Digital Commons Network^™

Design And Actuation Of A Fabric-Based Worm-Like Robot, Akhil Kandhari, Anna Mehringer, Hillel J. Chiel, Roger D. Quinn, Kathryn A. Daltorio

Faculty Scholarship

Soft-bodied animals, such as earthworms, are capable of contorting their body to squeeze through narrow spaces, create or enlarge burrows, and move on uneven ground. In many applications such as search and rescue, inspection of pipes and medical procedures, it may be useful to have a hollow-bodied robot with skin separating inside and outside. Textiles can be key to such skins. Inspired by earthworms, we developed two new robots: FabricWorm and MiniFabricWorm. We explored the application of fabric in soft robotics and how textile can be integrated along with other structural elements, such as three-dimensional (3D) printed parts, linear springs, …

The Public Information Fallacy, Woodrow Hartzog

Faculty Scholarship

The concept of privacy in “public” information or acts is a perennial topic for debate. It has given privacy law fits. People struggle to reconcile the notion of protecting information that has been made public with traditional accounts of privacy. As a result, successfully labeling information as public often functions as a permission slip for surveillance and personal data practices. It has also given birth to a significant and persistent misconception — that public information is an established and objective concept.

In this article, I argue that the “no privacy in public” justification is misguided because nobody knows what “public” …

Digital Market Perfection, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

Google’s, Apple’s, and other companies’ automated assistants are increasingly serving as personal shoppers. These digital intermediaries will save us time by purchasing grocery items, transferring bank accounts, and subscribing to cable. The literature has only begun to hint at the paradigm shift needed to navigate the legal risks and rewards of this coming era of automated commerce. This Article begins to fill that gap first by surveying legal battles related to contract exit, data access, and deception that will determine the extent to which automated assistants are able to help consumers to search and switch, potentially bringing tremendous societal benefits. …

Comments On Preliminary Draft 4 [Black Letter And Comments], Jane C. Ginsburg, June M. Besek

Faculty Scholarship

In many respects, PD4 is a helpful synthesis of the law, likely to provoke less controversy than drafts of earlier Chapters. Nevertheless, we remain concerned about this draft’s, like its predecessors’, inconsistent treatment of legal issues. As in earlier drafts, this one sometimes traverses the line between restating positive law and “improving” it. In several instances, these departures from positive law adopt policy positions we would endorse in a different kind of endeavor, such as a “Principles” project, or an acknowledged advocacy piece. But we do not believe it accurate to characterize these departures, however substantively desirable, as “restating” the …

Prevalence, Patterns And Factors Associated With Hypertensive Crises In Mulago Hospital Emergency Department; A Cross-Sectional Study, Martha Sajatovic

Faculty Scholarship

Background: Hypertension is increasing in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and it’s the single most important modifiable stroke risk factor, yet it’s control is not routinely emphasized. The prevalence, pattern and factors associated with hypertensive urgencies and emergencies in Uganda is not well established. A cross-sectional study, was conducted between November 2015 and February 2016, using a complete clinical examination and pre-tested standardized questionnaire subjects were enrolled. The prevalence of hypertensive crises and associations of demographic and clinical factors determined using logistic regression. Results: The prevalence of hypertensive crises was 5.1%, (203/4000) of all admissions at the medical section of the accident …

Cophosk: A Method For Comprehensive Kinase Substrate Annotation Using Co-Phosphorylation Analysis, Marzieh Ayati, Danica D. Wiredja, Daniela M. Schlatzer, Sean Maxwell, Ming Li, Mehmet Koyutürk, Mark R. Chance

Faculty Scholarship

We present CoPhosK to predict kinase-substrate associations for phosphopeptide substrates detected by mass spectrometry (MS). The tool utilizes a Naïve Bayes framework with priors of known kinase-substrate associations (KSAs) to generate its predictions. Through the mining of MS data for the collective dynamic signatures of the kinases’ substrates revealed by correlation analysis of phosphopeptide intensity data, the tool infers KSAs in the data for the considerable body of substrates lacking such annotations. We benchmarked the tool against existing approaches for predicting KSAs that rely on static information (e.g. sequences, structures and interactions) using publically available MS data, including breast, colon, …

Effects Of High-Fidelity Simulation Based On Life-Threatening Clinical Condition Scenarios On Learning Outcomes Of Undergraduate And Postgraduate Nursing Students: A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Celeste Marie Alfes

