Digital Commons Network^™

Class Actions At The Crossroads: An Answer To Wal-Mart V. Dukes, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

The Supreme Court has recently decided to hear argument in the largest private-employer civil rights case in American history, Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. This historic case involves up to 1.5 million women suing Wal-Mart, one of the largest companies in the world, for alleged gender discrimination in pay and promotions, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Like many employees who challenge companywide employment discrimination, the plaintiffs in Dukes brought their case as a class action pursuant to Rule 23(b)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and sought injunctive and declaratory relief, …

Clearing Civil Procedure Hurdles In The Quest For Justice, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

No abstract provided.

How Goliath Won: The Future Implications Of Dukes V. Wal-Mart, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

No abstract provided.

Who Killed The Hybrid Car? State And Local Green Incentive Programs After Metropolitan Taxicab V. City Of New York, Jonathan Skinner

Publications

Unnecessarily broad preemption ruling under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act discourages other states and municipalities from pursuing innovative, environmentally beneficial policies.

Overcoming Babel’S Curse: Adapting The Doctrine Of Foreign Equivalents, Jonathan Skinner

Publications

No abstract provided.

Trauma And Transformation: The Political Progress Of John Bunyan: Book Review, Jeffrey Galbraith

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In these papers from the Third Triennial Conference of the International John Bunyan Society, the life and writings of John Bunyan assume a less tidy shape than appears in standard biographies. Bunyan braved the consequences of defying the Act of Uniformity of 1662, yet Trauma and Transformation does not view the Dissenting author as possessing an identity galvanized by persecution. Nor, on the other hand, do the essays reduce Bunyan's religious sensitivity to a psychological disorder. Rather, the contributors to this collection work to excavate the gaps in the existing record of Bunyan's life. Notably, they address Bunyan's silence concerning …

Jonathan Edwards's Metaphors Of Sin In Indian Country, Joy A. J. Howard

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

T he move to Indian country was an uncommon one for a preacher of Jonathan Edwards's status and age, but the seven years he lived in Stockbridge preaching to Mohawks, Mahicans, and colonial settlers proved to be some of the most fruitful of his career. Jonathan Edwards accepted the position in Stockbridge after his Northampton congregation voted to dismiss him in 1750 and, after visiting the mission town multiple times, he was officially installed as pastor in August of 1751. Edwards valued Protestant mission imperatives, and although the pastorate was remote and he faced a significant language barrier between him …

Studies On Major Ion Chemistry And Hydrogeochemical Processes Of Groundwater In Port Harcourt City, Southern Nigeria

Journal of Spatial Hydrology

Of recent, the rapid deterioration of groundwater quality in Port Harcourt, Southern Nigeria due to unregulated exploitation resulting from increasing growth in the oil and gas production activities has become a major concern. The predisposition of groundwater to pollution and the realization of its serious health and economic consequences demand knowledge of the ambient groundwater quality and of the processes leading to an improved understanding of the groundwater in the area. Groundwater samples were collected from eighteen (18) representative boreholes spread over the Port Harcourt City. This was done to assess and determine the geochemical processes occurring within the aquifer …

Porn, Popery, Mahometanism, And The Rise Of The Novel: Responses To The London Earthquakes Of 1750, Samara Anne Cahill

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In February and March of 1750, two earthquakes hit London, provoking panic in the population and generating a great deal of providentialist rhetoric from religious authorities and selfproclaimed prophets alike. Public figures used the earthquakes as didactic opportunities to structure domestic identity and national security along gridlines of reason, faith, and national guilt. Such representations indicate not only that religious identity and faith remained important to Britons throughout the eighteenth century but also that, although Britons used Christian belief to structure their national identity, they were by no means convinced of the superiority of actual Christian behavior compared to that …

Digital Determinism: The Cyrillic Alphabet In The Age Of New Technology, Martin Paulsen

Russian Language Journal

The spread of digital technology has created new conditions for the existence and development of languages. The East Slavonic languages Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian are excellent examples. Since the Internet originated in the U.S., and since most computer devices are created on the basis of languages that use the Latin alphabet (i.e., English), people who use other alphabets, such as Cyrillic, face additional challenges in adapting to the new technological realities (Sproat 2010).3 In this article, I shall focus on how digital technology challenges Cyrillic, as the alphabet in which the East Slavonic languages are written.

The consequences of similar …

The Whole World In Their Hands, Helen Crompton, Lynne Goodhand, Susan Wells

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

A North Carolina middle school didn't have enough computers to give students reasonable access to the Internet, so administrators implemented a one-to-one iPod touch program. Now every student is connected.

