Digital Commons Network^™

Novel Lipase(S): Application In Biodiesel Production From Wastewater Grown Microalgae, Priyanka Anilkumar

Doctoral

Lipase-basedcatalysis in organic solvents offerseveraladvantages and,therefore, havebeen widely researched and applied. Nature provides a vast microbial enzyme pool thatcan be easily bio-discovered through the targeted exploration of existing extremophiles.Among the large number of bacterial lipases, those from species like Geotrichum, Bacillus, Pseudomonas, BurkholderiandStreptomyceshave shownadequate stability forbiosynthetic application. In this study, severalbacterial strains isolated from soils in the Dublin and Laois regionsofIrelandwere screened forpresence ofsolvent stable lipases.Fivebacterialstrains producing most solvent stable lipase(s) were identified asPseudomonas sp. BIM B-86, Sphingomonas sp., Listeria monocytogenes, Pseudomonas reinekeiand Pseudomonas brennerivia 16S rRNA sequencing.Amonst thesefive strains, new lipolytic enzymes from only two strains of Pseudomonassp. i.e. …

An Insight Into The Epitope-Based Peptide Vaccine Design Strategy And Studies Against Covid-19, Murat Topuzoğullari, Tayfun Acar, Peli̇n Peli̇t Arayici, Burcu Uçar, Erennur Uğurel, Emrah Şefi̇k Abamor, Tüli̇n Arasoğlu, Di̇lek Balik, Serap Derman

Turkish Journal of Biology

SARS-CoV-2 is a new member of the coronavirus family and caused the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in 2020. It is crucial to design and produce an effective vaccine for the prevention of rapid transmission and possible deaths wcaused by the disease. Although intensive work and research are being carried out all over the world to develop a vaccine, an effective and approved formulation that can prevent the infection and limit the outbreak has not been announced yet. Among all types of vaccines, epitope-based peptide vaccines outshine with their low-cost production, easy modification in the structure, and safety. In …

Encouraging Healing For Home Health Aides.Pdf, Joann Sahl

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The United States faces a national crisis to provide adequate carefor its aging population. A critical component of this crisis is thenation’s inability to provide enough home health care aides to assistwith important, if not vital, long-term care needs.This Article identifies a labor pool to help resolve this crisis: quali-fied workers with criminal convictions. But home health care aideswith criminal convictions face an inhospitable landscape. Employersin the health care field are risk-averse to hiring these workers.Furthermore, most states’ laws impose permanent employment banson home health aides with criminal convictions.The Article examines the warren of laws used to disqualify homehealth care …

Pandemic Surveillance: The New Predictive Policing, Michael Gentithes, Harold J. Krent

Akron Law Faculty Publications

In Part I, we examine the growth of predictive policing, which similarly treats some individuals differently based on the likelihood that they will either commit or be the victim of a crime. If such surveillance does not lead to detention, incursion on the right to travel, or other loss of freedom, we believe such efforts to be constitutional, even though not always wise. Use of data to prioritize law enforcement efforts poses no insuperable constitutional obstacles. But deployment of predictive analytics can result in infringement on the right to liberty, as we relate. In Part II, therefore, we apply the …

Janus-Faced Judging: How The Supreme Court Is Radically Weakening Stare Decisis, Michael Gentithes

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Drastic changes in Supreme Court doctrine require citizens to reorder their affairs rapidly, undermining their trust in the judiciary. Stare decisis has traditionally limited the pace of such change on the Court. It is a bulwark against wholesale jurisprudential reversals. But, in recent years, the stare decisis doctrine has come under threat. With little public or scholarly notice, the Supreme Court has radically weakened stare decisis in two ways. First, the Court has reversed its long-standing view that a precedent, regardless of the quality of its reasoning, should stand unless there is some special, practical justification to overrule it. Recent …

South Atlantic Mpas And Oculina Hapc: Characterization Of Fish Communities, Benthic Habitat, And Benthic Macrobiota Final Report For 2018-2019 Noaa Ship Pisces Cruises (18-02, 19-02)., Stacey Harter, John K. Reed, Stephanie Farrington

