Digital Commons Network^™

Constitutional Law—The Powers Of State Attorneys General To Determine Public Interest, J. Dillon Pitts

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Online Sports Betting: The Opportunities And Risks For Banks, Evan Harrell

North Carolina Banking Institute

No abstract provided.

Litigating An Invisible Enemy: Will The United States Insurance Industry Survive The Covid-19 Pandemic?, Alisa Baird

Tulsa Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Affordable Housing Crisis: Tiny Homes & Single-Family Zoning, Lauren Trambley

UC Law Journal

Although California was by no means an affordable state to reside in prior to 2008, Californians are still experiencing the reverberating effects of the collapse of the housing market in its present affordable housing crisis. As a result of the spike in home foreclosures following the 2008 collapse, the rental market remains “tight” with low vacancies, while housing development has only slowly increased. Combined with stagnant wages, rising housing costs, and growing demand, California has failed to address its shortage of not only housing, but affordable housing. Recent state action demonstrates the desire to increase housing density. But by focusing …

Juvenile Punishment, High School Graduation, And Adult Crime: Evidence From Idiosyncratic Judge Harshness, Ozkan Eren, Naci Mocan

Faculty Publications

This paper contributes to the debate on the impact of juvenile crime punishment on high school completion and adult recidivism using administrative data from a southern U.S. state. We exploit random assignment of cases to judges and use idiosyncratic judge stringency in imprisonment to estimate the causal effect of incarceration. We find that juvenile incarceration increases the propensity of being convicted for a drug offense in adulthood while it lowers the propensity to be convicted of a property crime. Juvenile incarceration has also a detrimental effect on high school completion for earlier cohorts, but it has no impact on later …

State-Mandated Occupational Licenses, Harmful Or Helpful? A Look At The Due Process And Equal Protection Principles Surrounding The Constitutionality Of Occupational Licensing Regulations, Laney Ivey

Mercer Law Review

Mary Jackson, a twenty-eight-year lactation consultant veteran, saw her ability to pursue her passion and her livelihood slip away with the passing of the Georgia Lactation Consultant Practice Act (Act) in 2016. Under the Act, the International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) certification is required by the state of Georgia in order to be considered a licensed lactation consultant. Due to her lack of an IBCLC certification, Jackson, a Certified Lactation Counselor (CLC), cannot legally perform her job, where she provides crucial lactation support to families and mothers at Grady Memorial Hospital. This Act is one of many the Georgia …

Death Of The Author: The Evolution And Expansion Of The Government Edicts Doctrine In Copyright Law, Elizabeth Selph

Mercer Law Review

Codification of the law is an expensive and time-consuming task that requires a certain level of skill and an ability for quick turnaround of product. Because of this, Congress and a majority of state legislatures hire companies, pursuant to their respective jurisdictions, with legal experts who organize legal information from a wide swath of sources into masterfully-constructed annotations brimming with helpful information to the reader. These annotations are so useful that the federal and state judiciary often employ them to understand statutes that are unclear or to define the scope of statutes. Moreover, these annotations, due to the nature of …

Solution Or Setback: Legal And Practical Implications Of School Threat Assessments For Ohio Students With Disabilities, Margaret Miles

University of Dayton Law Review

No abstract provided.

Making The Case For Abolition: Why Legislation Restricting Solitary Confinement Is Not Enough, Veronica Chmiel

Seton Hall Journal of Legislation and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

One Step At A Time: Duquesne University’S Eighth Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory, Carissa Lange, Gabriella Zuccolotto

Duquesne University Greenhouse Gas Inventories

The eighth greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventory was conducted for fiscal year 2019 (FY19) and fiscal year 2020 (FY20). FY19 began on July 1, 2018 and ended on June 30, 2019, while FY20 began on July 1, 2019 and ended on June 30, 2020. Assembled by graduate assistants Carissa Lange and Gabriella Zuccolotto, at the Center for Environmental Research and Education (CERE), these findings were compared with those derived from the previous inventories to assess trends in Duquesne University’s GHG emissions. Furthermore, this inventory discusses options for reducing Duquesne’s carbon footprint in future years.

Duquesne University’s total GHG emissions for …

Constructing Large-Scale Complex Aquifer Systems With Big Well Log Data: Louisiana Model, Hamid Vahdat-Aboueshagh, Frank T.C. Tsai

Faculty Publications

This study introduces a lithofacies modeling method to construct a complex Louisiana stratigraphy model up to depth of 900 m using more than 114,000 well logs. Lithofacies intervals in one well log can be as many as 76. Louisiana comprises a number of interconnected aquifer systems and distinct geological features, such as angular unconformities, domes, and faults. The method contains processes of tessellation, discretization, translation, and interpolation to accommodate these geological features. First, the model domain is tessellated into tiles. Formations have the same dip direction within the same tile, but may have varying dip angles. Each tile is then …

Annual Report Of The Tennessee Emergency Communications Board, Fiscal Year 2020, Tennessee. Department Of Commerce And Insurance.

Emergency Communications Board Annual Report

No abstract provided.

