Digital Commons Network^™

Access Law Schools & Diversifying The Profession, Deseriee A. Kennedy

Scholarly Works

Lawyers do not reflect the racial diversity in the United States. The legal profession continues to struggle with ways to achieve and maintain racial diversity. Law schools play a critical role in the path to practice, and therefore an examination of the barriers to the profession they created is warranted. This essay critiques the over-reliance on standardized testing in law school admissions and advocates for an open admissions process that prioritizes racial and academic diversity. It suggests that the benefits of minimizing the role of standardized tests far outweigh any perceived costs in legal education. This essay concludes that the …

Should I Stay Or Should I Go: Student Housing, Remote Instruction, Campus Policies And Covid-19, Patricia E. Salkin, Pamela Ko

Scholarly Works

In March 2020, as the world scrambled to understand and address myriad public health and economic challenges unfolding from the novel coronavirus labeled COVID-19, higher education was forced into a tailspin. This article examines the legal and policy challenges that result from, among other issues, the congregate housing situations existing for on- and off-campus housing at colleges and universities. The legal issues demonstrate federalism at work and include; at the federal level, regulations and guidance from the White House, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the U.S. Department of Education; at the State level from gubernatorial executive orders, state …

On Basing One-Way Permutations On Np-Hard Problems Under Quantum Reductions, Nai-Hui Chia, Sean Hallgren, Fang Song

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

A fundamental pursuit in complexity theory concerns reducing worst-case problems to average-case problems. There exist complexity classes such as PSPACE that admit worst-case to average-case reductions. However, for many other classes such as NP, the evidence so far is typically negative, in the sense that the existence of such reductions would cause collapses of the polynomial hierarchy(PH). Basing cryptographic primitives, e.g., the average-case hardness of inverting one-way permutations, on NP-completeness is a particularly intriguing instance. As there is evidence showing that classical reductions from NP-hard problems to breaking these primitives result in PH collapses, it seems unlikely to base cryptographic …

Reemergence Of Guadalupe Fur Seals In The U.S. Pacific Northwest: The Epidemiology Of Tranding Events During 2005–2016, Erin D'Agnese, Dyanna M. Lambourn, James Rice, Debbie Duffield, Jessica L. Huggins, Terry Spraker, Stephen A. Raverty, Tetiana Kuzmina, Micheal E. Grigg, Kristin Wilkinson, Multiple Additional Authors

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Guadalupe fur seals (GFS), Arctocephalus philippii townsendi, an U.S. Endangered Species Act threatened pinniped, have recently reappeared in their historic range along the western seaboard of the continental United States. Starting 2005 through 2016, 169 GFSs stranded in Washington and Oregon, involving two designated unusual mortality events. The circumstances surrounding GFS strandings, mortality, and their increased presence in Oregon and Washington were analyzed during this study. Detailed necropsies, histopathology (n = 93), and epidemiological analysis found three main causes of death (COD): emaciation (44%), trauma (29%), and infectious disease (19%) and the factors associated with overall strandings and …

Crossing Boundaries: Steps Toward Measuring Undergraduates' Interdisciplinary Science Understanding, Brie Tripp, Sophia A. Voronoff, Erin Shortlidge

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

A desired outcome of education reform efforts is for undergraduates to effectively integrate knowledge across disciplines in order to evaluate and address real-world issues. Yet there are few assessments designed to measure if and how students think interdisciplinarily. Here, a sample of science faculty were surveyed to understand how they currently assess students’ interdisciplinary science understanding. Results indicate that individual writing-intensive activities are the most frequently used assessment type (69%). To understand how writing assignments can accurately assess students’ ability to think interdisciplinarily, we used a preexisting rubric, designed to measure social science students’ interdisciplinary understanding, to assess writing assignments …

Compensation Strategies That Support Commercial Banks’ Effective Risk Management Practices, Elias Kagumya

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Compensation structures with relatively high levels of contingent pay encouraged managers to engage in excessive risk-taking behavior at financial institutions, which contributed to the global financial crisis of 2008. The purpose of this study, guided by the theory of the firm, was to explore compensation strategies that some executives in Uganda used to support effective risk-management practices. This multiple case study was an in-depth inquiry into compensation strategies that encouraged prudent risk-taking behavior. The target population comprised 5 risk-management executives from 5 separate commercial banks who had successfully implemented compensation strategies that supported risk management practices. Data were collected through …