Faculty Scholarship

Objective The purpose was to analyse the effectiveness of high-fidelity patient simulation (HFPS) based on life-threatening clinical condition scenarios on undergraduate and postgraduate nursing students' learning outcomes. Design A systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted based on the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions and its reporting was checked against the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses checklist. Data sources PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL with Full Text, Wiley Online Library and Web of Science were searched until July 2017. Author contact, reference and citation lists were checked to obtain additional references. Study selection To be included, available full-texts …

Temporal Evolution And Pathway Models Of Poly(Ethylene-Terephthalate) Degradation Under Multi-Factor Accelerated Weathering Exposures, Cara L. Fagerholm, Roger H. French, Laura S. Bruckman

Faculty Scholarship

Photolytic and hydrolytic degradation of poly(ethylene-terephthalate) (PET) polymers with different stabilizers were performed under multiple accelerated weathering exposures and changes in the polymers were monitored by various evaluation techniques. Yellowing was caused by photolytic degradation and haze formation was induced by combined effects of photolytic and hydrolytic degradation. The formation of light absorbing chromophores and bleaching of the UV stabilizer additive were recorded through optical spectroscopy. Chain scission and crystallization were found to be common mechanisms under both photolytic and hydrolytic conditions, based on the infrared absorption of the carbonyl (C = O) band and the trans ethylene glycol unit, …

Betting On Climate Policy: Using Prediction Markets To Address Global Warming, Gary M. Lucas Jr, Felix Mormann

Faculty Scholarship

Global warming, sea level rise, and extreme weather events have made climate change a top priority for policymakers across the globe. But which policies are best suited to tackle the enormous challenges presented by our changing climate? This Article proposes that policymakers turn to prediction markets to answer that crucial question. Prediction markets have a strong track record of outperforming other forecasting mechanisms across a wide range of contexts — from predicting election outcomes and economic trends to guessing Oscar winners. In the context of climate change, market participants could, for example, bet on important climate outcomes conditioned on the …

The Non-Doctrine Of Redundancy, Saurabh Vishnubhakat

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores and evaluates a controversial practice that the Patent Office undertook beginning early in the post-AIA regime, the practice of denying otherwise meritorious requests for review because of what the Office termed "redundant" grounds. The controversy over redundancy-based rejections had several sources. One was that making such rejections required the Patent Office to decide petitions piecemeal—and, indeed, the agency claimed that power for itself—even though it was not clear that this power lay within the statute. Another source was that the Patent Office persistently declined to explain what, in the agency's view, did or did not constitute redundancy. …

Graffiti, Speech, And Crime, Jenny E. Carroll

Faculty Scholarship

Graffiti resides at the uncomfortable intersection of criminal law and free speech rhetoric. It is not the shout of revolution to the gathered, protesting masses, or the political pamphlet flung from a 1920s window. Graffiti is not the obscene-rendered-political-jacketed protest of war, or a flag set aflame in the name of reclaiming patriotism. It is an illicit scrawl. It is damage and defiance rolled into one from the moment of its creation. Graffiti is a crime.

Unlike more celebrated examples of free speech, graffiti earns no safe harbor from the First Amendment. When asked to choose between the tag that …

Artificially Intelligent Law, Lawrence B. Solum

Faculty Scholarship

This paper explores a series of thought experiments that postulate the ex-istence of "artificially intelligent law." An artificially-intelligent legal system is de-fined as one with three functional capacities: 1. The system has the capacity to gen-erate legal norms. 2. The system has the capacity to apply the legal norms that it generates. 3. The system has the capacity to use deep learning to modify the legal norms that it generates. The paper then considers the question whether such a sys-tem would be desirable as a matter of legitimacy and justice. The core idea of the paper is that the key …

The Intricate Relationship Between Intellectual Property Exhaustion And Free Movement Of Goods In Regional Organizations: Comparing The Eu/Eea, Nafta, And Asean, Irene Calboli

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the relationship between national rules on the exhaustion of intellectual property (IP) rights and cross-border trade within regional organizations. In particular, this article compares three distinct approaches adopted by: the European Union (EU); the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA); and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Based on this comparison, this article concludes that in order to effectively promote the free movement of goods, members of regional organizations need to consistently adopt national policies on IP exhaustion that support, at least, a system of regional exhaustion such as currently found in the EU. However, …