Faculty Scholarship

The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (SAFMC) and Department of Commerce through the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Management Act have established eight deepwater Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), five deepwater Coral Habitat Areas of Particular Concern (CHAPCs), and the Oculina Coral HAPC along the outer continental shelf off the southeastern U.S. This project proposed to document and characterize the benthic habitat, benthic sessile biota, and fish populations within some of these protected areas and within the jurisdiction of the SAFMC. In February 2009, the SAFMC implemented eight Type II MPAs between Cape Hatteras, NC and the Florida Keys to protect seven species of …

Net Neutrality And Consumer Welfare: Divergent Approaches To The Egyptian Telecommunication Regulation, Mennatullah Helmy Hamada

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the implications of the debate on net neutrality on telecommunication policy in Egypt. I argue that consumer welfare should be the main determining factor of the effects of net neutrality obligations on the telecom sector. Consumer welfare must remain the focus of any regulator while applying net neutrality obligations. Consumers in any telecom market care about three elements, namely, prices, quality and speed of the internet, and openness and accessibility of the content available over the internet. Meanwhile, the main controllers of the telecom market are torn between preserving the nature of the internet and their own …

Holding The Therapeutic State At Bay? Balancing Autonomy And Protection In Singapore's Vulnerable Adults Act, Wing Cheong Chan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Abuse, exploitation and neglect of adults raise complex issues on the freedom of the individual to choose for themselves versus the powers of the State to intervene. The law has traditionally limited the scope of compulsory intervention to extreme situations only which can frustrate social workers who deal with such cases. On the other hand, it would be unacceptable to allow intervention simply because it is assessed to be in the adults’ best interests. A balance therefore has to be struck between autonomy and protection. This paper examines how Singapore’s Vulnerable Adults Act identifies the point for intervention and embodies …

How To Approach Market Definition After Ohio V. American Express, Roger P. Alford

Journal Articles

Technological developments have introduced new methods of buying and selling goods and services. These advancements often times take the form of two-sided platforms. While these platforms increase overall social utility, they also present a host of challenges to antitrust enforcement. One such challenge is defining the appropriate market in cases involving actions that are not illegal per se. That task has been made more difficult with the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Ohio v. American Express Co. (“Amex”).2 Moving forward, one of the critical questions Amex presents is how to define the product market in the context of two-sided platforms.

A Parsimonious Equity?: Discussion Of Equity: Conscience Goes To Market, Samuel L. Bray

Journal Articles

Equity has always had enemies. As Professor Irit Samet notes in her agile and insightful new book, Equity: Conscience Goes to Market, these enemies have lodged two main complaints. One is that equity is not distinctive, and for that reason should be eliminated. The other is that equity is distinctive—and dangerous—and for that reason should be eliminated.

Today And Yesterday, Vol. 44, 2020, Illinois State University, Department Of History

Today and Yesterday

Newsletter of the Illinois State University Department of History

The Complexities Of Democracy, Development, And Human Rights In China's Belt And Road Initiative, Diane Desierto

Journal Articles

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)-a dense network of China-funded multi-year infrastructure projects in over 65 countries from the Western Pacific to the Baltic Sea, collectively aiming to establish China's strategic "Maritime Belt" and "Silk Road" connectivity using an estimated range of USD$1 Trillion to USD$8 Trillion--is as unprecedented phenomenon in sovereign project financing and bilateral investment lending, since the United States' grant of USD $800 Billion for the Marshall Plan was for Europe's post World War II reconstruction. The scale, scope, and terms of BRI projects remain shrouded in relative opacity, with China as of this writing only incrementally …

China's Maritime Law Enforcement Activities In The South China Sea, Diane Desierto

Journal Articles

China, one of the territorial and maritime claimants of the South China Sea, declared in April 2020 that it had created two new administrative districts in the South China Sea:

Xisha district, covering the Paracel Islands and Macclesfield Bank, and Nansha district covering the Spartly [sic] Islands .... The new administrative districts are to be under the authority of the local government in Sansha, a city located on Woody Island which is administratively part of Hainan province. The Xisha district will be based in Sansha while the Nansha district will operate from Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratlys.