Best Practices For Patching Composite Pavements, Rebecca S. Mcdaniel

JTRP Technical Reports

Concrete and composite (asphalt over concrete) pavement distress frequently occurs in the vicinity of joints or cracks in the concrete slabs. Water can enter into the pavement structure at these locations, leading to concrete deterioration and loss of subgrade support. Permanently patching these weakened areas can extend the pavement life considerably before major rehabilitation or reconstruction becomes necessary. Identifying where these or other distresses are occurring in composite pavements is problematic, however, because the asphalt overlay masks the defects in the underlying concrete. Reflective cracking in the overlay can indicate the presence of the joints or working cracks in the …

Incorporating Economic Resilience Metrics Into Indot’S Transportation Decision-Making, Yue Ke, Lisa Lorena Losada-Rojas, Davis Chacon-Hurtado, Konstantina Gkritza, Jon D. Fricker

JTRP Technical Reports

The 2007 Great Recession is widely considered the worst economic downturn in recent United States History. In Indiana, the unemployment rate reached 10.6%, and took nearly seven years to return to pre-recession levels. However, employment data from this period shows that the change in total employment at the county level ranged from -20% to +5%, indicating that while many counties suffered from high unemployment, other counties experienced gains in total employment. Various research efforts, including this project, have been undertaken to understand the local characteristics that influence the differing degrees to which regional/city economies were able to resist or cope …

Investigation Of Design Alternatives For The Subbase Of Concrete Pavements, Amy Getchell, Luis Garzon Sabogal, Philippe L. Bourdeau, Marika Santagata

JTRP Technical Reports

In all pavement structures, one or more support layers separate the pavement from the subgrade. In addition to offering structural support, these layers have several important functions, which include: providing a stable and uniform construction platform, facilitating drainage, mitigating pumping of the subgrade fines, and protecting the pavement from the effects of frost heave. Their performance is critical in achieving the desired pavement smoothness, and in extending the service life of the structure. A range of designs, making use of unbound or stabilized aggregates and in some cases geosynthetics, are employed by different agencies to fulfill these functions.

This project …

Concrete Box Beam Risk Assessment And Mitigation: Volume 1—Evolution And Performance, Robert J. Frosch, Christopher S. Williams, Ryan T. Molley, Ryan T. Whelchel

JTRP Technical Reports

Adjacent box beam bridges have a history of poor long-term performance including premature deterioration and failures. Leaking joints between box beams allow chloride-laden water to migrate through the superstructure and initiate corrosion. The nature of this deterioration leads to uncertainty of the extent and effect of deterioration on structural behavior. Due to limitations in previous research and understanding of the strength of deteriorated box beam bridges, conservative assumptions are made for the assessment and load rating of these bridges. Furthermore, the design of new box beam bridges, which can offer an efficient and economical solution, is often discouraged due to …

Determining The Optimal Traffic Opening Timing Through An In-Situ Ndt Method For Concrete Early Age Properties, Yen-Fang Su, Guangshuai Han, Na (Luna) Lu

JTRP Technical Reports

Developing a reliable in-situ testing method to determine the strength of concrete for traffic opening is a critical need for INDOT, due to the fast-pace construction schedule exposes concrete pavements and/or structures undergoing a substantial loading conditions even at its early ages. Nevertheless, the current methods for determining traffic opening times are inefficient and expensive, often causing construction delays or cost overruns. To address this critical need, we propose to develop an in-situ nondestructive testing (NDT) method that enables an accurate and efficient understanding of early age properties of concrete using electromechanical impedance (EMI) method coupled with piezoelectric sensors.

Previous …

Implementing The Strut-And-Tie Method For The Design Of Bridge Components, Andi S. Vicksman, Christopher S. Williams, Merrick A. Howarth

JTRP Technical Reports

The strut-and-tie method (STM) is used for the design of D-regions (disturbed regions) of reinforced concrete structures. Many typical bridge substructure components consist of D-regions and warrant the use of the STM for design. Implementation of the STM is more complex than typical design methods, and engineers are often unfamiliar with the design process. As a result, designing using the STM is more time consuming than traditional design methods. The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) identified a need for resources and tools that assist with the design of typical bridge substructure components using the STM. The primary tool created to …

