Digital Commons Network^™

A Critical Appraisal Of The Roles Of Public Sector Employees In The Provision Of Educational Buildings Under A Public Private Partnership (Ppp) In The Republic Of Ireland, Louis Gunnigan, David Eaton

Conference papers

Public-Private Partnership (PPP) has now become established as a key element in the Irish Government’s strategy in the provision of school buildings. Specific guidelines have been implemented to define the public sector role in a PPP in Ireland and these guidelines represent a significant change in role from those in the traditional schools procurement process. Through a literature review, this paper maps the PPP process and establishes the new tasks that public sector employees must carry out in the adoption of PPP. The new knowledge, skills and competence (KSC) required to carry out these tasks are noted. Whilst existing literature …

A Critical Appraisal Of The Opportunities Currently Available For A More Energy Conscious Approach To Residential Building In Ireland, John Mcdonagh, Louis Gunnigan

Conference papers

This paper focuses on the particular advantages which off-site housing construction has over the more traditional methods of building especially where the efficient use and conservation of energy is concerned. It will explain why modern innovative methods of house construction not only have a clear advantage environmentally (big reductions in CO2 emissions) but also deliver substantial benefits to the end user or householder especially in the form of lower energy bills.

The ecological argument for off-site systems is a very powerful one but on its own is still unlikely to be the prime driver for widespread implementation. That growth is …

Competition And Market Failure In The Antitrust Jurisprudence Of Justice Stevens, Alan J. Meese

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Crime And Punishment In Taxation: Deceit, Deterrence, And The Self-Adjusting Penalty, Alex Raskolnikov

Faculty Scholarship

Avoidance and evasion continue to frustrate the government's efforts to collect much-needed tax revenues. This Article articulates one of the reasons for this lack of success and proposes a new type of penalty that would strengthen tax enforcement while improving efficiency. Economic analysis of deterrence suggests that rational taxpayers choose avoidance and evasion strategies based on expected rather than nominal sanctions. I argue that many taxpayers do just that. Because the probability of detection varies dramatically among different items on a tax return while nominal penalties do not take the likelihood of detection into account, expected penalties for inconspicuous noncompliance …

Grutter At Work: A Title Vii Critique Of Constitutional Affirmative Action, Jessica Bulman-Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

This Note argues that Title VII doctrine both illuminates internal contradictions of Grutter v. Bollinger and provides a framework for reading the opinion. Grutter's diversity rationale is a broad endorsement of integration that hinges on the quantitative concept of critical mass, but the opinion's narrow-tailoring discussion instead points to a model of racial difference that champions subjective decisionmaking and threatens to jettison numerical accountability. Title VII doctrine supports a reading of Grutter that privileges a view of diversity as integration and therefore cautions against the opinion's conception of narrow tailoring. Grutter, in turn, can productively inform employment discrimination law. The …

Centennial Essays: Editors' Introduction, Lori Fisler Damrosch, Bernard H. Oxman

Faculty Scholarship

The first words of the first essay published in our pages pose a challenge as prescient as it is timely:

The increase of popular control over national conduct, which marks the political development of our time, makes it constantly more important that the great body of the people in each country should have a just conception of their international rights and duties.

With this precept in mind, we begin our celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of the American Journal of lnternational Law and its publisher, the American Society of International Law.

The "American" And The "International" In The American Journal Of International Law, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

This essay explores the American and international components of the AJIL's identity, with attention to intellectual agendas as well as to individuals who have influenced the Journal in its first century. Part I asks about "American" and "international" preoccupations in the AJIL's substantive work, foreshadowing some of the themes to be developed in more depth in other essays in this centennial series. What have we understood to fall within the purview of an American journal of international law? Have we represented perspectives on our subject in a specifically American or a broadly international way? Part II looks at …

Rights Myopia In Child Welfare, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

For decades, legal scholars have debated the proper balance of parents' rights and children's rights in the child welfare system. This Article argues that the debate mistakenly privileges rights. Neither parents' rights nor children's rights serve families well because, as implemented, a solely rights-based model of child welfare does not protect the interests of parents or children. Additionally, even if well-implemented, the model still would not serve parents or children because it obscures the important role of poverty in child abuse and neglect and fosters conflict, rather than collaboration, between the state and families. In lieu of a solely rights-based …

Simulated Domain Wall Dynamics In Magnetic Nanowires, Andrew Kunz

Physics Faculty Research and Publications

The simulated domain wall dynamics in rectangular 10 nm thick, 2000 nm long Permalloy wires of varying width is presented. In the absence of an applied field the static domain wall length is found to be linearly dependent to the width of the nanowire. As magnetic fields of increasing strength are applied along the wire’s long axis, the domain wall motion changes from a uniform reversal to a steplike reversal. The onset of the stepping motion leads to a decrease in the domain wall speed. By continuing to increase the field it is possible to decrease the time between steps …

