Digital Commons Network^™

A Comprehensive Covid-19 Response—The Need For Economic Evaluation, Govind Persad, Ankur Pandya

Publications

Recently, the World Health Organization has exhorted countries to fight the Covid-19 pandemic with other interventions in addition to vaccines. But for countries to mount a comprehensive and effective response, more than exhortation is needed. Policymakers must understand the benefits and burdens associated with various policy options. They also have to be equipped to rigorously and systematically compare these benefits and burdens, both when evaluating individual policies and when determining which policies to include in a legislative or regulatory package.

Dose Optimisation And Scarce Resource Allocation: Two Sides Of The Same Coin, Govind Persad, Govind C. Persad, William F. Parker, Srinivas Murthy

Publications

Objective: A deep understanding of the relationship between a scarce drug's dose and clinical response is necessary to appropriately distribute a supply-constrained drug along these lines.

Summary of key data: The vast majority of drug development and repurposing during the COVID-19 pandemic – an event that has made clear the ever-present scarcity in health care systems –has been ignorant of scarcity and dose optimisation's ability to help address it.

Conclusions: Future pandemic clinical trials systems should obtain dose optimisation data, as these appear necessary to enable appropriate scarce resource allocation according to societal values.

A Multicenter Weighted Lottery To Equitably Allocate Scarce Covid-19 Therapeutics, Govind Persad, Erin K. Mccreary, Chung-Chou H. Chang, Mark Schmidhoffer

Publications

Shortages of new therapeutics to treat coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have forced clinicians, public health officials, and health systems to grapple with difficult questions about how to fairly allocate potentially life-saving treatments when there are not enough for all patients in need. Shortages have occurred with remdesivir, tocilizumab, monoclonal antibodies, and the oralantiviral Paxlovid.

Ensuring equitable allocation is especially important in light of the disproportionate burden experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic by disadvantaged groups, including Black, Hispanic/Latino and Indigenous communities, individuals with certain disabilities, and low-income persons. However, many health systems have resorted to first-come, first-served approaches to allocation, which tend …

Prosecutorial Nonenforcement And Residual Criminalization, Justin Murray

Publications

In recent years a small but influential group of locally elected prosecutors committed to criminal justice reform have openly refused to enforce various criminal laws—laws prohibiting marijuana possession, sentencing enhancements, laws authorizing the death penalty, and much more—because they see those laws as unjust and incompatible with core reform objectives. Condemned by many on the political right for allegedly usurping the legislature’s lawmaking role and praised by many on the left for bypassing dysfunctional state legislatures in favor of local solutions, these prosecutorial nonenforcement policies are commonly said to have the same effect as nullifying, or even repealing, the laws …

The Parthenon Marbles Case And The Universal Museum Myth: Policies And Politics: Panel 4: Cultural Property And International Human Rights Trends, Sandy Cobden, Leila Amineddoleh, Kristen A. Carpenter, Lawrence Kaye

Publications

No abstract provided.

Quantum Technology And Human Rights: An Agenda For Collaboration, Vivek Krishnamurthy

Publications

Quantum technologies have the potential to transform many aspects of our lives as they come into wider use, but how do we ensure that these technologies promote human rights instead of harming them? This article will draw lessons from our collective experience in managing the human rights impacts of internet technologies to help the quantum science and technology community build and develop technologies that respect and promote the fundamental rights of all people.

Anti-Subordination Torts, Scott Skinner-Thompson

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No abstract provided.

Debunking The Myth That Police Body Cams Are Civil Rights Tool, Scott Skinner-Thompson

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No abstract provided.

Manipulation And The First Amendment, Helen Norton

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No abstract provided.

Endangered Claims: How The U.S. Civil Procedure System Mimics The Wild, Suzette M. Malveaux

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No abstract provided.

