Digital Commons Network^™

A Theory Of Reciting As Asian American Buddhist Practice: The Young Buddhist Editorial As A Discursive Site Of Recitation, Funie Hsu

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This article contributes a theory of reciting as Asian American Buddhist practice. I argue that when Asian American Buddhists share their stories and experiences, they perform a critical form of religious reciting. This reciting articulates the reality of Asian American Buddhist existence amidst ongoing legacies of exclusion. It displaces the predominance of narratives about Asian American Buddhists told by others. Moreover, reciting forges networks of knowledge, recognition, and sangha amongst Asian American Buddhists. This article then investigates the recently established web platform, The Young Buddhist Editorial (YBE), as an example of the layered reciting practices amongst young Asian American Buddhists. …

Predicting Question Deletion And Assessing Question Quality In Social Q&A Sites Using Weakly Supervised Deep Neural Networks, Souvick Ghosh

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Community question answering (CQA) sites, which use the power of collective knowledge, have emerged as popular destinations for complex and personalized questions that require human-human interactions and multiple rounds of clarifications between the asker and the answerer. In this paper, we undertook a threefold task: First, we developed a deep neural network model to automatically predict the questions that are likely to be deleted by the moderators. Second, we hypothesized that there exists a relationship between the question quality and its probability of being deleted by the forum moderators. We developed a deep model using deleted questions and used it …

"Do Users Need Human-Like Conversational Agents?" - Exploring Conversational System Design Using Framework Of Human Needs, Souvick Ghosh, Satanu Ghosh

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

The fascinating story of human evolution can be attributed to our ability to speak, write, and communicate complex thoughts. When researchers envision a perfect, artificially intelligent conversational system, they want the system to be human-like. In other words, the system should converse with the same intellect and cognition as humans. Now, the question which we need to ask is if we need a human-like conversational system? Before we engage in the complex endeavor of implementing human-like characteristics, we should debate if the pursuit of such a system is logical and ethical. We analyze some of the system-level characteristics and discuss …

Extensible Embedded Processor For Convolutional Neural Networks, Joshua Misko, Shrikant S. Jadhav, Youngsoo Kim

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) require significant computing power during inference. Smart phones, for example, may not run a facial recognition system or search algorithm smoothly due to the lack of resources and supporting hardware. Methods for reducing memory size and increasing execution speed have been explored, but choosing effective techniques for an application requires extensive knowledge of the network architecture. This paper proposes a general approach to preparing a compressed deep neural network processor for inference with minimal additions to existing microprocessor hardware. To show the benefits to the proposed approach, an example CNN for synthetic aperture radar target classification …

Sneakers, Corporate Attitudes, And The Black Lives Matter Movement: An Interview With Sneaker Expert Sean Williams, Travis D. Boyce

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Cross Border Regional Planning: Insights From Cascadia, Francesco Cappellano, Kathrine Richardson, Laurie Trautman

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This analysis focuses on different levels of Cross-Border Regional Planning (CBRP) processes in the Cascadia borderland. The region is home to the business-led initiative ‘Cascadia Innovation Corridor’ (CIC), designed to foster cross-border economic integration. The CIC strives to build a global innovation ecosystem in Cascadia, including a new high-speed train to connect Seattle and Vancouver. This paper focuses on the scope of the CIC as a CBRP case. The authors evaluate engagement of city governments and coherency between different planning scales to determine whether the CIC has been addressing the major challenges that may prevent tighter economicintegration in Cascadia. The …

Characterization Of Substance Use Among Underrepresented Sexual And Gender Minority Participants In The Population Research In Identity And Disparities For Equality (Pride) Study, Branden T. Barger, Juno Obedin-Maliver, Matthew R. Capriotti, Mitchell R. Lunn, Annesa Flentje