The Street View Of Property, Vanessa Casado-Pérez

Faculty Scholarship

Parking on public streets is scarce. The current allocation system for parking spots based on rule of capture coupled with low parking fees creates a tragedy of the commons scenario. The misallocation of parking has consequences for commerce, for access to public spaces, and for pollution and congestion. Municipalities have not widely adopted the solution that economists propose to solve this scarcity problem: increase the price. Politics aside, the reluctance of municipalities to do so may be explained by the unique nature of public property as reflected in well-rooted legal and societal constraints. This unique nature helps explain, for example, …

Reconsidering Christianity As A Support For Secular Law: A Final Reply To Professor Calhoun, Wayne Barnes

Faculty Scholarship

This symposium has revolved around Professor Calhoun’s article, which posits that it is completely legitimate, in proposing laws and public policies, to argue for them in the public square based on overtly religious principles. In my initial response, I took issue with his argument that no reasons justify barring faith-based arguments from the public square argument. In fact, I do find reasons justifying the prohibition of “faith-based,” or Christian, arguments in the public square – and, in fact, I find such reasons within Christianity itself. This is because what is being publicly communicated in Christian political argumentation is that if …

Energy Status And Body Composition Across A Collegiate Women’S Lacrosse Season, Hannah A. Zabriskie, Bradley S. Currier, Patrick S. Harty, Richard A. Stecker, Andrew R. Jagim, Chad M. Kerksick

Faculty Scholarship

Little data is available regarding the energy and nutritional status of female collegiate team sport athletes. Twenty female NCAA Division II lacrosse athletes (mean ± SD: 20.4 ± 1.8 years; 68.8 ± 8.9 kg; 168.4 ± 6.6 cm; 27.9 ± 3% body fat) recorded dietary intake and wore a physical activity monitor over four consecutive days at five different time points (20 days total) during one academic year. Body composition, bone health, and resting metabolic rate were assessed in conjunction with wearing the monitor during off-season, pre-season, and season-play. Body fat percentage decreased slightly during the course of this study …

The Place Of The People In Criminal Procedure, Jocelyn Simonson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Procedure Of Patent Eligibility, Paul Gugliuzza

Faculty Scholarship

A decade ago, the patent-eligible subject matter requirement was defunct. Several recent Supreme Court decisions, however, have made eligibility the most important issue in many patent cases. To date, debates over the resurgent doctrine have focused mainly on its substance. Critics contend that the Supreme Court’s case law makes patents too easy to invalidate and discourages innovation. Supporters emphasize that the Court’s decisions help eradicate the overly broad patents often asserted by so-called patent trolls.

Yet one important consequence of eligibility’s revival has been procedural. Because district courts often view eligibility to present a pure question of law, they are—for …

Transdisciplinarity At The Boundaries: Exploring A Sylvan Metaphor For Health, Peter J. Whitehouse

Faculty Scholarship

Transdisciplinarity is an action oriented intellectual and ethical endeavor to address complex ecological, economic, and political challenges that humans face. Language is viewed as a powerful tool for necessary cultural change. Blending art and science looking for the difficult to define but critically important hidden spaces between apparently rigid conceptual structures is a core of transdisciplinarity. Metaphor is a particular powerful tool for examining boundaries and developing creative blends of structures and processes. Forests are biologically and culturally critical to life on the planet. In this paper we explore, a performance character named Sylvanus, the Tree Doctor, named after the …

Review Of "Jean Paton And The Struggle To Reform American Adoption", Malinda L. Seymore

Faculty Scholarship

Book Review Extract:

Wayne Carp is rightly celebrated as the official historian of American adoption reform. He continues his important work, begun with Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption in 1998 and continued with Adoption Politics: Bastard Nation and Ballot Initiative 58 in 2004, with a look at the life and times of Jean Paton, a reformer of the 1950s. Carp credits her with a litany of “firsts”: the first to recognize and study adult adoptees; the first to critique the “chosen child” concept; the first to create an organization devoted to adult adoptees; the first …

Catalyst-Free, Highly Selective Synthesis Of Ammonia From Nitrogen And Water By A Plasma Electrolytic System, Ryan Hawtof, Souvik Ghosh, Evan Guarr, Cheyan Xu, R. Mohan Sankaran, Julie N. Renner

