Digital Commons Network^™

The Long Road Back To Skokie: Returning The First Amendment To Mask Wearers, Rob Kahn

Journal of Law and Policy

When the Seventh Circuit upheld the First Amendment right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois in 1978, the protection of mask wearers was not far behind. Since then, doctrinal paths have diverged. While the Supreme Court continues to protect hate speech, mask wearing has been increasingly placed outside First Amendment protection. This article seeks to get to the bottom of this doctrinal divergence by addressing the symbolic purposes of mask bans—rooted in repudiating the Ku Klux Klan—as well as the doctrinal steps taken over the past forty years to restrict the First Amendment claims of mask wearers. It also …

Increasing Lapses In Data Security: The Need For A Common Answer To What Constitutes Standing In A Data Breach Context, Aaron Benjamin Edelman

Journal of Law and Policy

As the number of data breaches continues to rise in the United States, so does the amount of data breach litigation. Many potential plaintiffs who suffered as victims of data breaches, however, find themselves in limbo regarding the issue of standing before a court because of a significant split on standing determinations amongst the federal circuit courts. Thus, while victims of data breaches oftentimes have their personal information fall into the hands of nefarious characters who intend to use the information to a victim’s detriment, that may not be enough to provide victims a right to sue in federal court …

Neglecting Responsibilities: The Uniform Probate Code's Failure To Address Child Maltreatment And Poverty, Joshua Hamlet

Journal of Law and Policy

When a child or adolescent passes away, parents are typically stricken with grief and unable to cope with the devastation. Unfortunately, the emotional toll is not the only challenge parents face. Some are forced to handle legal battles regarding the administration of their deceased child’s estate. Since the majority of children do not have a will, state adoptions of the Uniform Probate Code dictate what happens to the child’s estate during these tragedies. But what happens in the event these parents abused or neglected their child while that child was still living? While the Uniform Probate Code advises that these …

Shoring Up The Hear Act: Proposed Amendments To Federal Legislation Designed To Assist Heirs And Claimants Of Nazi-Looted Art, Alexander Hull

Journal of Law and Policy

From 1933 to 1945, Nazi German forces executed a mass campaign of property confiscation, stealing as many as 600,000 pieces of art, including paintings, tapestries and sculptures from museums and private collections across Europe. It is estimated that some 300,000 pieces of art are still missing or are currently in the possession of someone other than the so-called “true” owner, based on reviews of Nazi documentation conducted by the Jewish Restitution Organization. While Nazi art looting has been regarded as “dehumanizing,” “self-advancing” and concomitant with the Nazi regime’s larger genocidal crusade, restitution in this context has been framed as a …

High Stakes: Throwing A Hail Mary To Congress For A Federal Ban On Sports Betting In College Athletics, Kaitlyn Kallert

Journal of Law and Policy

The Supreme Court’s 2018 decision overruling the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act’s (“PASPA”) federal prohibition on sports betting as unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment has cleared the way for states to legalize sports gambling, which, in turn, has proven a controversial subject. Supporters of state legalization of sports gambling “argue that legalization will generate revenue for states and critically weaken illegal sports betting operations, which are often commissioned by organized crime.” However, as the Supreme Court notes, opponents contend that the legalization of sports betting will expose America’s youth to accessible gambling, “encourage people of modest means to squander …

The Hard Look Doctrine: How Disparate Impact Theory Can Inform Agencies On Proper Implementation Of Nepa Regulations, Monica Mercola

Journal of Law and Policy

Executive Order 12898—Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations—was issued to achieve “environmental protection for all communities” by drawing federal agencies’ attention to the environmental and human health effects brought about by their actions. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) sets forth a detailed process which aims to ensure that each agency will have available, and will consider, a carefully detailed compilation of information concerning significant environmental impacts resulting from federal actions before taking those actions. Realizing the Executive Order’s goal, however, is rendered problematic, in part because of the difficulty in challenging an Environmental …

