Digital Commons Network^™

Voronoi Cells, Fractal Dimensions And Fibre Composites, J. Summerscales, F. J. Guild, N. R.L. Pearce, P. M. Russell

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Is International Bankruptcy Possible?, Frederick Tung

Faculty Scholarship

Although international business firms proliferate, there is no international bankruptcy system. Instead, bankruptcy law remains a matter for individual states. The failure of a multinational firm therefore raises difficult questions of conflict and cooperation among national bankruptcy laws. In the discourse over the appropriate design for an international bankruptcy system, universalism has long held sway as the dominant idea, embraced nearly universally by bankruptcy scholars. Universalism offers a simple and elegant blueprint for international bankruptcy. Under universalism, the bankruptcy regime of the debtor firm's home country would govern worldwide, enjoying global reach to treat all of the debtor's assets and …

Outrelativizing Relativism: A Liberal Defense Of The Universality Of International Human Rights, Robert D. Sloane

Faculty Scholarship

This Article seeks to provide a new framework, rooted in classical liberalism, for understanding and defending the universality of international human rights. After reviewing the philosophical and historical development of the idea of universality, I argue in Part II that none of the traditional justifications for conceiving of international human rights as universal succeed. Cultural pluralism therefore must be accepted as a descriptive truth. But to acknowledge the cultural contingency of values as a descriptive claim does not, by itself, undermine the normative claim that human rights are, or should be, universal. Instead, it points to the need to justify …

The Theory Of Tort Doctrine And The Restatement Of Torts, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

The lack of detailed implications and general failure to come to grips with important features of tort doctrine have been substantial shortcomings in the dominant positive theory framework of Holmes and Posner. I extend the dominant framework below to enable it to justify various intentional tort doctrines, and the specific form and allocation of strict liability rules within tort law. After developing the positive framework, I apply it to the Restatement (Third) of Tort Law. The theory explains many of the detailed provisions and commentary of the Restatement, and identifies one area in which the Restatement (Third) seems inconsistent with …

The Delaware Business Trust Act Failure As The New Corporate Law, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

The Internet transcends boundaries and time, reduces and shifts the cost of receiving and disseminating information. It poses unusual pressures of change on the common law. Internet jurisprudence demonstrates the vitality of the common law, yet highlighted its limitations. The Article describes how the common law addresses Internet issues and the relationship of judicial cases and congressional actions. The Article praises common law system of "muddling through," evolving piecemeal, addressing particular conflicts, not always uniformly nor predictably. This is lawmaking for the risk-averse, reducing the risk and cost of correcting big mistakes. The price: higher learning costs and fewer clear, …

Copyright Law And Price Discrimination, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

I show that copyright law is intimately connected to price discrimination. First, price discrimination is common in markets for copyrighted works. Second, many features of copyright law affect resale or personal arbitrage and so influence the profitability of price discrimination. For example, the first sale doctrine and the fair use doctrine often facilitate arbitrage and discourage discrimination, while the derivative and public performance rights impede arbitrage and promote discrimination. Third, optimal copyright policy requires attention to the social costs and benefits from price discrimination.

I use models of price discrimination to unify the analysis of a wide range of copyright …

Party As A "Political Safeguard Of Federalism": Martin Van Buren And The Constitutional Theory Of Party Politics, Gerald F. Leonard

Faculty Scholarship

In the last decade or so, the Supreme Court has revitalized judicial enforcement of federalism. This development has spurred the partisans of Herbert Wechsler's "political safeguards of federalism" to begin a serious investigation of the ways in which extra-judicial politics can and does substitute for and complement the judicial role in enforcing federalism and the Constitution. Similarly, constitutional scholars have turned in increasing numbers to the question of how even judicially promulgated doctrines of constitutional law turn out to be more derivative of popular politics than vice versa. Necessarily, much of the investigation on both fronts has turned historical and …

Of Theory And Practice, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

Much has been written about theory and practice in the law, and the tension between practitioners and theorists. Judges do not cite theoretical articles often; they rarely "apply" theories to particular cases. These arguments are not revisited. Instead the Essay explores the working and interaction of theory and practice, practitioners and theorists.

