Digital Commons Network^™

Law Schools As Agents Of Change And Justice Reform In The Americas, Jon Mills, Timothy Mclendon

Florida Journal of International Law

As the legal community of the Americas evolves, the role of law schools and legal education must change with it. New realities of globalizing commerce and communication dictate that the legal profession understand and deal with emerging legal relationships. Wherever the future may lead with regard to the various treaties between nations in this hemisphere, like CAFTA, NAFTA, the FTAA, Mercosur, and others, it is obvious that the Americas are drawing irrevocably closer.

How will law schools participate and react? There is, in my opinion, an obligation for universities and particularly law schools to be involved in society and promote …

Empowering Women's Land Rights As A Climate Change Mitigation Strategy In Nigeria, Cate Baskin

Northwestern Journal of Human Rights

This article focuses on the intersection between gender and land rights as they relate to climate change in Nigeria. Decisions about land use, such as biodiversity management and farming techniques, impact the quality of the land and peoples’ ability to live off it. This article will show that women are better situated to utilize techniques which sustain the land. Despite this, women have historically been denied land rights in Nigeria, creating a disconnect between the women who cultivate the land and the men who own it and leading to unsustainable use of agricultural land in Nigeria. Climate change is only …

7.7 Nyc Districting Commission Hearing Summary, Piper Benedict

Redistricting Resources

No abstract provided.

Death By A Thousand Cuts? Green Tech, Traditional Knowledge, And Genocide, Regina Menachery Paulose

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Traditional Knowledge is a system of knowledge that is passed down through generations of Indigenous and Ethnic Minority Peoples throughout the world. A subset of Traditional Knowledge is Traditional Ecological Knowledge. These knowledge systems are incorporated throughout various international instruments and are considered vital to ways of life for Indigenous and Ethnic Minority Peoples. The author examines the elimination of Traditional Knowledge as a result of green technology. With discussions surrounding ways to obtain “net zero” in response to climate change, the author (re)introduces the notion that the irresponsible push for carbon zero technologies has a horrendous impact on the …

Climate Disasters, Mass Violence, And Human Mobility In South Sudan: Through A Gender Lens, Marisa O. Ensor

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article examines the links between gender, mass violence, climate change, and displacement in South Sudan. I argue for risk-informed gender-sensitive strategies that incorporate local capacities and sources of resilience. When civil war engulfed South Sudan again in 2013, egregious human rights violations, including sexual and gender-based violence, were perpetrated with near complete impunity. As the national army was divided along Dinka-Nuer ethnic lines, soldiers from each faction turned against each other in a deadly pattern of revenge and counter-revenge attacks that soon spread across the national territory. Inter-communal conflicts also intensified, often centering on competition over land for pasture, …

The Holocaust Paradigm As Paradoxical Imperative In The Century Of Anthropogenic Omnicide, Mark Levene

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The Holocaust and today's climate emergency are not obvious bed fellows. But the post-Holocaust mantra “never again” has also been voiced by some climate activists who see similarities in the failure of Western governments in the 1930s to act to stop Hitler and an equivalent failure now to effectively halt state and corporate drives to biospheric catastrophe. This article examines whether the way Western society has understood the Holocaust in recent decades has relevance to the urge for climate action. It finds the mainstream, state-centred Holocaust paradigm wanting as a framework for empathy and solidarity with those in the Global …

Dissecting The Treatment-Naive Ecosystem Of Human Melanoma Brain Metastasis, Jana Biermann, Johannes C Melms, Amit Dipak Amin, Yiping Wang, Lindsay A Caprio, Alcida Karz, Somnath Tagore, Irving Barrera, Miguel A Ibarra-Arellano, Massimo Andreatta, Benjamin T Fullerton, Kristjan H Gretarsson, Varun Sahu, Vaibhav S Mangipudy, Trang T T Nguyen, Ajay Nair, Meri Rogava, Patricia Ho, Peter D Koch, Matei Banu, Nelson Humala, Aayushi Mahajan, Zachary H Walsh, Shivem B Shah, Daniel H Vaccaro, Blake Caldwell, Michael Mu, Florian Wünnemann, Margot Chazotte, Simon Berhe, Adrienne M Luoma, Joseph Driver, Matthew Ingham, Shaheer A Khan, Suthee Rapisuwon, Craig L Slingluff, Thomas Eigentler, Martin Röcken, Richard Carvajal, Michael B Atkins, Michael A Davies, Albert Agustinus, Samuel F Bakhoum, Elham Azizi, Markus Siegelin, Chao Lu, Santiago J Carmona, Hanina Hibshoosh, Antoni Ribas, Peter Canoll, Jeffrey N Bruce, Wenya Linda Bi, Praveen Agrawal, Denis Schapiro, Eva Hernando, Evan Z Macosko, Fei Chen, Gary K Schwartz, Benjamin Izar

