Digital Commons Network^™

Dignity And Discrimination, Frederick Mark Gedicks

Faculty Scholarship

Delivered as the Dignity in Law Symposium keynote address, this essay surveys uses of “dignity” in U.S. constitutional law, with a focus on conflicts between the dignities attached to citizenship and religious conscience. Parts I and II discuss dignity as state sovereignty and hierarchical status. Part III examines the collision of dignities in the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision. Part IV argues that attention to the public or private nature of the site where religious accommodation is demanded clarifies when accommodation is appropriate, using a house of worship and a government office as illustrations. Part V lists other sites of accommodation and …

Christian Dignity And The Overlapping Consensus, Frederick Mark Gedicks

Faculty Scholarship

This Article rejects arguments by Christian leaders, scholars, and others who lament the secularization of the West and urge Christian dignity as the foundation of universal human rights. It argues instead that only a secular conception of dignity free of Christian metaphysics can create an overlapping consensus in support of human rights.

Part I describes the roots of Christian dignity in medieval theology and status. Part II briefly recounts how the Renaissance and Enlightenment re-centered the end of dignity from knowing God to knowing oneself, while the Reformation’s extension of original sin to the intellect left Catholicism as the primary …

Small Business Disaster Relief And Restructuring, Brook Gotberg

Faculty Scholarship

To assist small businesses in the wake of an exogenous shock, Congress should consider implementing a system of lending that models the financing provided to small business debtors in a bankruptcy proceeding. Such a system would be more targeted, effective, and fair than traditional government loans, but less stigmatizing than bankruptcy.

Prosecutors And Mass Incarceration, Shima Baradaran Baughman, Megan Wright

Faculty Scholarship

It has long been postulated that America’s mass incarceration phenomenon is driven by increased drug arrests, draconian sentencing, and the growth of a prison industry. Yet among the major players—legislators, judges, police, and prosecutors—one of these is shrouded in mystery. While laws on the books, judicial sentencing, and police arrests are all public and transparent, prosecutorial charging decisions are made behind closed doors with little oversight or public accountability. Indeed, without notice by commentators, during the last ten years or more, crime has fallen, and police have cut arrests accordingly, but prosecutors have actually increased the ratio of criminal court …

Crime And The Mythology Of Police, Shima Baradaran Baughman

Faculty Scholarship

The legal policing literature has espoused one theory of policing after another in an effort to address the frayed relationship between police and the communities they serve. All have aimed to diagnose chronic policing problems in working towards structural police reform. The core principles emanating from these theoretical critiques is that the mistrust of police among communities of color results from maltreatment, illegitimacy and marginalization from the law and its enforcers. Remedies have included police training to encourage treating people with dignity, investing in body cameras and other technology, providing legal avenues to encourage constitutional action by police, and creating …

A Clustering And Treemap-Based Approach For Query Reuse And Visualization In Large Data Repositories, Yousra Harb, Surendra Sarnikar, Omar El-Gayar

Research & Publications

No abstract provided.

Fake News Detection On The Web: An Lstm-Based Approach, Piyush Vyas, Jun Liu, Omar El-Gayar

Research & Publications

The acceptance and popularity of social media platforms for the dispersion and proliferation of news articles have led to the spread of questionable and untrusted information (in part) due to the ease by which misleading content can be created and shared among the communities. While prior research has attempted to automatically classify news articles and tweets as credible and non-credible. In this work, we complement such research by proposing an approach that utilizes the amalgamation of natural language processing (NLP) and deep learning techniques such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM). We used publicly available datasets that contain labeled news articles …

Empathizing With Mhealth App Users In Application Design: Early-Stage Persona Development Through Social Media Data Mining, Martinson Ofori, Omar El-Gayar

Research & Publications

The pervasiveness of mobile technologies has led to the paradigm known as mHealth. Research has shown that mHealth is useful for self-management of chronic conditions but is plagued by usability issues. Design approaches such as Design Thinking advise the use of “personas” to represent real users and aid the design of user-centered and empathy-oriented mHealth applications. The current study develops three representative personas that could inform the development of a diabetes-management mobile application using about 1.35 million social media posts that represent about 40.81% of diabetes-related conversations on Twitter. This study demonstrates that social media could be useful in human-centered …

