Digital Commons Network^™

Machine Learning Using U-Net Convolutional Neural Networks For The Imaging Of Sparse Seismic Data, Robert L. Nowack, Jiayuan Huang

Geodata Science Technical Reports

Machine learning using convolutional neural networks (CNNs) is investigated for the imaging of sparsely sampled seismic reflection data. A limitation of traditional imaging methods is that they often require seismic data with sufficient spatial sampling. Using CNNs for imaging, even if the spatial sampling of the data is sparse, good imaging results can still be obtained. Therefore, CNNs applied to seismic imaging have the potential of producing improved imaging results when spatial sampling of the data is sparse. The imaged model can then be used to generate more densely sampled data and in this way be used to interpolate either …

Optimizing Measurement Strengths For Qubit Quasiprobabilities Behind Out-Of-Time-Ordered Correlators, Razieh Mohseninia, José Raúl González Alonso, Justin Dressel

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs) have been proposed as a tool to witness quantum information scrambling in many-body system dynamics. These correlators can be understood as averages over nonclassical multitime quasiprobability distributions (QPDs). These QPDs have more information and their nonclassical features witness quantum information scrambling in a more nuanced way. However, their high dimensionality and nonclassicality make QPDs challenging to measure experimentally. We focus on the topical case of a many-qubit system and show how to obtain such a QPD in the laboratory using circuits with three and four sequential measurements. Averaging distinct values over the same measured distribution reveals either …

Pi‑Plat: A High‑Resolution Image‑Based 3d Reconstruction Method To Estimate Growth Dynamics Of Rice Inflorescence Traits, Jaspreet Sandhu, Feiyu Zhu, Puneet Paul, Tian Gao, Balpreet K. Dhatt, Yufeng Ge, Paul E. Staswick, Hongfeng Yu, Harkamal Walia

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Background: Recent advances in image-based plant phenotyping have improved our capability to study vegetative stage growth dynamics. However, more complex agronomic traits such as inflorescence architecture (IA), which predominantly contributes to grain crop yield are more challenging to quantify and hence are relatively less explored. Previous efforts to estimate inflorescence-related traits using image-based phenotyping have been limited to destructive end-point measurements. Development of non-destructive inflorescence phenotyping platforms could accelerate the discovery of the phenotypic variation with respect to inflorescence dynamics and mapping of the underlying genes regulating critical yield components.

Results: The major objective of this study is to evaluate …

Temporary Shelter Simulation Towards Effectiveness Value Of Ottv And Thermal Comfort, Ayu Dyah Puspa, Prayitno Budi, Hariyadi Agus

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development

Indonesia is prone to a variety of natural disasters, one of which is earthquakes. Earthquakes are detrimental to human life, causing among other things a loss of shelter. As such, victims of earthquakes need basic assistance in the form of shelter, which the Indonesian government provides in the transition phase of emergency responses. Several innovations in the provision of temporary shelter have arisen in terms of packaging and fast unloading. This research aimed to examine the effective value of OTTV energy (overall thermal transfer value), differences in room temperature, and thermal comfort in existing temporary shelters. OTTV values and thermal …

Nancy Pelosi Is Defending The Constitution With Her Actions, Edward A. Purcell Jr.

Other Publications

This post originally appeared on https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/476021-nancy-pelosi-is-defending-the-constitution-with-her-actions

Symposium Introduction, William D. Araiza, Joel M. Gora

Brooklyn Law Review

On April 12, 2019, scholars gathered at Brooklyn Law School to consider the past, the present, and the future of free speech, and concerns about incitement that militate toward suppression. The speakers provided incisive and timely insight on these important matters—insight that is reflected in the papers published in this symposium issue of the Brooklyn Law Review. This introduction provides an overview of this symposium issue and the questions presented by each article.

In Defense Of Brandenburg: The Aclu And Incitement Doctrine In 1919, 1969, And 2019, Emerson J. Sykes

Brooklyn Law Review

In the United States, full-throated advocacy—even advocacy of violence—is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Few other countries define “incitement to violence” as narrowly, and governments tend to exploit any authority to regulate speech. The ACLU has played a central role in developing America’s speech-protective modern incitement doctrine over the last century, sometimes by representing clients with abhorrent views, including in the landmark Brandenburg v. Ohio. The Brandenburg test sets a high bar for incitement that should be maintained, even with respect to online speech. Calls for increased regulation of speech should not be heeded.