Statistical Analysis Of Safety Improvements And Integration Into Project Design Process, Andrew P. Tarko, Mario Romero, Cristhian Lizarazo, Raul Pineda

JTRP Technical Reports

RoadHAT is a tool developed by the Center for Road Safety and implemented for the INDOT safety management practice to help identify both safety needs and relevant road improvements. This study has modified the tool to facilitate a quick and convenient comparison of various design alternatives in the preliminary design stage for scoping small and medium safety-improvement projects. The modified RoadHAT 4D incorporates a statistical estimation of the Crash Reduction Factors based on a before-and-after analysis of multiple treated and control sites with EB correction for the regression-to-mean effect. The new version also includes the updated Safety Performance Functions, revised …

Evaluation Of Anti-Icing/De-Icing Products Under Controlled Environmental Conditions, Yi Ji, Bob Mccullouch, Zhi Zhou

JTRP Technical Reports

Snow and ice removal are important tasks during the winter season and large amounts of anti-icing and de-icing chemicals are used and there is a critical need to review and synthesize information from the literature to compare and contrast anti-icing and de-icing chemicals to understand their environmental impact and support decision making. The effectiveness, costs, and environmental impact of commonly used and alternative anti-icing and de-icing chemicals were reviewed in this study. Application of anti-icing and de-icing chemicals may increase ion concentrations in soils and change nitrogen cycle, soil pH, and trace metal concentrations, affect surface water and groundwater, and …

Indot Research Program Benefit Cost Analysis—Return On Investment For Projects Completed In Fy 2019, Bob Mccullouch

JTRP Technical Reports

To demonstrate the value of research and its implementation, the Governor’s Office requested an annual financial analysis of the INDOT Research Program to determine the return on the research investment (ROI). This report is for the 35 research projects that completed in FY 2019. The ROI analysis will supplement the annual IMPACT report by adding a more rigorous quantitative benefit cost analysis (BCA) to the Research Program. Previous financial analyses used the approach of calculating net present values of cash flows to determine a benefit cost ratio and this report uses the same approach. Additionally, an overall program rate of …

Concrete Box Beam Risk Assessment And Mitigation: Volume 2—Evaluation And Structural Behavior, Robert J. Frosch, Christopher S. Williams, Ryan T. Molley, Ryan T. Whelchel

JTRP Technical Reports

Adjacent box beam bridges have a history of poor long-term performance including premature deterioration and failures. Leaking joints between box beams allow chloride-laden water to migrate through the superstructure and initiate corrosion. The nature of this deterioration leads to uncertainty of the extent and effect of deterioration on structural behavior. Due to limitations in previous research and understanding of the strength of deteriorated box beam bridges, conservative assumptions are made for the assessment and load rating of these bridges. Furthermore, the design of new box beam bridges, which can offer an efficient and economical solution, is often discouraged due to …

Speed Management In Small Cities And Towns—Guidelines For Indiana, Andrew P. Tarko, Thomas Hall, Cristhian Lizarazo, Fernando España-Monedero

JTRP Technical Reports

Many small cities and towns in rural states such as Indiana are crossed by arterial highways. The local traffic on these roads, particularly vulnerable road users, face the excessive risk of injury and death. This danger is amplified with local land development, driveways, and on-street parking in town centers. This report presents an Indiana study of the speeding problem on arterial roads passing through small communities. Past research on various countermeasures suitable for the studied conditions were identified and the connection between speed reduction and safety improvements was investigated in a sample of Indiana small towns. Promising speed-reduction measures include …

Development Of Subgrade Stabilization And Slab Undersealing Solutions For Pcc Pavements Restoration And Repairs, Ali Behnood, Jan Olek

JTRP Technical Reports

The loss of functionality and the development of distress in concrete pavements is often attributable to the poor subbase and subgrade conditions and/or loss of support due to the development of the voids underneath the slab. Subgrade soil stabilization can be used as an effective approach to restore the functionality of the subgrades in patching projects. This research had two main objectives: (1) identifying the best practices for soil stabilization of the existing subgrade during pavement patching operations and (2) identifying and developing new, modified grouting materials for slab stabilization and undersealing. Various stabilization scenarios were tested and showed improved …

Investigation Of Strategic Deployment Opportunities For Unmanned Aerial Systems (Uas) At Indot, Sarah M. Hubbard, Bryan Hubbard

JTRP Technical Reports

Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are increasingly used for a variety of applications related to INDOT’s mission including bridge inspection, traffic management, incident response, construction and roadway mapping. UAS have the potential to reduce costs and increase capabilities. Other state DOTs and transportation agencies have deployed UAS for an increasing number of applications due to technology advances that provide increased capabilities and lower costs, resulting from regulatory changes that simplified operations for small UAS under 55 pounds (aka, sUAS).