Procedural Environmental Justice, Jonathan Skinner-Thompson

Publications

Achieving environmental justice—that is, the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies—requires providing impacted communities not just the formal right, but the substantive ability, to participate as equal partners at every level of environmental decision-making. While established administrative policy purports to provide all people with so-called “meaningful involvement” in the regulatory process, the public participation process often excludes marginalized community members from exerting meaningful influence on decision-making. Especially in the environmental arena, regulatory decisions are often buried …

Cryptocurrency, Legibility, And Taxation, Amanda Parsons

Publications

In Jarrett v. United States, a taxpayer in Tennessee is arguing that staking cryptocurrency did not result in him earning “income” under federal income tax law. This case illustrates the fundamental challenge that cryptocurrency and blockchain technology present for tax law. Wealth creation in the crypto space is not readily legible to the state. This absence of legibility threatens tax law’s reliance on placing economic activities into categories to determine how they should be taxed. Furthermore, this case highlights the harms Congress and Treasury are risking by not taking action on cryptocurrency taxation. The uncertainty and lack of guidance on …

The (Un)Just Use Of Transition Minerals: How Efforts To Achieve A Low-Carbon Economy Continue To Violate Indigenous Rights, Kathleen Finn, Christina A.W. Stanton

Publications

No abstract provided.

Tax's Digital Labor Dilemma, Amanda Parsons

Publications

Digitalization has reshaped the relationship between companies and their customers and users. Customers and users increasingly serve a dual role. They are not only consumers but also producers, creating data and content. They are a value-creating workforce, functioning as “digital laborers.”

Digital laborers’ value creation highlights that there are two parts to the question of whether multinational companies are paying their “fair share” of taxes—one of amount and one of location. First, are companies’ total tax bills paid across all countries in line with their global income? Second, is taxing authority over multinational companies’ income being divided amongst countries in …

A Numerical Solution Of Water Flow In Unsaturated Soil With Evapotraspiration, Andrei Ludu, Harihar Khanal, Ramesh Chandra Timsina, Kedar Nath Uprety

Publications

Flow movement in unsaturated soil can be expressed by Richards equation. This equation can be obtained by applying the mass conversation law and the Darcy law. In this work, we solve one-dimensional Kirchhoff transformed Richards equation with loss of water due to the evaporation of unsaturated porous media (soils) and transpiration of plants numerically using Crank-Nicolson method. The result has compared with evapotranspiration function and without it in the governing equation. It has found that an additional work in time and flow movement is needs to reach the given boundary condition for the model without evapotranspiration.

A Mathematical Model For Transport And Growth Of Microbes In Unsaturated Porous Soil, Harihar Khanal, Andrei Ludu, Ramesh Chandra Timsina, Kedar Nath Uprety

Publications

In this work, we develop a mathematical model for transport and growth of microbes by natural (rain) water infiltration and flow through unsaturated porous soil along the vertical direction under gravity and capillarity by coupling a system of advection diffusion equations (for concentration of microbes and their growth-limiting substrate) with the Richards equation. (e model takes into consideration several major physical, chemical, and biological mechanisms. (e resulting coupled system of PDEs together with their boundary conditions is highly nonlinear and complicated to solve analytically. We present both a partial analytic approach towards solving the nonlinear system and finding the main …

Impact Of Medical Blog Reading And Information Presentation On Readers' Preventative Health Intentions: Mixed Methods, Multistudy Investigation, Kimberly A. Taylor Dnp, Rn, Nea-Bc, Cnor, William F. Humphrey

Publications

Background:

Medical blogs have become valuable information sources for patients and caregivers. Most research has focused on patients’ creation of blogs as therapy. But we know less about how these blogs affect their readers and what format of information influences readers to take preventative health actions.

Objective:

This study aimed to identify how reading patient medical blogs influences readers’ perceived health risk and their intentions to engage in preventative health actions. Further, we aimed to examine the format of the medical blog and the reader’s response.

