Digital Commons Network^™

Recent Cases: Eeoc V. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc.: Religious Accommodation In The Workplace, Elizabeth King

Faculty Scholarship

In EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc., the plaintiff, Samantha Elauf, was rejected from a sales clerk position because her headscarf clashed with Abercrombie & Fitch’s employee dress code.¹ This code, Abercrombie’s “Look Policy,” required all employees to dress in a “classic East Coast collegiate style” and prohibited “caps.”² However, Elauf, a practicing Muslim, wore a headscarf (or “hijab”) as a representation and obligation of her religion.³ After Abercrombie rejected her employment application, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) sued the company on Elauf’s behalf, alleging a Title VII violation for failure to accommodate a …

Race And Reform In Twenty-First Century America: Foreword, Trina Jones, Guy-Uriel Charles, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

In November 2015, approximately two hundred activists, academics, and students from across the United States convened at Duke University School of Law for a conference entitled The Present and Future of Civil Rights Movements: Race and Reform in 21st Century America. Planning for the conference had commenced a year earlier, in the fall of 2014. At that time, the nation was reeling from the deaths of Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, John Crawford III, and Michael Brown, among others. In addition to the killing of these unarmed Black men and women by law enforcement personnel, many people, particularly within the civil …

Teaching Innovation: Equipping Students To Overcome Real-World Challenges, Jamye Foster, Gallayanee Yaoyuneyong

Faculty Publications

© 2016 The Author(s). Business students beginning their careers find that they must innovate to solve nebulous problems, work in interdisciplinary groups and environments, and effectively communicate their knowledge to colleagues and clients with diverse backgrounds. Addressing this, researchers devised a flipped classroom cross-disciplinary (CD) client-based project (CBP), in which two different business classes, containing students from two different fields, worked together on a semester-long project. The project aimed to address three areas in which students tend to be weak as they attempt to begin their careers: innovativeness, interdisciplinary collaboration, and real-world experience. The flipped classroom CD CBP was centered …

Activation Of Signal Transduction Pathways During Hepatic Oncogenesis, W Chung, M Kim, S De La Monte, L Longato, R Carlson, B L. Slagle, X Dong, J R. Wands

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Understanding the molecular pathogenesis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is essential to identify therapeutic targets. A hepatitis B virus (HBV) related double transgenic murine model was developed. METHODS: Liver specific expression of HBV X protein (HBx) and insulin receptor substrate 1 (IRS1) was achieved and transgenic mice were followed from birth to age 21 months. Liver and tumor tissue were assessed for histologic changes as well as activation of signal transduction pathways by qRT-PCR and multiplex ELISA protein assays. RESULTS: Overexpression of HBx and IRS1 stimulates liver cell proliferation in the double transgenic mice. Only the male mice …

Fairer Uses, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

A response to Professor Joseph Liu’s paper on Fair Use, Notice Failure, and the Limits of Copyright as Property, this essay challenges Professor Liu to go even farther in his analysis and protection of the everyday audience of copyright works. In describing and analyzing what I term “fairer uses” on the basis of qualitative data from interviews of artists and authors who make and rely on copyrighted works for their own creativity and professional well-being, I support Professor Liu’s advocacy for maintaining “fuzzy boundaries” of fair use. Based on evidence from grounded practice of professional creators, their expansive application …

Animism Among Western Buddhists, Daniel S. Capper

Faculty Publications

Myriad instances of animist phenomena abound in the Buddhist world, but due to the outdated concepts of thinkers such as Edward Tylor, James George Frazer, and Melford Spiro, commonly scholars perceive this animism merely as the work of local religions, not as deriving from Buddhism itself. However, when one follows a number of contemporary scholars and employs a new, relational concept of animism that is based on respectful recognition of nonhuman personhoods, a different picture emerges. The works of Western Buddhists such as Stephanie Kaza, Philip Kapleau Roshi, and Gary Snyder express powerful senses of relational animism that arise specifically …

