Digital Commons Network^™

Support Of Non-Biological Children In Jewish Law, J. David Bleich

Articles

Adoption as a legal institution is unknown in Jewish law. Suppression of parental identity, as generally occurs in closed adoption, is banned “lest the earth become filled with licentiousness” (Leviticus 19:29). Rabbinic tradition interprets that verse as expressing concern regarding the possibility of a future incestuous marriage. Nevertheless, raising an orphan in one’s home is regarded as highly meritorious. However, binding obligations of support and maintenance can be undertaken only by means of contract. Such a contract in favor of a stepchild may be verbal if entered into at the time of marriage. Otherwise, a formal kinyan, i.e., one of …

The Failed Promise Of A General Theory Of Pure Economic Loss: An Accident Of History?, Anthony J. Sebok

Articles

The article explores the evolution and challenges of pure economic loss doctrine in American tort law, focusing on the contrasting approaches of Robert Rabin and Gary Schwartz. While Schwartz critiques the feasibility of a general theory due to the diversity of economic injuries, Rabin advocates for a nuanced, fact-specific approach. The article highlights the ad hoc nature of the doctrine, as seen in key cases like JAire Corp. v. Gregory and Aas v. Superior Court, which reflect shifting judicial attitudes toward negligence and liability. It concludes that the failure to establish a coherent principle for determining duty underscores the ongoing …

Integrative Gene Regulatory Network Analysis Reveals Light-Induced Regional Gene Expression Phase Shift Programs In The Mouse Suprachiasmatic Nucleus., Haisun Zhu, Rajanikanth Vadigepalli, Rachel Rafferty, Gregory E Gonye, David R Weaver, James S Schwaber

Department of Pathology, Anatomy, and Cell Biology Faculty Papers

We use the multigenic pattern of gene expression across suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) regions and time to understand the dynamics within the SCN in response to a circadian phase-resetting light pulse. Global gene expression studies of the SCN indicate that circadian functions like phase resetting are complex multigenic processes. While the molecular dynamics of phase resetting are not well understood, it is clear they involve a "functional gene expression program", e.g., the coordinated behavior of functionally related genes in space and time. In the present study we selected a set of 89 of these functionally related genes in order to further …

Knockdown Of Ki-67 By Dicer-Substrate Small Interfering Rna Sensitizes Bladder Cancer Cells To Curcumin-Induced Tumor Inhibition., Sivakamasundari Pichu, Swapna Krishnamoorthy, Andrei Shishkov, Bi Zhang, Peter Mccue, Biddanda C Ponnappa

Department of Pathology, Anatomy, and Cell Biology Faculty Papers

Transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) of the urinary bladder is the most common cancer of the urinary tract. Most of the TCC cases are of the superficial type and are treated with transurethral resection (TUR). However, the recurrence rate is high and the current treatments have the drawback of inducing strong systemic toxicity or cause painful cystitis. Therefore, it would be of therapeutic value to develop novel concepts and identify novel drugs for the treatment of bladder cancer. Ki-67 is a large nucleolar phosphoprotein whose expression is tightly linked to cell proliferation, and curcumin, a phytochemical derived from the rhizome Curcuma …

Emergence Of Bimodal Cell Population Responses From The Interplay Between Analog Single-Cell Signaling And Protein Expression Noise., Marc R Birtwistle, Jens Rauch, Anatoly Kiyatkin, Edita Aksamitiene, Maciej Dobrzyński, Jan B. Hoek, Walter Kolch, Babatunde A Ogunnaike, Boris N Kholodenko

Department of Pathology, Anatomy, and Cell Biology Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: Cell-to-cell variability in protein expression can be large, and its propagation through signaling networks affects biological outcomes. Here, we apply deterministic and probabilistic models and biochemical measurements to study how network topologies and cell-to-cell protein abundance variations interact to shape signaling responses.