Brandenburg And Terrorism In The Digital Age, David S. Han

Brooklyn Law Review

This essay explores the tension between the longstanding Brandenburg standard and the current technological context—one in which abstract advocacy of terrorist conduct, widely and cheaply disseminated through the internet and channeled through social media, has contributed to a number of devastating attacks such as the Orlando nightclub shooting, the Boston marathon bombings, and the shootings in San Bernardino. It does so through the lens of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Carpenter v. United States—a Fourth Amendment case that similarly dealt with the collision between the longstanding constitutional righThis essay explores the tension between the longstanding Brandenburg standard and the …

Assumptions About “Terrorism” And The Brandenburg Incitement Test, Christina E. Wells

Brooklyn Law Review

The incitement standard announced in Brandenburg v. Ohio, which bars government officials from punishing advocacy of illegal activity unless it is directed and likely to imminently incite such activity, is one of the most speech-protective tests in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence. However, terrorist advocacy – glorification of violence, spreading of propaganda, and recruitment of individuals to their cause – is putting pressure on the Brandenburg standard. Scholars have suggested working around Brandenburg’s incitement standard to counter the dangerous influence of terrorist advocacy, especially online advocacy. Although scholars’ concern with the harms of terrorism is understandable, their willingness to alter Brandenburg …

"Incitement Lite" For The Nonpublic Forum, Leslie Gielow Jacobs

Brooklyn Law Review

The incitement exception set out in Brandenburg v. Ohio defines the authority of the government, acting in its sovereign capacity, to impose criminal punishment on speakers because the content of their advocacy may persuade listeners to commit crimes. Nonpublic forum managers have much greater flexibility than the government-as-sovereign to restrict the private speakers they invite onto their property because the content of their speech may persuade listeners to engage in harmful conduct. In nonpublic forum management, speakers experience no sanctions and, unlike the government-as-sovereign, nonpublic forum managers may close their forums to all private speakers to avoid unwanted speech. This …

23andeveryone: Privacy Concerns With Law Enforcement’S Use Of Genealogy Databases To Implicate Relatives In Criminal Investigations, Shanni Davidowitz

Brooklyn Law Review

The discovery of DNA typing in the 1980s transformed law enforcement’s ability to exonerate innocent suspects, while implicating those who are guilty, with “the power of a silent biological witness at the crime scene.” This transformation, coupled with the new trend of law enforcement’s use of genealogy databases, has created legal issues that police officers, prosecutors, genealogy companies, and policy makers are all currently trying to navigate. The technological advancement comes with serious ethical and privacy concerns, including fear of the establishment of a “genetic panopticon.” General concern exists that if a “genetic panopticon” comes to fruition, the government can …

“Hey Alexa, Do Consumers Really Want More Data Privacy?”: An Analysis Of The Negative Effects Of The General Data Protection Regulation, Katherine M. Wilcox

Brooklyn Law Review

Recent news articles discuss the flooding of email inboxes with lengthy terms and condition updates, viral videos of Mark Zuckerberg’s public Cambridge Analytica hearing before Congress, and the phenomenon of internet advertisements appearing for items that consumers merely searched for on Google a day prior. Effective as of May 25, 2018, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) established a framework that sets legal standards targeted at businesses and other data collectors to dramatically increase data privacy protections for citizens of the EU. Consumers, however, do not seem to appreciate these increased protections, as they rarely read the updated …

Where Are You, Congress?: Silence Rings In Congress As Juvenile Offenders Remain In Prison For Life, Megan R. Pollastro

Brooklyn Law Review

Over the last decade, Supreme Court precedent has changed the way courts have sentenced juveniles in the United States. It has failed, however, to clearly establish the proper handling of cases in which juveniles are sentenced to extended periods of time in prison that equate to a de facto sentence of life in prison without parole. Congress has also remained noticeably silent on the issue. Children are not considered mature enough to vote, to drink alcohol, to serve on a jury, and yet, courts treat juvenile offenders as mature enough to pay for their crimes for the remainder of their …

Words We Fear: Burning Tweets & The Politics Of Incitement, Rachel E. Vanlandingham

Brooklyn Law Review

The United States government has long wrestled with the link between speech and violence, periodically employing speculative claims of potential violence and law-breaking to suppress political speech in times of national insecurity. By the late 1960s, however, the Supreme Court fully operationalized the First Amendment’s premise that most government speech suppression is antithetical to self-government, individual autonomy, equality, and liberty. The Court therefore, required immediacy of potential violence before the government could punish speech advocating such illegality, but left private actors free to censor and suppress speech. Today, social media companies, at the behest of the government, are doing what …

The First Amendment And The Imminence Of Harm, Floyd Abrams

Brooklyn Law Review

Noted First Amendment litigator Floyd Abrams engages questions about the past, the present and the future of free speech directly by considering the key words from Justice Holmes’s canonical formulation for the constitutional standard governing regulation of incitement speech—the requirement that any danger justifying such speech regulation must be “clear and present.” Mr. Abrams asks what types of “danger” are sufficiently “present” to provide that justification, using as examples the Communist teachings at issue in Dennis v. United States and The Progressive magazine’s publication of plans for constructing a hydrogen bomb. While Mr. Abrams reaches no hard and fast conclusion …