Faculty Scholarship

There is a growing need for scalable ammonia synthesis at ambient conditions that relies on renewable sources of energy and feedstocks to replace the Haber-Bosch process. Electrically driven approaches are an ideal strategy for the reduction of nitrogen to ammonia but, to date, have suffered from low selectivity associated with the catalyst. Here, we present a hybrid electrolytic system characterized by a gaseous plasma electrode that facilitates the study of ammonia formation in the absence of any material surface. We find record-high faradaic efficiency (up to 100%) for ammonia from nitrogen and water at atmospheric pressure and temperature with this …

Diffusing New Technology Without Dissipating Rents: Some Historical Case Studies Of Knowledge Sharing, James Bessen, Alessandro Nuvolari

Faculty Scholarship

The diffusion of innovations is supposed to dissipate inventors’ rents. Yet in many documented cases, inventors freely shared knowledge with their competitors. Using a model and case studies, this article explores why sharing did not eliminate inventors’ incentives. Each new technology coexisted with an alternative for one or more decades. This allowed inventors to earn rents while sharing knowledge, attaining major productivity gains. The technology diffusion literature suggests that such circumstances are common during the early stages of a new technology.

Shades Of Nixon In Mattis Departure, Joshua E. Kastenberg

Faculty Scholarship

With the voluntary departure or unceremonious firing of Secretary of Defense James Mattis, there is a potential/looming crisis in civil-military affairs in our country. Not since President Richard Nixon has there been this type of instability in the Department of Defense.

Implementation Science And Prevention In Action: Application In A Post-Permanency World, Nancy Rolock

Faculty Scholarship

This article describes how implementation science and intervention research guided the process of selecting and implementing an evidence-informed intervention (Tuning in to Teens; TINT). TINT was provided as a selective prevention effort offered to families with youth aged 10 to 13 years old, with characteristics that suggest an elevated risk for post-permanency discontinuity. Usability testing findings: Contact was made with 54% of families, and 12% participated in the intervention. Multivariate results found no statistically significant differences between families who responded to outreach efforts and those who did not; families who participated in TINT and those who did not. Implications: Large …

Regulating Offshore Finance, William J. Moon

Faculty Scholarship

From the Panama Papers to the Paradise Papers, massive document leaks in recent years have exposed trillions of dollars hidden in small offshore jurisdictions. Attracting foreign capital with low tax rates and environments of secrecy, a growing number of offshore jurisdictions have emerged as major financial havens hosting thousands of hedge funds, trusts, banks, and insurance companies.

While the prevailing account has examined offshore financial havens as “tax havens” that facilitate the evasion or avoidance of domestic tax, this Article uncovers how offshore jurisdictions enable corporations to evade domestic regulatory law. Specifically, recent U.S. Supreme Court cases restricting the geographic …

Data-Informed Duties In Ai Development, Frank A. Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

Law should help direct—and not merely constrain—the development of artificial intelligence (AI). One path to influence is the development of standards of care both supplemented and informed by rigorous regulatory guidance. Such standards are particularly important given the potential for inaccurate and inappropriate data to contaminate machine learning. Firms relying on faulty data can be required to compensate those harmed by that data use—and should be subject to punitive damages when such use is repeated or willful. Regulatory standards for data collection, analysis, use, and stewardship can inform and complement generalist judges. Such regulation will not only provide guidance to …

The Constitutional Development Of The Nineteenth Amendment In The Decade Following Ratification, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Teaching Justice-Connectivity, Michael Pinard

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay conveys the importance of building in law students the foundation to recognize the various systems, institutions, and conditions that often crash into the lives of their clients, as well as the residents of the communities that are just outside law schools’ doors. It does so through proposing a teaching model that I call Justice-Connectivity. This model aims for students to understand and be humbled by the ways in which different institutions, systems, and strands of law converge upon, oppress, isolate, and shun individuals, families, and communities. The ultimate teaching lesson is that individuals, families, and communities are often …

Professional Judgment In An Era Of Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning, Frank A. Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

Though artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare and education now accomplishes diverse tasks, there are two features that tend to unite the information processing behind efforts to substitute it for professionals in these fields: reductionism and functionalism. True believers in substitutive automation tend to model work in human services by reducing the professional role to a set of behaviors initiated by some stimulus, which are intended to accomplish some predetermined goal, or maximize some measure of well-being. However, true professional judgment hinges on a way of knowing the world that is at odds with the epistemology of substitutive automation. Instead of …

Rescuing Maryland Tort Law: A Tribute To Judge Sally Adkins, Donald G. Gifford

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.