The Role Of Privacy Within The Realm Of Healthcare Wearables' Acceptance And Use, Thomas Jernejcic, Omar El-Gayar

Research & Publications

While there are definite benefits attributed to wearables, there are also notable risks, especially in the realm of security where personal information and/or activities are often accessible to third parties. Users weigh the benefits with the risks (Privacy Calculus) and often opt for the wearable device despite concern that their information may or will be disclosed (Privacy Paradox). While past research has focused on specific technologies, the paradox of disclosure despite concern for privacy has not been the primary focus, particularly regarding the manifestation of the paradox specific to the acceptance and use of healthcare wearables. The purpose of this …

Explainable Artificial Intelligence In The Medical Domain: A Systematic Review, Shuvro Chakrobartty, Omar El-Gayar

Research & Publications

The applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques in different medical fields is rapidly growing. AI holds great promise in terms of beneficial, accurate and effective preventive and curative interventions. At the same time, there is also concerns regarding potential risks, harm and trust issues arising from the opacity of some AI algorithms because of their un-explainability. Overall, how can the decisions from these AI-based systems be trusted if the decision-making logic cannot be properly explained? Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) tries to shed light to these questions. We study the recent development on this topic within the …

An Approach For Weed Detection Using Cnns And Transfer Learning, Martinson Ofori, Omar F. El-Gayar

Research & Publications

No abstract provided.

Agile Project Management: A Systematic Literature Review Of Adoption Drivers And Critical Success Factors, Cherie Noteboom, Ofori Martinson, Kruttika Sutrave, Omar El-Gayar

Research & Publications

No abstract provided.

An Lstm Based Approach For The Classification Of Customer Reviews: An Exploratory Study, Jun Liu, Akhilesh Chauhan, Piyush Vyas

Research & Publications

Significant research has been conducted to address the problem of identification and elimination of malicious content. The credibility of such information is always in question, especially in the E-commerce domain. This research proposes a classification model that automatically classifies customer reviews as credible or non-credible. This model encompasses a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) as a classification technique. The preliminary results have shown the potential of our model to classify customer reviews as credible/non-credible based on textual features.

Proliferation Of Health Misinformation On Social Media Platforms: A Systematic Literature Review, Jun Liu, Gitika Vyas, Piyush Vyas

Research & Publications

This paper presents a systematic literature review to provide a conceptual framework and future research directions for the identification and detection of health misinformation on social networking sites. We have found the health misinformation problem is yet to evolve and requires more exploration towards the identification of reliable techniques. We have extracted the existing literature from five research databases. The focus of this review is to explore various concepts, techniques, and datasets adopted by the prior studies. After applying Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines we have got 27 final papers to include in this review. …

Prediction Of Patient Willingness To Recommend Hospital: A Machine Learning-Based Exploratory Study, Jun Liu, Loknath Sai Ambati, Piyush Vyas, Giridhar Reddy Bojja, Martinson Ofori

Research & Publications

Health organizations are diligently working to achieve the zenith in service outcome and furtherance of patient satisfaction by embracing patient-centric policies. Patient recommendation is a critical indicator of patient satisfaction and hospital service quality. Evidence suggests that patient recommendation is the most valuable form of marketing. However, hospitals often encounter patients' unwillingness to recommend them. Prior studies mainly rely on patient survey data to determine factors that impact patients’ willingness to recommend hospitals. Our study aims to identify factors that are not readily available in the patient surveys but have significant impact on hospital recommendation. Our proposed Machine Learning (ML) …

Security Analytics, Tania Williams, Omar F. El-Gayar, Thomas H. Morris

Research & Publications

Security analytics, which separates malicious activity from normal usage patterns, leverages data analytics to assist with system security. The field encompasses analytic capabilities that enable the analysis of large quantities of structured and unstructured data across large infrastructures in a short amount of time, allowing monitoring and surveillance of activity such as network traffic, web transactions, network servers and nodes, and user credentialing to detect threats and to provide an overall picture of a system’s security posture.