The Paradox Of The Drug Elimination Program In New York City Public Housing, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Garth Davies, Jan Holland

Faculty Scholarship

In this study, we examine the effects of the DEP intervention at three levels of complementary theoretical and practical relevance: the public housing development itself, the neighborhood in which public housing is situated, and the police precinct where the tract is located. From surveys of residents, observations of program activities, and analyses of NYCHA's program records, we compiled detailed information on the components of DEP and the reactions of public housing residents to each type of intervention. We then analyzed panel data from 1985-1996 to estimate the effects of DEP on crime rates in and around the city's public housing …

Inducers And Authorisers: A Comparison Of The Us Supreme Court's Grokster Decision And The Australian Federal Court's Kazaa Ruling, Jane C. Ginsburg, Sam Ricketson

Faculty Scholarship

On June 27, 2005, the US Supreme Court announced its much-awaited decision in MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster Ltd. A few months after this, the Federal Court of Australia handed down its decision at first instance in relation to parallel litigation in that country concerning the KaZaa file sharing system. Both decisions repay careful consideration of the way in which the respective courts have addressed the relationship between the protection of authors' rights and the advent of new technologies, particularly in relation to peer-to-peer networks.

In the Grokster case, songwriters, record producers and motion picture producers alleged that two popular …

Antidiscrimination Law In The Administrative State, Julie C. Suk

Articles

The article argues that antidiscrimination law in the U.S. should shift its focus from corrective justice, which addresses individual wrongs, to distributive justice, which aims to eradicate systemic inequalities and promote equal opportunities. This shift would require enhancing the role of administrative agencies, such as the EEOC, to enforce antidiscrimination laws more effectively through proactive regulation and rulemaking. The article draws on the British model, where administrative agencies have stronger enforcement powers, to suggest reforms for the EEOC.

The Media As Participants In The International Legal Process, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

We know what we know about current international events through the media. The media (with their instantaneous transmission of images and sound across great distances) inform us of everything from the train bombings in Madrid and London, to human rights abuses in Darfur, to the fall of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Yet the media do not simply communicate raw information; they selectively filter, define and give shape to the events that they cover — in terms of what is happening, whether it is appropriate, and how relevant international actors should and do respond. The media thus are the nerves of the …

Femtosecond Laser Ablation With Single And Two-Photon Excitation For Mems, Mohamed Abdelfattah Kottb Ahmad Elbandrawy

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

There is an increasing interest in femtosecond laser micromachining of materials because of the femtosecond laser's unique high peak power, ultrashort pulse width, negligible heat conductivity process during the laser pulse, and the minimal heat affected zone, which is in the same order of magnitude of the ablated submicron spot. There are some obstacles in reaching optimal and reliable micromachining parameters. One of these obstacles is the lack of understanding of the nature of the interaction and related physical processes. These processes include amorphization, melting, re-crystallization, nucleated-vaporization, and ablation.

The focus of this Dissertation was to study the laser-matter interaction …

Automatic Speech Recognition Using Lp-Dctc/Dcs Analysis Followed By Morphological Filtering, Penny Hix

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Front-end feature extraction techniques have long been a critical component in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). Nonlinear filtering techniques are becoming increasingly important in this application, and are often better than linear filters at removing noise without distorting speech features. However, design and analysis of nonlinear filters are more difficult than for linear filters. Mathematical morphology, which creates filters based on shape and size characteristics, is a design structure for nonlinear filters. These filters are limited to minimum and maximum operations that introduce a deterministic bias into filtered signals.

This work develops filtering structures based on a mathematical morphology that utilizes …

On The Applicability Of The Silica Mdl Proceeding To Asbestos Litigation, Lester Brickman

Articles

The article argues that the findings from the silica multidistrict litigation (MDL), presided over by U.S. District Court Judge Janis Jack, have significant implications for understanding the fraudulent practices in asbestos litigation. The author contends that both silica and asbestos litigations share a common "entrepreneurial model" where a small group of doctors and screening companies generate specious claims for financial gain, often without proper medical oversight. Judge Jack's findings in the silica MDL, which revealed widespread fraud and manipulation of medical diagnoses, corroborate the author's long-standing critique of asbestos litigation practices.