Sansha City …

Religious Freedom And The Churches: Contemporary Challenges In The United States Today, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

A crucial, but often overlooked, dimension of the human and constitutional right to religious freedom is the autonomy of religious institutions, associations and societies with respect to matters of governance, doctrine, formation and membership. Although the Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed this autonomy in the context of American constitutional law, it is vulnerable, and even under threat, for a variety of reasons, including a general decline in the health of civil society and mediating associations and a crisis of confidence and authority caused by clerical sexual abuse and churches’ failure to respond to it.

The Communitarian Work And Vision(S) Of Robert Cochran (And Thomas Shaffer), Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

Professor Robert Cochran's work and thought were powerfully shaped by those of his friend, mentor, and teacher, the late Professor Thomas Shaffer, a towering figure in the religious lawyering movement. A leading theme in Shaffer's writing, one that has continued through and been developed in Cochran's, is "community." This Essay explores and unpacks this theme and highlights several ways that the idea of "community" functions in their vision of the lawyer 's role and vocation.

Reckoning With Adjudication's Exceptionalism Norm, Emily S. Bremer

Journal Articles

Unlike rulemaking and judicial review, administrative adjudication is governed by a norm of exceptionalism. Agencies rarely adjudicate according to the Administrative Procedure Act’s formal adjudication provisions, and the statute has little role in defining informal adjudication or specifying its minimum procedural requirements. Due process has almost nothing to say about the matter.

The result is that there are few uniform, cross-cutting procedural requirements in adjudication, and most hearings are conducted using procedures tailored for individual agencies or programs. This Article explores the benefits and costs of adjudication’s exceptionalism norm, an analysis that implicates the familiar tension between uniformity and specialization …

Neoclassical Administrative Law, Jeffrey A. Pojanowski

Journal Articles

This Article introduces an approach to administrative law that reconciles a more formalist, classical understanding of law and its supremacy with the contemporary administrative state. Courts adopting this approach, which I call “neoclassical administrative law,” are skeptical of judicial deference on questions of law, tend to give more leeway to agencies on questions of policy, and attend more closely to statutes governing administrative procedure than contemporary doctrine does. As a result, neoclassical administrative law finds a place for both legislative supremacy and the rule of law within the administrative state, without subordinating either of those central values to the other. …

An Economic Approach To Religious Exemptions, Stephanie H. Barclay

Journal Articles

Externalities caused by religious exemptions have been getting the spotlight again in light a case the U.S. Supreme Court will hear this term: Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. Some argue that religious individuals should be required to internalize the costs they impose on third parties and thus should be denied the right to practice that harmful behavior. These new progressive theories about harm trade on rhetoric and normative intuitions regarding externalities and costs. But curiously, these theories also largely ignore an influential theoretical movement that has studied externalities and costs for the last fifty years: law and economics.

This Article …

Untangling Entanglement, Stephanie H. Barclay

Journal Articles

The Court has increasingly signaled its interest in taking a more historical approach to the Establishment Clause. And in its recent American Legion decision, the Supreme Court strongly suggested that the three-prong Lemon test is essentially dead letter. Such a result would make sense for the first two prongs of the Lemon test about secular purpose and the effects. Many scholars have observed that these aspects of the prong are judicial creations far afield of the Establishment Clause history. But what of the entanglement prong of the test? If we rejected all applications of this prong of the analysis, would …

Forgotten Borrowers: Protecting Private Student Loan Borrowers Through State Law, Judith Fox

Journal Articles

Private student loan borrowers arguably have the fewest protections of any users of credit in the United States. In a scarcely debated amendment to federal bankruptcy law, in 2005 private student lenders gained the same protections against discharge previously afforded to federal student lenders. Yet, private student loan borrowers received none of the rights available to federal student loan borrowers. These include income-driven repayment, relief from repayment on disability, loan discharge for fraud or closed schools, and public service loan forgiveness. Private student loan borrowers thus have neither the bankruptcy protections afforded to non-student loan debtors nor the repayment and …