First-Principles Study Of High-Pressure Phase Stability And Superconductivity Of Bi4i4, Shiyu Deng, Xianqi Song, Quan Li, Yu Xie, Changfeng Chen, Yanming Ma

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

Bismuth iodide Bi4I4 exhibits intricate crystal structures and topological insulating states that are highly susceptible to influence by environments, making its physical properties highly tunable by external conditions. In this work, we study the evolution of structural and electronic properties of Bi4I4 at high pressure using an advanced structure search method in conjunction with first-principles calculations. Our results indicate that the most stable ambient-pressure monoclinic α−Bi4I4 phase in C2/m symmetry transforms to a trigonal P31c structure (ɛ−Bi4I4) at 8.4 GPa, then to a tetragonal P4/mmm structure (ζ−Bi4I4) above 16.6 GPa. In contrast to the semiconducting nature of ambient-pressure Bi4I4, the …

The Oecd Multilateral Tax Instrument: A Model For Reforming The International Investment Regime?, Wolfgang Alschner

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The international tax and investment regimes display striking similarities. They are both based on thousands of bilateral treaties that follow similar principles but differ in fine print. They each facilitate the free flow of international capital by respectively disciplining fiscal and regulatory host state conduct. Finally, they share common historical foundations and have experienced similar periods of rapid diffusion and deep contestation. Yet, while the international tax regime recently accomplished a sweeping reform to solve a decades-old legitimacy crisis, the investment regime is still grappling with its own legitimacy crisis and reform. In 2018, the multilateral tax instrument (MLI) entered …

Coming To Terms With Wartime Collaboration: Post-Conflict Processes & Legal Challenges, Shane Darcy

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The phenomenon of collaboration during wartime is as old as war itself. During situations of armed conflict, civilians or combatants belonging to one party to the conflict frequently provide assistance to the opposing side in various ways, such as by disclosing valuable information, defecting and fighting for the enemy, engaging in propaganda, or providing administrative support to an occupying power. Such acts of collaboration have been punished harshly, with violent retribution often directed at alleged collaborators during armed conflict, while states and at times non-state actors have prosecuted and punished collaboration as treason or related offenses in times of war. …

How Much Do Expert Opinions Matter? An Empirical Investigation Of Selection Bias, Adversarial Bias, And Judicial Deference In Chinese Medical, Chunyan Ding

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

This article investigates the nature of the operation and the role of expert opinions in Chinese medical negligence litigation, drawing on content analysis of 3,619 medical negligence cases and an in-depth survey of judges with experience of adjudicating medical negligence cases. It offers three major findings: first, that both parties to medical negligence disputes show significant selection bias of medical opinions, as do courts when selecting court-appointed experts; second, expert opinions in medical negligence litigation demonstrate substantial adversarial bias; third, courts display very strong judicial deference to expert opinions in determining medical negligence liability. This article fills the methodological gap …

Reducing The Governance Gap For Corporate Complicity In International Crimes, Seunghyun Nam

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

With increasing reports of corporations involved in serious human rights abuses that amount to international crimes, there are greater calls for states to hold these corporations accountable. Still, many obstacles and challenges remain when it comes to holding corporations accountable. Complex corporate structures, the extraterritorial dimension of the abuses, competition among states and businesses, lack of institutional capacity on the part of states, and lack of legal coordination among states collectively create an impunity gap. The case studies of the situation in Burma and the Democratic Republic of Congo involving foreign companies aim to illustrate this governance gap. With growing …

Of Sustainable Development In Africa: Addressing The (In)Congruence Of Plastic Bag Regulations With International Trade Rules, Regis Y, Simo

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Several aspects of the trade policies of African countries suffer from neglect in the legal literature. When they are the object of research, the focus is sometimes limited to their participation in the dispute settlement system or on the enforceability of special and differential treatment provisions. While practice displays that African countries have almost never been the target of complaints for a number a reasons, those approaches do not always take into consideration African countries’ domestic measures affecting the flow of goods and services, which could eventually trigger disputes. This paper intends to fill that gap and add to the …

Kicking The Law: The Effects Of Fifa Regulations On A World Cup Host Country’S Legislative Process In Regards To Intellectual Property Protection, Nicole-Amanda Brandofino

