Digital Commons Network^™

Essay: Inside Guantanamo, Peter Jan Honigsberg

Nevada Law Journal

In May 2007 I visited Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. What I saw and experienced then are fading away and will soon disappear, now that two-thirds of the nearly 800 detainees have been released and President Obama will close the detention centers within the year. Consequently, this essay provides a historical account of one person's media visit to Guantanamo, when it was a fully-operational prison violating human rights, due process and international law.

The essay describes not only the visit but also the application process - a bizarre experience. The military's application concluded with two quotes from the New Testament and included …

Herring V. United States: Mapp's "Artless" Overruling?, Michael Vitiello

Nevada Law Journal

The central thesis of this essay is that, consistent with the “art of overruling,” the Court could have limited Mapp, for example, by extending the good-faith reasonable mistake rationale that animates cases like United States v. Leon. As developed below, the facts of Herring are quite similar to the facts of other cases where the Court upheld police conduct that, although erroneous, seemed reasonable; accordingly, excluding the illegally obtained evidence had no value as a deterrent of future conduct in light of the reasonableness of the police officer's mistake. However, Herring goes much further and points towards a much greater …

When The Governor Legislates: Post-Enactment Budget Changes And The Separation Of Powers In Nevada, Joanna M. Myers

Nevada Law Journal

This Note addresses two key questions. First, it addresses whether Governor Gibbons's attempt to unilaterally cut the budget violates Nevada law and the Nevada Constitution. Second, it addresses whether the Governor's continued spending of federal stimulus money pursuant to allegedly delegated authority also violates Nevada law and the presentment requirements of the Nevada Constitution. Alternatively, would a Nevada statute granting the Governor power to unilaterally increase, reduce, or withhold the budget of state agencies constitute an excessive and unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the Governor?

This Note attempts to answer this question through a multi-faceted and detailed discussion examining …

Annual Saltman Lecture: Further Beyond Reason: Emotions, The Core Concerns, And Mindfulness In Negotiation, Leonard L. Riskin

Nevada Law Journal

This article focuses on one particularly common problem: Sometimes people who understand the Core Concerns System, know how to use it, and intend to employ it in a particular negotiation, either fail to do so or fail to do so skillfully; when they review the negotiation, they regret not having used the Core Concerns System, and believe that using it would have produced a better process and outcome. When this occurs, it often results from deficits or faults in the negotiator's awareness.

It follows that a negotiator can enhance his ability to employ the Core Concerns System through improving his …

Using Mindfulness Practice To Work With Emotions, Deborah Calloway

Nevada Law Journal

The most important point to understand is that working with and understanding our own emotional reactions is an essential prerequisite to working skillfully with emotionally charged individuals in disputes. Training in “mediation techniques” designed to help us recognize and work with emotions in the mediation and negotiation context will not work unless we have practiced working with our own emotions consistently in our ordinary lives. Otherwise, in the heat of the moment during a negotiation or mediation, we are likely to forget every technique we have learned. Habitual patterns of behavior simply take hold.

This article seeks to provide some …

Feeding The Right Wolf: A Niebuhrian Perspective On The Opportunities And Limits Of Mindful Core Concerns Dispute Resolution, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Nevada Law Journal

This Article offers a few observations regarding both the promise and the difficulties faced in using mindful core concerns dispute resolution. Part II focuses on the difficulties faced by mindful negotiators and mediators when confronted with disputants who are too adversarial, selfish, unrealistic, or unresponsive to overtures for interest-based bargaining--even after skilled attempts to neutralize whatever negative emotions may be fueling their counterproductive behavior. In making these assessments and suggestions, the Article relies significantly on the work of Reinhold Niebuhr. Appreciation of Niebuhr's insights can assist mindful negotiation by helping the negotiator to distinguish those situations amenable to the cooperative …

Mindfulness, Emotions, And Ethics: The Right Stuff?, Ellen Waldman

Nevada Law Journal

This essay celebrates Leonard Riskin's call to arms while suggesting some limits to what mindfulness can achieve in the ethical realm. I discuss recent developments in neuroethics that imply a prominent role for emotions in establishing ethical restraint. The Article also surveys a growing body of evidence that suggests the directive power of our emotions remains largely hidden from and impervious to the control of our “reasoning” selves. Lastly, the author examines what Riskin has, in an earlier work, described as the ethical hard case in light of recent explorations into the emotional wellsprings of deontological versus consequentialist thinking. Although …