This document provides an overview of UAS applications that may be appropriate for INDOT, as well as a description of the regulations …

Implementing The Superpave 5 Asphalt Mixture Design Method In Indiana, John E. Haddock, Reyhaneh Rahbar-Rastegar, M. Reza Pouranian, Miguel Montoya, Harsh Patel

JTRP Technical Reports

Recent research developments have indicated that asphalt mixture durability and pavement life can be increased by modifying the Superpave asphalt mixture design method to achieve an in-place density of 95%, approximately 2% higher than the density requirements of conventionally designed Superpave mixtures. Doing so requires increasing the design air voids content to 5% and making changes to the mixture aggregate gradation so that effective binder content is not lowered. After successful laboratory testing of this modified mixture design method, known as Superpave 5, two controlled field trials and one full scale demonstration project, the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) let …

Extraction Of Vehicle Can Bus Data For Roadway Condition Monitoring, Howell Li, Enrique Saldivar-Carranza, Jijo K. Mathew, Woosung Kim, Jairaj Desai, Timothy Wells, Darcy M. Bullock

JTRP Technical Reports

Obtaining timely information across the state roadway network is important for monitoring the condition of the roads and operating characteristics of traffic. One of the most significant challenges in winter roadway maintenance is identifying emerging or deteriorating conditions before significant crashes occur. For instance, almost all modern vehicles have accelerometers, anti-lock brake (ABS) and traction control systems. This data can be read from the Controller Area Network (CAN) of the vehicle, and combined with GPS coordinates and cellular connectivity, can provide valuable on-the-ground sampling of vehicle dynamics at the onset of a storm. We are rapidly entering an era where …

Verification Of Bridge Foundation Design Assumptions And Calculations, Fei Han, Monica Prezzi, Rodrigo Salgado, Mehdi Marashi, Timothy Wells, Mir Zaheer

JTRP Technical Reports

The Sagamore Parkway Bridge consists of twin parallel bridges over the Wabash River in Lafayette, IN. The old steel-truss eastbound bridge was demolished in November 2016 and replaced by a new seven-span concrete bridge. The new bridge consists of two end-bents (bent 1 and bent 8) and six interior piers (pier 2 to pier 7) that are founded on closed-ended and open-ended driven pipe piles, respectively. During bridge construction, one of the bridge piers (pier 7) and its foundation elements were selected for instrumentation for monitoring the long-term response of the bridge to dead and live loads. The main goals …

Truck Traffic And Load Spectra Of Indiana Roadways For The Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide, Jieyi Bao, Xiaoqiang Hu, Cheng Peng, Yi Jiang, Shuo Li, Tommy Nantung

JTRP Technical Reports

The Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) has been employed for pavement design by the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) since 2009 and has generated efficient pavement designs with a lower cost. It has been demonstrated that the success of MEPDG implementation depends largely on a high level of accuracy associated with the information supplied as design inputs. Vehicular traffic loading is one of the key factors that may cause not only pavement structural failures, such as fatigue cracking and rutting, but also functional surface distresses, including friction and smoothness. In particular, truck load spectra play a critical role in all …

Cost And Benefit Analysis Of Installing Fiber Optics On Indot Projects, Ananth V. Iyer, Samuel Labi, Steven Dunlop, Thomas Brady Jr., Eki Amijaya, Abdullah Nafakh

JTRP Technical Reports

The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) is tasked with the stewardship of billions of dollars’ worth of public invested highway infrastructure. Not only does INDOT continually seek design and operational policies that foster cost effective project delivery and procurement, they also seek opportunities for revenue generation.