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Background: Profiles of substance use among less commonly described subgroups of sexual and gender minority (SGM) people (e.g., queer, genderqueer) remain largely unknown. Objective(s): To identify substance use differences among less commonly described SGM identity-based subgroups. Methods: The PRIDE Study is a national, online, longitudinal cohort study of self-identified SGM adults living in the U.S. Between 2015–2017, an iPhone application was used to administer three cross-sectional health questionnaires to participants, one of which included questions about binge alcohol, marijuana, and other drug use (substance use). This study was a secondary data analysis of participant responses to substance use survey items. …

Expanding The Narrative: ‘Fashion, Style, Aesthetics And #Blacklivesmatter’, Travis D. Boyce, Lisa D. Lenoir, Winsome M. Chunnu

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

‘We, Too, Share Their Heritage And Culture’: An Interview With Corin Lindsay, Co-Founder Of Corin Demarco, Travis D. Boyce

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Racial And Social Justice At San José State University: Students Respond With Social Action, Scott Myers-Lipton, William Armaline

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

So You Want To Publish: Becoming A Researcher, Amanda Izenstark, Ann Agee, Holly Jackson, Anna Sandelli, Lindsay Roberts

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

New librarians, experienced librarians, and those considering a change in career may want to start writing or researching for a variety of reasons, including meeting professional requirements. In this article, we share some tips for getting started, or perhaps inspiration for bringing old ideas back to life.

The Need For A Strong And Stable Federal Public Health Agency Independent From Politicians, Jacqueline Salwa, Christopher Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the precariousness of federal public health institutions in the United States, and how disastrously things can go when those institutions are undermined by political forces. Such institutions can be disbanded, underfunded, populated with incompetent political hacks, manipulated, or sidelined. As a field, public health in particular needs some political space, given that it requires deep scientific expertise and needs to communicate to the public clearly, reliably, and with authority to engender trust. Key public health agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in particular, should be buttressed against future political encroachment, …

Litigation As Education: The Role Of Public Health To Prevent Weaponizing Second Amendment Rights, Michael Ulrich

Faculty Scholarship

Tobacco litigation was unquestionably successful, but it is dangerous to expect that it can be easily duplicated. An unrealistic reliance on litigation as a regulatory measure can blind public health advocates to other mechanisms of change. And that includes litigation as a means of enabling actual regulation. Firearms and the gun violence epidemic provides a useful case study. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) essentially bars litigation as a regulatory tool for firearms. This legislation means every time someone pulls the trigger, they become the party to blame. Soto v. Bushmaster Firearms presents a rare exception based …

Deficit Frame Dangers, Jonathan Feingold

Faculty Scholarship

Civil rights advocates have long viewed litigation as an essential, if insufficient, catalyst of social change. In part, it is. But in critical respects that remain underexplored in legal scholarship, civil rights litigation can hinder short- and long-term projects of racial justice.

Specifically, certain civil rights doctrines reward plaintiffs for emphasizing community deficits—or what I term a “deficit frame.” Legal doctrine, in other words, invites legal narratives that track, activate, and reinforce pernicious racial stereotypes. This dynamic, even in the context of well-intended litigation, risks entrenching conditions that drive racial inequality—including the conditions that litigation is often intended to address. …

The Covid-19 Pandemic And The Technology Trust Gap, Johanna Gunawan, David Choffnes, Woodrow Hartzog, Christo Wilson

Faculty Scholarship

Industry and government tried to use information technologies to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, but using the internet as a tool for disease surveillance, public health messaging, and testing logistics turned out to be a disappointment. Why weren’t these efforts more effective? This Essay argues that industry and government efforts to leverage technology were doomed to fail because tech platforms have failed over the past few decades to make their tools trustworthy, and lawmakers have done little to hold these companies accountable. People cannot trust the interfaces they interact with, the devices they use, and the systems that power tech …

The Criminalization Of Foreign Relations, Steven Arrigg Koh

Faculty Scholarship

Overcriminalization has rightly generated national condemnation among policymakers, scholars, and practitioners alike. And yet, such scholarship often assumes that the encroachment of criminal justice stops at our borders. This Article argues that our foreign relations are also at risk of overcriminalization due to overzealous prosecution, overreaching legislation, and presidential politicization—and that this may be particularly problematic when U.S. criminal justice supplants certain nonpenal U.S. foreign policies abroad. This Article proposes three key reforms— presidential distancing, prosecutorial integration, and legislative de-escalation—to assure a principled place for criminal justice in foreign relations.

