Digital Commons Network^™

The America Invents Act: Target, The Eastern District Of Texas, Jim Harlan, Chad Everingham, Douglas M. Kubehl, Lisa A. Dolak

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Enhancement Or Recovery: The Scientific And Legal Paradox Of Performance-Enhancing Substances, Robert M. Gallman

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Down With The Dmca, Andrew Johnson

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tobacco Manufacturers And The United States Government: Ready For Battle, Brian E. Mason

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Assessing Numeracy In Oncology: The Role Of Patient Perception And Preferences, Jennifer Kilkus Poe

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Treatment decision making (TDM) in oncology is complex. Understanding treatment information is essential for shared TDM. Research suggests many patients have low numeracy. This mixed methods study explored numeracy and experience with numbers in a sample of individuals diagnosed with follicular lymphoma. Participants completed questionnaires (N = 32) and interviews (N = 20) assessing numeracy, decisional conflict and regret, and number preference. Results suggest that mean objective numeracy was relatively high, and most reported high confidence in numerical ability. Most participants preferred to receive numbers during the TDM process. There was no relationship between numeracy and decision outcomes. Future research …

Inference Generation And Story Comprehension Among Children With Adhd, Jessica S. Kosloski

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Academic difficulties are well-documented among children with ADHD. Exploring these difficulties through story comprehension research has revealed deficits among children with ADHD in making causal connections between events, and using causal structure and thematic importance when recalling stories. Important to theories of story comprehension and implied in these deficits is the ability to make inferences. Often, characters’ goals are implicit and explanations of events must be inferred. The purpose of the present study was to compare the ability of 7- to 11-year-old children with ADHD and their comparison peers to make inferences during story comprehension. Children watched two televised stories, …

Infants’ Perception Of Emotion From Dynamic Body Movements, Nicole R. Zieber

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

In humans, the capacity to extract meaning from another person’s behavior is fundamental to social competency. Adults recognize emotions conveyed by body movements with comparable accuracy to when they are portrayed in facial expressions. While infancy research has examined the development of facial and vocal emotion processing extensively, no prior study has explored infants’ perception of emotion from body movements. The current studies examined the development of emotion processing from body gestures. In Experiment 1, I asked whether 6.5-month-olds infants would prefer to view emotional versus neutral body movements. The results indicate that infants prefer to view a happy versus …

Using The Scrambled Sentences Test To Examine Relationships Between Cognitive Bias, Thought Suppression And Borderline Personality Features, Paul Jefferson Geiger

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Cognitive bias and thought suppression are two maladaptive patterns of thinking that have been associated with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Negative cognitive biases related to BPD include thoughts that they are bad, powerless, or vulnerable and that the world is dangerous. Thought suppression is a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy where unwanted thoughts are intentionally pushed out of one’s consciousness. However, previous research has connected thought suppression and cognitive biases to BPD only via self-report measures. The present study examined whether a laboratory task meant to measure cognitive bias and thought suppression (Scrambled Sentences Test) would predict BPD features over and …

Do High School Peer Crowd Affiliation And Peer Alcohol Use Predict Alcohol Use During College?, Jacqueline A. Bonsu

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Peer crowd affiliation (PCA) has been linked to alcohol use in adolescents, with patterns varying by crowd. However, a comprehensive examination of how peers influence college students’ behaviors, especially with regards to PCA, is lacking. The current study seeks to replicate and extend findings from Barber, Eccles, and Stone (2001) by examining whether high school PCA is associated with average weekly drinking and problematic drinking in a sample of college freshman, including friends’ drinking as a potential mediator and susceptibility to peer influence as a potential moderator. As existing research has found that close friends’ drinking predicts own drinking, peer …

Impulsivity Traits And The Longitudinal Prediction Of Addictive Behaviors During The Transition From Elementary To Middle School, Leila Guller

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

The aim of this study was to test for prospective relationships between personality factors measured in elementary school and drinking, smoking, and binge eating during the first year of middle school. Data were collected among adolescents drawn from 23 elementary schools and 15 middles schools in central Kentucky. In a two-wave study, 1,906 children completed questionnaire measures in the spring of 5^th grade and the spring of 6^th grade. After controlling for sex, pubertal status, and prior engagement in addictive behaviors, it was found that urgency at wave 1 predicted drinking, smoking, and binge eating at wave 2, …

Shame And Borderline Personality Features: The Potential Mediating Role Of Anger And Anger Rumination, Jessica R. Peters

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Two prominent emotions in borderline personality disorder (BPD) are anger and shame. Rumination has been demonstrated to occur in response to shame and to escalate anger, and rumination, particularly anger rumination, has been shown to predict BPD symptoms. The present study examined whether one way that shame leads to the features of BPD is via increased anger and anger rumination. A sample of 823 undergraduates completed self-report measures of global and situational shame, trait- level anger, anger'rumination, and BPD features. A structural equation model was constructed using these measures. The hypothesized model of shame to anger and anger rumination to …

The Effect Of Therapist Use Of Technology On The Therapeutic Alliance , Nicholas R. Wiarda

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

No abstract provided.