The Comparative Legal Landscape Of Educational Pluralism, Nicole Stelle Garnett

Journal Articles

In the United States, debates about private and faith-based education tend to focus on questions about government funding: which kinds of schools should the government fund (and at what levels)? Should, for example, students be able to use public funds to attend privately operated schools? Faith-based schools? If so, what policy mechanisms should be used to fund private schools—vouchers, tax credits, direct transfer payments? How much funding should these schools receive? The same amount as public schools or less? As a historical matter, the focus on funding in the United States makes sense because only public (that is, government-operated) elementary …

Implementing Algorithmic Crisis Alerts In Mhealth Systems For Veterans With Ptsd, Md Sazzad Hossain, Priyanka Annapureddy, Sheikh Iqbal Ahamed, Praveen Madiraju, Mark Flower, Lisa Rein, Thomas Kissane, Wylie Frydrychowicz, Naveen K. Bansal, Niharika Jain, Katinka Hooyer, Zeno Franco

Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

This paper seeks to establish a machine learning driven method by which a military veteran with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is classified as being in a crisis situation or not, based upon a given set of criteria. Optimizing alerting decision rules is critical to ensure that veterans at highest risk for mental health crisis rapidly receive additional attention. Subject matter experts in our team (a psychologist, a medical anthropologist, and an expert veteran), defined acute crisis, early warning signs and long-term crisis from this dataset. First, we used a decision tree to find an early time point when the peer …

Artificial Intelligence - Modularity With Behavior Trees, Andy Vuong

Technical Library

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a growing field of interest in computer science and is becoming increasingly important. There are numerous applications of AI with one of the most common ones being in video games. AI in video games often requires complex behavior for non-player characters (agents) within the game (e.g., enemies). One challenge for video game developers is to provide robust agent behavior while reducing duplication of code. Agent behavior often consists of a choice between independent actions ("should I run or shoot?"), but good design principles dictate that the code for those actions should not be duplicated in each …

Exploring Seasonal Trends And Episodic Weather In The Muskegon Lake Ecosystem, Elijah Smith

Technical Library

Over the last 10 years, the Robert B. Annis Water Resources Institute (AWRI) at Grand Valley State University has collected buoy sensor data from Muskegon Lake. This sensor data, captured every 15 minutes, records a variety of physical and biological characteristics important to the regional biome. Ranging from wind speed to dissolved oxygen to chlorophyll, the 21 distinct metrics reveal details about the intertwined processes and seasonal variations in the ecosystem. Previous research from AWRI has shown that “episodic weather events” play a role in water column mixing and algal blooms. For example, a strong storm system will mix up …

Automatic Detection From Chest X-Rays Using Deep Learning, Evan Lang

Technical Library

Over the past year, COVID-19 has affected countries world-wide. COVID-19 detection tests have allowed us to control the spread of the disease; however, COVID-19 testing kits are highly specialized and difficult to procure in quantity. X-rays, on the other hand, have broad clinical usage and therefore tend to be readily available. As a result, radiologists have begun using chest X-rays to diagnose COVID-19 in patients with respiratory distress. The goal of this research project was to demonstrate that deep learning can be used to automatically detect COVID-19 from chest X-rays. Automated detection with deep learning models could help make X-ray …

Evaluation Of Spot Size Using Volumetric Repainting Technique On A Proteusplus Pbs Proton Therapy System, Suresh Rana, Jaafar Bennouna, Alonso Gutierrez

All Publications

Volumetric repainting is considered as one of the techniques for motion mitigation in proton therapy. Faster layer switching time to deliver a volumetric repainting proton plan is very critical to reduce the overall treatment time. Recently, IBA (proton therapy vendor at the Miami Cancer Institute) has implemented a "field regulation" – a new feature to reduce the switching time between layers by applying a magnetic field setpoint to specific groups of magnets. In order to investigate the impact of field regulation and volumetric repainting technique on the spot size, several spot maps were generated. The spot sizes were measured at …

Correlation Between Number Of Mendeley Readers And Citations In Dental Sciences, Jafar Kolahi, David G. Dunning, Edward F. Rossomando

Journal Articles: College of Dentistry

No abstract provided.