Public Law Limitations On Privatization Of Government Functions, Paul R. Verkuil

Articles

The privatization movement is on the verge of succeeding too well. The fact that some of what government does can be done better and cheaper by the private sector has gained such momentum that the public sector is sometimes seen as redundant or irrelevant. But the economist's make-or-buy choice simply fails to capture the full range of responsibilities that government faces in deciding whether to outsource a particular function to private contractors.

This Article illuminates the public dimension of government functions. By exploring the public-private distinction and relating it to constitutional, statutory, and administrative requirements, it structures an argument that …

On Doubly Periodic Solutions Of Quasilinear Hyperbolic Equations Of The Fourth Order, T. Kiguradze, T. Smith

Publications

The problem on doubly periodic solutions is considered for a class of quasilinear hyperbolic equations. Effective sufficient conditions of solvability and unique solvability of this problem are established.

Book Review: Digital Crime And Forensic Science In Cyberspace, Gary C. Kessler

Publications

This document is Dr. Kessler's review of Digital Crime and Forensic Science in Cyberspace, by P. Kanellis, E. Kiountouzis, N. Kolokotronis, and D. Martakos. Idea Group Publishing, 2006. ISBN: 1-59140-873-3.

The White Dwarf Luminosity Function From Sloan Digital Sky Survey Imaging Data, Hugh C. Harris, Jeffrey A. Munn, Mukremin Kilic, James W. Liebert, Kurtis A. Williams, Ted Von Hippel, Stephen E. Levine, David G. Monet, Daniel J. Eisenstein, S. J. Kleinman, T. S. Metcalfe, Atsuko Nikka, D. E. Winget, J. Brinkmann, Masataka Fukugita, G. R. Knapp, Robert H. Lupton, J. Allyn Smith, Donald P. Schneider

Publications

A sample of white dwarfs is selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 3 using their reduced proper motions, based on improved proper motions from combined SDSS and USNO-B data. Numerous SDSS and follow-up spectra (Kilic and coworkers) are used to quantify completeness and contamination of the sample; kinematicsmodels are used to understand and correct for velocity-dependent selection biases.A luminosity function is constructed covering the range 7 < Mbol < 16, and its sensitivity to various assumptions and selection limits is discussed. The white dwarf luminosity function based on 6000 stars is remarkably smooth and rises nearly monotonically to Mbol=15.3. It then drops abruptly, although the small number of low-luminosity stars in the sample and their unknown atmospheric composition prevent quantitative conclusions about this decline. Stars …

Cool White Dwarfs In The Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Mukremin Kilic, Jeffrey A. Munn, Hugh C. Harris, James W. Liebert, Ted Von Hippel, Kurtis A. Williams, Travis S. Metcalfe, D. E. Winget, Stephen E. Levine

Publications

A reduced proper motion diagram utilizing Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) photometry and astrometry and USNO-B plate astrometry is used to separate cool white dwarf candidates from metal-weak, high-velocity, mainsequence Population II stars (subdwarfs) in the SDSS Data Release 2 imaging area. Follow-up spectroscopy using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, the MMT, and the McDonald 2.7 m telescope is used to demonstrate that the white dwarf and subdwarf loci separate cleanly in the reduced proper motion diagram and that the contamination by subdwarfs is small near the cool white dwarf locus. This enables large, statistically complete samples of white dwarfs, particularly the …

Processing And Characterization Of High Performance Structural Nanocomposites, Dennis C. Working

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Carbon nanotubes are considered to be a revolutionary material breakthrough due to their unique combination of properties. While many applications for SWCNTs have been projected, realization of these potential uses have been hampered by the high cost of limited supplies of high quality SWCNTs and the difficulty in the development of a suitable processing method that does not damage the filler thus diminishing the desirable properties of this material. In spite of these technical challenges, their potential to enable the fabrication of multifunctional materials is being investigated in earnest. The goal of this thesis is to investigate the feasibility of …

A Robust Reactive Scheduling System With Application To Parallel Machine Scheduling, Jean-Paul M. Arnaout

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In this turbulent world, scheduling role has become crucial in most manufacturing production, and service systems. It allows the allocation of limited resources to activities with the objective of optimizing one performance measure or more. Resources may be machines in a factory, operating rooms in a hospital, or employees in a company, while activities can be jobs in a manufacturing plant, surgeries in a hospital, or paper work in a company. The goal of each schedule is to optimize some performance measures, which could be the minimization of the schedule makespan, the jobs' completion times, jobs' earliness and tardiness, among …

Assimilating Non-Probabilistic Assessments Of The Estimation Of Uncertainty Bias In Expert Judgment Elicitation Using An Evidence Based Approach In High Consequence Conceptual Designs, Colin K. S. Barrows