Program Evaluation Of A Curriculum For Increasing Empathy, Self-Awareness, Personal Healing, And Knowledge Of Abuse And Sex-Trafficking, Haley H. Crowl

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

No abstract provided.

Diffuse Optical Imaging Using Decomposition Methods, Binlin Wu, M. Alrubaiee, W. Cai, M. Xu, S. K. Gayen

Publications and Research

Diffuse optical imaging (DOI) for detecting and locating targets in a highly scattering turbid medium is treated as a blind source separation (BSS) problem. Three matrix decomposition methods, independent component analysis (ICA), principal component analysis (PCA), and nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) were used to study the DOI problem. The efficacy of resulting approaches was evaluated and compared using simulated and experimental data. Samples used in the experiments included Intralipid-10% or Intralipid-20% suspension in water as the medium with absorptive or scattering targets embedded.

Family Processes, Beliefs About Intelligence, And Openness As Predictors Of English Language Learners’ Creative Problem Solving, Seokhee Cho, Norman Eng

Publications and Research

There has been a pressing need in creativity research to discover interactive relationships that can predict creative problem solving, particularly in the fastest growing demographic segment in public schools, immigrants. This study examined the best predictor for creative problem solving attributes of English Language Learners (ELLs) among family processes, beliefs about intelligence, and openness. 198 mathematically promising third graders in seven public schools were selected and administered questionnaires on their family processes, beliefs about intelligence, openness to experience, and creative problem solving attributes. It was found that the Asian English learners' creative problem solving were predicted better with their incremental …

The Constitutional Right Not To Kill, Mark L. Rienzi

Scholarly Articles

Federal and state governments participate in and/or permit a variety of different types of killings. These include military operations, capital punishment, assisted suicide, abortion and self-defense or defense of others. In a pluralistic society, it is no surprise that there will be some members of the population who refuse to participate in some or all of these types of killings. The question of how governments should treat such refusals is older than the Republic itself. Since colonial times, the answer to this question has been driven largely by statutory protections, with the Constitution playing a smaller role, particularly since the …

The Technological Edge, Elizabeth I. Winston

Scholarly Articles

To grant a patent to natural phenomena hinders innovation, taking back from the public that which the public has a right to possess. To deny a patent to man’s manufacture undercuts the fundamental bargain of the patent system. All inventions, at their core, may be deemed natural, rendering it difficult to distinguish between man’s manufacture and natural phenomena. Determining whether the innovative aspect of the product is a technological one, rather than a natural one, can clarify whether the patent grant promotes the progress of science and the useful arts. The higher the level of skill in the art required …

Judicial Challenges To Mandatory Minimum Sentences: A New Frontier In Debate Over Child Pornography Sentencing?, Mary Graw Leary

Scholarly Articles

Over the past decade, federal sentencing issues concerning child pornography have produced considerable legal debate, much of it focused on the application of federal sentencing guidelines as set forth by the United States Sentencing Commission (U.S.S.C.). Many judges have opined that the factors used to calculate the adjusted offense level for some child pornography offenses may be out of date, impracticable, and/or in conflict with 18 U.S.C. 3553(a), which requires, among other things, “just punishments.” Particular concerns have been expressed that strict application of the sentencing guidelines can produce results in which possessors of child pornography (i.e. those who commit …

Fluids, Anomalies And The Chiral Magnetic Effect: A Group-Theoretic Formulation, V. Parameswaran Nair, Rashmi Ray, Shubho Roy

Publications and Research

It is possible to formulate fluid dynamics in terms of group-valued variables. This is particularly suited to the cases where the fluid has nonabelian charges and is coupled to nonabelian gauge fields. We explore this formulation further in this paper. An action for a fluid of relativistic particles (with and without spin) is given in terms of the Lorentz and Poincare (or de Sitter) groups. Considering the case of particles with flavor symmetries, a general fluid action which also incorporates all flavor anomalies is given. The chiral magnetic and chiral vorticity effects as well as the consequences of the mixed …

Response: There Is No Common Law Of Severability, Kevin C. Walsh

Scholarly Articles

In this solicited response to The New General Common Law of Severability, I first offer an interpretation of Ayotte and subsequent Supreme Court decisions as continuous with existing doctrine instead of a departure from it. I then suggest that much of Scoville’s evidence for a federalization of severability doctrine is better viewed as evidence of doctrinal looseness rather than of doctrinal change. I conclude by returning to the lessons of severability’s doctrinal history, suggesting that the prehistory of severability doctrine may supply a better guide for how courts should deal with problems of partial unconstitutionality in the future.

