ordinarily extended only to core political and religious speech. And now, we are told, automated information generated for cryptocurrencies, robocalling, and social media bots are also protected speech under the Constitution. Where does it end? It begins, no doubt, with corporate and commercial speech. We show, however, that heightened protection for corporate and commercial speech is built on several “artifices” - …

Deferring Intellectual Property Rights In Pandemic Times, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines an unprecedented proposal that India and South Africa submitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in October 2020, which called for a waiver of more than 30 provisions in the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights to help combat COVID-19. It begins by recounting the proposal's strengths and weaknesses. The Article then identifies the challenges surrounding the negotiation and implementation of the proposed waiver. It shows why these two sets of challenges were neither separate nor sequential, but deeply entangled at the time of the international negotiations.

To respond to these challenges and the negotiation …

Adoption Ouroboros: Repeating The Cycle Of Adoption As Rescue, Malinda L. Seymore

Faculty Scholarship

Ouroboros—the circular symbol of the snake eating its tail; an endless cycle. As the U.S. recently withdrew from Afghanistan in chaos and Russia invaded Ukraine, the attention of Americans turned, as it frequently has in times of international conflict, to the plight of children in need of rescue. For many Americans, rescue is synonymous with adoption. The history of international adoption began with rescues following America’s wars in Europe and Asia and continues today through other violent upheavals. International adoption is an ouroboros, repeating the pattern of adoption as a response to humanitarian crises. But as human and charitable as …

Policing & The Problem Of Physical Restraint, Steven Arrigg Koh

Faculty Scholarship

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits unreasonable “seizures” and thus renders unlawful police use of excessive force. On one hand, this definition is expansive. In the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2021 Term, in Torres v. Madrid, the Court clarified that a “seizure” includes any police application of physical force to the body with intent to restrain. Crucially, Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion emphasized that police may seize even when merely laying “the end of a finger” on a layperson’s body. And yet, the Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment totality-of-the-circumstances reasonableness balancing test is notoriously imprecise—a “factbound morass,” in the famous …

Major Questions And An Emergency Question Doctrine: The Biden Student Debt Case Study Of Pretextual Abuse Of Emergency Powers, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

The major question doctrine tries to address one problem, the Imperial Executive, by escalating another, the Imperial Judiciary. This article proposes a solution, with the Biden Student Debt Waiver as a case study: An “emergency question” doctrine.

This emergency questions doctrine would apply when the executive relies on a statutory emergency clause or invokes an emergency in its application of a statutory provision. As a matter of statutory interpretation, the emergency question doctrine would follow the two most important steps of the major question approach: 1) relying on purpose and context to clarify and limit the scope of open-ended emergency …

Justices Citing Justices, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars have long paid attention to how often and for what reasons Supreme Court justices cite law review articles and academic books in their opinions. More recently, a new area of scholarship has begun to look at how Justices create their own lines of “personal precedent” through not only their prior opinions but also their academic writings. At the intersection of these two areas of inquiry lies questions of how often and for what reasons Supreme Court justices cite the journal articles and books of the various justices sitting on the Court, including their own. With the exception of one …

“Do Not Ever Refer To My Lord Jesus Christ With Pronouns”: Considering Controversies Over Religiously Motivated Discrimination On The Basis Of Gender Identity, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

In the by-now familiar framing “religious freedom versus LGBT+ rights,” perhaps the most visible conflicts today in the United States, and elsewhere, concern the “T”—transgender or gender identity rights. This issue of the Journal of Law and Religion includes a conversation in print between Patrick Parkinson, Laura Portuondo and Claudia Haupt, and Shannon Gilreath on this timely topic, and their contrasting perspectives mirror dimensions of the larger public controversies. Although tweets like those quoted above (by unsuccessful Republican congressional candidate Lavern Spicer) asserting that neither the Bible nor Jesus had pronouns sparked both factual corrections and comical retorts, ³ the …

Selective Infrared Neural Inhibition Can Be Reproduced By Resistive Heating, Junqi Zhuo, Chloe E. Weidrick, Yehe Liu, Michael A. Moffitt, Hillel J. Chiel, Michael W. Jenkins