The Maternal Personhood Of Cattle And Plants At A Hindu Center In The United States, Daniel S. Capper

Faculty Publications

Religious experiences with sacred nonhuman natural beings considered to be “persons” remain only vaguely understood. This essay provides a measure of clarification by engendering a dialogue between psychoanalytic self psychology on one side and, on the other, religious experiences of cattle and Tulsi plants as holy mothers at a Hindu cattle sanctuary in the United States. Ethnographic data from the Hindu center uncover experiences of sacred maternal natural beings that are tensive, liminal, and colored with affective themes of nurturance, respect, and intimacy, much like psychoanalytic maternal selfobjects. Devotees protect cattle and ritually venerate plants because these actions facilitate a …

Groundhog Oracles And Their Forebears, Daniel S. Capper

Faculty Publications

Groundhog Day animal weather forecasting ceremonies continue to proliferate around the United States despite a lack of public confidence in the oracles. This essay probes religio-historical and original ethnographic perspectives to offer a psychological argument for why these ceremonies exist. Employing Paul Shepard’s notion of a felt loss of sacred, intimate relationships with nonhuman nature, as well as Peter Homans’ concept of the monument that enables mourning, this essay argues that groundhog oracles serve as monuments that allow humans experientially to attempt to heal lost sacred relationships with animals like weather forecasting bears, hedgehogs, and badgers

Introduction To Thinking About A Post-Aca World: Litigation, Cost Shifting And Enforcement Of Statutory Rights, Maria O'Brien

Faculty Scholarship

At its annual gathering in 2016, members of the Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation and Law, Medicine and Healthcare Sections of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) jointly sponsored a discussion of the future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) following the Supreme Court's decision in King v. Burwell.' What follows are the papers generated for the panel discussion. The panelists² were asked to evaluate the future of the ACA from a distinct perspective.

A Cacciopoli-Type Inequality To Prove Coercivity Of A Bilinear Form Associated With Spatial Hysteresis Internal Damping For An Euler-Bernoulli Beam, Bernd S.W. SchrÖder, Jonathan B. Walters, Katie A. Evans

Faculty Publications

We prove an inequality that resembles Cacciopoli inequalities in that it bounds the norm of the derivative of a function by using the norm of the function. Unlike in Cacciopoli inequalities, there is no restriction on the function, a fact made up for by adding an extra term to the norm of the function. The inequality arose in the proof that a bilinear form associated with spatial hysteresis internal damping for an Euler-Bernoulli beam is coercive.

Root Cause Approach To Prisoner Radicalisation, Nathan Thompson

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Prison radicalisation in Australia has become a key focal point for the subject literature on radicalisation. However, while attention has been directed at identifying and apprehending violent extremists, less consideration has been given to what could be done with these people when convicted. This paper applies the 'root cause model' to prisoner radicalisation to investigate the environmental, social and individual influences that contribute to radicalisation in prisons. This examination took a holistic view of the prison radicalisation process that is based on causal factors rather than the traditional 'phase model' approach. It is argued that this is an important step …

Humanising The Curriculum: The Role Of A Virtual World, Beverley Ewans, Sara Geale, Caroline Vafeas, Fiona Foxall, Barbara Loessl, Aisling Smyth, Christopher Mccafferty

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Objective:

Technology has changed our world; changed the way we communicate, the way we do business and the way education is delivered. As a result, undergraduate student cohorts come to university equipped with new technology, and educators need to transform the delivery of the curricula to satisfy a variety of learning styles. Nursing education, in particular, is developing and transforming to incorporate technology into the learning environment. Clinical placement opportunities are often sparse and alternative experiences need to be considered. Across nursing curricula, it has been recognised that technology has the capacity to provide real-life learning experiences that promote …

Nurse Staffing And Workload Drivers In Small Rural Hospitals: An Imperative For Evidence, Diane E. Twigg, Jennifer H. Cramer, Judith D. Pugh

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Purpose:

The aim of this study was to explore staffing issues and the workload drivers influencing nursing activities in designated small rural hospitals of Western Australia. A problem for small rural hospitals is an imbalance between nurse staffing resources and work activity.