The Essay starts with a story about solving a legal issue using our intellectual tools - theory, practice, and their progenies: experience and "gut." Next the Essay elaborates on the nature of theory, practice, experience and "gut." The third part of the Essay discusses theories that are helpful …

Rape, Murder, And Formalism: What Happens If We Define Mistake Of Law?, Gerald F. Leonard

Faculty Scholarship

The criminal law maxim "ignorance of the law is no excuse" represents a broad doctrine of strict liability in an area of law that usually insists on a culpable state of mind as a prerequisite for liability. For that reason, many scholars have attacked the harsh mistake-of-law rules as incompatible with basic principles of culpability. Other scholars have come to the defense of the maxim, and courts have adhered to it quite strongly even as the list of exceptions to the maxim has slowly grown. Oddly enough, however, this debate has proceeded without a definition of mistake of law. Distinguishing …

Tying Law And Policy: A Decision-Theoretic Approach, Keith N. Hylton, Michael Salinger

Faculty Scholarship

This paper offers a decision theoretic framework for analyzing tying law, and presents a critical assessment of post-Chicago tying theory. The decision theoretic framework takes into account the likelihood of judicial error in the application of rules and the costs of such error. We use the decision theoretic framework to assess the proper legal rules regarding tying and technological integration. Three general themes run throughout much of our analysis. First, the per se rule against tying simply has no economic foundation. Second, while the post-Chicago literature established the theoretical possibility of anticompetitive tying, one must know the frequency of anticompetitive …

When Did The Constitution Become Law?, Gary S. Lawson, Guy Seidman

Faculty Scholarship

Conventional wisdom and Supreme Court doctrine hold that the federal Constitution became legally effective on March 4, 1789, when the first session of Congress began. This conclusion is wrong, or at least seriously incomplete. Evidence from the Constitution, its adoption, and contemporaneous understandings reflected in treaties, statutes, and state constitutions demonstrates that the Constitution did not have a single effective date. Instead, different parts of the Constitution took effect in stages, beginning on June 21, 1788, when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the document, and continuing at least until April 30, 1789, when President Washington was sworn …

Epidemiological Features Of Aplastic Anaemia In Pakistan, Salman Adil, G. N. Kakepoto, Mohammad Khurshid, I. A. Burney

Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

Objective: To complete the data on the demographic features of patients diagnosed to have aplastic anemia at a single institution over a 7.5 years period. Methods: Demographic information was retrieved from the patients medical records retrospectively as well as prospectively of those patients who presented with features of aplastic anaemia. Their diagnosis was confirmed by performing a complete blood count and bone marrow trephine.
Results: One hundred and forty four patients were diagnosed to have aplastic anemia; there were 106 males and 38 females. Their ages ranged from 2 to 75 years, with a median of 17 years, …

Impaired Splenic Function In Systemic Amyloidosis: Diagnostic Importance Of Peripheral Blood Film, F. Bilwani, Salman Adil, G. N. Kakepoto, Mohammad Khurshid, A. Ahmed

Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

We describe case of a 40 year old male, who went on to developed systemic amyloidosis 3 years after the diagnosis of chronic renal failure. The diagnosis of systemic amyloidosis was suspected upon a routine examination of periheral blood film showing features of hyposlenism. We would like to highlight the importance of examination of pheripheral blood film in patients with renal failure for the diagnosis of extensive systemic amyloidosis which occasionally leads to functional hyposplenism, recognized by the presence of abnormal red cell morphology and reduced splenic uptake on isotope scan¹.

The Relationship Between Workplace Absenteeism And Alcohol Use: A Day-To-Day Examination, Susan Kay Mcfarlin

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This investigation examined the conditional day-to-day relationship between alcohol use and workplace absenteeism among participants (N = 302) employed full-time in one of three large companies located in the northeastern U.S. Semi-structured interviews were used to gather information from employees on their daily use of alcohol and other drugs during a 1-month period. Employees' absenteeism and work injury data during the same target time period were gathered from personnel files residing in the companies' human resources departments. The presence of a current alcohol use disorder also was determined. The following primary hypotheses were tested: (a) there would be a …

Mathematical Models Of Quiescent Solar Prominences, Iain Mckaig

Mathematics & Statistics Theses & Dissertations

Magnetic fields in the solar atmosphere suspend and insulate dense regions of cool plasma known as prominences. The convection zone may be the mechanism that both generates and expels this magnetic flux through the photosphere in order to make these formations possible. The connection is examined here by modeling the convection zone as both one-dimensional, then more realistically, two-dimensional.