The Empty Tomb: Post-Critical Legal Hermeneutics, Peter Goodrich

Nevada Law Journal

There is nothing more refreshing than a successful failure. A momentary flaring of flamboyance. A near miss. Fifteen weeks as media monarchs; a good part—a small part—of a decade as a political threat to the order of the academy, if not the stability of the system. The affective bonds and the institutional disruption of youthful and latterly not-so-young dissidents and socialist sympathizers within the law schools definitely had their excitements, their impetus and novelties, and then they grew old, got rejected, disappeared into the shadows, backrooms, and faculty lounges. The various histories assign different figures to the failure of critical …

Constitution, Human Rights And Republic: A Necessary Dialogue Between Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics And Boaventura De Sousa Santos's Diatopic Heremeneutics, Jania Maria Lopes Saldanha, Jose Luis Bolzan De Morais

Nevada Law Journal

When we think about the concept of human rights—including all the possible ways of its realization, and considering the complementarities and also the unity of different dimensions of the concept—we confront several difficult questions. In particular, in an age when constitutions and constitutional doctrine have already incorporated a substantive body of human rights law, we must address how some of the constitutional promises regarding individual rights have not been fulfilled. Additionally, we must consider how rights that foster solidarity in the economic, social, and cultural spheres have not been recognized.

This article operates on two levels. On one level, we …

The Veil That Covered France's Eye: The Right To Freedom Of Religion And Equal Treatment In Immigration And Naturalization Proceedings, Kendal Davis

Nevada Law Journal

In June 2008, France’s highest administrative court upheld a decision to deny citizenship to a Muslim woman because, essentially, she was ‘not French enough.’ This decision incited both praise and outrage in the international human rights arena regarding considerations such as the right to freedom of religion, gender equality, and citizenship.

This Note examines relevant French domestic law and international human rights instruments, and argues that while immigration and naturalization decisions remain an exercise of broad sovereign powers, the emerging human rights norm to be free from discrimination should apply in naturalization proceedings. Furthermore, despite judicial deference and flexibility to …

An In-Vitro Co-Culture Model To Study The Disruption Of The Blood Brain Barrier By Cronobacter Sakazakii. (Formerly Enterobacter Sakazakii), Erin Louise Koval

Food Safety

Cronobacter spp. (formerly Enterobacter sakazakii) is an opportunistic pathogen associated with contaminated powdered infant formula. It causes necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) and sepsis, which can develop into severe meningitis and brain abscess formation in infants. Very little is known about the specific pathogenic mechanisms of this organism. In this study, we propose a model to investigate the ability of Cronobacter spp. isolates to disrupt the blood-brain barrier. Biofilm formation of the Cronobacter spp. isolates used in the model was also assayed. Secondary mouse endothelial and astrocyte cells were grown to con.fluency on polyethylene terephtalate (PET) membranes (1.0 μm pore size) in …

Relatedness Ofisolates Of A Novel Genus, Cronobacter, Formerly Known As Enterobacter Sakazakii, Tracy Anne Solseng

Food Safety

Members of the genus Cronobacter were once classified as Enterobacter sakazakii. These bacteria are opportunistic pathogens that are associated with necrotizing enteritis, sepsis and meningitis in neonatal or low-birth-weight infants and can result in death, slowed development, or extensive neurological disorders. In adults, they have been documented as a cause of bacteremia, osteomyelitis, and vaginitis. Previously, E. sakazakii was found in the midgut of stable flies. Research by Nangoh et al. determined that Cronobacter spp. (previously identified as E. sakazakii) are present in bison and bovine feces. In addition to the bison and bovine fecal isolates of Cronobacter spp. found …

Development Of Real-Time Pcr Method For Detection, Identification And Quantification Of Five Different Fusarium Species, Kakolie Goswami

Food Safety

Fusarium head blight (FHB) is a fungal disease affecting cereal crops worldwide. FHB involves multiple Fusarium species that create food safety concerns by producing mycotoxins such as trichothecenes, zearalenone and moniliformin. Quantitative methods allowing rapid risk assessment of mycotoxigenic Fusarium species are needed to detect Fusarium spp. Real time quantitative PCR (qPCR) is a fast, sensitive and reliable alternative to conventional culture methods. An objective of the study was to develop TaqMan® based qPCR methods to detect, identify and quantify five different Fusarium species associated with FHB, namely F. graminearum, F culmorum, F avenceum, F poae and F sporotrichioides. The …

Proteomic And Molecular Analysis Of Methicillin Resistance And Selected Toxigenic Genes In Coagulase-Negative Staphylococcus Spp From Food And Animal Sources., Racheal Aye

Food Safety

While most coagulase-negative Staphylococcus (CNS) are apathogenic, recent evidence suggests some food and animal derived CNS isolates may carry and express virulence factors including classical enterotoxins, toxic shock syndrome, and methicillin resistance genes. The present study was designed to assess the potential role of CNS in the epidemiology of foodborne illnesses and to determine the likelihood of food and domestic animals as transmission vehicles of methicillin resistance. Of the animal-derived food samples tested, 27.3% (39/143) were Staphylococcus-positive compared to only 9.5% (23/242) of the plant foods. A total of 92 Staphylococcus spp cultured from 385 food (62/92) and 30 diagnostic …