Deputizing The Frontline: Enforcing Workplace Rights In A Post-Pandemic Economy, Elizabeth J. Kennedy

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

The COVID-19 pandemic exploded against a backdrop of federal retrenchment and repeal of workplace rights and protections for frontline workers, casting a spotlight on systemic racial inequity. While states and cities emerged as the last line of defense for wage standards in the United States, the sweeping application of mandatory arbitration agreements and restrictions on class actions makes enforcing those new rights difficult, if not impossible. A forecasted post-pandemic recession will further undermine the ability of workers to advocate for higher wages and diminish the capacity of enforcement agencies to combat wage theft. Given the enormity of this crisis, any …

Improving Text Classification With Semantic Information, Joshua H. White

Theses and Dissertations

The Air Force contracts a variety of positions, from Information Technology to maintenance services. There is currently no automated way to verify that quotes for services are reasonably priced. Small training data sets and word sense ambiguity are challenges that such a tool would encounter, and additional semantic information could help. This thesis hypothesizes that leveraging a semantic network could improve text-based classification. This thesis uses information from ConceptNet to augment a Naive Bayes Classifier. The leveraged semantic information would add relevant words from the category domain to the model that did not appear in the training data. The experiment …

Optimizing Cost And Performance Of Infrastrucure Alternatives At Contingency Bases In A Hub-And-Spoke Network, Kyle J. Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

Military contingency bases require substantial resources and funding sustain and are often not connected to an infrastructure grid. Infrastructure assets produce the required outputs for sustainment, but are often expensive and inefficient, producing a significant logistical burden. With the increasing near-peer threats of opposing military forces, there is a need for more self-sufficient contingency bases with alternatives that reduce resources usage and the cost of sustainment. Accordingly, the goal of this research is to develop an optimization model capable of selecting infrastructure alternative combinations that minimize the overall resource usage and cost of sustainment at the contingency base level.

Climate-Informed Prediction And Forecast Modeling Of Installation Total Energy Consumption, Scott C. Weiss

Theses and Dissertations

Climate variability is an external and stochastic factor that causes energy demand uncertainty. Energy managers can use climate-based models to understand future trends of energy demand and to adjust operations, policy, and budgets accordingly. This research focuses on 1) identifying how climate attributes impact energy use, 2) creating a historically informed statistical modeling framework to skillfully predict energy use, and 3) forecasting future changes to energy use and costs, using CMIP5 temperature projections, at the campus level. After synthesizing the existing breadth of research on climate-informed energy modeling, a skillful, unbiased, climate-informed total energy consumption prediction model is developed for …

Marketing And Operations Impacts Of The Corona Virus Era In Tourism And Leisure Related Industries, Jack Samuels, Yawei Wang

Visions in Leisure and Business

This article explores the impacts of COVID-19 on the tourism, leisure, entertainment, sports, hospitality, and related industries. It focuses mostly on long-lasting impacts of the pandemic and has numerous ideas regarding the management and marketing of these interrelated industries in the wake of the crisis. It also looks at preparation for future crises in these industries.

Time To Reload: The Harms Of The Federal Felon-In-Possession Ban In A Post-Heller Worl, Zach Sherwood

Duke Law Journal

Federal law permanently prohibits anyone who has been convicted of a felony from possessing a firearm. Keeping lethal weapons out of the hands of those who pose a risk to public safety is no doubt a worthy policy goal. But the federal felon-in-possession ban is blunt, punitive, and supremely damaging to the ex-felons who fall within its ambit. The statute’s sweeping scope ensures that any ex-felon who possesses any firearm for any length of time for any reason can be swiftly and harshly punished. And it indiscriminately targets conduct that is often neither harmful nor criminal.

The felon-in-possession ban gained …

The Vanishing Core Of Judicial Independence, Evan C. Zoldan

Nevada Law Journal

With Congress firmly in control of the jurisdiction, resources, and structure of the federal courts, the scope of the judiciary’s independence is limited indeed. If there is an attribute that can be considered the core of judicial independence, it is the power of the federal courts to decide cases pending before them. In a pair of recent decisions, however, the Supreme Court has called into question whether the federal judiciary possesses even this limited attribute of independence. This Article examines how the Court has blurred the line between the judicial and legislative powers by ceding to Congress the authority to …

El Leñador, March 2021, El Leñador Staff

El Leñador Newspaper

El Leñador is an English and Spanish newspaper produced by Humboldt State University students. Our staff cover and provide news to Latinx and other diverse communities on campus and in Humboldt County. We are committed to providing relevant news and expanding the representations and stories told about people of color and other marginalized groups. Our work helps create more social, political and cultural diversity in local media.

