Digital Commons Network^™

Year In Review: The Federal Circuit's 2020 Government Contract Law Decisions, The Honorable Jeri Kaylene Somers, Jedidiah Blake Ii, Matthew Gurr, Benjamin Phillips Iii

American University Law Review

This Article discusses a number of important 2020 government contracts decisions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. As in previous years, appeals involving government contracting issues comprised only a small portion of the Federal Circuit’s docket, the majority of which is consistently intellectual property disputes. Although only comprising a small portion of the docket, the government contracts appeals that the Federal Circuit considered in 2020 covered a wide range of topics. This year-in-review first addresses Federal Circuit decisions across three major issues in government contracts appeals—cost and pricing, contract interpretation, and bid protests—before examining other significant …

Tracing The Invisible: Information Fiduciaries And The Pandemic, Anne L. Washington, Lauren Rhue

American University Law Review

Predictive data technology designed to contain the COVID-19 pandemic was not as successful as promised. Data-centric solutions to providing testing and tracing did little to limit the virus’s spread in part because they served only the most visible parts of society. This Article argues for more robust solutions to protect individuals’ privacy—whether those individuals are currently visible or invisible to pandemic technology—if pandemic technology is to provide the universal coverage necessary for a public health emergency, such as the COVID- 19 pandemic. First, we contend that current pandemic data technology operates under rigid technical and social assumptions that thwart participation …

Reconstructing Patent Eligibility, Talha Syed

American University Law Review

Patent law’s doctrine of ineligible subject matter is widely agreed to be in a bad state of repair. Even those welcoming the Supreme Court’s return to express subject-matter bars have been left disoriented by the Court’s pronouncements in this area. Which subject matter is ineligible, why it is ineligible, and how it might become eligible have all remained enshrouded in mystery.

The nub of the problem, this Article contends, is two-fold. First, from its nineteenth-century origins to the present, courts grappling with ineligibility doctrine have remained in the grip of a series of “physicalist” misconceptions of the object of patent …

Building A Better Future In International Development: Why The Dfc Should Be Considered An Agency To Comply With Development Finance Standards And Maintain Influence Abroad, Rebecca M. Dresner

American University Law Review

The world is facing increasingly global challenges like climate change, growing income inequality, financial crises, and the COVID-19 pandemic. These challenges disproportionately impact economically developing countries. Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) and International Finance Institutions (IFIs) are tools that the international community deploys to mobilize private capital to support development projects around the world. The International Development Finance Corporation is a newly formed U.S. DFI that consolidated the United States’ development finance initiatives into one government entity.

The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) is a bilateral entity that receives funding from the U.S. government to further economic advancement in developing …

A Right For Retirement Unconscionable Contracts, The Right (Not) To Associate, And Citizens United, Paul S. Miller

American University Law Review

The doctrine of unconscionable contracts is an equity doctrine. As such, it does not ask whether an agreement is or is not an enforceable contract; legality has no bearing. Rather, the doctrine asks whether it would be it be fit and proper . . . would it be fair . . . for a court to enforce such a contract. Using the doctrine, courts examine whether the price paid for a good or service far outstrips any benefit gained.

What if that price is the surrender of a basic right, the Right (Not) to Associate? The Supreme Court says that …

When Thoughts And Prayers Are Not Enough: Why Age-Based Restrictions On Purchasing Firearms Pass Constitutional Muster, Madeline P. Fuller

American University Law Review

After the tragic shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that took the lives of seventeen students and staff members and injured countless others, the community debated how this event could have been prevented. There were security failures on the part of the school and police—unlocked doors, passive deputies and a security guard, and a broken PA system—all of which may have lessened the casualties had they been operating properly. However, these security measures might not have been tested and found lacking if another preventative measure had already taken place: prohibiting the young shooter from legally purchasing a weapon.

Florida …

The Pocketbook Next Time: From Civil Rights To Market Power In The Latinx Community, Rachel F. Moran

American University Law Review

The United States is undergoing a demographic transformation. Nearly one in five Americans already is Latinx, and the United States Census Bureau projects that by 2060, nearly one in three will be. Latinx will substantially outnumber every other historically underrepresented racial and ethnic minority group, and non-Hispanic whites no longer will be a majority. Those changes have unsettled traditional approaches to full inclusion.