“Disturbing Schools” Laws: Disturbing Due Process With Unconstitutionally Vague Limits On Student Behavior, Rachel Smith

Journal of Law and Policy

For over a century, the United States Supreme Court has held, in sum and substance, that students do not “shed their constitutional rights . . . at the schoolhouse gate.” In practice, however, while not shed entirely, many of those rights have been increasingly limited. “Disturbing Schools” Laws subject students to criminal charges for behaving in a distracting or obnoxious manner on campus—behavior which can easily be conceptualized as typical adolescent behavior. Challenges to Disturbing Schools Laws have resulted in opposing outcomes across Circuit Courts. This Note discusses how students may use the Fourth Circuit case Kenny v. Wilson to …

An Ai Approach To Measuring Financial Risk, Lining Yu, Wolfgang Karl Hardle, Lukas Borke, Thijs Benschop

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

AI artificial intelligence brings about new quantitative techniques to assess the state of an economy. Here, we describe a new measure for systemic risk: the Financial Risk Meter (FRM). This measure is based on the penalization parameter (λ" role="presentation" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size: 18px; text-indent: 0px; text-align: left; text-transform: none; letter-spacing: normal; word-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border: 0px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; position: relative;">λλ) of a linear quantile lasso regression. The FRM is calculated by taking the average …

2018 Pathway Award® Winner: Pentec Health Uses Pathway To Excellence® Standards And Technology To Reduce Pain And Anxiety During Targeted Drug Delivery, Patience Harris, Leann Li, Karen Mchenry, Maricon Dans

Group: American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC)

When nurses are empowered to practice at their highest level, they can contribute to improving patient care and advancing evidence-based nursing practice. That's why in 2011, the American Nurses Credentialing Center launched the Pathway Award®, sponsored by Cerner. This award supports the efforts of Pathway-designated organizations to develop initiatives that promote the use of innovation and technology in their practice. Pentec Health earned the prestigious 2018 Pathway Award, which provided funding to implement its proposed integrative care project.

Understanding The (Ir)Relevance Of Shareholder Votes On M&A Deals, Randall S. Thomas, James D. Cox, Tomas J. Mondino

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Has corporate law and its bundles of fiduciary obligations become irrelevant? Over the last thirty years, the American public corporation has undergone a profound metamorphosis, transforming itself from a business with dispersed ownership to one whose ownership is highly concentrated in the hands of sophisticated financial institutions. Corporate law has not been immutable to these changes so that current doctrine now accords to a shareholder vote two effects: first, the vote satisfies a statutory mandate that shareholders approve a deal, and second and significantly, the vote insulates the transaction and its actors from any claim of misconduct incident the approved …

Navigational Feasibility Of Flyby / Impact Missions To Interstellar Objects, Declan Moore Mages

Master's Theses

In October 2017, the first interstellar object, designated 1I/2017 U1 and more commonly referred to as Oumuamua, was detected passing through our solar system by the Pan-STARRS telescope, followed recently by the detection of 2I/Borisov in August 2019. These detections came much sooner than thought possible, and have redefined our understanding of the population of interstellar objects. With the construction of the next generation of powerful observatories, future detections are estimated to occur as frequently as two per year, and while there is significant scientific understanding to be gained from observing these objects remotely, a spacecraft sent to intercept one …

2020 Calendar: Archives Near And Far: Travel And Tourism, Special Collections Staff

Annual Calendars

This calendar contains examples of travel and tourism materials from the C. L. Sonnichsen Special Collections Department.