Sample:

A purposive sample of 17 nurse leaders employed at designated small rural hospitals in Western Australia.

Method:

A qualitative research design was used. Data were collected by focus group and semi-structured interviews and review of Western Australian Country Health Service records. Thematic analysis was used to interpret data.

Findings:

A minimum nurse staffing model is in use. …

A Morphometric Study Of The Human Mandible In The Indian Population For Sex Determination, Maneesha Sharma, Rakesh K. Gorea, Arshdeep Gorea, Abdulwahab A. Abuderman

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Sex determination from bones is important in forensic investigations for establishing identity in cases of mutilated bodies. Many morphometric criteria have been laid down for various bones for sex determination in previous studies. The present study aimed at setting up some parameters of the mandible as indicators of sex in the Indian population. The length of body of the mandible, angle of the mandible and minimum ramus breadth were considered as chief parameters for sex determination from dried bones obtained from the Departments of Anatomy in two medical colleges of Punjab and Chandigarh. There was a statistically significant difference found …

An Automated Approach For Digital Forensic Analysis Of Heterogeneous Big Data, Hussam Mohammed, Nathan Clarke, Fudong Li

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The major challenges with big data examination and analysis are volume, complex interdependence across content, and heterogeneity. The examination and analysis phases are considered essential to a digital forensics process. However, traditional techniques for the forensic investigation use one or more forensic tools to examine and analyse each resource. In addition, when multiple resources are included in one case, there is an inability to cross-correlate findings which often leads to inefficiencies in processing and identifying evidence. Furthermore, most current forensics tools cannot cope with large volumes of data. This paper develops a novel framework for digital forensic analysis of heterogeneous …

Structural Geodesic-Tchebychev Transform: An Image Similarity Measure For Face Recognition, Ali Nadhim Razzaq, Zahir Hussain, Hind Rustum Mohammed

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This work presents a new holistic measure for face recognition. Face recognition involves three steps: Face Detection, Feature Extraction and Matching. In the face detection process to identify the face area in face images, Viola-Jones algorithm has been used. Feature extraction is based on performing double-transformation, where discrete Tchebychev transform is performed on the geodesic distance transform of the grayscale image. Structural Similarity (SSIM) is applied to the resulting image double-transform to find matching factor with other image faces in the FEI (Brazilian) database. Performance is measured using a confidence criterion based on the similarity distance between the recognized person …

Data Journalism Classes In Australian Universities: Educators Describe Progress To Date, Kayt Davies, Trevor Cullen

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This article examines the extent to which data journalism (DJ) is being taught in Australian universities. It presents the results of interviews with 35 journalism academics about how they are incorporating data journalism into their courses. It includes details about the types of data journalism skills they are teaching, the resources they are using and the hindrances that have met or are making it difficult to teach data journalism. These hindrances include low and varied levels of quantitative literacy and math aversion among students, lack of time for upskilling and limited room in their courses for new material. The study …

Running To Well-Being: A Comparative Study On The Impact Of Exercise On The Physical And Mental Health Of Law And Psychology Students, Natalie K. Skead, Shane L. Rogers

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Research indicates that, in comparison to other university students, law students are at greater risk of experiencing high levels of psychological distress. There is also a large body of literature supporting a general negative association between exercise and stress, anxiety and depression. However, we are not aware of any studies exploring the impact of exercise on the mental health of law students specifically. This article reports evidence of a negative association between exercise and psychological distress in 206 law and psychology students. Compared to psychology students, the law students not only reported greater psychological distress, but, in addition, there was …

Medicine In The Early Twenty-First Century: Paradigm And Anticipation - Epma Position Paper 2016, Olga Golubnitschaja, Babak Baban, Giovanni Boniolo, Wei Wang, Rostyslav Bubnov, Marko Kapalla, Kurt Krapfenbauer, Mahmood S. Mozaffari, Vincenzo Costigliola