Against Theories Of Punishment: The Thought Of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Marc O. Degirolami

Scholarly Articles

This paper reflects critically on what is the near-universal contemporary method of conceptualizing the tasks of the scholar of criminal punishment. It does so by the unusual route of considering the thought of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, a towering figure in English law and political theory, one of its foremost historians of criminal law, and a prominent public intellectual of the late Victorian period. Notwithstanding Stephen's stature, there has as yet been no sustained effort to understand his views of criminal punishment. This article attempts to remedy this deficit. But its aims are not exclusively historical. Indeed, understanding Stephen's ideas …

Stressors And Threats To The Flora Of Acadia National Park, Maine: Current Knowledge, Information Gaps, And Future Directions, T B. Harris, N Rajakaruna, S J. Nelson, P D. Vaux

Faculty Publications, Biological Sciences

Stressors and threats to the flora of Acadia National Park, Maine: Current knowledge, information gaps, and future directions. J. Torrey Bot. Soc. 139: 323–344. 2012.— Acadia National Park is a center of plant diversity in northeastern North America. The Park's varied habitats and flora are sensitive to a number of natural and anthropogenic perturbations. Stressors such as invasive plants, pest and pathogens, ozone, acidic fog and sulfur deposition, nitrogen deposition, heavy metals, fire and fire suppression, over-browsing, visitor use, hurricanes, and climate change have all had effects on the Park's habitats and plant species at some point and it is …

Barth, Barthes, And Bergson: Postmodern Aesthetics And The Imperative Of The New, Paul Douglass

Faculty Publications, English and Comparative Literature

No abstract provided.

Literary Annual, Katherine D. Harris

Faculty Publications, English and Comparative Literature

No abstract provided.

Rudolph Ackermann, Katherine D. Harris

Faculty Publications, English and Comparative Literature

No abstract provided.

Object Retrieval From Secure Unknown Interior Spaces Using Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, John Levous, Julie Hoven, Victor Habgood, Abdulrahman Alotaibi, Brandon Ordway, Garibe Mohammed-Jones, Haole Guo, Filip Cuckov, Chung-Hao Chen

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper describes an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed to participate in the 23rd annual International Aerial Robotics Competition. The UAV is equipped with onboard sensors and a Harvard architecture 8-bit RISC microcontroller to monitor and locally control its flight telemetry. Additional sensors (and an additional microcontroller) are used for detecting and mapping of structural and environmental objects while the UAV is in flight. The microcontrollers are interfaced with wireless communication modules for transmitting flight telemetry and structural/environmental data to a ground control station that sends the UAV command and control signals required for the mission objectives. The UAV …

In Re Toft; Section 1506 Public Policy Exception Trumps General Grant Of Comity, Malerie Ma

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

Chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code allows courts in the United States to recognize the judgments of foreign courts on the basis of comity. Chapter 15's “public policy” exception, however, prevents recognition of such judgments if they are “manifestly contrary to the public policy of the United States.” In re Toft is one of the few cases to deny relief on the basis of the public policy exception. While courts will continue to apply this exception narrowly, In re Toft shows that the public policy exception can be a powerful impediment to requests for aid in foreign insolvency proceedings. …

Evacuee Route Choice Decisions In A Dynamic Hurricane Evacuation Context, R. Michael Robinson, Asad Khattak

VMASC Publications

Very high traffic volumes may lead to extensive congestion during hurricane evacuations. Evacuation planners reduce this congestion by careful planning for multiple hurricane scenarios and assignment of evacuation routes and timing. This planning may be for naught if obstructions block key roadways. An advanced traveler information system (ATIS) may be used to guide evacuees to alternate routes, but how effective will that guidance be? Should the use of alternate routes be encouraged? How are drivers likely to respond to delays and information? Will information shorten or improve the reliability of travel times in emergency conditions? Integration of a dynamic evacuation …

Who Has Standing To Object To A Debtor’S Reorganization Plan? Analyzing Section 1128(B)’S “Party In Interest” Bankruptcy Standing Requirement And The “Persons Aggrieved” Appellate Standing Test, Michael Battema

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

In a decision with important implications for parties listed in debtor reorganization plans, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit recently reiterated its position that section 1128(b) of the Bankruptcy Code (the “Code”) should be interpreted broadly to permit any listed party whose rights might be implicated by a debtor’s reorganization plan the ability to object to the plan’s terms in bankruptcy court. In its decision, the Third Circuit distinguishes between a party’s right to object to a debtor’s confirmation plan in bankruptcy court (“Bankruptcy Standing”) versus that party’s ability to appeal the debtor’s confirmation ruling …

In Re Awal Bank: Expanding Ability To Avoid Setoff In Chapter 15 Bankruptcy Cases, Jacob Chase

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

Foreign bankruptcy representatives seeking to avoid setoff of fund transfers pursuant to section 553 of the Bankruptcy Code may enjoy more flexible standards than ever before. In a recent decision by the United States Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York, In re Awal Bank, Judge Gropper allowed the foreign representative for Awal Bank to avoid a setoff by HSBC even though the bank had not filed a plenary chapter 7 or 11 bankruptcy proceeding within 90 days of the setoff, holding that Awal Bank’s filing under Chapter 15 within the relevant 90 day look-back period …