The Feminist Cure: Feminist Identity As A Shield From Hyper-Sexualized L'Vledia Induced Self-Objectification In College Women, Natalie Smith Carlson

English

This paper explores the impact of hyper-sexualized media on college women in terms of inducing self-objectification and/or inhibiting feminist identity. The survey and resulting analysis showed participants' feminist orientation ostensibly affected their inclination to self-objectify after watching and responding to a slideshow of common images of women in our culture. By comparing the reactions of women \Vith high feminist orientation and low feminist orientation, suggestions were clear about connections between an identification with feminism and a propensity to value the self and other women for characteristics beyond those of appearance and sexuality.

Lord Of The Living Souls: Dominion And The Spiritual Lives Of Animals In Milton's Paradise Lost, Kurt William Russow

English

This paper examines Milton's views of the spiritual status of animals as presented in Paradise lost. It discusses how Milton enters into discussion with the discourses of 111 theology, philosophy, and both antique and modern science to construct his own nuanced view on the dominion humankind was theologically mandated to have over animals. Milton promotes a complex animal ethic based simultaneously on both hierarchy and kinship. Ultimately this ethic is used not only to celebrate animals, but also to celebrate a stewardship-oriented notion of a divinely ordained hierarchy.

"Putting On My Feminist Pants": How Academic Feminists Use Clothing To Construct Professional Identity, Katie Marie Gunter

English

Feminism has traditionally been concerned with issues of women's bodies; however, an examination of women's bodies in clothing has been largely overlooked, especially in relation to feminists themselves. Constructing identity for professional feminists in the context of clothing calls into question the traditional feminist binary of privileging the mind over the body. While many feminist writers discuss a rift between second and third wave feminists concerning views on clothing, no one has produced data to show that these views are still held. This paper investigates how second and third wave professional feminists view clothing in relation to the mind/body binary …

Enculturating Gender: Examining Bestselling Children's Picture Books, Kara Michele Smith

English

This research examines gender depictions in 20 current bestselling children's picture books. I argue that children's picture books, specifically those aimed at children 0-5 years of age, portray gender in a way that potentially limits girls in developing and achieving their goals because of the limited options presented to them based on gender and also constrains boys' emotional growth due to the rigid standards depicted for them. These depictions are especially critical during the Sensorimotor and Preoperational stages in children's development because they are developmentally primed for acquiring and being socialized to gender knowledge. Extending the work of Hamilton et …

Applying Graduate Student Perceptions Of Task Engagement To Enhance Learning Conditions, Johnette Caulfield

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

Under what conditions are graduate students most likely to learn? How do we, as teachers, best create those conditions? The answer to these questions was the focus of this study whereby 91 masters’ students identified learning tasks that were most and least engaging. A model utilizing affective, behavioral and cognitive attributes was developed to measure graduate student engagement in learning tasks. Student survey data demonstrated a direct relationship between perceived value of the learning task, perceived effort put forth in achieving the learning task and perceived student engagement in learning. Multiple regression was used to predict engagement; two attributes, value …

Active Learning In Introductory Economics: Do Myeconlab And Aplia Make Any Difference?, Trien T. Nguyen, Angela Trimarchi

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

This paper reports experiment results of teaching large classes of introductory economics with modern learning technology such as MyEconLab or Aplia. This new technology emerges partially in response to the enrollment pressure currently facing many institutions of higher education. Among other things, the technology provides an integrated online teaching and learning environment that allows active learning through student direct participation in the learning process as well as interaction with their instructor, peers, and the outside Internet. Our results showed that, for the classes in the experiment, modern learning technology could make a difference in helping students improve their class mark …

Personal Reflection: Sotl And Don't Perish!, Gerald Goh

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

This reflection describes my early encounters with SoTL as I went through a critical period questioning my role and responsibilities as an academic and my journey with a cohort of students who made me realise that there is indeed a dire need for SoTL to bridge the nexus between a university academic’s teaching responsibilities as well as the global ‘publish or perish’ pressure most academics experience today

City Innovation Systems: The Metro Manila Experience, Aida L. Velasco

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

City innovations, as defined by leading Southeast Asian researchers in urban and innovation studies, refer to new or improved solutions that contribute to enhanced liveability, prosperity, and equity of the city. These may be technological products, service or processes; institutional or organizational developments; administrative or legislative policies; or socio-cultural practices that create a more liveable environment, promote better economic conditions, and produce a more equitable social structure. City innovations cover both social and commercial innovation.