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Challenges of “standardisation” and “individualisation” have always been characteristic for medical services. In terms of individualisation, the best possible individual care is the ethical imperative of medicine, and it is a good right of any patient to receive it. However, in terms of standardisation, all the available treatments are based on guideline recommendations derived from large multi-centre trials with many thousands of patients involved. In the most optimal way, the standardisation and individualisation should go hand-in-hand, in order to identify the right patient treating him/her with the right medication and the right dose at the right time point!

Further, …

Bio-Physical Closure Criteria Without Reference Sites: Realistic Targets In Modified Rivers, Melanie L. Blanchette, Mark Lund, Robyn Stoney, Digby Short, Colm Harkin

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The use of reference sites for establishing closure criteria in areas disturbed by mining activities is common practice. ‘Reference’ sites are those considered to be largely unimpacted by anthropogenic activity (retaining desirable natural characteristics), and occurring near disturbed sites. Sites are considered rehabilitated when their biophysical condition approximates that of the reference site. However, this approach often creates impossible or unrealistic targets for miners seeking to close rehabilitated lands. For example, reference sites are often limited in availability (or non-existent) due to impacts by other land uses. Further, any available reference sites might not be realistic matches for the rehabilitated …

Diet And Nutrition Reverse Type 3 Diabetes And Accelerated Aging Linked To Global Chronic Diseases, Ian James Martins

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The acceleration in the rate of chronic diseases that involve insulin resistance has become of global concern. The rate of the most prevalent chronic disease such as cardiovascular disease is linked to the metabolic syndrome, non alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and other chronic diseases that include obesity, diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. The gene-environment interaction in Western countries indicates that with urbanization access to food and its content may lead to induction of epigenetic alterations and identify the gene Sirtuin 1 (Sirt 1) to be responsible for the increased risk for insulin resistance and NAFLD relevant to Type 1, Type …

Serum Concentrations Of The Biomarkers Ca125, Ca15-3, Psa And Papp-A In Early Pregnancy, Melissa J. Stemp, Peter Roberts, Allison Mcclements, Vincent Chapple, Phillip Matson

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Blood samples were collected serially from 14 women with healthy pregnancies, beginning in gestational week 4 at the time of a positive pregnancy test through to the identification of a foetal heart by ultrasound. Six biomarkers were measured in the serum retrospectively including two reproductive hormones (progesterone and human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG)) and four additional biomarkers (prostate-specific antigen (PSA), cancer antigen 15-3 (CA15-3), cancer antigen 125 (CA125) and pregnancy-associated plasma protein A (PAPP-A)) measured on a Siemens Centaur XP and a Roche Cobas e411 automated analysers, respectively. The progesterone and hCG results were unremarkable following established patterns, but distinctive patterns …

Headline Grabs For Music: The Development Of An Ipad Score Generator, Cat Hope, Stuart James, Aaron Wyatt

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This paper-demonstration provides an overview of an generative music score adapted for the iPad by the Decibel new music ensemble. The original score `Loaded (NSFW)’ (2015) is by Western Australian composer Laura Jane Lowther, and is scored for ensemble and electronics, commissioned for a performance in April 2015 at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts. It engages and develops the Decibel Score Player application, a score reader and generator for the iPad as a tool for displaying an interactive score that requires performers to react to news headlines through musical means. The paper will introduce the concept for the player, …

Drug Therapy For Obesity With Anti-Aging Genes Modification, Ian J. Martins

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Nutritional regulation and drug therapy has been the focus of the current obesity epidemic in various countries in the world. Epigenetics is the major mechanism for the development of insulin resistance and obesity with unhealthy diets, oxidative stress and environmental factors relevant to alterations in gene expression with effects on mitochondrial biogenesis, adipose tissue lipid metabolism and energy expenditure. Anti-aging genes are involved in the regulation of adipogenesis with increased sensitivity to anti-aging gene dysfunction associated with adipocyte-neuron interactions compared to other cells. Unhealthy diets downregulate adipocyte anti-aging genes associated with the development of Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) …

