Digital Commons Network^™

Insuring The 'Uninsurable': Catastrophe Bonds, Pandemics, And Risk Securitization, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

In principle, governments could protect against the potential economic devastation of future pandemics by requiring businesses to insure against pandemic-related risks. In practice, though, insurers do not currently offer pandemic insurance. Although they may well be able to obtain sufficient actuarial data to set pandemic underwriting standards and rate tables, insurers are concerned that they lack sufficient capacity, as an industry, to cover those risks, which are likely to occur worldwide and to be highly correlated. Pandemics therefore are in the class of risks, like war, terrorism, and riots, that are deemed “uninsurable,” at least by private markets. This Article …

On Skepticism, Modesty, And Embracing Those With Whom We Disagree: A Rejoinder, Barak D. Richman, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Chinese Canons And The Basic Law: Tracing The Interpretative Shifts Of The National People's Congress Standing Committee, Joshua M. Feinzig

Faculty Scholarship

This Article considers the uneasy constitutional relationship between Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China Central Government through the lens of the National People's Congress Standing Committee's interpretations of the Hong Kong Basic Law. These interpretations have constrained and redirected Hong Kong's democratic development, and scholars have appropriately questioned the legitimate extent of the Standing Committee's interpretative authority in light Article 158 and the animating purposes of the Sino-British Joint Declaration Treaty. But the interpretations are less frequently treated as legal texts that both reflect and inform underlying constitutional developments.

This Article therefore evaluates the Standing Committee's normative and …

The Search For Clarity In An Attorney’S Duty To Google, Michael Murphy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Towards A Generic Method For Articulating Design Uncertainty, Mouna Dhaouadi, Kate M. B. Spencer, Megan H. Varnum, Alicia M. Grubb, Michalis Famelis

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

Modelers encounter different kinds of uncertainty in their designs and models of software systems. One such type concerns uncertainty about how to build a model. This is called design-time uncertainty, and existing research has studied how modelers can work in its presence. However, the process by which they come to elicit and express their uncertainties remains unclear. In this paper, we take steps towards addressing this gap by introducing DRUIDE (Design and Requirements Uncertainty Integrated Development Environment), a language and workflow for articulating design time uncertainty. We present and illustrate our proposal on a software design example. Additionally, we conduct …

Current Market Rates For Scholarly Publishing Services, Alexander Grossman, Björn Brembs

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

For decades, the supra-inflation increase of subscription prices for scholarly journals has concerned scholarly institutions. After years of fruitless efforts to solve this “serials crisis”, open access has been proposed as the latest potential solution. However, the prices for open access publishing are also high and are rising well beyond inflation. What has been missing from the public discussion so far is a quantitative approach to determine the actual costs of efficiently publishing a scholarly article using state-of-the-art technologies, such that informed decisions can be made as to appropriate price levels. Here we provide a granular, step-by-step calculation of the …

Academic Libraries And Open Access Books In Europe: A Landscape Study, Agata Morka, Rupert Gatti

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Executive Summary

The last fifteen years have witnessed the emergence of a new role for academic libraries. Besides fulfilling their fundamental task of providing access to knowledge, besides being called everything from temples of knowledge to disturbing heterotopias, libraries have become one of the crucial stakeholders in the open access book publishing space. They act as funders for OA book fees, they support collaborative funding schemes, and sometimes they assume the role of publishers themselves.

In an attempt to create a sustainable publishing environment, in which OA books could blossom, it is therefore necessary to gain a sound understanding of …

The Clean Air Act Of 1963: Postwar Environmental Politics And The Debate Over Federal Power, Adam D. Orford

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the development of the Clean Air Act of 1963, the first law to allow the federal government to fight air pollution rather than study it. The Article focuses on the postwar years (1945-1963) and explores the rise of public health medical research, cooperative federalism, and the desire to harness the powers of the federal government for domestic social improvement, as key precursors to environmental law. It examines the origins of the idea that the federal government should “do something” about air pollution, and how that idea was translated, through drafting, lobbying, politicking, hearings, debate, influence, and votes, …

The Total Operating Characteristic From Stratified Random Sampling With An Application To Flood Mapping, Zhen Liu, Robert Gilmore Pontius