RESULTS: We observe bimodal distributions of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) responses to epidermal growth factor (EGF) stimulation, which are generally thought to indicate bistable or ultrasensitive signaling behavior in single cells. Surprisingly, we find that a simple MAPK/ERK-cascade model with negative feedback that displays graded, analog ERK responses at a single cell level can explain the experimentally …

Multi-Disciplinary Hands-On Desktop Learning Modules And Modern Pedagogies, Bernard J. Van Wie, David B. Thiessen, Marc Compere, Ximena Toro, Jennifer C. Adam, Et Al.

Publications

Our team’s research focuses on fundamental problems in undergraduate education in terms of how to expand use of well researched, yet still “new”, teaching pedagogies of ‘sensing’ or ‘hands-on’, ‘active’ and ‘problem-based learning’ within engineering courses. It is now widely accepted that traditional lectures ARE NOT best for students – yet that is what the community almost universally does.

To address this issue we are developing new Desktop Learning Modules (DLMs) that contain miniaturized processes with a uniquely expandable electronic system to contend with known sensor systems/removable cartridges, as well as, unknown expansions to the project. We have shown that …

Interactive Multimedia Learning On Health Care Among Lebanese Women: An Exploratory Study, Joanna R. Kassem, Zeinab H. Houssein, Leila Halawi

Publications

Multimedia learning greatly enhanced the learning outcome and experience of learners exposed to it. The proposed study will explore the usefulness of multimedia learning software devised to educate Lebanese pregnant women who have a low level of formal education about pregnancy and early infant care. The study will be based on the media richness theory. It is expected that through media rich programs, communication of information is facilitated, promoting the resolving of indecisiveness and ambiguity that stems out of the lack of knowledge or information about a given a subject and the inability to convey a meaning of what is …

Linguistic Processing Of Accented Speech Across The Lifespan., Alejandrina Cristia, Amanda Seidl, Charlotte Vaughn, Rachel Schmale, Ann Bradlow, Caroline Floccia

School of Psychology

In most of the world, people have regular exposure to multiple accents. Therefore, learning to quickly process accented speech is a prerequisite to successful communication. In this paper, we examine work on the perception of accented speech across the lifespan, from early infancy to late adulthood. Unfamiliar accents initially impair linguistic processing by infants, children, younger adults, and older adults, but listeners of all ages come to adapt to accented speech. Emergent research also goes beyond these perceptual abilities, by assessing links with production and the relative contributions of linguistic knowledge and general cognitive skills. We conclude by underlining points …

Use Of A Clay Modeling Task To Reduce Chocolate Craving., Jackie Andrade, Sally Pears, Jon May, David J. Kavanagh

School of Psychology

Elaborated Intrusion theory (EI theory; Kavanagh, Andrade, & May, 2005) posits two main cognitive components in craving: associative processes that lead to intrusive thoughts about the craved substance or activity, and elaborative processes supporting mental imagery of the substance or activity. We used a novel visuospatial task to test the hypothesis that visual imagery plays a key role in craving. Experiment 1 showed that spending 10 min constructing shapes from modeling clay (plasticine) reduced participants' craving for chocolate compared with spending 10 min 'letting your mind wander'. Increasing the load on verbal working memory using a mental arithmetic task (counting …

Implicit Social Learning In Relation To Autistic-Like Traits, Matthew Hudson, Tanja C.W. Nijboer, Tjeerd Jellema

School of Psychology

No abstract provided.

Young Children Consider Merit When Sharing Resources With Others, Patricia Kanngiesser, Felix Warneken

School of Psychology

Merit is a key principle of fairness: rewards should be distributed according to how much someone contributed to a task. Previous research suggests that children have an early ability to take merit into account in third-party situations but that merit-based sharing in first-party contexts does not emerge until school-age. Here we provide evidence that three- and five-year-old children already use merit to share resources with others, even when sharing is costly for the child. In Study 1, a child and a puppet-partner collected coins that were later exchanged for rewards. We varied the work-contribution of both partners by manipulating how …

The Problem Of Convicting Innocent Persons: How Often Does It Occur And How Can It Be Prevented?, Leon Friedman

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

In order to determine the number of innocent persons convicted and the severity of the problem that exists, it is necessary to examine the statistics. As indicated below, an often-quoted figure representing the number of wrongly persons convicted is about 0.5% of all criminal cases, or 30,000, which is not an insignificant number. Some modest changes in the system, particularly furnishing defendants with more exculpatory evidence at the outset, might make a significant change in that number.

