Digital Commons Network^™

A Hidden Markov Model For Alphabet-Soup Word Recognition, Shaolei Feng, Nicholas Howe, R. Manmatha

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

Recent work on the “alphabet soup” paradigm has demonstrated effective segmentation-free character-based recognition of cursive handwritten historical text documents. The approach first uses a joint boosting technique to detect potential characters - the alphabet soup. A second stage uses a dynamic programming algorithm to recover the correct sequence of characters. Despite experimental success, the ad hoc dynamic programming method previously lacked theoretical justification. This paper puts the method on a sounder footing by recasting the dynamic programming as inference on an ensemble of hidden Markov models (HMMs). Although some work has questioned the use of score outputs from classifiers like …

The Endangered Species Act: A New Avenue For Climate Change Litigation?, Sarah J. Morath

Akron Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

On-Line Distributed Traffic Grooming, R. Jordan Crouser, Brian Rice, Adrian Sampson, Ran Libeskind-Hadas

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

This paper addresses the problem of on-line traffic grooming in WDM paths. Each request consists of a source node, a destination node, and the desired bandwidth for the connection. Connections may be multi-hop, permitting the use of multiple lightpaths. We describe a new distributed on-line algorithm for this problem that is provably wide-sense non-blocking under cer- tain assumptions. Moreover, we use simulations to demonstrate that the algorithm is extremely effective even when some of these assumptions are relaxed.

The Uniform Trust Code: An Analysis Of Ohio's Version, Alan Newman

Akron Law Faculty Publications

THE UNIFORM TRUST CODE: AN ANALYSIS OF OHIO'S VERSION

The Uniform Trust Code (UTC), which was promulgated in 2000, is the first national codification of the law of trusts. It has been adopted, with modifications, in 19 jurisdictions and is under consideration for adoption in many others. The Ohio Trust Code (OTC), which includes many significant modifications from the UTC, was enacted in June 2006, with an effective date of January 1, 2007.

The OTC is the product of extensive study of the UTC by a joint committee of members of the Estate Planning, Trust, and Probate Law Section of …

Continence Care: The Need For Creativity And Innovation, Karen A. Karlowicz

Ellmer School of Nursing Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) In April 2007, I attended a conference quite different from anything I had previously experienced. The conference, Innovating for Continence: The Engineering Challenge, was hosted by the Simon Foundation for Continence. As the title implies, this was not your usual conference about the diagnosis, treatment, and management of urinary incontinence. Rather, it was a conference dedicated to exploring technological advances in continence care. The central question throughout this two-and-a-half day event was, "What can be done to simulate continence technology to ensure the most effective management for persons who suffer with this problem?"

Presenca De Dentes Permanentes Irrompidos Em Escolares Da Regiao Metropolitana De Porto Alegre, Karine Squeff, Guilherme Pessoa Cerveira, Luciane Quadrado Closs, Jose A. Bosio

School of Dentistry Faculty Research and Publications

Foi realizada uma pesquisa de campo em duas escolas da rede pública estadual de Porto Alegre, com a finalidade de verificar a presença de dentes permanentes irrompidos em crianças com faixa etária entre seis a dez anos. Foram examinadas 327 crianças, considerando as variáveis de idade, sexo e raça. Não foi observada diferença significativa para a época de erupção para as variáveis de raça e sexo. Foi observado que aos seis anos de idade uma porcentagem maior de incisivos inferiores (78,7%) irrompeu antes que os primeiros molares inferiores (75,9%), assim como a erupção na arcada inferior antecedeu a da arcada …

Friends As Fiduciaries, Ethan J. Leib

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that the law of fiduciary duties provides a good framework for friends to understand their duties to one another better, gives courts a useful set of rhetorical and analytical tools to employ when they are forced to entertain disputes that arise between close friends, and, finally, can help direct courts to furnish betrayed friends certain kinds of remedies that are most appropriate for achieving justice within that dispute context. This is not the first Article to make an effort to expand the reach of the fiduciary concept into new sorts of relationships that are not always considered …

Punishing Family Status , Jennifer M. Collins, Ethan J. Leib, Dan Markel

Faculty Scholarship

This Article focuses upon two basic but under-explored questions: when does, and when should, the state use the criminal justice apparatus to burden individuals on account of their familial status? We address the first question in Part I by revealing a variety of laws permeating the criminal justice system that together form a string of family ties burdens, laws that impose punishment upon individuals on account of their familial status. The seven burdens we train our attention upon are omissions liability for failure to rescue, parental responsibility laws, incest, bigamy, adultery, nonpayment of child support, and nonpayment of parental support. …

Liberal Justices' Reliance On Legislative History, James J. Brudney, Corey Distlear

Faculty Scholarship

This Article presents a strong case against the conventional wisdom that legislative history is a "politicized'" resource, invoked opportunistically by federal judges. The premise that judges regularly rely on legislative history to promote their preferred policy positions-if true-should find ample support in the majority opinions of liberal Supreme Court Justices construing liberal (pro-employee) labor and civil rights statutes. By analyzing all 320-plus majority opinions in workplace law authored by eight liberal Justices from 1969-2006, the authors establish that legislative history reliance is actually associated with a constraining set of results. When the eight liberal Justices use legislative history as part …

Editorial

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

The Dervishes Dance — The Sacred Ritual Of Love, Jale Erzen

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In the Sufi Way, the experience of the world and its perception is aesthetic in an ecstatic fashion. The awareness of the overpowering beauty of the world fills the heart with love and opens the mind to cosmic relations. The integration of reason, form-making, and imagining, along with yielding the body and mind to the powers of the earth, is a total aesthetic in Sufism.