Due to population growth and the increased demand for online connectivity and global information transmission, the fiber-optic cable industry has experienced rapid growth over the past few years. Information and communication technology (ICT) companies have long sought to achieve higher economic productivity by installing fiber-optic cables in the right of way (ROW) of access-controlled …

Improvement Of Stiffness And Strength Of Backfill Soils Through Optimization Of Compaction Procedures And Specifications, Shahedur Rahman, Rodrigo Salgado, Monica Prezzi, Peter J. Becker

JTRP Technical Reports

Vibration compaction is the most effective way of compacting coarse-grained materials. The effects of vibration frequency and amplitude on the compaction density of different backfill materials commonly used by INDOT (No. 4 natural sand, No. 24 stone sand, and No. 5, No. 8, No. 43 aggregates) were studied in this research. The test materials were characterized based on the particle sizes and morphology parameters using digital image analysis technique. Small-scale laboratory compaction tests were carried out with variable frequency and amplitude of vibrations using vibratory hammer and vibratory table. The results show an increase in density with the increase in …

Performance Of Right-Turn Lane Designs At Intersections, Satish Ukkusuri, Lu Ling, Tho V. Le, Wenbo Zhang

JTRP Technical Reports

Right-turn lane (RTL) crashes are among the most key contributors to intersection crashes in the US. Different right turn lanes based on their design, traffic volume, and location have varying levels of crash risk. Therefore, engineers and researchers have been looking for alternative ways to improve the safety and operations for right-turn traffic. This study investigates the traffic safety performance of the RTL in Indiana state based on multi-sources, including official crash reports, official database, and field study. To understand the RTL crashes' influencing factors, we introduce a random effect negative binomial model and log-linear model to estimate the impact …

Legal And Permit Loads Evaluation For Indiana Bridges, Chris Kusiak, Mark D. Bowman, Arun Prakash

JTRP Technical Reports

According to federal law, routine commercial vehicles must adhere to certain limits on their load configuration in order to operate legally on interstate highways. However, states may allow for heavier or different load configurations provided that bridges on the state and county highway system are load rated and, if necessary, posted with vehicles that appropriately represent these loads. The state of Indiana allows several classes of vehicles to operate with loads that exceed federal limits, and, presently, several LFD design loads are used to represent these exceptions as state legal loads. This study evaluates the MBE rating loads for their …

Circulating Tumour Dna In Advanced Melanoma Patients Ceasing Pd1 Inhibition In The Absence Of Disease Progression, Lydia Warburton, Leslie Calapre, Michelle Pereira, Anna Reid, Cleo Robinson, Benhur Amanuel, Mel Ziman, Michael Millward, Elin Gray

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Immunotherapy is an important and established treatment option for patients with advanced melanoma. Initial anti-PD1 trials arbitrarily defined a two-year treatment duration, but a shorter treatment duration may be appropriate. In this study, we retrospectively assessed 70 patients who stopped anti-PD1 therapy in the absence of progressive disease (PD) to determine clinical outcomes. In our cohort, the median time on treatment was 11.8 months. Complete response was attained at time of anti-PD1 discontinuation in 61 (87%). After a median follow up of 34.2 months (range: 2–70.8) post discontinuation, 81% remained disease free. Using ddPCR, we determine the utility of circulating …

Structural Similarity Loss For Learning To Fuse Multi-Focus Images, Xiang Yan, Syed Zulqarnain Gilani, Hanlin Qin, Ajmal Mian

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Convolutional neural networks have recently been used for multi-focus image fusion. However, some existing methods have resorted to adding Gaussian blur to focused images, to simulate defocus, thereby generating data (with ground-truth) for supervised learning. Moreover, they classify pixels as ‘focused’ or ‘defocused’, and use the classified results to construct the fusion weight maps. This then necessitates a series of post-processing steps. In this paper, we present an end-to-end learning approach for directly predicting the fully focused output image from multi-focus input image pairs. The suggested approach uses a CNN architecture …

In Situ Wettability Investigation Of Aging Of Sandstone Surface In Alkane Via X-Ray Microtomography, Nilesh Kumar Jha, Maxim Lebedev, Stefan Iglauer, Jitendra S. Sangwai, Mohammad Sarmadivaleh

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Wettability of surfaces remains of paramount importance for understanding various natural and artificial colloidal and interfacial phenomena at various length and time scales. One of the problems discussed in this work is the wettability alteration of a three-phase system comprising high salinity brine as the aqueous phase, Doddington sandstone as porous rock, and decane as the nonaqueous phase liquid. The study utilizes the technique of in situ contact angle measurements of the several 2D projections of the identified 3D oil phase droplets from the 3D images of the saturated sandstone miniature …