The Possibilities Of A Line: Marking The Glissando In Music, Cat Hope, Michael Terren

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The glissando as it is deployed in Western art music notation carries with it a number of challenges to the hegemony of traditional harmony, rhythm, and notation. The glissando embodies the smooth line, unlike the striated pitch-time space of traditional Western music, which aligns the glissando to many philosophical concepts, as well as mathematical, scientific, and architectural disciplines. Select works by Iannis Xenakis, James Tenney and Giacinto Scelsi are discussed for their development of glissandi as integral formal components, especially around the glissando’s tendency to encourage stasis. Compositional attempts to combine the nature of glissandi with drone in the author’s …

Magnesium Therapy Prevents Senescence With The Reversal Of Diabetes And Alzheimer’S Disease, Ian James Martins

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In the current global epidemic for Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD), diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease there has been a major interest in magnesium therapy to delay the severity of NAFLD, Type 3 diabetes and neurodegeneration in the developing and developed world. The objective of magnesium therapy is to activate the anti-aging gene Sirtuin 1 (Sirt1) to prevent cardiovascular disease, NAFLD and diabetes. Reduced consumption of nutrients such as fatty acids, glucose, cholesterol and increased magnesium consumption is closely linked to reduced bacterial lipopolysaccharides (LPS) and activation of Sirt1 relevant to active nuclear and mitochondria interactions …

Type 3 Diabetes With Links To Nafld And Other Chronic Diseases In The Western World, Ian J. Martins

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In the year 2015 it is now estimated that 30% of the Western World will now progress to non alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and by the year 2050 if NAFLD remains untreated in the Western world the prevalence of the disease may rise to 40% of the global population. Type 3 diabetes and circadian rhythm disturbances may be involved in the induction of NAFLD that may promote insulin resistance and various chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, pancreatic disease, kidney disease and neurodegenerative disease. Multiple risk factors that induce Type 3 diabetes and NAFLD include stress, magnesium deficiency, bacterial …

Introduction, Ingrid B. Wuerth

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Comparative constitutional law is today an exciting and increasingly diverse field of academic inquiry in US and Canadian law schools, as the excellent papers for this Symposium illustrate. Looking back, the 1990s were also a dynamic period for comparative constitutional law, with a predictable emphasis on constitution drafting in Eastern Europe and South Africa. As law and economics and empirical work became popular tools of legal analysis, comparative constitutional law initially drifted instead toward a focus on constitutional courts and on positive and negative liberties. Moreover, once the focus shifted away from active constitution drafting projects, questions re-surfaced about why …

The Conventions Of Constitutional Amendment In Canada, Richard Albert

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Commentators have suggested that the unsuccessful national referendum to ratify the 1992 Charlottetown Accord created an expectation of popular participation requiring national referendal consultation in major reforms to the Constitution of Canada. In this article, I inquire whether federal political actors are bound by a constitutional convention of national referendal consultation for formal amendments to the basic structure of the Constitution of Canada. Drawing from the Supreme Court of Canada’s Patriation Reference, I suggest that we cannot know whether federal political actors are bound by such a convention until they are confronted with the question whether or not to hold …

Formal Versus Functional Method In Comparative Constitutional Law, Francesca Bignami

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

In the field of comparative constitutional law, the dominant approach to concept formation and research design is formal. That is, comparative projects generally identify what counts as the supreme law that can be enforced against all other sources of law based on the “constitutional” label of the positive law (written constitutions and the jurisprudence of constitutional courts) and the law books. This formal method, however, has significant limitations when compared with the functional method used in the field of comparative law more generally speaking. After a brief exposition of the functional method, this article explores the advantages of the functional …