In the Islamic world, humans' movement, the way they understand the process of time and space, depends on nature and parallels the cosmic order and the basic underlying forms that are found in nature. They …

The Aesthetics Of Trademarks, Peter H. Karlen

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Trademarks are not just property, they are aesthetic creations that pervade everyday experience. One estimate is that the average person encounters more than 1,000 trademarks per day, many of which influence purchases and product use.

As pervasive aesthetic creations having literary, pictorial, graphic, sculptural, and musical content, trademarks deserve aesthetic analysis. The article discusses the origins, strength, appeal, and effectiveness of trademarks within the context of aesthetic considerations such as meaning, intention, authorship, and mode of creation. Also reviewed are morphemic and phonemic analysis of trademarks, semantic positioning, the dichotomy between creation and discovery of trademarks, and the differences between …

Questioning "The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction": A Stroll Around The Louvre After Reading Benjamin0, Jonathan Davis

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In this article I claim that Walter Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" merits renewed critical attention. Just as Dada had confronted art with anti-art, so Benjamin hoped his essay would confront aesthetics with an anti-aesthetic. I examine Benjamin's capsule history of the aura and show it to be misleading, criticize the essay's underdeveloped ontology of painting and sketch an alternative, and draw attention to the surprising proximity of Benjamin's notion of value to that of neoliberal thought. I conclude with a critique of Benjamin's cultural politics.

Definition Of Videogames, Grant Tavinor

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Can videogames be defined? The new field of games studies has generated three somewhat competing models of videogaming that characterize games as new forms of gaming, narratives, and interactive fictions. When treated as necessary and sufficient condition definitions, however, each of the three approaches fails to pick out all and only videogames. In this paper I argue that looking more closely at the formal qualities of definition helps to set out the range of definitional options open to the games theorist. A disjunctive definition of videogaming seems the most appropriate of these definitional options. The disjunctive definition I offer here …

Danto And Art Criticism, Cynthia Freeland

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In this article I examine the relationship between Arthur Danto's philosophy of art and his practice of art criticism. Danto has said that he included many actual examples of discussions of art in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace because of the feeling that, previously, philosophers had theorized about art in a vacuum. And since the time of publishing that book, he has written on a wide variety of both historical and contemporary artists and art practices. Danto's philosophy of art commits him to an account of the practice of art criticism as interpretation. However, I question whether the Danto-esque interpretive …

Thinking About Leaving? The Ethics Of Departing One Firm For Another, John P. Sahl

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This article examines the ethical and professional responsibilities of lawyers who are considering leaving one law firm to join another. John P. Sahl explores the legal and ethical implications surrounding client notification, client choice, conflicts of interest, and the handling of firm property and confidential information. The piece offers guidance on how to navigate the delicate balance between the departing lawyer’s rights and duties, the interests of the law firm, and the paramount concern for clients’ rights. Drawing from case law, ethics opinions, and professional conduct rules, the article highlights best practices for minimizing disputes and protecting all parties during …

Stone Soup: Thoughts On Balancing A Deanship And Family Life After Twelve Years As Dean, Richard L. Aynes

Akron Law Faculty Publications

JUNE 30, 2007 marked the conclusion of my twelve-year service as Dean of the University of Akron School of Law. During that time the University of Toledo Law Review initiated its very successful “Leadership in Legal Education Symposium” and I benefited from reading articles in the prior symposia. It was inspiring to read about the efforts, thoughts, concerns, and accomplishments of fellow deans. Sometimes those essays gave me reassurance, raised my curiosity, provided new ideas, gave me an opportunity to think about old matters from a different perspective, and even prompted healthy disagreement.

Having benefited from the contributions of other …

Analyzing The Schizoid Agency: Achieving The Proper Balance In Enforcing The Internal Revenue Code, Richard L. Lavoie

Akron Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ebay's Practical Effect: Two Differing Visions, Jay Dratler

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This short paper examines the likely effect of the Court's three opinions on the actual practice of intellectual property cases in their remedial phase. The first part briefly discusses the unanimous opinion and its likely economic effect in increasing the already daunting complexity-and therefore the already considerable cost-of intellectual property litigation. The second part examines the first concurring opinion and the effect of its implicit suggestion that nothing much has really changed. The third part examines the possible practical effect of the second concurring opinion. The conclusion then offers a few general observations on where remedial practice in patent cases …

Thinking About Leaving? The Ethics Of Departing One Firm For Another, John Sahl

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Lawyers today increasingly change jobs, suggesting to some that lawyer movement is becoming the norm. For example, one study reported that an average of 15 out of 100 associates annually depart a law firm. Today's mobility is in stark contrast to a half-century ago when lawyers might reasonably expect to remain with the same firm for their entire careers.