First a Dirichlet problem on a semi-infinite strip is solved using conformal mapping and the method of images. The base of the strip represents the photosphere where a current distribution can be given as a boundary condition, and the strip extends …

Ensemble Monte Carlo Based Simulation Analysis Of Gan Hemts For High-Power Microwave Device Applications, Tao Li

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) fabricated using wide-bandgap semiconductors show promise as high-gain, low-noise devices with superior frequency response. The structure and operation principle of HEMT are first briefly discussed. The distinguishing and unique properties of GaN are reviewed and compared with those of GaAs. Calculations of the electronic mobility and drift velocity have been carried out for bulk GaN based on a Monte Carlo approach, which serves as a validity check for the simulation model.

By taking account of polarization effects, degeneracy and interface roughness scattering, important microwave performance measures such as the dynamic range, harmonic distortion and …

External Memory Algorithms For Factoring Sparse Matrices, Florin Dobrian

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

We consider the factorization of sparse symmetric matrices in the context of a two-layer storage system: disk/core. When the core is sufficiently large the factorization can be performed in-core. In this case we must read the input, compute, and write the output, in this sequence. On the other hand, when the core is not large enough, the factorization becomes out-of-core, which means that data movement and computation must be interleaved.

We identify two major out-of-core factorization scenarios: read-once/write-once (R1/W1) and read-many/write-many (RM/WM). The former requires minimum traffic, exactly as much as the in-core factorization: reading the input and writing the …

Evaluation Of A Distance Learning Program For The Preparation Of Special Education Teachers, Tami Seifert

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Services - Urban Education

The primary purpose of this research was to evaluate the efficacy of the distance learning Commonwealth Special Education Endorsement Program (CSEEP) delivered by Old Dominion University. The CSEEP program was designed to address economic and geographic barriers confronting teachers seeking to complete requirements for endorsement in special education, improve the quality of education teachers, help reduce the shortage of fully licensed special education teachers, and increase teacher retention in special education.

This evaluation was designed to assess program results, examine the effectiveness of the program, and determine the impact on both the participants and the schools, and identify ways to …

Measurement Of Virtual Compton Scattering Below Pion Threshold At Invariant Four-Momentum Transfer Squared Q²=1.(Gev/C)², Christopher Jutier

Physics Theses & Dissertations

Experimental Virtual Compton Scattering (VCS) off the proton is a new tool to access the Generalized Polarizabilities (GPs) of the proton that parameterize the response of the proton to an electromagnetic perturbation. The Q² dependence of the GPs leads, by Fourier transform, to a description of the rearrangement of the charge and magnetization distributions. The VCS reaction γ* + p → p + γ was experimentally accessed through the reaction e + p → e + p + γ of electroproduction of photons off a cryogenic liquid Hydrogen target. Data were collected in Hall A at Jefferson Lab between …

Clinical Process Related To Outcome In Psychodynamic Psychotherapy For Panic Disorder, Cara F. Klein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study identified psychotherapeutic processes that relate meaningfully to psychotherapeutic outcome for patients with panic disorder undergoing Panic-Focused Psychodynamic Psychotherapy ([PFPP]; Milrod, Busch, Cooper, & Shapiro, 1997). Subjects were 21 patients who participated in an open clinical trial of PFPP (Milrod et al., in press; Milrod et al., 2000). Patients received 24 sessions over approximately 12 weeks. Each patient was diagnostically screened by an independent evaluator and completed a battery of outcome assessments at baseline, termination and 6-month follow up.