Uranium-Series Dating Of Gypsum Speleothems: Methodology And Examples, Laura Sanna, Francisco Saez, Siri Simonsen, Silviu Constantin, José-Maria Calaforra, Paolo Forti, Stein-Erik Lauritzen

International Journal of Speleology

The analytical problems of dating gypsum speleothems with the U-series technique are reviewed. Gypsum speleothems are, in general, very low in U content, challenging the limits of detection methods. Various approaches to dissolving gypsum and isolation of actinides from the matrix include ion-pairing dissolution with magnesium salts and using nitric acid. The most precise dating technique is Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometry (TIMS), combined with Fe(OH)₃ scavenging and anionic exchange chromatography. Less satisfactory, but much quicker, is direct retention of actinides from HNO₃ by means of TRU resin and MC-ICP-MS detection. We have tested these methods on gypsum speleothems …

Graduate Student Progress Tracking System, Pramodh Kumar Thalloji

Computer Science

In this paper, I propose and implement an application to track the graduate student progress in various Computer Science and Software Engineering graduate programs. This application will provide lists of students who in a given year or semester did not fulfill any of the numbered requirements of their programs. It will provide a list of students who passed the comprehensive or qualifier exams in that year or semester. It will also list the students who have taken longer than the time limit mandated by the Graduate School to complete their plan of study. This application was developed with the assumption …

Teaching Encryption: A Learning Theory Approach, Manu Kishore Bhogadi

Computer Science

Bloom's taxonomy for cognitive domain is an effective taxonomy for structured learning. The six levels in Bloom's taxonomy for cognitive domain are based on the levels of difficulty. This paper focuses on teaching communication security and encryption by applying Bloom's taxonomy in the creation of educational materials and assessments. Delivering education material to the mobile phones is made possible with the advancement of mobile technologies, and the use of mobile technologies in teaching is gaining popularity because of its benefits. In this paper, delivering educational material to the mobile phones is experimented with by using a flash cards application for …

Automatic Evaluation Of Mobile Web Pages, Ankita Sehgal

Computer Science

The use of mobile devices to access the information on the World Wide Web is growing rapidly. The growth has created a surge in the number of webpages being designed for mobile devices. In order to support efficient mobile browsing, some markup languages (e.g., WML and XHTML Mobile Profile) and standards (Mobile Web Best Practices) have been developed to specifically support the rendering of information on mobile devices. Evaluating the mobile webpages manually against the guidelines requires a tremendous amount of work. This research paper focuses on automatic evaluation of mobile webpages, a process which offers many advantages in terms …

Design Of The Photo Album Ontology, Mridula Sarker

Computer Science

At present, growing demand of the management of huge volume of web contents, especially photos, require the software tools, which can store, index and retrieve the photos from the repository more efficiently. In this paper, we proposed a design solution using the semantic web technology. The goal is to integrate this knowledge-based ontology into the photo management system to improve the experience of the user's accessibility in the photo warehouse. Most of the existing photo album management software tools are built using the convention of traditional approaches, such as key-word based search or low-level image annotation approaches, which make it …

Development Tools For Content Creation In Virtual Environments, Guy Eric Hokanson

Computer Science

lmmersive Virtual Environments (IVEs) for education are designed and implemented to enable students to learn complicated concepts in an exploratory and inquiry based manner. The environments are constructed so that multiple users can interact with the educational simulation and learn to think like a scientist. Developing these IVEs requires a multi-disciplinary development team that consists of more than just software engineers. It requires content experts to provide the information needed to create the best and most interactive lessons possible. While some content experts have a strong interest in technology and are capable of working with the development environment directly, many …

Rend: Reliable And Energy-Efficient Node-Disjoint Paths In Wireless Sensor Networks, Siva Yanteru

Computer Science

In wireless sensor networks, finding most reliable and most efficient paths between source node and destination node is considered NP hard problem. We can increase reliability by ability to find node-disjoint alternate path when there is any disruption in the path from source to destination. If we can find reliable paths by keeping efficiency in consideration then we can increase both reliability and efficiency of paths between source and destination. In this paper, we present routing protocol for finding two node-disjoint paths between each pair of nodes in a wireless sensor networks. In proposed protocol, each and every node has …

Athletic Fundraising And University Development Offices: A Structurational Relationship, Keith Michael Dickhudt

Computer Science

This case study examines the working relationship between an athletic department and a central development office within a university. This study focuses primarily on the coordination of fundraising efforts between the two offices. A qualitative approach, using a structuration theoretical framework, presents the working relationship at Midwestern State University (MWSU) through in-depth interviews. Results suggest the two offices could improve the coordination of fundraising efforts. Recommendations, based on the results and theoretical framework, are given.