Diabetic Nephropathy: Review Of Novel Experimental And Clinical Strategies, Amal M. Mahfoz, Nahed M. Hassanein, Afaf A. Shoka, Hekma A. Abd El- Latif

Bulletin of Faculty of Pharmacy Cairo University

Background: Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is considered a severe disorder which affects health worldwide. New more active treatment options are required. Despite a large number of drugs already being available for treatment of hyperglycemia in diabetes, current oral antidiabetic agents often do not provide adequate glycemic control. Renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) blockers are novel agents to slow the progression of DN. Method: The present review provides an overview of recent studies on DN management, especially the use RAAS blockers and their antidiabetic effects. References were mainly identified through PubMed search until December 2016 and backtracking of references in pertinent studies. Results: This …

Inflammation And Corrosion In Total Hip Prostheses: The Generation And Interaction Of Reactive Oxygen Species With Cocrmo Metallic Biomaterial Surfaces, Michael John Wiegand

All Dissertations

There are many molecules, species and mechanisms that contribute to the overall wear and degradation of biometallic alloys like cobalt-chromium-molybdenum (CoCrMo). Following implantation, orthopaedic alloys are subject to an encompassing inflammatory response that will either lead to foreign body giant cell formation and attachment to the surface or the fibrous tissue encapsulation, forming an inflamed periprosthetic joint. In addition to the inflammatory response, tribocorrosion-based processes of alloy-on-alloy or alloy-on-polymer couples release polymeric wear debris, oxides, hydroxides, and metal ions in response to excessive wear, loading and corrosion. It is hypothesized that these processes, biological and triboelectrochemical, are linked together in …

Assessing The Adsorption Of Various Proteins With Conformational Screening Utilizing K-Means Clustering And Charmm Potential Energy Calculations, Richard Edwin Overstreet

All Dissertations

Utilizing Quartz Crystal Microbalances (QCMB) to study the interaction of biochemical systems at interfaces is a diverse field with many potential applications. However, with an unfunctionalized surface, this technique suffers from a lack of known binding specificity which can denature the protein and result in a loss in activity. Under such conditions, investigating the adsorption mechanism of proteins to hydrophobic surfaces is difficult with traditional molecular dynamics simulations. In this work, we propose a screening model using geometric transformations, k-means clustering, and MD simulations to investigate the clustered orientations. In order to validate this model and predict the surface density …

Role Of Cryptococcus Neoformans Pyruvate Decarboxylase And Aldehyde Dehydrogenase Enzymes In Acetate Production And Virulence, Mufida Ahmed Nagi Ammar

All Dissertations

The basidiomycete Cryptococcus neoformans is is an invasive opportunistic pathogen of the central nervous system and the most frequent cause of fungal meningitis. C. neoformans enters the host by inhalation and protects itself from immune assault in the lungs by producing hydrolytic enzymes, immunosuppressants, and other virulence factors. C. neoformans also adapts to the environment inside the host, including producing metabolites that may confer survival advantages. One of these, acetate, can be kept in reserve as a carbon source or can be used to weaken the immune response by lowering local pH or as a key part of immunomodulatory molecules. …

Privacy-Preserving Decentralized Optimization And Event Localization, Chunlei Zhang

All Dissertations

This dissertation considers decentralized optimization and its applications. On the one hand, we address privacy preservation for decentralized optimization, where N agents cooperatively minimize the sum of N convex functions private to these individual agents. In most existing decentralized optimization approaches, participating agents exchange and disclose states explicitly, which may not be desirable when the states contain sensitive information of individual agents. The problem is more acute when adversaries exist which try to steal information from other participating agents. To address this issue, we first propose two privacy-preserving decentralized optimization approaches based on ADMM (alternating direction method of multipliers) and …

The Effects Of Indirubin Derivative E804 On Inflammatory Profiles In Glioblastoma Multiforme Cell Lines And Subsequent Crosstalk Effect On Tumor Associated Thp-1 Macrophages, Micaela Ro Scobie

All Dissertations

Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) is a highly invasive brain tumor that affects approximately 18,000 people annually in the USA alone yet remains without curative treatment. Median survival with treatment is 14 months, with most treatments only prolonging life for several months while causing severe adverse side effects. There is a need for new therapeutic modalities. Herein I explore two small molecules that show promise in modulating inflammatory signaling in an in vitro GBM model. Indirubins E804 (indirubin-3’-(2,3 dihydroxypropyl)-oximether) and 7BIO (7-Bromoindirubin-3’-oxime) are synthetic derivatives of natural indirubin. Natural indirubin is a bisindole alkaloid derived from tryptophan precursors and is an agonist …