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Melanoma brain metastasis (MBM) frequently occurs in patients with advanced melanoma; yet, our understanding of the underlying salient biology is rudimentary. Here, we performed single-cell/nucleus RNA-seq in 22 treatment-naive MBMs and 10 extracranial melanoma metastases (ECMs) and matched spatial single-cell transcriptomics and T cell receptor (TCR)-seq. Cancer cells from MBM were more chromosomally unstable, adopted a neuronal-like cell state, and enriched for spatially variably expressed metabolic pathways. Key observations were validated in independent patient cohorts, patient-derived MBM/ECM xenograft models, RNA/ATAC-seq, proteomics, and multiplexed imaging. Integrated spatial analyses revealed distinct geography of putative cancer immune evasion and evidence for more abundant …

Agent-Based Modelling Of Space-Time Activity For Assessment Of Personal Exposures To Ambient Air Pollution In Nationwide Health Cohorts, Oliver Schmitz

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Not avalible

Restitution As A Remedy For Refugee Property Claims In The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Michael Kagan

Florida Journal of International Law

My goal in this Article is to examine restitution as an autonomous human right for refugees displaced in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and to assess the implications of taking such a rights-based approach. I conclude that the refugees have a strong legal claim to restitution. In international law, compensation is relevant only when restitution is materially impossible, where property has been damaged or declined in value so that restitution is not a complete remedy for the victim’s loss or where a refugee chooses not to seek restitution. Current empirical research about land usage in Israel indicates that a great deal, and …

The Hiv/Aids Pandemic And Human Rights: A Continuum Approach, Ellen M. Walker

Florida Journal of International Law

The pandemic of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) has generated a global human rights crisis. Despite evidence showing that protecting human rights helps prevent the transmission of HIV and reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS, fundamental rights continue to be violated. There is a two-way causal relationship between HIV/AIDS and states’ related human rights violations, complicated by the need for international cooperation. While many would agree that HIV/AIDS adversely impacts rights, there lacks a common understanding of how states must apply existing international human rights protections vis-à-vis HIV/AIDS. The international community is insufficiently aware of the many …

Force, International Law, And American Foreign Policy, W. Jason Fisher

Florida Journal of International Law

This Article explores the efficacy of the international rules that determine when resorting to force is appropriate, jus ad bellum. It does so by comparing the elements that presently determine the legality of a state’s decision to use force, as the international legal community generally interprets them, with the motivations that actually underlie such a decision. In doing so, this Article seeks to provide part of the foundation on which an alternative use of force regime, one that takes account of how states actually behave, can be built. Part II of the Article lays out the current jus ad …

Globalization, Nationalism, & Human Rights, Paul H. Brietzke

Florida Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Protecting Traditional Environmental Knowledge And New Social Meovements In The Americas: Intellectual Property, Human Right, Or Claims For An Alternative Form Of Sustainable Development?, Rosemary J. Coombe

Florida Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Centrality And City Size Effects On No2 Ground And Tropospheric Concentrations Within European Cities, Yufei Wei, Geoffrey Caruso, Rémi Lemoy

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) has been one of the constant health threats of urban citizens. But how the NO2 levels change across European cities, relate to urban population size is still unclear. Meanwhile, a theory shows that traffic-induced air pollution (e.g. NO2) decreases with the distance to the city center. But among empirical studies, whether this centrality effect is prevalent in NO2 pollution in European cities is still unknown. We therefore investigate 378 European cities to quantify the effects of centrality and population size using NO2 data from monitoring stations and the satellite Sentinel-5P. We confirm the centrality effect proposed by …

Visualizing Abm Submodels To Promote Stakeholder Participation: A Look Into Sustainable Forest Operations, Zenith Arnejo, Benoit Gaudou, Nathaniel Bantayan, Leonardo Barua

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Over the years, there has been an accumulation of different agent-based models (ABM) dedicated to forest resource management. However, only a few have been used in the implementation of real-world decision-making applications. One reason for this is the low level of stakeholder engagement in model development. There is still a significant gap between the stakeholders' understanding of the socioecological system and its corresponding representation as a process in a simulation model. In order to bridge this gap, it is necessary to communicate to the stakeholders the actual processes taking place in the simulation model. In this study, we developed an …

Gender Barriers To Climate Change Adaptation Practices In Semi-Deciduous Forest Zone Of Ghana, Evans Amoako Amoah, Lawrence Damnyag, Frank Baffour-Ata, Dickson Boateng