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

One of the major challenges in conceptual designs of complex systems is the identification of uncertainty embedded in the information due to lack of historic data. This becomes of increased concern especially in high-risk industries. This document reports a developed methodology that allows for the cognitive bias, estimation of uncertainty, to be elucidated to improve the quality of elicited data. It consists of a comprehensive literature review that begins by defining a 'High Consequence Conceptual Engineering Environment' and identifies the high-risk industries in which these environments are found. It proceeds with a discussion that differentiates risk and uncertainty in decision-making …

A Dyadic Composition To Foster Virtual Team Effectiveness: An Experimental Study, Gamze Karayaz

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The importance of effectiveness for virtual teamwork continues to gain momentum as technology and globalization of work accelerate. The implementation of virtual teams provides one approach to enhance competitiveness, overcoming the disadvantages of space and time differences through collaborative technologies. The influence of structure to virtual team performance has not been clearly established in the literature. The purpose of this research study was to investigate the effectiveness of a dyad structured approach for virtual teams using a quasi-experimental research design.

This research investigated four questions related to the influence of structure on virtual team effectiveness related to task performance, communication …

Effects Of Elevated Atmospheric Co₂ On Scrub-Oak Root Carbon Pools And Soil Microbial Processes, Alisha Lea Pagel Brown

Biological Sciences Theses & Dissertations

The levels of atmospheric CO₂ are rising and this affects the growth of plants and the ecosystems in which they reside. Plants take up additional C from the atmosphere and have potential to sequester C in the soil. I investigated the sequestration of C belowground and the microbial processes that control C retention in the soil. This study was conducted in a Florida scrub-oak ecosystem, where CO₂ levels have been elevated to twice ambient since 1996 in open top chambers. There were eight replicates of ambient CO₂ chambers and eight replicates of twice-ambient CO₂ levels. The …

Stability Analysis Of Hybrid Jump Linear Systems With Markov Inputs, Arturo Tejada Ruiz

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In the past two decades, the number of applications that make use of supervisory algorithms to control complex continuous-time or discrete-time systems has increased steadily. Typical examples include air traffic management, digital control systems over networks, and flexible manufacturing systems. A common feature of these applications is the intermixing of the continuous dynamics of the controlled plant with the logical and discrete dynamics of the supervising algorithms. These so-called hybrid systems are the focus of much ongoing research. To improve the performance of these systems, it is important to analyze the interactions between the supervising algorithms and the plant. Few …

The Use Of Proteomic Technologies To Identify Serum Glycoproteins For The Early Detection Of Liver And Prostate Cancers, Elizabeth Ellen Schwegler

Theses and Dissertations in Biomedical Sciences

The application of proteomic technologies to identify serum glycoproteins is an emerging technique to identify new biomarkers indicative of disease severity. Many of these newly evolving protein-profiling methodologies have evolved from previous global protein expression profiling studies such as those involving SELDI-TOF-MS technologies. Though the SELDI approach could distinguish disease from normal by utilizing protein patterns as shown herein with the HCC study of chapter II, it was unable to offer sequence information on the selected peaks, and did not have the ability to analyze the entire dynamic range of the serum/plasma proteome. To address these deficiencies, new strategies that …

Diverse Effects Of Nanosecond Pulsed Electric Fields On Mammalian Cells, Jody Anne White

Theses and Dissertations in Biomedical Sciences

The continuing effort to manipulate cell-signaling pathways for therapeutic benefit has lead to the exploration of electric field effects on cells. Current electric field applications include electroporation of the plasma membrane for introduction of drugs, genes, or other macromolecules into cells. Modeling of how these pulsed electric fields affect cells depicts the cell as an excitable circuit. In this model, the electric fields, administered in short pulses to a cell, charge the plasma and internal membranes, which act as dielectric layers, and between these the cytoplasm acts as a conductive medium. The pulse lengths of this treatment are traditionally in …

The Politics And Economics Of Health: A Cross-National Comparison Of Civic Engagement And Health Status, Suzanne J. Wood

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

Over the past two decades, various structural modifications associated with the provision of national health and its systems have been undertaken. The preponderance of liberalization experiences have occurred in the absence of epidemiological, political, or social considerations associated with adoption and implementation. Often, financial and political manipulation by international organizations and powerful foreign governments has served as the impetus for fundamental shifts leading to an asymmetrical distribution of resources by population density, geography, and along various socio-cultural boundaries. Consequently, structural adjustments have resulted in unpredictable and divergent outcomes with regard to health status. The question of whether or not health …