Using Poll Everywhere To Encourage Active Participation In A University Setting, Helen Crompton

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of Lolita, Michael Adams

Publications and Research

Review of Stanley Kubrick's Lolita: http://www.media-party.com/discland/2011/06/lolita-1962-blu-ray.html

Beyond Friending: Buddypress And The Social, Networked, Open-Source Classroom, Matthew K. Gold

Publications and Research

Classrooms have always been networks, of a sort, with professors and students forming an interlaced series of nodes that take shape over the course of a semester, but tools like BuddyPress and WordPress can make those networks more open, more porous, and more varied. In very useful ways, the classroom-as-social-network can help create engaging spaces for learning in which students are more connected to one another, to their professors, and to the wider world.

Securitizing Gender: Identity, Biometrics, And Transgender Bodies At The Airport, Paisley Currah, Tara Mulqueen

Publications and Research

It is widely assumed that the more information surveillance apparatuses can collect about an individual, the less risk she poses. In this article, we examine how gender figures into and potentially disrupts the link between identity and security. Our analysis centers on one very particular event: the confusion that erupts at the airport when US Transportation Security Administration agents perceive a conflict between the gender marked on one's papers, the image of one's body produced by a machine, and/or an individual's perceived gender presentation. Gender has been so deeply naturalized—as immutable, as easily apprehended, and as existing before and outside …

Old Enough To Fight, Old Enough To Swipe: A Critique Of The Infancy Rule In The Federal Credit Card Act Of 2009, Andrew A. Schwartz

Utah Law Review

In the 1960s and 1970s, American society came to the considered conclusion that if eighteen-year-olds can be drafted to fight and possibly die for their country, they should be treated as adults under the law. Thus, in 1971, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which lowered the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen, was proposed and ratified in just three months, making it the fastest amendment to be ratified in American history. The minimum age for federal and state jury service was also lowered from twenty-one to eighteen. And, with regard to contract law, every state passed legislation …

The Missing Miranda Warning: Why What You Don’T Know Really Can Hurt You, Geoffrey S. Corn

Utah Law Review

When the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the consolidated case of Miranda v. Arizona, it registered as a seismic shock through the law enforcement community. This “shock effect” was the result of the broad implications created by the plain language of the ruling and the assumption that it permanently hobbled the efficacy of law enforcement interrogations. According to the Court, protecting the criminal suspect’s Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination required “something more” than the mere availability of the privilege during trial; something to offset the inherent coercion associated with police interrogation. That “something more” became the ubiquitous Miranda …

Critical Teaching In The Library, Alycia Sellie

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Working Memory In Simultaneous Interpreters: Effects Of Task And Age, Teresa Signorelli, Henk Haarmann, Loraine Obler

Publications and Research

This study examines whether interpreters have better working memory (WM) than noninterpreters, taking into account different WM components and the potential modulatory influence of age. Younger and older interpreters and non-interpreters were tested on reading span, nonword repetition, and order- and category-cued recall, using English, second-language materials. Articulation rate was also assessed. Interpreters outperformed non-interpreters in reading span and nonword repetition, but not cued recall and articulation rate. These results suggest that interpreters have better ability to manipulate information in working memory and process or store sub-lexical phonological representations, but have no advantage in short-term retention of words and their …

Review Of Zazie Dans Le Metro, Michael Adams

Publications and Research

Review of Louis Malle's 1960 French New Wave film.

Review Of The Killing, Michael Adams

Publications and Research

Review of Stanley Kubrick's The Killing: http://www.media-party.com/discland/2011/10/the-killing-blu-ray.html

Review Of Last Tango In Paris, Michael Adams

Publications and Research

Review of Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris: http://www.media-party.com/discland/2011/03/last-tango-in-paris-blu-ray.html

The Effect Of Optional Summer Transition To High School Program Participation And Required School Year Long Placement On A Core Content Team On Ninth-Grade Students At-Risk Measured Achievement, Engagement, And Behavior Outcomes, Frances K. Pokorski

Student Work

No significant difference in beginning ninth-grade pretest compared to ending ninth-grade posttest comparisons of American History t (17) = 0.34, p = .37 (one-tailed), d = 0.09, English t (17) = 1.40, p = .09 (one-tailed), d = 0.34, and Biology (t (17) = -1.58, p = .07 (one-tailed), d = -0.22, course grade scores were observed for students at-risk who accepted optional summer transition to high school program participation and completed the required school year long placement on a core content team. Students at-risk who refused optional summer transition to high school program participation but completed the required …

The Benefits Of Living In Foreign Language Housing: The Effect Of Language Use And Second-Language Type On Oral Proficiency Gains, Wendy Baker-Smemoe, Rob A. Martinsen, Jennifer Brown, Cary Johnson