Geography

The Total Operating Characteristic (TOC) measures how the ranks of an index variable distinguish between presence and absence in a binary reference variable. Previous methods to generate the TOC required the reference data to derive from a census or a simple random sample. However, many researchers apply stratified random sampling to collect reference data because stratified random sampling is more efficient than simple random sampling for many applications. Our manuscript derives a new methodology that uses stratified random sampling to generate the TOC. An application to flood mapping illustrates how the TOC compares the abilities of three indices to diagnose …

Potential Effects Of Storage Period, Warehouse Locations, And Methyl Jasmonate In Long-Term Stored Garlic Bulbs, Selen Akan, Nurdan Tuna Güneş

Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry

In this study, the effect of methyl jasmonate (MeJA) treatments (10-3 and 10-5 M) and two different storage locations such as Ankara and Taşköprü, on some quality parameters, such as weight loss, L* values, soluble solids content, firmness, titratable acidity, total phenolic content, antioxidant capacity, vitamin C and allicin content in garlic bulbs (Allium sativum cv. 'Taşköprü') were investigated during a storage period of six months with three replications (30 bulbs or 120 g cloves). Based on storage periods, storage locations and MeJA treatment effects, the results showed that the storage period significantly affected all parameters except allicin content. MeJA …

Quality Retention Of Minimally Processed Spinach Using Low-Dose Ozonated Water During Storage, Esra Mersi̇nli̇, Mehmet Ali̇ Koyuncu, Derya Erbaş

Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry

The use of ozone for the sanitization of fresh-cut produce has been postulated during all steps of the cold chain from harvest to consumption. However, little is known about its effects on the postharvest quality of minimally processed spinach. In the present study, the effects of different doses of ozone on the storage life and quality of minimally processed spinach were determined and compared with sodium hypochlorite. Minimally processed spinach samples were subjected to 4 treatments: immersion in sodium hypochlorite solution (100 ppm) as control, and exposure to 3 different ozonated water (0.5,1 and 2 ppm) for 10 min. Treated …

Floristic Diversity Of Threatened Woodlands Of Kazakhstan Formed By Populus Pruinosa Schrenk, Tamara Stikhareva, Anna Ivashchenko, Vitaliy Kirillov, Alimzhan Rakhimzhanov

Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry

Climate aridization and increased anthropogenic pressure pose a severe threat to natural vegetation, including coastal plant communities. Those located in river basins of the desert zone of Central Asia are among the most vulnerable. Of the variety of ecosystems of the Ili-Balkhash region of Kazakhstan, forests dominated by a rare relict species Populus pruinosa Schrenk are of particular concern. This species occupies a very narrow ecological niche associated with river banks of the arid zone, which makes it very vulnerable to adverse natural and anthropogenic factors. The main objective of the research conducted was to fill the knowledge gap related …

Estimation Of Future Irrigation Performance With Times Series Analysis: A Case Study Of Andırın, Kahramanmaraş, Turkey, Si̇nan Kartal

Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry

Performance indicators are used to identify the weaknesses and strengths of irrigation schemes. Until now, evaluations have been made using several different statistical methods to determine the performance of irrigation schemes. However, these methods showed the current performance of irrigation schemes and the statistical relationship between them. It is planned to provide adaptation of irrigation networks to climate change with state policies. Therefore, it is of great importance to estimate the future performance of irrigation schemes. In this study, the future irrigation performance of the Andırın irrigation scheme in Kahramanmaraş province Andırın district was estimated using time series forecasting method. …

The Rapid Detection Method Of Chlorophyll Content In Rapeseed Based On Hyperspectral Technology, Hongyuan Tang, Guiping Liao

Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry

The inconsistency of chlorophyll content in rapeseed directly affects the quality of seed, so it is necessary to establish a rapid and nondestructive detection technology of chlorophyll in mature rapeseed. In this paper, the content of chlorophyll in rapeseed samples was determined by ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometry, and the near-infrared spectrum data were collected. The partial least squares regression model of chlorophyll content in rapeseed was established based on hyperspectral technology through first derivative and standard normal variable transformation pretreatment. The results of the cross-test showed that the determination coefficient of the validation set of the prediction model of chlorophyll content in …

The Effects Of Increasing Doses Of Nickel And Lead Applications On Some Oriental Tobacco Varieties, Mahmut Tepeci̇k, Mehmet Eşref İrget

Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry

Heavy metals are hazardous pollutants for humans, animals and plants, when their threshold concentration exceeds. Tobacco can accumulate higher concentrations of heavy metals, and the genotypic differences of tobacco in heavy metal uptake and their growth responses have not been clearly examined. In this study, the effects of nickel (Ni) and lead (Pb) on phytoremediation capabilities were tested in four local Oriental tobacco cultivars (Basma, Akhisar, Sarıbağlar and Dibek). In two pot experiments, nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (P) were applied in fıxed doses, while Pb and Ni were applied at 4 different doses (10, 50, 100 and 150 …

Optimization Of Agrobacterium-Mediated Transformation And Regeneration For Crispr/Cas9 Genome Editing Of Commercial Tomato Cultivars, Zafer Seçgi̇n, Musa Kavas, Kubi̇lay Yildirim

Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is the second most important horticultural crop worldwide that is widely used as a model plant in genetic manipulation of Solanaceae. CRISPR/Cas9 system has been successfully utilized in several studies for genome edition of model tomato cultivars. However, these genome editing systems should be also optimized for commercial tomato cultivar for direct application of genome editing in field conditions. In this study, we have optimized an Agrobacterium-mediated gene transfer and regeneration system for CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing in two commercial tomato cultivars for the first time. The effect of explant type, genotype, pre-transformation time, Agrobacterium concentration, infection time, …

Character Recognition Techniques And Approaches: A Literature Review, Mostafa Abdulghfoor Mohammed, Shuyuan Yang

Mesopotamian Journal of Computer Science

Researchers have carried out many approaches to recognizing the OCR through software-based and FPGA-based and its relationship with the ANNs and training these NNs by using the BP algorithm. The FPGA supports high speed to recognize the character because it works in parallel. It involves many logic circuits and can process at the same time (clock cycle). There have been problems with the established system because the size, shape, and style of supposedly identical characters might differ from person to person and even within the same person on rare occasions. The photograph is vulnerable to noise and can lose some …

Adversarial Reconstruction Loss For Domain Generalization, Bekkouch Imad Eddine Ibrahim, Dragos Constantin Nicolae, Adil Khan, S. M. Ahsan Kazmi, Asad Masood Khattak, Bulat Ibragimov

All Works

The biggest fear when deploying machine learning models to the real world is their ability to handle the new data. This problem is significant especially in medicine, where models trained on rich high-quality data extracted from large hospitals do not scale to small regional hospitals. One of the clinical challenges addressed in this work is magnetic resonance image generalization for improved visualization and diagnosis of hip abnormalities such as femoroacetabular impingement and dysplasia. Domain Generalization (DG) is a field in machine learning that tries to solve the model’s dependency on the training data by leveraging many related but different data …

Maybe Law Schools Do Not Oppress Minority Faculty Women: A Critique Of Meera E. Deo’S “Unequal Profession: Race And Gender In Legal Academia” (Stanford University Press 2019), Dan Subotnik

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Understanding The Role Of Religion In Shaping Cross-National And Domestic Attitudes And Interest In Abortion, Homosexuality, And Pornography Using Traditional And Google Search Data, Amy Adamczyk, Yu-Hsuan Liu, Jacqueline Scott

Publications and Research

Over the last 20 years, internet usage has increased substantially, providing an inexpensive source of data that may be less prone to bias and could provide a greater number of meso and macro units. However, validating big data and their usefulness has been challenging. This study uses established sources to validate Google Trends’ search interest in the “Bible” across US Designated Market Areas and “Ramadan” across nations, establishing a potential new source of religion data. We then use these measures to show that people from religiously conservative US areas and countries are more likely to disapprove of homosexuality, abortion and …

The Expressiveness Of Regulatory Trade-Offs, Benjamin M. Chen

Georgia Law Review

Trade-offs between a sacred value—like human life—
against a secular one—like money—are considered taboo.
People are supposed to be offended by such trade-offs and to
punish those who contemplate them. Yet the last decades in the
United States have witnessed the rise of the cost-benefit state.
Most major rules promulgated today undergo a regulatory
impact analysis, and agencies monetize risks as grave as those
to human life and values as abstract as human dignity.
Prominent academics and lawmakers advocate the weighing of
costs and benefits as an element of rational regulation. The
cost-benefit revolution is a technocratic coup, however, if …

Covid-19 And Comparative Corporate Governance, Martin Gelter, Julia M. Puaschunder