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Brand protection is highly sought after by large organizations that seek to monetize valuable intellectual property. At the international level, treaties such as the TRIPS Agreement allow for protection amongst signatory nations. As a leader in the international sports field, FIFA has capitalized on its well-known brand throughout the world through the selling of merchandise and licensing to influential third parties. With the occurrence of the World Cup every four years, FIFA strives to uphold the high revenue it earns through its wide intellectual property portfolio. As the World Cup host country prepares for the tournament, it must abide by …

Global Implementation Of Soda Taxes: Is There A Better Solution For Combatting Obesity?, Lauren Cedeno

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

As incidences of overweight and obese populations continue to increase around the world, countries are looking for ways to decrease the prevalence of this epidemic. Soda and SSB taxes have increased in prevalence as countries seek to address the health problems associated with consumption of soda and other sugary beverages. This Note explores the implementation of these taxes in Mexico, Europe, and the United States. In analyzing these taxes, this Note seeks to gain a greater understanding of whether these taxes have impacted overweight and obesity rates in the countries and municipalities that have enacted them. This Note argues that …

Sovereign Immunity For Russia's Rocket Engines? Enforcing The "Yukos" Award, Evan Drake

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

In 2003 Yukos Oil Company was once the largest oil company in Russia, and its oligarch CEO was Russia’s richest man. By 2007 Yukos had been dissolved, its CEO arrested, and its assets acquired by Russian state oil giants Rosneft and Gazprom. The fall of Yukos triggered what may be the largest arbitral dispute of all time. In 2014, the former shareholders of Yukos successfully won a $50 billion award against Russia for violations of the Energy Charter Treaty – by far the largest in history. Now the shareholders need to collect. This Note examines how Yukos could enforce its …

Third-Party Funding: The Road To Compatibility In International Arbitration, Vienna Messina

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Third-party funding in global commerce and dispute resolution has gained considerable traction in the last few decades. The rise in complex international arbitration cases has encouraged a demand for third-party funding arrangements since the disputes involve large amounts of money in addition to high legal costs. This Note explores the implications of third-party funding on the practice of international arbitration, particularly with the expansion of arbitral institutions’ doctrinal rules to address the use of third-party funding. Much of the pre-existing research and literature highlights the issues that third-party funding poses in international arbitration proceedings, but fails to consider a broader, …

Looking To The United Kingdom To Overhaul New York State’S Paid Family Leave Law And Close The Global Gender Gap, John Pietruszka

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The World Economic Forum estimates that mitigating gender-based disparities in the area of economic participation could lead to substantial economic benefits for the global economy. However, the international system of sovereign states requires this effort be piecemeal, as each state must set priorities to achieve greater gender parity within its own economic, political, and cultural contexts. The United States, by virtue of being the largest economy in the world by nominal GDP, undoubtedly has one of the largest roles to play in the effort to mitigate this global problem. Nonetheless, it lags behind other nation-states in several key areas that …

#Losingthethread: Recognizing Assembly Rights In The New Public Forum, Liz Grefrath

Brooklyn Law Review

The specter of banishment from the vibrant public forum of social media to the empty streets and deserted sidewalks is a matter of increasing political, social, and cultural importance. Today, nearly every government official maintains a social media presence on Facebook or Twitter, generally to promote initiatives, share ideological positions, engage constituents, and tangle with critics. Privacy controls and content moderation tools, however, offer government officials tantalizing opportunities to discretely and effectively muffle disapproval, stifle dissent, and shield themselves from criticism on their public social media pages through “blocking” features. Courts are just starting to grapple with the First Amendment …

Emerging Trends In Corporate Enforcement And Corporate Compliance: Symposium Introduction, Miriam H. Baer, James A. Fanto

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

No abstract provided.

Compliance Officers: Personal Liability, Protections, And Posture, Jennifer M. Pacella

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This Symposium Article will explore the evolving nature of the regulatory and enforcement landscape as it pertains to compliance officers, specifically regarding their susceptibility to personal liability. It will examine the posture of compliance officers in three contexts: i) as a possible target for enforcement activity by regulators; ii) as a quasi-professional subject to a current regime of “non-regulation”; and iii) as an employee in need of ample whistleblower protections, each of which create implications for a compliance officer’s risk of personal liability and protections as a constituent of the organization monitored. After considering the current guidance surrounding enforcement activity …

Social Responsibility Regulation And Its Challenges To Corporate Compliance, Stephen Kim Park

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This Article addresses the intersection of corporate social responsibility and corporate compliance. In this context, the focus of this Article is on regulation that seeks to enhance socially responsible corporate conduct and its implications for the compliance function. Social responsibility regulation raises operational concerns for companies, including problems associated with assessing social performance, the proliferation and fragmentation of legal obligations, and the contested nature of the social issues that it addresses. As laws mandating socially responsible corporate conduct continue to grow in number and expand in scope, corporations will increasingly need to acknowledge and respond to these challenges.