The present study utilized two process measures: the Interactive Process Assessment ([IPA]; Klein, Milrod, Busch, 1999), developed specifically to identify …

Private 'I'S: Investigating Men's Experiences With Pornographies, Michael Charles Putnam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This presentation of original research on men's experiences with pornography draws on various theoretical approaches, including the social construction of gender and sexualities, pro-feminist men's studies, queer theory, and cultural studies. The research consists of lengthy, qualitative interviews with 64 pornography fans in the New York metropolitan area. The purpose of the study was to describe men's experiences with pornography and to test the hypothesis that the current literature on pornography does not represent their experience. The impetus for this argument is that there is a vast literature on pornography, but no data on the experiences of bisexual, gay, and …

The Police Officer As Survivor: The Psychological Impact Of Exposure To Death In Contemporary Urban Policing, Vincent E. Henry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

All human encounters with death, whether they involve a casual contact with the death of another person or the realistic threat of one's own demise, have important psychological consequences that result in new modes of adaptation, thought and feeling. In the course of their duties, contemporary urban police officers frequently encounter the deaths of others and some participate in mortal combat situations that credibly threaten their own lives. The psychological dimensions of police officers' professional exposures to the deaths of others are to a large extent shaped by the specific duties and responsibilities prescribed by their formal task environment, while …

L1 Lexical, Morphological And Morphosyntactic Attrition In Greek-English Bilinguals, Linda Ann Pelc

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigated first language attrition in Greek-English bilinguals. Three areas of attrition were identified and tested in grammaticality judgment tasks. They include the lexical, morpholexical and morphosyntactic domains of Greek. Rejection of Greek grammatical sentences and acceptance of English grammatical sentences characterize the attrited state of these bilinguals.

The first area of attrition involves metaphorical senses of perno, 'take,' and spazo, 'break.' These verbs were chosen for this study because of the wide range of senses or meanings associated with them. As predicted, metaphorical senses were found to be vulnerable to attrition.

Another form of lexical attrition comprises opaque …

The Influence Of Family And Community Ties On The Demand For Home Equity Conversion Mortgages, Kenneth Allen Knapp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Reverse mortgages are loans against home equity that do not have to be repaid until the borrower moves, sells the home, or dies. The loans generally are available only to older homeowners, usually aged 62 or over. This paper explores whether demand for reverse mortgages is influenced by the strength of area’s family and community ties. One type of reverse mortgage is analyzed: the FHA-insured Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM). Several researchers have estimated the potential demand for reverse mortgages. To my knowledge, this is the first study of how actual demand may be determined, and of how it may …

Mothers Of Sexually Abused Children And The Concept Of Collusion, Patricia A. Joyce

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study reports the perspectives of clinical social workers on the mothers of sexually abused children whom they saw for treatment. The subjects were 15 masters-level social workers in an urban child treatment program. The study used qualitative methods based on grounded theory to examine professionals' social constructions of mothers of sexually abused children. The child's disclosure of incest provided the study's conceptual focus, since historically professionals constructed the "collusive mother," even though prior empirical research never supported maternal collusion or culpability for incest.

Respondents were interviewed for approximately one hour using a semi-structured interview guide; nearly one hundred hours …

Crime Legends In Old And New Media, Pamela Donovan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project explores the contemporary meanings and persistence of the "crime legend." A case study approach was used: three crime legends with a considerable history of public debunking were chosen. These cases were: the market in snuff films, the theft of vital organs for black-market transplant, and the abduction of children from theme park restrooms. Current versions circulating in Internet newsgroups and via electronic mail lists were collected. Discussions in Internet newsgroups were examined and twenty regular newsgroup participants were interviewed. The public newsgroup communication environment is such that salience is established by the interlocutors themselves, rather than by the …

Auditing Multiemployer Plans, American Institute Of Certified Public Accountants. Accounting And Auditing Publications Team

Guides, Handbooks and Manuals

No abstract provided.

Risk Management : A Cpa's Toolkit For A Changing Environment, Anthony E. Davis, Marcia Gordon, Robert H. Spencer

Guides, Handbooks and Manuals

No abstract provided.

Checklists And Illustrative Financial Statements For Defined Benefit Pension Plans : A Financial Accounting And Reporting Practice Aid, July 2001 Edition, American Institute Of Certified Public Accountants. Accounting And Auditing Publications, Linda Delahanty

Industry Guides (AAGs), Risk Alerts, and Checklists

No abstract provided.

Checklist Supplement And Illustrative Financial Statements For Investment Companies : A Financial Accounting And Reporting Practice Aid, December 2001 Edition, American Institute Of Certified Public Accountants. Accounting And Auditing Publications, Maryann Kasica

Industry Guides (AAGs), Risk Alerts, and Checklists

No abstract provided.