Methods:

We surveyed 99 university participants and a general-population, online panel of 167 participants. …

Primary Versus Secondary Gravity Wave Responses At F-Region Heights Generated By A Convective Source, C. J. Heale, P. A. Inchin, J. B. Snively

Publications

A 2D nonlinear, compressible model is used to simulate the acoustic-gravity wave (AGW, i.e., encompassing the spectrum of acoustic and gravity waves) response to a thunderstorm squall-line type source. We investigate the primary and secondary neutral AGW response in the thermosphere, consistent with waves that can couple to the F-region ionospheric plasma, and manifest as Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances (TIDs). We find that primary waves at z = 240 km altitude have wavelengths and phase speeds in the range 170–270 km, and 180–320 m/s, respectively. The secondary waves generated have wavelengths ranging from ∼100 to 600 km, and phase speeds from …

Evaluating The Progress Of The Liberalization Of International Aviation Toward Open Skies, Tyler B. Spence, Daniel Friedenzohn, Steven M. Leib

Publications

The United States has engaged in well over 100 Open Skies Agreements with other ICAO member state partners reaching all parts of the globe. These Open Skies Agreements have established a practice of liberalization for airlines to have the most freedom to choose when, where, how often, and for how much they fly to locations. Despite a majority of ICAO member state partners engaging in Open Skies, there has been a reluctance of the member states to engage in the same practices with other aviation partners for similar access. A similar pattern is also evident for liberalization through the Freedoms …

Reduced-Order Dynamic Modeling And Robust Nonlinear Control Of Fluid Flow Velocity Fields, Anu Kossery Jayaprakash, William Mackunis, Vladimir Golubev, Oksana Stalnov

Publications

A robust nonlinear control method is developed for fluid flow velocity tracking, which formally addresses the inherent challenges in practical implementation of closed-loop active flow control systems. A key challenge being addressed here is flow control design to compensate for model parameter variations that can arise from actuator perturbations. The control design is based on a detailed reduced-order model of the actuated flow dynamics, which is rigorously derived to incorporate the inherent time-varying uncertainty in the both the model parameters and the actuator dynamics. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first robust nonlinear closed-loop active flow …

Defining And Detecting Toxicity On Social Media: Context And Knowledge Are Key, Amit Sheth, Valerie Shalin, Ugur Kursuncu

Publications

As the role of online platforms has become increasingly prominent for communication, toxic behaviors, such as cyberbullying and harassment, have been rampant in the last decade. On the other hand, online toxicity is multi-dimensional and sensitive in nature, which makes its detection challenging. As the impact of exposure to online toxicity can lead to serious implications for individuals and communities, reliable models and algorithms are required for detecting and understanding such communications. In this paper We define toxicity to provide a foundation drawing social theories. Then, we provide an approach that identifies multiple dimensions of toxicity and incorporates explicit knowledge …

Advancing The Industrial Sectors Participation In Demand Response Within National Electricity Grids, Alexander Brem, Dominic T.J O'Sullivan, Ken Bruton

Publications

Increasing the level and diversifying the sources of flexible capacity available to transmission system operators will be a pivotal factor for maintaining reliable control of national electricity grids. These response capacities are widely available; however, one area with large capacities that could benefit from advancements is the industrial sector. This sector’s highly regulated nature ensures that structured procedures and thorough investigations are required to implement significant change. This study presents a systematic methodology to effectively categorise assets and evaluate their perceived risk of participation in demand response, allowing industries to present a sustainable portfolio of flexible capacity to the grid. …

Teaching Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion In Aviation Education., Jorge L. D. Albelo Ph.D., Nicola O'Toole

Publications

Over the last decade, many companies have begun to recognize the value of a diverse workforce, equity within the workforce, and inclusion practices. Recent global events have pushed the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the aviation workplace and education higher on the priority list for many. Unfortunately, the aviation industry continues to have difficulty in attracting and retaining a diverse workforce. Notwithstanding this struggle in the industry, those in education must find ways to educate our students on topics relating to DEI. It is critically important that this training is rooted in research. The aviation industry is …

Utilizing Uas To Support Wildlife Hazard Management Efforts By Airport Operators, Flavio A. C. Mendonca, Ryan Wallace

Publications

The FAA requires airports operating under the Code of Federal Regulations Part 139 to conduct a wildlife hazard assessment (WHA) when some wildlife-strike events have occurred at or near the airport. The WHA should be conducted by a Qualified Airport Wildlife Biologist (QAWB) and must contain several elements, including the identification of the wildlife species observed and their numbers; local movements; daily and seasonal occurrences; and the identification and location of features on and near the airport that could attract wildlife. Habitats and land-use practices at and around the airport are key factors affecting wildlife species and the size of …