Civil rights activists have suffered numerous setbacks, and the burgeoning Latinx population is searching for other paths to belonging. Some leaders have turned to growing Latinx market power to demand recognition and equal opportunity. These efforts rely …

Poaching, Charles A. Sullivan

American University Law Review

The last few years have seen the beginnings of what could become a radical revision of the law’s approach to restraints on competition in the labor market. While most attention has been focused on “noncompetes”—agreements between employers and their employees imposing postemployment restraints—there has also been a revival of interest in so-called “no-poaches”—agreements by which employers restrict their ability to hire each other’s workers. This new interest includes antitrust challenges and an enhanced skepticism by common law courts about enforcing such agreements. Indeed, as new laws increasingly limit the use of traditional noncompetes, no-poaches have become more attractive to employers …

Murders In The German Sex Trade: 1920 To 2017, Manuela Schon, Anna Hoheide

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This research report is the result of collecting and evaluating data on cases of homicides and attempted homicides in the German sex trade from 1920-2017. The findings show violence against prostituted women and the attitudes of the sex buyers who commit most of the violent acts against the women. The report discusses the media coverage of murder cases, complication of cases, and a critique of methods of criminal evaluation by the police. From 1920 to 2017, 272 victims of murder and attempted murder were identified. Liberalization of prostitution occurred in 2002. From then until 2017, there is a decrease in …

Influenza Vaccination For The Prevention Of Cardiovascular Disease In The Americas: Consensus Document Of The Inter-American Society Of Cardiology And The Word Heart Federation, Álvaro Sosa Liprandi, María Inés Sosa Liprandi, Ezequiel José Zaidel, Gabriel M Aisenberg, Adrián Baranchuk, Eduardo Costa Duarte Barbosa, Gabriela Borrayo Sánchez, Bryce Alexander, Fernando Tomás Lanas Zanetti, Ricardo López Santi, Ana Girleza Múnera-Echeverri, Pablo Perel, Daniel Piskorz, Carlos Enrique Ruiz-Mori, Jorge Saucedo, Osiris Valdez, José Ramón González Juanatey, Daniel José Piñeiro, Fausto J Pinto, Fernando Stuardo Wyss Quintana

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Cardiovascular mortality is decreasing but remains the leading cause of death world-wide. Respiratory infections such as influenza significantly contribute to morbidity and mortality in patients with cardiovascular disease. Despite of proven benefits, influenza vaccination is not fully implemented, especially in Latin America.

OBJECTIVE: The aim was to develop a regional consensus with recommendations regarding influenza vaccination and cardiovascular disease.

METHODS: A multidisciplinary team composed by experts in the management and prevention of cardiovascular disease from the Americas, convened by the Inter-American Society of Cardiology (IASC) and the World Heart Federation (WHF), participated in the process and the formulation of …

A Threatened Ecological Community: Research Advances And Priorities For Banksia Woodlands, Alison L. Ritchie, Lauren N. Svejcar, Bronwyn M. Ayre, Julian Bolleter, Aaron Brace, Michael D. Craig, Belinda Davis, Robert A. Davis, Eddie J. B. Van Etten, Joseph B. Fontaine, William M. Fowler, Ray H. Froend, Christine Groom, Giles E. S. J. Hardy, Paula Hooper, Anna J. M. Hopkins, Michael Hughes, Siegfried L. Krauss, Matthias Leopold, Ben P. Miller, Russell G. Miller, Cristina E. Ramalho, Katinka X. Ruthrof, Christopher Shaw, Jason C. Stevens, Ryan Tangney, Leonie E. Valentine

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The rapid expansion of urban areas worldwide is leading to native habitat loss and ecosystem fragmentation and degradation. Although the study of urbanisation's impact on biodiversity is gaining increasing interest globally, there is still a disconnect between research recommendations and urbanisation strategies. Expansion of the Perth metropolitan area on the Swan Coastal Plain in south-western Australia, one of the world's thirty-six biodiversity hotspots, continues to affect the Banksia Woodlands (BWs) ecosystem, a federally listed Threatened Ecological Community (TEC). Here, we utilise the framework of a 1989 review of the state of knowledge of BWs ecology and conservation to examine scientific …

Calliope, Georgia Southern University

Calliope Magazine

Volume 38

Current Recommendations For Lower Body Aerobic Exercise In Chronic Unilateral Stroke - A Systematic Review, Jordan N. Brown

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Background: Chronic stroke patients (i.e., > six months since the onset of stroke) continue to experience persistent gait complications. Once formal physical therapy concludes, exercise professionals can implement exercise interventions designed to improve quality of life and reduce risk of secondary stroke. This systematic review aimed to evaluate whether lower-body aerobic exercise transferred to gait improvements in chronic unilateral stroke. Methods: An electronic search of the following databases were undertaken: MEDLINE, CINHAL, Ovid, and SPORTdiscus. Two independent reviewers selected articles using predetermined inclusion criteria: adults (i.e., >18 years old) who suffered from a chronic unilateral stroke. Additionally, all included studies were …

Myelination: A Plastic Religion, Cody A. Thomas

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Plastic products are convenient, abundant and our use of them has become routine. This acceptance of

plastics’ presence has become a dogma that most humans adhere to. The continual consumption of

these single-use plastics in our daily lives has unknowingly shaped our environmental consciousness,

behaviors, and justification for them. This belief in plastics function has been strategically developed by

companies that rely on our behaviors to distribute their products. Humans have become the faithful

consumers of these goods and this belief. The brain and its ability to remain plastic and develop

decision-making skills are known as Myelination. New experiences enhance …

Applicant Religion And Work Qualifications Impacting Hiring Decisions, William T. Cagle