Heightened Levels Of Antimicrobial Response Factors In Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis, Prathapan Ayyappan, Robert Z. Harms, Jennifer A. Seifert, Elizabeth A. Bemis, Marie L. Feser, Kevin D. Deane, M Kristen Demoruelle, Ted R. Mikuls, V Michael Holers, Nora Sarvetnick

Journal Articles: Surgery

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic progressive autoimmune disease leading to considerable disability over time. The disease can be characterized by the presence of multiple autoantibodies in the serum and synovial fluid. Microbial dysbiosis is proposed to play a role in the pathogenesis of RA. Increased systemic bacterial exposure leads to elevated levels of antimicrobial response factors (ARFs) in the circulation. In the present study, we tested whether RA patients have increased levels of ARFs by analyzing the levels of multiple ARFs in serum from RA patients and healthy age and sex-matched controls. The levels of soluble CD14 (sCD14), lysozyme, …

Complexation-Induced Resolution Enhancement Of 3d-Printed Hydrogel Constructs, Jiaxing Gong, Carl C. L. Schuurmans, Anne Metje Van Genderen, Xia Cao, Wanlu Li, Feng Cheng, Jacqueline Jialu He, Arturo López, Valentin Huerta, Jennifer Manríquez, Ruiquan Li, Hongbin Li, Clément Delavaux, Shikha Sebastian, Pamela E. Capendale, Huiming Wang, Jingwei Xie, Mengfei Yu, Rosalinde Masereeuw, Tina Vermonden, Yu Shrike Zhang

Journal Articles: Surgery

Three-dimensional (3D) hydrogel printing enables production of volumetric architectures containing desired structures using programmed automation processes. Our study reports a unique method of resolution enhancement purely relying on post-printing treatment of hydrogel constructs. By immersing a 3D-printed patterned hydrogel consisting of a hydrophilic polyionic polymer network in a solution of polyions of the opposite net charge, shrinking can rapidly occur resulting in various degrees of reduced dimensions comparing to the original pattern. This phenomenon, caused by complex coacervation and water expulsion, enables us to reduce linear dimensions of printed constructs while maintaining cytocompatible conditions in a cell type-dependent manner. We …

Advanced Preparation Makes Research In Emergencies And Isolation Care Possible: The Case Of Novel Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19), David Brett-Major, Elizabeth R. Schnaubelt, Hannah M. Creager, Abigail Lowe, Theodore J. Cieslak, Jacob M. Dahlke, Daniel W. Johnson, Paul D. Fey, Keith F. Hansen, Angela L. Hewlett, Bruce G. Gordon, Andre C. Kalil, Ali S. Khan, Mark G. Kortepeter, Christopher J. Kratochvil, Luann Larson, Deborah A. Levy, James Linder, Sharon J. Medcalf, Mark E. Rupp, Michelle M. Schwedhelm, James N. Sullivan Md, Angela M. Vasa, Michael C. Wadman, Rachel E. Lookadoo, John-Martin J. Lowe, James V. Lawler, M. Jana Broadhurst

Journal Articles: Epidemiology

The optimal time to initiate research on emergencies is before they occur. However, timely initiation of high-quality research may launch during an emergency under the right conditions. These include an appropriate context, clarity in scientific aims, preexisting resources, strong operational and research structures that are facile, and good governance. Here, Nebraskan rapid research efforts early during the 2020 coronavirus disease pandemic, while participating in the first use of U.S. federal quarantine in 50 years, are described from these aspects, as the global experience with this severe emerging infection grew apace. The experience has lessons in purpose, structure, function, and performance …