Design Of A Virtual Cybersecurity Escape Room, Tania Williams, Omar F. El-Gayar

Research & Publications

As cybersecurity education and training methods endeavor to build a skilled workforce to meet the growing demands of government and industry, it is important to craft training exercises to build and assess a learner’s understanding of cybersecurity topics in a fun and meaningful way. To meet this need, we designed a concept map and virtual model of a collaborative, virtual cybersecurity escape room. Escape rooms, which are a form of serious games intended to increase knowledge and skills or measure learning outcomes, are scenario-based and interactive in nature. The artifacts described align the serious gaming elements with elements associated with …

The Issue Class Revolution, Myriam E. Gilles, Gary Friedman

Articles

In 2013, four Supreme Court Justices dissented from the decision in Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, which established heightened requirements for the certification of damages class actions. In a seemingly offhanded footnote, these dissenters observed that district courts could avoid the individualized inquiries that increasingly doom damages classes by certifying a class under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(c)(4) on liability issues only and "leaving individual damages calculations to subsequent proceedings." The dissenters were onto something big. In fact, the issue class and follow-on damages model has broad potential to restore the efficacy of aggregate litigation across several substantive areas …

Sacred Heart University Public Health Program Self-Study, Public Health, College Of Health Professions

News, Magazines and Reports

From the Introduction:

The public health program began in the fall, 2018. The public health program has only one degree offered, a master’s of public health (MPH) degree with a concentration in community health. The program was developed in response to an observed need. Specifically, Sacred Heart undergraduate students in both the Health Science and Exercise Science undergraduate programs were asking for an MPH program that they could matriculate into after graduating from their undergraduate studies. The current MPH program director, Dr. Anna Greer, was already working at SHU as a behavioral scientist within SHU’s Exercise Science program. Dr. Greer …

Financial Summary 2021, Sacred Heart University

News, Magazines and Reports

FY 2021.

For the year ending June 30, 2021, the University again demonstrated positive results and operated with a balanced budget. Net tuition and fee revenue grew by 5% over prior year, reflecting the continued growth in the student population. Total net assets increased by $105 million, which represents more than a 29% increase over prior year and a 49% increase over the last three years. In addition, the University has maintained solid long-term bond ratings with Standard & Poor’s (A) and Moody’s (A3). The University continues to align its operating budget with its Strategic Plan to ensure we are …

Police Prosecutions And Punitive Instincts, Kate Levine

Articles

This Article makes two contributions to the fields of policing and criminal legal scholarship. First, it sounds a cautionary note about the use of individual prosecutions to remedy police brutality. It argues that the calls for ways to ease the path to more police prosecutions from legal scholars, reformers, and advocates who, at the same time, advocate for a dramatic reduction of the criminal legal system’s footprint, are deeply problematic. It shows that police prosecutions legitimize the criminal legal system while at the same time displaying the same racism and ineffectiveness that have been shown to pervade our prison-backed criminal …

Executive Compensation And Firm Performance In New Zealand: The Role Of Employee Stock Option Plans, David K. Ding, Ya Eem Chea

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine the role of employee stock option plans (ESOPs) in mitigating agency problems in New Zealand firms. We find that ESOPs have a significant and positive effect on firm performance relative to their non-ESOP counterparts. This relation appears within a year from the first ESOP announcement, and for two to four years after the announcement. Our results show that ESOPs improve corporate performance by 10 times the cost of the ESOPs’ adoption in the first year of issue. The improvement persists for four years after the first issuance. These findings confirm the effectiveness of employee stock option plans for …

Inducing Compliance With Postmarket Studies For Drugs Under Fda's Accelerated Approval Pathway, Liang Xu, Hui Zhao, Nicholas C. Petruzzi

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Problem definition: In 1992, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) instituted the accelerated approval pathway (AP) to allow promising drugs to enter the market based on limited evidence of efficacy, thereby permitting manufacturers to verify true clinical benefits through postmarket studies. However, most postmarket studies have not been completed as promised. We address this noncompliance problem. Academic/practical relevance: The prevalence of this noncompliance problem poses considerable public health risk, thus compromising the original purpose of a well-intentioned AP initiative. We provide an internally consistent and implementable solution to the problem through a comprehensive analysis of the myriad complicating factors and …