A Proper Burial, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

This is an invited response to Professor Mark Killenbeck's article, "Sober Second Thoughts? Korematsu Reconsidered." In his contrarian piece, Killenbeck argues that Korematsu was defensible, albeit on narrow grounds: it advanced the development of strict scrutiny. He goes on to argue that comparisons between the internment case and the Supreme Court's Muslim travel ban case are overwrought and that the latter case, too, is defensible. I'm not convinced. First, to say that a ruling is defensible is not saying much; far better for critiques to be tethered to sterner standards. Second, after all these years, Korematsu remains a poorly reasoned …

Second Panel Discussion - Symposium: Who Makes Esg? Understanding Stakeholders In The Esg Debate, Lisa M. Fairfox, Carmen X. W. Lu, David H. Webber

Faculty Scholarship

This symposium was hosted virtually by Fordham University School of Law on October 23, 2020. The transcript has been edited for clarity and to provide sources, references, and explanatory materials for certain statements made by the speakers.

The second panel discussion was on the topic of "Stakeholders as the driving force of ESG." Panelists for the second panel were Carmen Lu, Lisa Fairfax, and David Webber.

The Integration Of Records, Electronic Communication And Networks In Indonesia, Ike Iswary Lawanda

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Purpose: This paper aims to show how managers/users’ communication and negotiations through electronic communication reflect individual and organizational resilience facing the global changes in ICT. The networked record structure, as the centre of the interactions, symbolizes the internal and external communication process in the organization.

Design/methodology/approach: We analysed the integrated network structures of the record from six government offices and three multinational corporations and one international Non-Government Organization in Indonesia as symbolic interactions between individuals and groups who easily cope with ICT innovation and who find the innovation to be challenging. To validate our findings, we interviewed eleven stakeholders, consists …

Role Of Library And Information Science Virtual Classrooms In Curriculum Delivery: Nigerian Teachers’ Perception, Patience Chioma Patrick, Ekwutosi Monica Nnadi Phd, Pricilla Chika Ukwueze, Valentine Obum Aneshie-Otakpa

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The study investigated teachers’ perception of the use of Library and Information Science virtual classrooms in curriculum delivery in Nigeria in post COVID 19 era. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. Simple random sampling technique was used to draw a sample of 150 (68 male and 82 female) secondary school teachers in Nsukka LGA. Teachers Perception of Use of Library and Information Science virtual classrooms Questionnaire was used to collect data. The reliability of the instrument was 0.76. Data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions and t test to test the hypotheses …

Starting With Life: Murder Sentencing And Feminist Prison Abolitionist Praxis, Debra Parkes

All Faculty Publications

Advocates of decarcation often focus their critiques on imprisonment for non-violent offences. In this vein, current advocacy efforts to end mandatory sentences in Canada tend to carve out “serious violent offences” as not part of a reform agenda. In this chapter, Debra Parkes sketches out the contours of an argument for why feminists might not want to cede that ground, why anti-carceral feminism might involve centering our analysis on the most, rather than the least, serious crimes – starting with those who are serving life sentences for murder. Parkes identifies four non-exhaustive reasons for that focus. The first reason relates …