Civic Homeland Security Culture: A Poll Study Approach And The Example Of Pennsylvania, Alexander Siedschlag

Publications

COVID-19 response experience around the world has demonstrated that it is indispensable to understand the public understanding of, and needs during, risk, hazards, and crisis in public policy, in particular related to the security of society as a whole. The ultimate goal of homeland security and broader civil (or sometimes referred to as societal) security alike, as well as of related security science research, is to accomplish resilient societies through a culture of preparedness. Civic security culture is a necessary ingredient to such a culture of preparedness. The security culture perspective also helps understand how a resilient society and nation …

Catalyst Regeneration Of Rap-Binder In Asphalt, D. Spivak, Subramanian Balamurugan

Publications

Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP) binders are difficult to reuse because they often contain associated/aggregated molecules with very high molecular weights. This is due to the polarity gained during oxidative aging, causing the aggregation to occur. These high molecular weight components are responsible for RAP binder’s increased viscosity and certain deteriorated rheological properties. One strategy to reuse RAP binder is to mix it with virgin asphalt binder and use this partially recycled mixture in asphalt. The RAP binder is usually improved before mixing by the addition of rejuvenators, softening agents, softer binders, and antioxidants to the asphalt binder mix to rebalance …

Smart Battery Management System For Electric Vehicles: Selflearning Algorithms For Simultaneous State And Parameter Estimation, And Stress Detection, Avimanyu Sahoo, Samir Ahmed

Publications

The project proposes to develop parameter-varying SOH-coupled models for lithium-ion battery and self-learning algorithms to learn the model for simultaneous state and parameter estimation and fault detection. The traditional battery models use constant parameters, limiting their accuracy for predicting the state of the charge and health over the complete life-cycle. In practice, the battery parameters vary with the change in the state of charge and state of health. SOH-coupled models can be used to estimate the state of charge and health accurately. Further, obtaining the model parameters is also a challenging task for designing filters or observers for state estimation. …

Statistical Spectral Characteristics Of Three-Dimensional Winds In The Mesopause Region Revealed By The Andes Lidar, Qian Li, Alan Z. Liu, Shao Dong Zhang, Chun Ming Huang, Kai Ming Huang, Yun Gong, Quan Gan, Yan Ying Yan, Hang Liu

Publications

By analyzing data recorded at the Andes Lidar Observatory in Cerro Pachon, Chile (30.3°S, 70.7°W) from May 2014 to July 2019, we investigated the fundamental features of three-dimensional wind and temperature spectra. The vertical wavenumber spectral amplitudes of horizontal winds show obvious seasonal variations that are closely related to the seasonal variations in the source and background winds. The wavenumber spectral slopes of the horizontal winds are systematically less negative than −3, with mean values of −1.96 and −2.18 for zonal and meridional winds, respectively. The zonal and meridional wind frequency spectra have mean slopes of −1.37 and −1.56, respectively; …

Assessing Video Game Satisfaction Of Gamers With Disabilities, Carmen Van Ommen, Barbara Chaparro

Publications

According to a survey conducted by the CDC, it is estimated that 26% of Americans are living with a disability. Of those with disabilities in the United States, it is estimated that 33 million play video games. People with disabilities face many barriers in gaming, which is likely to impact game satisfaction. Measuring game satisfaction among this population can be problematic if the scale is not adapted to their needs, which can vary significantly based on the disability. To understand how best to assess game satisfaction among these populations, we discuss the issues people with cognitive, sensory, and/or motor disabilities …

Developing A Peer Mentorship Program In Human Factors Academia, Emily A. Rickel, Barbara S. Chaparro

Publications

Peer mentorship programs that pair more experienced students (i.e., mentors) with less experienced students (i.e., mentees) can have an effective, positive impact on university students’ personal, academic, and professional outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process and lessons learned in the creation of a peer mentorship program in a Human Factors and Ergonomics (HF/E) academic department. Through a combination of peer networking opportunities and skill development workshops, the mentorship program outlined in this paper aims to promote students’ academic and professional growth. Take-aways that can be utilized by other HF/E academia departments interested in starting or …