El Leñador es un periodico en español y inglés producido por estudiantes de la Universidad Estatal de Humboldt. Nuestro personal cubre y provee noticias a la comunidad Latinx y otras comunidades diversas en …

The Authority Of International Refugee Law, Evan J. Criddle, Evan Fox-Decent

William & Mary Law Review

As COVID-19 has spread around the world, many states have suspended their compliance with a core requirement of international refugee law: the duty to refrain from returning refugees to territories where they face a serious risk of persecution (the duty of non-refoulement). These measures have prompted some observers to question whether non-refoulement will survive the pandemic as a nonderogable legal duty. This Article explains why the international community should embrace non-refoulement as a peremptory norm of general international law (jus cogens) that applies even during public emergencies, such as the coronavirus pandemic. Viewed from a global justice perspective, the …

Blockchain-Based Video Forensics And Integrity Verification Framework For Wireless Internet-Of-Things Devices, Suat Mercan, Mumin Cebe, Ramazan S. Aygun, Kemal Akkaya, Elijah Toussaint, Dominik Danko

Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

A camera footage which is essential for forensic investigations can easily be modified with advanced video tampering techniques. This makes it necessary to employ novel methods to retain and prove the integrity of captured scene in criminal investigations. In this vein, blockchain technology has received a substantial interest in the last decade as it provides trust among users without a trusted third party, which enabled a myriad of applications. To this end, we propose a framework that utilizes blockchain technology to verify integrity of a camera footage recorded by a resource-constrained wireless Internet of Things (IoT) device. The proposed approach …

Student Veterans: The Transition Process, Andrew Edwin Crane

Theses and Dissertations

Separation from the military and reintegration into civilian life can be a challenging experience for veterans. One opportunity that veterans pursue during this transition process is secondary education. Despite growing rates of student veterans across campuses limited research exists on the psychosocial functioning and reintegration difficulties faced by these individuals. The current study examined the relationship between factors such as deployment experience, perceived social support following deployment, psychological flexibility, academic functioning, as well as student engagement in collegiate activities. Findings from this study highlight the relationship between experiential avoidance and social support with psychological distress and student engagement for student …

The Relationship Between Career And Technical Education Enrollment And College And Career Readiness Outcomes, Daniel Soliz Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

College and career readiness for K-12 students has become a priority of legislatures and educational leaders in the United States. In recent years, Texas public school leaders have emphasized the importance of maximizing the percentage of College, Career and Military Ready (CCMR) graduates. The specific problem studied was that a low percentage of students in Texas, in comparison to the state’s graduation rate, graduate with a CCMR distinction. Career and Technical Education (CTE), a component of K-12 education, can assist school leaders in maximizing college and career readiness for students. However, it was not clear how within schools, CTE enrollment …

Front Matter, Journal Editors

Journal of Space Law

Includes table of contents.

Ethical, Legal, And Social Issues (Elsi), Andrea Jerkovic´, Alexander Siedschlag

Publications

This chapter introduces the concept of ethical, legal, and social issues – known as ELSI – as it is relevant to security science research and security science-informed practice. After defining ethical, legal, and social issues, the chapter addresses main ELSI domains and discusses how to address those in security science. Arguments are illustrated using examples from domains such as critical infrastructure protection and novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) response. Subsequently, the chapter demonstrates the relevance of ELSI analysis in security science for risk assessment and vulnerability analysis. It argues for a comprehensive approach to ELSI assessment and consideration in security science …

Noncompliance With Safety Guidelines As A Free-Riding Strategy: An Evolutionary Game-Theoretic Approach To Cooperation During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Jose C. Yong, Bryan K. C. Choy

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Evolutionary game theory and public goods games offer an important framework to understand cooperation during pandemics. From this perspective, the COVID-19 situation can be conceptualized as a dilemma where people who neglect safety precautions act as free riders, because they get to enjoy the benefits of decreased health risk from others' compliance with policies despite not contributing to or even undermining public safety themselves. At the same time, humans appear to carry a suite of evolved psychological mechanisms aimed at curbing free riding in order to ensure the continued provision of public goods, which can be leveraged to develop more …

Prostitution Decriminalization Campaigns In The United States: Libertarianism Or A "Decent Society", Jody Raphael

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Recently, legislative campaigns to totally decriminalize the sex trade industry in a handful of U.S. states and the District of Columbia failed, but a look at campaign supporters and their arguments demonstrates that libertarian principles are mainly guiding their efforts. This article explores how libertarianism principles, when applied to the sex trade, could bring about severe and lasting harm to others, including sellers of sex, potential victims of sex trafficking to meet the new demand, and the general community. Philosophic principles of liberty have been incorporated by courts, which find that liberty is never absolute and requires a balancing test …

A Deep Learning Approach To Downscale Geostationary Satellite Imagery For Decision Support In High Impact Wildfires, Nicholas F. Mccarthy, Ali Tohidi, Yawar Aziz, Matt Dennie, Mario Miguel Valero, Nicole Hu

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Scarcity in wildland fire progression data as well as considerable uncertainties in forecasts demand improved methods to monitor fire spread in real time. However, there exists at present no scalable solution to acquire consistent information about active forest fires that is both spatially and temporally explicit. To overcome this limitation, we propose a statistical downscaling scheme based on deep learning that leverages multi-source Remote Sensing (RS) data. Our system relies on a U-Net Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to downscale Geostationary (GEO) satellite multispectral imagery and continuously monitor active fire progression with a spatial resolution similar to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) …

Tennessee Farm Bureau News - March 2021, Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation

Tennessee Farm Bureau News

No abstract provided.