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The underlying effect of religious bias towards Muslims has negatively impacted their chances of receiving equal employment opportunities. The current study attempts to observe this effect by having Christian participants pretend to be a boss of a company and asking them to evaluate a fictitious resume and rate the applicant on their suitability for the managerial job at hand. The applicants were either Christian or Muslim. Based on the justification-suppression model, we also attempted to observe the effect having different hiring qualifications had on the applicant ratings. To do this, applicants either had a high or low GPA, and they …

Habitat Use Of Wintering Henslow's Sparrows (Centronyx Henslowii) In Power Line Right-Of-Ways, Abigail W. Dwire

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Habitat loss and degradation are the leading causes of grassland bird declines worldwide. The Henslow’s Sparrow (Centronyx henslowii; hereafter HESP) is a grassland bird species of conservation concern that has historically relied on the herbaceous ground-layer of longleaf pine savannas and similar habitats in the southeastern U.S. for food and shelter in the winter. However, due to human development, alterations of habitat, and fire suppression, only fragments of these habitats remain. Over the last decade, surveys have annually documented HESPs using power line right-of-ways (hereafter, ROWs) at several sites in the coastal plain of Georgia as alternative habitat for …

The Development Of A Holistic Quality Score Using In-Situ Monitoring Of Laser Powder Bed Fusion, Ryan Daigneault

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Additive manufacturing processes allow for a great degree of flexibility in terms of part production. The process is autonomous once the part has started printing in that the operator generally does not need to intervene until the part is finished. One issue that this introduces, however, is an inability to determine part quality during the printing process. Once a part has started printing, the operator must either wait until the part is finished or regularly check on the part during the print to determine the part quality. Using data gathered from multiple sensors, a quality score can be used to …

Creating A Medical Humanities Mini-Course For Third Year Medical Students, Kate Reming, Judith Sabino Mph, Cdp

USF-LVHN SELECT

No abstract provided.

Advance (Spring 2021), Georgia Southern Division Of Continuing And Professional Education

Division of Continuing & Professional Education

No abstract provided.

Jiann-Ping Hsu College Of Public Health Magazine, Georgia Southern University

College of Public Health: News & Publications

• Message from the Dean: Stuart H. Tedders, PhD
• One-On-One: Building a POD from the ground up!
• Our Community: Making a Difference
• The COVID-19 Pivot: Teaching, Outreach, Research
• One Year Later: Reflections
• Dr. James Stephens
• Zoom made the world smaller
• Creating space where everyone belongs
• Center for Addiction Recovery Growth in a new normal—the pandemic year
• Karl E. Peace Center for Biostatistics and Survey Research Working together: biostatistics collaborations
• Center for Public Health Practice and Research Making real impacts with training, assessments and more
• Faculty and Students
• Office of Practice and Research
• Research
• College
• Photos

Strengthening Mental Health Diagnostic Detection In Integrated Primary Care, Julia Brechbiel

Theses and Dissertations

Primary care behavioral health (PCBH) is crucial for providing mental health treatment to underserved, minority, and uninsured populations. There is a lack of knowledge about accurate mental health diagnoses at PCBH. Underdetection of mental health symptoms has the potential to worsen racial and socioeconomic disparities. Using an expert review process, I developed an abbreviated diagnostic clinical interview (ADCI) for integrated primary care. Next, patients (N = 82) completed the interview after attending PCBH appointments. According to the interview, 63.4% of participants met criteria for a diagnosis, while 64.7% received a diagnosis from their provider. A large portion of patients …

The Impact Of Healthcare Professional Students' Racial, Hiv-Related, And Abortion-Related Biases On Recommendations For Prenatal Care, Alison J. Patev

Theses and Dissertations

Black women and HIV-positive women have increased maternal mortality rates and other negative pregnancy outcomes, in part due to disparate prenatal care. Although women who seek abortions do not have the same negative outcomes, abortion stigma exists and is normalized in healthcare. Limited work has examined prenatal care provision for women in these groups, and even less work has explored the prenatal care provision by healthcare trainees (i.e., medical, nurse practitioner, and physician assistant students). Examining the role of bias on the prioritization of prenatal care items by healthcare trainees is imperative. Healthcare education sets the stage for future practice, …

Threat Assessment Team Activity And Outcomes In K-12 Public Schools: Integrating Methods To Better Understand School Safety, Jessica C. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