Faculty Scholarship

With the pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 raging around the world, many countries’ economies are at a crucial juncture. The COVID-19 external shock to the economy has the potential to affect corporate governance profoundly. This Article explores its possible impact on comparative corporate governance. For an economy to operate successfully, a society must first find a politically sustainable social equilibrium. In many countries, historical crises—such as the Great Depression and World War II—have resulted in a reconfiguration of corporate governance institutions that set the course for generations. While it is not yet clear whether COVID-19 will have a …

What's Law Got To Do With It? Dignity And Menstruation, Elizabeth B. Cooper

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Would Reasonable People Endorse A ‘Content-Neutral’ Law Of Contract?, Aditi Bagchi

Faculty Scholarship

This essay raises two challenges to Peter Benson’s compelling new account of contract law. First, I argue that Benson’s use of the concept of reasonableness goes beyond the Rawlsian account to require that we impute to others a capacity to transcend their contingent circumstances in the context of contractual choice. In fact, our choices in contract are driven by external contingencies and it is only reasonable to take those constrains on other people’s choices into account. Second, I contest Benson’s related claim that contract law should be, and largely is, content-neutral. I argue to the contrary that the justice of …

A Program Evaluation Of An Alternative Educational Program In A School District In North Carolina For High School Students At-Risk For Dropping Out, Janice Duffie

Doctor of Education Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to conduct a program evaluation of an alternative educational program in North Carolina for high school students at-risk for dropping out. The CIPP model was used to evaluate to what extent the alternative educational program is achieving its stated mission. This mixed-method evaluation consisted of quantitative and qualitative data that included interviews with district- and school-level leaders, surveys from selected staff at six high schools and the alternative educational program, and historical data. The program evaluation explored the program’s strengths and weaknesses, and recommendations for improvement. Based on the findings, the research questions examined …

Linking Seismicity And Time-Variant Loading Of The Solid Earth, Mason Perry

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Earth’s surface is constantly being stressed and deformed by countless dynamic processes that operate across a vast number of time and spatial scales. In this dissertation, I use geodetic observations in combination with time series analysis, basic numerical modeling, and a number of statistical tools to investigate the sources loading and observable deformation of earth’s surface and their relation to seismic activity.

In Central Asia, compressive stresses resulting from the collision of the Indian subcontinent and Eurasia have created a tectonically complex region that includes the best present-day example of ongoing subduction of continental lithosphere. Here, continental Eurasia is actively …

The Effects Of Heavy Metal Contamination In Soil On Dna Degradation After Decomposition, Samantha Hofland

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The application of DNA is an ever-expanding field of research with many implications in the field of forensic investigation. Research into DNA obtained from soil is ongoing and suggests a new avenue in forensic investigation. This research seeks to understand the effects of heavy metal on the preservation of DNA within soil after decomposition of remains. Using pigs as a proxy for human remains, the effects of heavy metal contamination on the microbial environment and endogenous pig DNA was observed. This gave broad insight into the effect of surface burial and Western Montana; summer climate has on DNA degradation.

Admissions & Bitterroot, Jesse Thomas Nee-Vogelman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

The Ecology Of Puha: Identity, Orientation, And Shifting Perceptions Reflected Through Material Culture And Socioreligious Practice, Aaron Robert Atencio

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This dissertation explores the assertions that changes in form, function, practice, and perceptions of puha primarily arose from the dispossession of landscapes and oppression of specific religious practices due to Euro-American contact, resource depletion, and reservation confinement. The reservation era placed the indigenous populace into a state of purgatory where treaties and peace relations were consistently repositioned and reneged. The perceptions of the indigenous inhabitants pre and post Euro-American contact detail critical moments that assisted in shaping the dynamic relationship between socioreligious perceptions and the Eastern Shoshone’s identity. What is displayed is a unique set of circumstances that assisted in …

No Answering Riot, Jacob Z. Bienvenue

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

I left this morning for Portland, Oregon—could be for good. Told my dear mother I was taking a day trip then hopped in her dinged up black Audi and felt the thing hum alive beneath me. Her speakers were still good, so I threw on a playlist with Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie and all of the ragged traintrack prophets and went roaring out of those gilded hills for hopefully ever. There was no traffic getting to Sacramento; it took me just twenty minutes to hit the I-5 North juncture and after that I went peeling up the central flatlands …