Faculty Publications

Many colleges and universities in North America employ foreign language housing (FLH) as a means of exposing students to a second language (L2). However, little research examines the effectiveness of these houses on L2 use and gains. The purpose of this study was to examine whether L2 learners living in FLH use the L2 more and whether they make greater language gains than classroom-only learners. This study also evaluated what kinds of tasks predict greater gains and whether such gains are related to the L2 studied. FLH learners of French, German, Russian, and Japanese were matched with classroom-only learners based …

Growing Up Policed In The Age Of Aggressive Policing Policies, Brett G. Stoudt, Michelle Fine, Madeline Fox

Publications and Research

Spray-painted atop an old tenement building in the East Village of Manhattan is a large fossilized graffiti image of a tyrannosaurus rex that reads: “NYC EATS ITS YOUNG.” With its ribs exposed and mouth open, this image represents symbolically what many young people in the neighborhood already know intimately and have experienced: New York City (NYC) is not an easy place to grow up. Their social safety nets are being dismantled and the public institutions they rely on every day often fail them. In NYC, public school budgets are being slashed each year even though the high school dropout/push-out rates …

Algebra Readiness Outcomes Of Sixth-Grade Boys And Girls Placed In Challenge Math Based On Measured Math Ability Compared To Sixth-Grade Boys And Girls Placed In Challenge Math Based On Teachers' Recommendations, David C. Hemphill

Student Work

The first pretest-posttest hypothesis was tested using the dependent t test. Null hypotheses for test score improvement over time were rejected for the end of fifth-grade pretest compared to ending sixth-grade posttest math Essential Learner Outcome scores converted to standard scores for randomly selected sixth-grade girls meeting measured test score criteria for challenge math placement ( n = 15): pretest M = 120.07, SD = 4.32; posttest M = 121.87, SD = 2.17; t (14) = 1.73, p = .05 (one-tailed), d = 0.500 and rejected for randomly selected sixth-grade girls not meeting measured test score criteria for challenge math …

Synthesis, Linda H. Pardo, Linda H. Geiser, Mark E. Fenn, Charles T. Driscoll, Christine L. Goodale, Edith B. Allen, Jill S. Baron, Roland Bobbink, William D. Bowman, Christopher M. Clark, Bridget Emmett, Frank S. Gilliam, Tara Greaver, Sharon J. Hall, Erik A. Lilleskov, Lingli Liu, Jason A. Lynch, Knute Nadelhoffer, Steven S. Perakis, Molly J. Robin-Abbott, John L. Stoddard, Kathleen C. Weathers

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

Human activity in the last century has led to a substantial increase in nitrogen (N) emissions and deposition. This N deposition has reached a level that has caused or is likely to cause alterations to the structure and function of many ecosystems across the United States. One approach for quantifying the level of pollution that would be harmful to ecosystems is the critical loads approach. The critical load is dei ned as the level of a pollutant below which no detrimental ecological effect occurs over the long term according to present knowledge.

The objective of this project was to synthesize …

Nitrogen Addition Shapes Soil Phosphorus Availability In Two Reforested Tropical Forests In Southern China, Xiankai Lu, Jiangming Mo, Frank S. Gilliam, Hua Fang, Feifei Zhu, Yunting Fang, Wei Zhang, Juan Huang

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

Scant information is available on how soil phosphorus (P) availability responds to atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition, especially in the tropical zones. This study examined the effect of N addition on soil P availability, and compared this effect between forest sites of contrasting land-use history. Effects of N addition on soil properties, litterfall production, P release from decomposing litter, and soil P availability were studied in a disturbed (reforested pine forest with previous understory vegetation and litter harvesting) and a rehabilitated (reforested mixed pine/broadleaf forest with no understory vegetation and litter harvesting) tropical forest in southern China. Experimental N-treatments (above ambient) …

Cell Count Moments In The Halo Model, J. N. Fry, S. Colombi, Pablo Fosalba, Anand Balaraman, István Szapudi, R. Teyssier

Physics & Astronomy: Faculty Publications

We study cell count moments up to fifth order of the distributions of haloes, of halo substructures as a proxy for galaxies, and of mass in the context of the halo model and compare theoretical predictions to the results of numerical simulations. On scales larger than the size of the largest cluster, we present a simple point cluster model in which results depend only on cluster–cluster correlations and on the distribution of the number of objects within a cluster, or cluster occupancy. The point cluster model leads to expressions for moments of galaxy counts in which the volume-averaged moments on …

Attracting K-12 Students Towards Engineering Disciplines With Project Based Learning Modules, Alok K. Verma

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Low enrollment and high attrition rates in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) based degree programs have created a workforce problem in industries like shipbuilding and repair which are important for national security. Part of this problem can be attributed to pedagogical issues like lack of engaging hands-on activities utilized for science and math education in middle and high schools. Lack of student interest in technical careers can also be attributed to lack of an integrated approach in teaching math, science and technical education. To engage student's interest in the technical career path, it is important that students establish a …