The use of threat assessment teams in schools is recommended as a violence prevention measure in K-12 public schools. The present study focused on the threat assessment process in the K-12 environment in Virginia and is the first to examine the association between threat assessment and school safety in tandem over time and the first to incorporate the views of K-12 threat assessment practitioners. Findings from this study demonstrate that while the number of threat assessments has increased overtime, threat assessment practitioners identified numerous concerns regarding threat assessment training, expressed doubts about fidelity to the recommended process, and revealed an …

Functional Limitations And Well-Being Throughout The Adult Lifespan: The Moderating Role Of Sleep, Claire M. Williams

Theses and Dissertations

Functional limitations represent individuals’ difficulty with completing essential activities of daily living, such as sitting, stooping, and walking. Though functional limitations have been linked to lower well-being outcomes, less is known about potential protective factors for well-being in the experience of functional limitations. The present study used archival data from the MIDUS Refresher study to evaluate how sleep and salient aspects of identity may alter the association between the experience of functional limitations and well-being. In particular, this study had two central aims: to examine the associations between functional limitations, life satisfaction, and affect and detect how aspects of identity …

Beam Dynamics Study In A Dual Energy Storage Ring For Ion Beam Cooling*, B. Dhital, Y. S. Derbenev, D. Douglas, A. Hutton, Geoffrey A. Krafft, F. Lin, V. S. Morozov, Y. Zhang

Physics Faculty Publications

A dual energy storage ring designed for beam cooling consists of two closed rings with significantly different energies: the cooling and damping rings. These two rings are connected by an energy recovering superconducting RF structure that provides the necessary energy difference. In our design, the RF acceleration has a main linac and harmonic cavities both running at crest that at first accelerates the beam from low energy E_{L} to high energy E_{H} and then decelerates the beam from E_{H} to E_{L} in the next pass. The purpose of the harmonic cavities is to extend the bunch length in a dual …

Special Education No Man's Land, Adrián E. Alvarez

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Since 2014, unaccompanied immigrant children have migrated to the United States in staggering numbers. The vast majority come from the Northern Triangle countries of Central America—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—and many are fleeing some of the highest homicide rates in the world. Immigration lawyers have highlighted many problems with the federal regime that cares for these children before they are released to family members or other adults living in the United States while their immigration cases move forward. Yet there is one group of unaccompanied minors that is not even on the radar of many advocates: unaccompanied children with …

Investigation Of Post-Acid Stimulation Impacts On Well Performance Using Fracture Modeling And Reservoir Simulation In A Jurassic Carbonate Reservoir, Muaath Alansari

Masters Theses

"Well stimulation (well fracturing) became an essential tool in the Oil and Gas industry to unlock the potential of unconventional reservoirs all over the world and especially in the Middle East. In Kuwait, well stimulation is obligatory when dealing with deep Jurassic carbonate reservoirs. Thus, the well fracture designing process plays a very critical role in determining the success of the stimulation job and the improvement of the recovery.

Several wells stimulated with 20% HCL have shown wide variations in both short and long term well production performance. The research aims to investigate and identify the possible reasons causing these …

Factors Affecting Covid-19 Pandemic, Linrui Han

Masters Theses

“COVID-19 has affected our daily lives in many aspects, such as work, healthcare, education, business, and social. With the quick spread of this new coronavirus, many countries quickly fell into a pandemic control and management mode. It has been more than one year since the discovery of COVID-19, but until now, COVID-19 is still affecting our lives and our daily operations. The research consists of two papers focusing on different factors affecting the COVID-19 pandemic. The first paper studies the effect of ICT and healthcare expenditures on the COVID-19 management and control. The second paper focuses on the impact of …

Cleaning Corporate Governance, Jens Frankenreiter, Cathy Hwang, Yaron Nili, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

Although empirical scholarship dominates the field of law and finance, much of it shares a common vulnerability: an abiding faith in the accuracy and integrity of a small, specialized collection of corporate governance data. In this paper, we unveil a novel collection of three decades’ worth of corporate charters for thousands of public companies, which shows that this faith is misplaced.

We make three principal contributions to the literature. First, we label our corpus for a variety of firm- and state-level governance features. Doing so reveals significant infirmities within the most well-known corporate governance datasets, including an error rate exceeding …

Minimizing Lost Circulation Non-Productive Time Using Expected Monetary Value And Decision Tree Analysis, Husam Hasan Alkinani, Abo Taleb Tuama Al-Hameedi, Shari Dunn-Norman

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Lost circulation and problems related to drilling present a major challenge for the drilling industry. Each year, billions are spent to treat these problems. There is not a single solution to lost circulation because of the complexity and kind of formations susceptible to this issue. Lost circulation treatment data for the Shuaiba formation (induced fractured formation) were gathered from drilled wells in Southern Iraq (over 2000). Treatments have been grouped according to the volume of mud loss as complete, severe, and partial loss remedies. Detailed costs and probabilities calculations were conducted. The costs of three types of loss treatments (partial, …