Journal of Environmental Sustainability

This study investigated the gender barriers to climate change adaptation practices in the semi-deciduous forest zone of Ghana. A mixed methods approach including household surveys with 210 farmers and 14 focus group discussions was employed in seven selected communities in the Ejisu-Juaben Municipality of the Ashanti Region. The following research questions were answered by the study: (i) What are the climate change adaptation practices implemented by male and female farmers in selected communities of the Ejisu-Juaben Municipality to reduce climate risks? and; (ii) What are the barriers obstructing male and female farmers in implementing climate change adaptation practices in the …

“Temporal Not Permanent:” The Impact Of Covid-19 Cities Lockdown On Improving Air Quality — A Critical Review Of Africa, Emmanuel Mensah Aboagye, Felix Mensah, Kwaku Obeng Effah, Sandylove Afrane, Jeffrey Dankwa Ampah, Selina Annah Brenyah

Journal of Environmental Sustainability

The WHO declared the novel Covid-19 virus a global pandemic shortly after it broke out. The deadly virus spread has affected human health and seriously halted many economic and industrial activities globally. However, there has been a blight as there has generally been an improvement in air quality since the deadly Covid-19 pandemic caused various governments to lockdown their cities to regulate the spread of the virus. Since the widespread of Covid-19, there have been several researches to measure the extent of impact Covid-19 city lockdown has had global air quality, but no critical review has been done in Africa …

Integrating Equity Considerations Into Agent-Based Modeling: A Conceptual Framework And Practical Guidance, Tim G. Williams, Daniel G. Brown, Seth G. Guikema, Tom M. Logan

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Advancing equity is a multi-dimensional challenge for society, science, and policy. Agent-based models are increasingly used as scientific tools to advance system understanding, inform decision-making, and share knowledge. Yet, equity has not received due attention within the agent-based modeling (ABM) literature. In this work, we develop a conceptual framework and provide guidance for integrating equity considerations into ABM research and good modeling practice. The framework describes ABM as interfacing with equity outcomes at two levels: the science-society interface and within the model itself. The framework identifies the modeler as a filter and lens that projects knowledge between the target system …

Implementation Of Postpartum Oral Glucose Testing Follow-Up In Women With Gestational Diabetes, Amanda Rose Metz

Dissertations

Implementation of Postpartum Oral Glucose Testing Follow-up in Women with Gestational Diabetes

Problem One of the most common medical complications of pregnancy is Gestational Diabetes (GDM). After delivery, guidelines recommend follow-up glucose tolerance testing (OGTT) 4-to 12-weeks postpartum. Despite these recommendations, only 16% to 22% of women complete an OGTT postpartum.

Methods The purpose of this quality improvement (QI) project is to pilot a postpartum outreach follow-up via telephone to reach women diagnosed with GDM; the communication will be sent using the institution’s electronic messaging system. Quantitative data were collected prospectively. Data collected included if the patient was contacted and …

Untold Perspectives: The Impact Of The Closure Of A Health Institution In A Black Community In North St. Louis County, Patricia Zahn, Kiley Bednar, Andrea Jackson-Jennings, Erica L. Henderson

Dissertations

Based on the literature of social determinants of health, health equity, and anchor institutions, it is evident that hospitals have a role to play in ensuring the health of their community. However, our understanding of the impact of hospital closures is limited, especially when it comes to Black communities. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship of the closure of the Normandy Osteopathic Hospital to the social determinants of health—specifically access to care and economic stability as it relates to income and wealth generation—for a Black community in one near-North suburb of St. Louis. Ten individuals with …

Analysis Of Geographic Variability Of Fecal Microbiomes Of Fratercula Arctica And Cross-Comparison Of Fecal Microbiomes Of Different Avian Feeding Types, Eric Jose Ramon Martinez

LSU Master's Theses

Gastrointestinal (gut) microbiota have a multitude of effects on their host, from aiding in digestion, to facilitating nutrient uptake, detoxification, and interactions with the immune system. Multiple factors have been identified that influence the composition of vertebrate microbiomes; these include host genetics, environmental conditions, diet and age, sex, and geography. However, broad inferences about wild avian gut microbial diversity and function under natural conditions are limited. Most knowledge on avian microbiomes is derived from studies on domestic poultry. Information on non-model taxa may provide important contextual information about vertebrate host-microbiome interactions and aid in future management of vulnerable species. Here, …

Evolving Deforestation Narratives In Practice: A Study Of The Un-Redd+ Readiness Programme In Nigeria, Stuart Clive Blackwell