Sociological Perspectives On Climate Change And Society: A Review, Md Saidul Islam, Edson Kieu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Society is at an important intersection in dealing with the challenges of climate change, and this paper is presented at a critical juncture in light of growing recognition that the natural sciences are insufficient to deal with these challenges. Critical aspects of sociological perspectives related to climate change research are brought together in this review in the hope of fostering greater interdisciplinary collaboration between the natural and social sciences. We fervently argue for the need to inculcate interdisciplinary approaches that can provide innovative perspectives and solutions to the challenges we face from the impacts of climate change. As such, some …

Getting Undergraduates Ready For China’S Belt And Road Initiative (Bri) Through An Overseas Experiential Learning Project, China And The World: Ancient And Modern Silk Road, Andrew Chin, Thomas Menkhoff, Hans-Dieter Evers, Hoong Hui Daniel Gn, Kevin Koh, Chester Wey Lee, Patrick Loh, Linda Low, Sebastian Tan, Teng Seng Teo, Natalie Yap

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper, we explain how an experiential learning course and study tour to Gansu Province (People’s Republic of China) enabled undergraduates at the Singapore Management University (SMU) to acquire 21st-century competencies and higher-order thinking skills by analyzing and evaluating specific aspects of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and China–Singapore (Chongqing) Connectivity Initiative — New International Land–Sea Trade Corridor (CCI-ILSTC) with emphasis on developing viable Go-To-Market (GTM) strategies aimed at selling Gansu produce in four Southeast Asian markets. We share how the course was designed to support the attainment of key learning goals and discuss how we turned pedagogical …

Informal Executive Actions And Agency Guidance: Legal And Political Implications For Immigration And Other Policy Areas, Ihsan A. Alkhatib, James C. Clinger

Commonwealth Review of Political Science

This paper is a study of the use of various forms of informal executive actions used by presidents and cabinet officials to guide the policy implementation of federal agencies. Among these are policy manuals, guidance statements, statements of administration policy, and announcements of executive priorities. The recent executive action regarding immigration announced by President Obama is also an example of this kind of behavior. The paper will rely upon the analysis of legal scholars who have examined the causes and consequences of informal executive actions. We will examine the implications that these actions have for public participation, transparency, consistency in …

Fictional Foreign Policy: How Madam Secretary And House Of Cards Depict United States Foreign Policy., John Heyrman

Commonwealth Review of Political Science

This paper analyzes the ways that United States foreign policy is depicted in two prominent current television programs: House of Cards and Madam Secretary. Both of these programs have had frequent plots in which the fictional foreign policy of the U.S. deals with issues very similar to those that the United States has actually confronted in recent years. Examples include nuclear proliferation negotiations with Iran and U.S. concern over anti-gay legislation in Russia. Several of these fictional stories are analyzed here to consider how processes and policies of the U.S. are portrayed. Madam Secretary does much more to demonstrate …

The Nature And Extent Of Presidential Pardon Power: An Analysis In Light Of Recent Political Developments, Max Guirguis Ph.D.

Commonwealth Review of Political Science

Long recognized as the most sweeping and least checked power vested in the Chief Executive, the pardon power received renewed scholarly attention with the federal investigation of the Trump White House. President Trump’s assertion via a Twitter post that “the U.S. President has the complete power to pardon” provoked a heated national debate on the reach of his pardoning authority. This paper is an attempt to elucidate the nature of the pardon power by examining its historical contours and the constitutional principles governing its exercise.

Complete Issue - Volume 5, Number 1 (2021)

Commonwealth Review of Political Science

Complete Issue

Perceptions Of Discrimination In The Legal Profession, Sabrina Collins

Commonwealth Review of Political Science

Historically, the legal profession has been dominated by white men (García-López 2008). Over time, the barriers hindering diverse participation have been somewhat lifted. In recent years, law schools enrolled equal percentages of men and women, and the number of minority students has also increased. So, how has the legal profession adapted to these changes? The hiring of women and minorities in the field of law does not reflect the increasing diversity seen in law school. Today, only 36% of lawyers are women. While existing research shows discrimination present in the field of law, few studies have examined the relationship between …