Stability And Toxicity Of Cerium Oxide Nanoparticles In Water-Soil-Plant Systems, Linlin Mu

All Dissertations

Cerium oxide nanoparticles (CeO2 NPs) are being increasingly used in industrial and consumer products and the release of CeO2 NPs into the air, water, and soil is an inevitable consequence. Once released into the environment, CeO2 NPs can have adverse impacts on the environment and human health. Thus, characterizing the environmental behavior and toxic effects of CeO2 NPs is important to protect the environment and human health. To assure such protection, the stability and phytotoxicity of CeO2 NPs need to be known because they are key to understanding their transport, toxicity and bioavailability in water and soil. The objective of …

Impacts Of Outcomes Based Funding On Resource Allocation: A Case Study Of Senior Administrators In Colorado, Monica Kosanovich

All Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand the impacts of outcomes-based funding legislation on senior administrator’s resource allocation decision making at public doctoral granting institutions in Colorado. This qualitative study’s participants included five CFOs who were interviewed after the third fiscal year that HB14-1319 had been operating as the funding allocation model in the state. While there has been quantitative research on outcomes-based funding policies and their effectiveness, there are noted gaps in the literature for qualitative studies. To determine the potential impacts to senior administrator’s resource allocation decision making after the introduction and switch to a outcomes-based funding …

Hybrid Ground Vehicle Thermal Management System Using Heat Pipes—Model And Control, Junkui Huang

All Dissertations

The development of Hybrid Electric and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (HEV and UGV) offer various benefits including improved vehicle performance, compatibility with high level control systems, reduced fuel consumption, and less environmental pollution. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the number of HEVs and EVs is expected to reach 20 million by the year 2020 (Green Car Congress, 2017). Compared with traditional Internal Combustion (IC) engines, hybrid powertrains are more complicated due to additional electronics including the electric motor, battery pack, and control units. However, these additional components introduce new challenges for the powertrain thermal management system design since they …

Evaluating And Enabling Scalable High Performance Computing Workloads On Commercial Clouds, Brandon M. Posey

All Dissertations

Performance, usability, and accessibility are critical components of high performance computing (HPC). Usability and performance are especially important to academic researchers as they generally have little time to learn a new technology and demand a certain type of performance in order to ensure the quality and quantity of their research results. We have observed that while not all workloads run well in the cloud, some workloads perform well. We have also observed that although commercial cloud adoption by industry has been growing at a rapid pace, its use by academic researchers has not grown as quickly. We aim to help …

Design And Evaluation Of Flow Mapping Systems For Heterogeneous Wireless Networks, Jianwei Liu

All Dissertations

Mobile wireless networks are always challenged by growing application demand. The increasing heterogeneity of both mobile device connection capability and wireless network coverage forms a general heterogeneous wireless network (HetNet). This type of HetNet contains sub-networks of different Radio Access Technologies. How to better coordinate the mappings of flows between Access Points (AP) and User Equipment (UE) inside this type of HetNet to improve system and user-level performance is an interesting research problem. The flow mapping systems used by off-the-shelf mobile devices make policy-based decisions from local information. Several global information based flow mapping systems that use Generalized Proportional Fairness …

The Effect Of Anthropometric Properties Of Self-Avatars On Action Capabilities In Virtual Reality, Ayush Bhargava

All Dissertations

The field of Virtual Reality (VR) has seen a steady exponential uptake in the last decade and is being continuously incorporated into areas of popular interest like healthcare, training, recreation and gaming. This steady upward trend and prolonged popularity has resulted in numerous extravagant virtual environments, some that aim to mimic real-life experiences like combat training, while others intend to provide unique experiences that may otherwise be difficult to recreate like flying over ancient Egypt as a bird. These experiences often showcase highly realistic graphics, intuitive interactions and unique avatar embodiment scenarios with the help of various tracking sensors, high …

Higher Education Governance Structures And Tuition: A Quantitative Analysis, Alfred Bundrick

All Dissertations

For years, higher education governance and the amount of state funding have been continuous issues in the state-institution relationship. Institutions want more funding and less state control over their activities. From the state’s perspective, legislators want to ensure that state resources are used wisely thereby creating governance structures to oversee higher education. The purpose of the current study is to examine whether the amount of control within the governance structure of a state affects state-level tuition at public 4-year institutions.