The article focuses on the rate of false conviction of innocent people in the U.S. and highlights the steps to be taken to …

A Critique Of Philosophizing About Lawyers' Ethics, Monroe H. Freedman

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Philosophical theorizing about lawyers' ethics is too often irrelevant to the real-life concerns of lawyers, omitting reference to relevant legal authorities and to facts that are essential to moral analysis. Rules of lawyers' ethics are in serious need of reform from a moral perspective, and more practical moral criticism is badly needed. Philosophical ethicists should put their moral sensitivity and keen intellects to use to bring about much needed improvement in the ethics and practice of lawyers and judges.

Law Schools As Knowledge Centers In The Digital Age, Vern R. Walker, A. J. Durwin, Philip H. Hwang, Keith Langlais, Mycroft Boyd

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

This article first defines the general concept of a "knowledge center," and then demonstrates that research laboratories in the sciences provide a concrete example of that concept. This article then applies both the general concept of a "knowledge center" and the scientific research paradigm to legal education in the digital age. Since the information explosion, which occurred as a result of widespread access to the Internet and the World Wide Web, law schools have increasingly employed online tools to disseminate their traditional knowledge products. Being a knowledge center in the digital age, however, also involves re-conceptualizing the forms of useful …

Switching To Prophylactic Injunctions, Tracy A. Thomas

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This essay highlights the significance of John Golden’s work on patents to the field of Remedies more generally. In his important new article, Injunctions as More (or Less) Than ‘Off Switches’: Patent-Infringement Injunctions’ Scope (Texas Law Review), Golden proves my thesis: prophylactic injunctions are, and should be, common, normal types of equitable relief. His careful and detailed analysis of the type and frequency of injunctions issued in patent infringement cases exposes the myth that prophylaxis is illegitimate. Steeped in details of patent law, Golden’s work nevertheless contributes significantly to the broader transsubstantive questions of the metes and bounds of equitable …

Switching To Prophylactic Injunctions, Tracy Thomas

Con Law Center Articles and Publications

This essay highlights the significance of John Golden’s work on patents to the field of Remedies more generally. In his important new article, Injunctions as More (or Less) Than ‘Off Switches’: Patent-Infringement Injunctions’ Scope (Texas Law Review), Golden proves my thesis: prophylactic injunctions are, and should be, common, normal types of equitable relief. His careful and detailed analysis of the type and frequency of injunctions issued in patent infringement cases exposes the myth that prophylaxis is illegitimate. Steeped in details of patent law, Golden’s work nevertheless contributes significantly to the broader transsubstantive questions of the metes and bounds of equitable …

Creating And Sustaining Interdisciplinary Guardianship Committees, Carolyn L. Dessin, Julia R. Nack, Judge Thomas Swift

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Over the past two decades, guardians, advocates, and the judiciary have been working at the national level to improve guardianship law and practice. This work was set in motion by a series of more than 200 Associated Press Wire Stories about guardianship abuses that were published in the mid-1980s. Over the next decade, guardians and other interested parties built relationships and established an association dedicated to improving guardianship. In the year 2000, members of the National Guardianship Association (“NGA”) wrote and formally adopted “Standards of Practice” for guardians. In 2001, at the Wingspan Conference held at Stetson University, other national …

Arbitrability And Vulnerability, Carolyn L. Dessin

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Arbitration is cool. Everybody‟s doing it. In the eighty-five years since the passage of the Federal Arbitration Act, that seems to be the prevailing sentiment. Recent decades have seen the meteoric rise of arbitration as a form of alternative dispute resolution. Arbitration is widely regarded as a less expensive, more expeditious alternative to litigation.