Faculty Scholarship

Objectives: Small-diameter afferent axons carry various sensory signals that are critical for vital physiological conditions but sometimes contribute to pathologies. Infrared (IR) neural inhibition (INI) can induce selective heat block of small-diameter axons, which holds potential for translational applications such as pain management. Previous research suggested that IR–heating-induced acceleration of voltage-gated potassium channel kinetics is the mechanism for INI. Therefore, we hypothesized that other heating methods, such as resistive heating (RH) in a cuff, could reproduce the selective inhibition observed in INI. Materials and Methods: We conducted ex vivo nerve-heating experiments on pleural-abdominal connective nerves of Aplysia californica using both …

Photophysical Characterization Of Isoguanine In A Prebiotic-Like Environment, Naishka E. Caldero-Rodríguez, Carlos E. Crespo-Hernández

Faculty Scholarship

It is intriguing how a mixture of organic molecules survived the prebiotic UV fluxes and evolved into the actual genetic building blocks. Scientists are trying to shed light on this issue by synthesizing nucleic acid monomers and their analogues under prebiotic Era-like conditions and by exploring their excited state dynamics. To further add to this important body of knowledge, this study discloses new insights into the photophysical properties of protonated isoguanine, an isomorph of guanine, using steady-state and femtosecond broadband transient absorption spectroscopies, and quantum mechanical calculations. Protonated isoguanine decays in ultrafast time scales following 292 nm excitation, consistently with …

Nussbaum’S Politics Of Wonder: How The Mind’S Original Joy Is Revolutionary, Jeremy D. Bendik-Keymer

Faculty Scholarship

Keymer explores how wonder is central to Martha C. Nussbaum’s normative project. Nussbaum’s work is opposed to the emotional and political conditions of ‘narcissism’ – the tendency to seek to control the wills of others in order to defend oneself against perceived vulnerabilities. Our capacity for wondering is important for growing beyond narcissism. Bendik-Keymer elaborates a politics of wonder that is consistent with understanding this idea. Taking issue with understandings of wonder viewing it as an emotion of surprise or delight, he develops an alternate tradition finding wonder in concert with the freedom of imagination found by degrees within much …

Bacteriuria In Older Adults Triggers Confusion In Healthcare Providers: A Mindful Pause To Treat The Worry, Robin L.P. Jump

Faculty Scholarship

The evidence base for refraining from screening for or treating asymptomatic bacteriuria (ASB) in older adults is strong, but both practices remain prevalent. Clinical confusion over how to respond to a change from baseline, when to order a urinalysis and urine culture, and what to do with a positive urine culture fuels unnecessary antibiotic use for ASB. If the provider can take a mindful pause to apply evidenced-based assessment tools, the resulting increased clarity in how to manage the situation can reduce overtreatment of ASB.

Sickle Red Blood Cell-Derived Extracellular Vesicles Activate Endothelial Cells And Enhance Sickle Red Cell Adhesion Mediated By Von Willebrand Factor, Ran An, Yuncheng Man, Kevin Cheng, Tianyi Zhang, Fang Wang, Erdem Kucukal, William J. Wulftange, Utku Goreke, Allison Bode, Lalitha V. Nayak, Jane A. Little, Umut A. Gurkan

Faculty Scholarship

Endothelial activation and sickle red blood cell (RBC) adhesion are central to the pathogenesis of sickle cell disease (SCD). Quantitatively, RBC-derived extracellular vesicles (REVs) are more abundant from SS RBCs compared with healthy RBCs (AA RBCs). Sickle RBC-derived REVs (SS REVs) are known to promote endothelial cell (EC) activation through cell signalling and transcriptional regulation at longer terms. However, the SS REV-mediated short-term non-transcriptional response of EC is unclear. Here, we examined the impact of SS REVs on acute microvascular EC activation and RBC adhesion at 2 h. Compared with AA REVs, SS REVs promoted human pulmonary microvascular ECs (HPMEC) …