This dissertation employs a mixed-method approach, consisting of two parts: a linear regression model with tuition as the dependent variable …

The Impact Of An Intronic Dopamine Receptor Type-2 Single Nucleotide Polymorphism On Growth, Reproduction And Prolactin Gene Expression In Beef Bulls, Andrea Decarlo

All Dissertations

Prolactin (PRL) is a ~22 kDa peptide hormone reported to regulate over 300 distinct biological functions in vertebrates. Tonic inhibition of prolactin (PRL) by dopamine binding to dopamine receptor-type 2 (DRD2) is well established and changes in PRL serum concentration resulting in detrimental effects to male reproductive physiology have been observed. Release and synthesis of PRL may be altered due to a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) in the DRD2 gene. The objective of these studies were to evaluate associations of a previously identified DRD2 SNP to PRL serum concentrations, growth traits, semen quality, and PRL gene expression in beef bulls. …

A Case Of Arts Coordination In A Rural School District: A Distributed Perspective, Anna Shealy Wages

All Dissertations

Though researchers have demonstrated the benefit of prolonged engagement in the arts (Catterall, Dumais, & Hapden-Thompson, 2012) school districts struggle to maintain high quality programs. Rural programs, in particular, are faced with unique challenges to providing arts programs (Donovan & Brown, 2017). Despite these challenges, some rural school districts have succeeded in providing quality programs, which are more in line with more resourced urban districts. Arts researchers (Bodilly, Augustine, & Zakaras, 2008) have found that arts coordination is a strategy to increase access to and the quality of an arts program. Further, districts of quality, even small ones, have arts …

Modeling Of Household Evacuation Decision, Departure Timing, And Number Of Evacuating Vehicles From Hurricane Matthew, Roa'a Jaber Mohammad Alawadi

All Dissertations

This dissertation investigates households’ evacuation decision, number of household vehicles used in evacuation, and departure timing from Hurricane Matthew. Regarding the evacuation decision, this dissertation takes a step further by presenting three level evacuation decision models that include full, partial, and no evacuation alternatives rather than the binary evacuate/stay decision. Multinomial (MNL) regression and random parameter MNL techniques were utilized to develop the prediction models. Results showed that some of the variables which affect the evacuate/stay decision have different influences on the three alternatives. The preferred MNL model was tested for random parameters and one random parameter (age of the …

A Parallel Geometric Multigrid Method For Adaptive Finite Elements, Thomas Conrad Clevenger

All Dissertations

Applications in a variety of scientific disciplines use systems of Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) to model physical phenomena. Numerical solutions to these models are often found using the Finite Element Method (FEM), where the problem is discretized and the solution of a large linear system is required, containing millions or even billions of unknowns. Often times, the domain of these solves will contain localized features that require very high resolution of the underlying finite element mesh to accurately solve, while a mesh with uniform resolution would require far too much computational time and memory overhead to be feasible on a …

Using Activity Based Costing To Inform Resource Allocation, Alexander Mccafferty

All Dissertations

This study identified the effect of variables as measured by activity-based costing (ABC) on course and department margins through the lens of inconsistent rewards. Data were gathered from an ABC initiative conducted at a large public research university in the United States. The data included measurements from 4,421 courses across 57 academic departments. Significant multicollinearity was discovered in the initial analysis, and ultimately half of the variables measured in the ABC initiative were removed. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses were run to measure the effect of two latent variables comprised of the remaining variables on course and department margins.

The …