Courts frequently note that federal policy clearly favors arbitration. No judicial enthusiasm for arbitration seems more complete than that evidenced in the jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court.

Along with the rise of arbitration, however, there has also been a rise in the amount of …

The New Illegitimacy: Tying Parentage To Marital Status For Lesbian Co-Parents, Joanna L. Grossman

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

This article takes a comprehensive look at recent case law under the PDA, while offering a critical commentary on the gender ideology that lies behind these decisions and charting the stakes for women in a reinvigorated Act. The survey of PDA decisions is an important undertaking in its own right, since it is not widely appreciated just how much courts have narrowed the PDA's protections. The PDA cases are an increasingly sorry lot, including cases like the recent Fourth Circuit ruling in Young v. UPS, in which the court held that a pregnant woman could lawfully be denied a …

Not Guilty As Charged: The Myth Of Mens Rea For Defendants With Mental Retardation, Elizabeth Nevins-Saunders

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

The notion that mens rea is an indicia of culpability runs deep in the American criminal law psyche. For most defendants, a finding that they had the requisite legal intent may be all we need to know to pronounce them morally culpable. This is because most defendants – those of average intelligence – enjoy a level of socialization, rationality, and agency sufficient to be aware of social norms, make a choice to violate them or not, and to control their own impulses in doing so. But for defendants with mental retardation, the state-of-mind element fails to accurately signify a “guilty …

Forward: "War On Women" In Women And The Law, Tracy Thomas

Con Law Center Articles and Publications

This foreword to Women and the Law highlights the dramatic attacks on women's rights over the past year. It summarizes the articles contained in this annual selection of leading scholarship in the field of women's rights. This "greatest hits" collection pulls together academic research of potential interest to litigators and policymakers on issues of reproductive rights, feminism and the family, violence against women, employment, women's healthcare, and feminist legal theory.

The Constitutionality Of The Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act, Wilson Huhn

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This presentation of April 26, 2012 presents data explaining why universal health care coverage is necessary, what the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will accomplish, and the constitutional challenges that the Supreme Court is considering.

The End Of The Beginning: The Politics Of Death And The American Death Penalty Regime In The Twenty-First Century, Lyn Entzeroth

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Genomic Amplification Of An Endogenous Retrovirus In Zebrafish T-Cell Malignancies, J. Kimble Frazer, Lance A. Batchelor, Diana F. Bradley, Kim H. Brown, Kimberly P. Dobrinski, Charles Lee, Nikolaus S. Trede

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Genomic instability plays a crucial role in oncogenesis. Somatically acquiredmutations can disable some genes and inappropriately activate others. In addition, chromosomal rearrangements can amplify, delete, or even fuse genes, altering their functions and contributing to malignant phenotypes. Using array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH), a technique to detect numeric variations between different DNA samples, we examined genomes from zebrafish (Danio rerio) T-cell leukemias of three cancerprone lines. In all malignancies tested, we identified recurring amplifications of a zebrafish endogenous retrovirus. This retrovirus, ZFERV, was first identified due to high expression of proviral transcripts in thymic tissue from larval and adult fish.We …

Part 5: Does The Commonwealth Balance It's Budget On The Backs Of Local Governments?, Regional Studies Institute, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

We examine the Commonwealth’s fiscal practices and conclude that the answer to this question often is yes.

Custom As A Source Of Jewish Law: Some Religious Reflections On David J. Bederman's Custom As A Source Of Law, Michael J. Broyde

Emory Law Journal

Professor David J. Bederman's seminal work, Custom as a Source of Law, seeks to answer several foundational questions in the fields of legal theory and formation. One of the central concerns: Can custom itself be law? That is to say, can custom alone become binding as custom, acting in ways that we would typically think of as legal, even before it is ever recognized or stamped as obligatory by the institutions that we would normally think of as creating compulsory law, for example, by word of an authoritative legislative body or by way of judicial precedent?