Occupational movement in the legal profession is likely to continue for several reasons. First, many law students graduate with substantial educational debt. As a result, some graduates accept jobs that are not their “real” first choice but that pay well with …

Ebay Rx, Tracy A. Thomas

Akron Law Faculty Publications

From a remedial perspective, the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C reopened the age-old question of what it means to award equitable relief. In eBay, the Court rejected a permanent injunction issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to protect a business-method patent that defendant eBay had infringed on its successful auction website. This essay diagnoses the remedial problem in eBay as the improper use of presumptions for equitable relief that effectively prioritizes selected legal rights. It offers a prescriptive cure for the problem in the traditional balancing of the …

The New Face Of Women's Legal History: An Introduction To The Symposium, Tracy A. Thomas

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Women’s legal history is developing as a new and exciting field that provides alternative perspectives on legal issues both past and present. Feminist legal history seeks to examine the ways in which law historically has informed women’s rights and how feminist discourse has shaped the law. This short essay quickly traces the development of women's legal history as a field, and then introduces the papers from a symposium at the University of Akron School of Law. The Akron Constitutional Law Center oranized a conference in October 2007 entitled “The New Face of Women’s Legal History” to showcase many of the …

On Corners Of Objects Built From Parallelepiped Bricks, Mirela Damian, Joseph O'Rourke

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

We investigate a question initiated in the work of Sibley and Wagon, who proved that 3 colors suffice to color any collection of 2D parallelograms glued edge-to-edge. Their proof relied on the existence of an "elbow" parallelogram. We explore the existence of analogous "corner" parallelepipeds in 3D objects. Our results are twofold. First, we refine the 2D proof to render information on the number and location of the 2D elbows. Second, we prove that not all of the 2D refinements extend to 3D.

Edge-Unfolding Nested Polyhedral Bands, Greg Aloupis, Erik D. Demaine, Stefan Langerman, Pat Morin, Joseph O'Rourke, Ileana Streinu, Godfried Toussaint

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

A band is the intersection of the surface of a convex polyhedron with the space between two parallel planes, as long as this space does not contain any vertices of the polyhedron. The intersection of the planes and the polyhedron produces two convex polygons. If one of these polygons contains the other in the projection orthogonal to the parallel planes, then the band is nested. We prove that all nested bands can be unfolded, by cutting along exactly one edge and folding continuously to place all faces of the band into a plane, without intersection. © 2007 Elsevier B.V.

Minority Language Rights: Historical And Comparative Perspectives, Douglas A. Kibbee

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Language is an instrument of communication that brings us together. Language is an element of identity that distinguishes us from one another. Language education is a means of leveling the playing field and giving all an equal opportunity. Language education is a way of destroying non-official languages and nonstandard language varieties and inevitably disfavors native speakers of those other languages and language varieties. Such are the paradoxes that every government must confront, from the largest to the smallest. Today, these questions of community and nation are being influenced by international organizations and treaties, transforming practice in spite of national traditions …

Indigenous Rights To Traditional Knowledge And Cultural Expressions: Implementing The Millennium Development Goals, Valerie J. Phillips

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

"Indigenous Rights to Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Expressions: Implementing The Millenium Development Goals" Reflections on Intellectual Property, Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Expressions by Valerie J. Phillips, Assistant Professor of Law at University of Tulsa College of Law.

Biodiversity, Traditional Knowledge And Folklore: Work On Related Ip Matters In The Wto, Hannu Wager

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Issues related to biodiversity, traditional knowledge and folklore have received increasing attention in the global intellectual property (IP) arena, including in the work of intergovernmental organizations and civil society. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is one of the forums in which the debate on related IP matters is occurring. Other intergovernmental organizations in which such debates are taking place include, among others, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the World Bank, and various United Nations human rights bodies. This …

Seeking A Sanctuary: Seventh-Day Adventism And Teh American Dream, 2nd Ed. [Review] / Bull Malcolm And Keith Lockhart, Roger L. Dudley

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

No abstract provided.

The Riddle Of A Riddle, Ivan Gaskell

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This paper examines the distinction made by Arthur C. Danto between artworks and what he terms "mere real things." It presents an eighteenth-century tool for sifting grain (a riddle) as a case study in the contexts of first, the house of its first known owner, General Artemas Ward (1727-1800); second, an exhibition 2006-7 drawn from the contents of that house pointedly held in an art museum; and, third, the likely maker of the object, a member of Hassanimisco Band of Nipmuc Indians. It examines the equivocal position of objects such as this in Danto's estimation, things that he considers to …

Tractor Test 1919: New Holland Tt 60a, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

ABOUT THE TEST REPORT AND USE OF THE DATA The test data contained in this report are a tabulation of the results of a series of tests. Due to the restricted format of these pages, only a limited amount of data and not all of the tractor specifications are included. The full OECD report contains usually about 30 pages of data and specifications. The test data were obtained for each tractor under similar conditions and therefore, provide a means of comparison of performance based on a limited set of reported data. EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURES Purpose The purpose of …