Immigration Detention In The Age Of Covid-19, Efrat Arbel, Molly Joeck

All Faculty Publications

In this chapter, we analyze Canada’s response to the outbreak of COVID-19 as it relates to immigration detention. We focus on decisions released by the Immigration Division (ID) of the Immigration and Refugee Board, the quasi-judicial administrative tribunal tasked with detention-related decision-making in Canada. Writing in the four months after pandemic measures were first introduced in Canada, our analysis is by necessity provisional, and focuses on seventeen ID decisions released between mid-March and mid-May 2020, at the height of the pandemic in Canada. Our analysis of this dataset reveals an identifiable shift in ID practice: prior to the outbreak of …

Deciding Not To Decide: Mahanoy Area School District V. B.L. And The Supreme Court's Ambivalence Towards Student Speech Rights, Jenny Diamond Cheng

Vanderbilt Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reimagining Energy, Monika U. Ehrman

Vanderbilt Law Review

No abstract provided.

"There Most Certainly Was A 'Tomorrow'": Chancery Court Finds Revlon Review Not Triggered When Acquirer Stock Constituted 58% Of Merger Consideration, Robert S. Reder, Connor J. Breed

Vanderbilt Law Review

No abstract provided.

Amarás Al Extranjero Como A Ti Mismo. Exploración De Levítico 19, Pablo R. Andiñach

Apuntes: Reflexiones teológicas desde el margen hispano

No abstract provided.

Global Impact Of Physical Inactivity And Implications For Public Health Nursing, Elizabeth A. Moxley, Kashica Webber-Ritchey, Laura Hayman

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

Physical inactivity has been a public health problem worldwide for more than a decade. Of those who are physically active, a substantial percentage engage solely in low or very low physical activity (PA) levels. In the last 3 decades, the prevalence of PA in the United States has decreased with approximately 80% of adults not meeting the recommended guidelines for aerobic and muscle strengthening PA. The PA levels of youth have dramatically decreasedwith 85% of adolescents reporting no PA. Regular PA participation can aid in preventing chronic diseases. A strong inverse dose-response relationship exists between PA and the incidence of …

Virtual Pedagogical Strategies And Hesi Student Outcomes In Response To Covid-19, Elizabeth A. Moxley, Anitha Saravanan, Larinda Dixon, Janice Miller, Maureen Waller

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

Background: To maintain curricular integrity in response to COVID-19, nurse educators are increasingly required to transition from traditional (face-to-face) to virtual pedagogy. Objectives: The purpose of this analysis was to compare the HESI scores based on a traditional pedagogy with the HESI scores following implementation of virtual pedagogy during Spring 2020. Methods: Student (n = 115; 81% female; mean age = 25.71 years) HESI scores were compared after each eightweek session using the Mann Whitney U test, permutation test and Wilcoxon rank test. Logistic regression was used to identify students achieving at least 850. Chi-square test was used to determine …

Understanding Middle School Students’ Enrollment Choice For A Fully Online Educational Environment During The Fall Of 2020 Covid-19 National Health Emergency: A Mixed Methods Study, Wendy Maltais Duvall

Theses and Dissertations--Curriculum and Instruction

Students’ choice in enrolling in a distance learning environment was examined in a mixed methods study in the fall of 2020 during the COVID-19 national health emergency of that same year. After state mandated school closures in the spring 2020, students statewide were forced into a fully online learning situation until the end of that semester. In the fall, the district that was the study site offered families the choice of either hybrid or fully distance learning environments where students could attend school during the national health crisis that had persisted. That choice would be in force for the full …

Fostering A Sense Of Community Among Teachers Via A Community Of Practice: A Mixed-Methods Action Research Study, Apryl Clark Moore

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Leadership Studies

Communities of Practice (CoPs) are learning communities that can improve the skills and knowledge of teachers and improve a sense of community. CoPs are designed to cultivate relationships among teachers and develop professional practices that increase a sense of community and knowledge attainment. This study examined the use an online CoP to increase teachers’ sense of community during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Teachers joined a private online community and shared resources about classroom management strategies.

A mixed-methods action research approach was adopted for this research study. Quantitative data was captured from pre- and post-intervention surveys that collected information about teachers’ …