Circulation And Water Properties And Their Relationship To The Oyster Disease Msx In Delaware Bay, Zhiren Wang, Dale B. Haidvogel, David Bushek, Susan E. Ford, Eileen E. Hofmann, Eric N. Powell, John Wilkin

CCPO Publications

We apply a high-resolution hydro-dynamical model to investigate the role of physical factors influencing infection prevalence of Haplosporidium nelsoni, causative agent of MSX disease in the eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica), in Delaware Bay, USA. Validation studies conducted for the years 2000 and 2010-2011 confirm that the model, based upon the Regional Ocean Modeling System, has significant skill in the recovery of observed water level, temperature, salinity, and velocity. Multi-year simulations are performed for periods representing temporal and spatial variations in H. nelsoni infection prevalence (1974-76, 1979-81, 1984-86, 1990-92, and 2006-09) to assess the degree to which the …

Can Oysters Crassostrea Virginica Develop Resistance To Dermo Disease In The Field: The Impediment Posed By Climate Cycles, Eric N. Powell, John M. Klinck, Ximing Guo, Eileen E. Hofmann, Susan E. Ford, David Bushek

CCPO Publications

Populations of eastern oysters, Crassostrea virginica, are commonly limited by mortality from dermo disease. Little development of resistance to Perkinsus marinus, the dermo pathogen, has occurred, despite the high mortality rates and frequency of epizootics. Can the tendency of the parasite to exhibit cyclic epizootics limit the oyster's response to the disease despite the presence of alleles apparently conferring disease resistance? We utilize a gene-based population dynamics model to simulate the development of disease resistance in Crassostrea virginica populations exposed to cyclic mortality encompassing periodicities expected of dermo disease over the geographic range at which epizootics have been …

Does Large-Scale Ocean Circulation Structure Life History Connectivity In Antarctic Toothfish (Dissostichus Mawsoni)?, Julian Ashford, Michael S. Dinniman, Cassandra Brooks, Allen H. Andrews, Eileen E. Hofmann, Gregor Cailliet, Christopher Jones, Nakul Ramanna

CCPO Publications

A multidisciplinary approach incorporating otolith chemistry, age data, and numerical Lagrangian particle simulations indicated a single, self-recruiting population of Antarctic toothfish (Dissostichus mawsoni) in the Southeast Pacific Basin (SPB) and Ross Sea, with a life history structured by the large-scale circulation. Chemistry deposited prior to capture along otolith edges demonstrated strong environmental heterogeneity, yet the chemistry in otolith nuclei, deposited during early life, showed no differences. Age data showed only adult fish in catches on the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge in the SPB and structuring of life stages consistent with transport pathways from the northern Ross Sea. Lagrangian particle simulations …

Oceanic Controls On The Mass Balance Of Wilkins Ice Shelf, Antarctica, Laurie Padman, Daniel P. Costs, M. S. Dinniman, Helen A. Fricker, Michael E. Goebel, Luis A. Huckstadt, Angelika Humbert, Ian Joughin, Jan T. M. Lenaerts, Stefan R. M. Ligtenberg, Ted Scambos, Michiel R. Van Den Broeke

CCPO Publications

Several Antarctic Peninsula (AP) ice shelves have lost significant fractions of their volume over the past decades, coincident with rapid regional climate change. Wilkins Ice Shelf (WIS), on the western side of the AP, is the most recent, experiencing a sequence of large calving events in 2008 and 2009. We analyze the mass balance for WIS for the period 1992-2008 and find that the averaged rate of ice-shelf thinning was similar to 0.8 m a(-1), driven by a mean basal melt rate of < w(b)> = 1.3 +/- 0.4 m a(-1). Interannual variability was large, associated with changes in both surface mass …