Master's Theses

The UN-REDD+ Readiness Programme was conducted between 2009 and 2015. The REDD+ Programme in Nigeria began once the readiness program was completed. This study conducts a document analysis of the program utilizing a political ecology lens to determine the extent to which the program adheres to or strays away from critical narratives surrounding both drivers of deforestation and inclusion and autonomy of federal, state, and local communities. By examining the entirety of the available documentation of the REDD+ Readiness program in Nigeria using a political ecological lens, this study demonstrates both an evolution of the program itself, and an evolution …

Egypt: How And Why A Heavily Indebted Country In The 1980s Emerged Solvent, Adel Beshai, Maryam Abouzeid

Faculty Journal Articles

This article deals with Egypt's debt crisis experience of the 1980s, which marked its own place in history. By the 1980s Egypt had a savings-investment gap; an export import gap; and a gap between government revenue and expenditure. The textbook answer was the Washington Consensus. Towards the end of the 1980s Egypt's military debt plus an interest rate of 15 per cent put the country in a situation where it wanted the debt to be cancelled. The USA responded that debt forgiveness wouldn’t be possible given the laws of the land. However, with Egypt’s participation in the liberation of Kuwait …

Space Matters: Spatial Effects, Maup, And Spatial Statistics In The Analysis Of Environmental Change In The Oil Sands Region Of Alberta (Canada), Bahareh Fallah, Isabelle Couloigner, Alison Hanes, Mojgan Mirzaei

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The oil sands zone (OSZ) is a vast area (142,200 km2) of northern Canada, best known for oil and gas extraction, and characterized by a delicate natural and human environment, owing to its diverse flora and fauna, as well as its cultural diversity, indigenous population, and resource economy. A spatio-temporal study is conducted to detect environmental changes in OSZ, based on DEM input and Landsat composites every fifth year between 2000 and 2020. Once changes are identified, statistical models will be implemented to probabilistically assess the association of disturbances with specific process categories, i.e., natural vs. anthropogenic. Spatial data, including …

A Web-Based Grid Generation And Conversion Method For Open Geographic Model Integration Applications, Yuanqing He, Min Chen, Yongning Wen, Songshan Yue

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Integrated application of geo-analysis models is critical for geo-process research. Due to the continuity of the real world, the geo-analysis model cannot be applied immediately over the entire space. To date, the method of regrading space as a sequence of computing units (i.e., a grid) has been widely used in geographic study. However, the model's variances in division algorithms result in distinct grid data structures. First, researchers must install and setup the various software to generate the structure-specific grid data required by the models. This method of localized processing is inconvenient and inefficient. Second, in order to integrate the models …

Strategies To Improve The Groundwater Representation Of Hydrological Models, The Case Of Hype Model, Befekadu Taddesse Woldegiorgis, Helen Baulch, Martyn Clark

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Although the importance of errors introduced by inappropriate numerical schemes is well recognized in the literature, several commonly used hydrological models continue to calculate concurrent fluxes sequentially. Here, two versions of the HYPE model (HYPE and H-HYPE) with different model structures were used in two case study basins to investigate the impacts of sequential calculations on groundwater representation. Implicit Euler (IE) solutions of the continuous state-space formulation for two HYPE versions (IE-HYPE and IE-H-HYPE) were developed to help provide more robust solutions. In contrast to IE-HYPE, results show that HYPE typically simulated no interflow when soil moisture levels exceeded the …

Using A Multimedia Modeling Approach To Simulate Eutrophication In The Pawcatuck River Estuary, Finnian S. Cashel, Christopher D. Knightes

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The Pawcatuck River Estuary (PRE), composed of the Pawcatuck River and Little Narragansett Bay (CT/RI, USA), is a coastal plain estuary subject to environmental stress. Anthropogenic nutrient loading, watershed land use changes, and urbanization have contributed to eutrophication, which results in hypoxia and seagrass loss. To understand these processes, a one-dimensional, numerical, process-based model was developed to interpret and predict spatial variations in water quality, using WASP8 (Water Analysis Simulation Program, v 8.32). Our PRE WASP Model included five different sub-modules: Dynamic Wave, or DYNHYD5, was used for hydrodynamics, the heat module for water temperature, the advanced eutrophication module for …

Expanding The Boundaries Of Climate Resilient Futures: Participatory Cross-Impact Balances In The Red River Basin, Anita Lazurko

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The long-term resilience of river basins around the world – conceptualized as coupled social-ecological systems – is influenced by uncertain drivers of change, including climate change. As actors attempt to make river basins more “resilient”, questions remain about what aspects of these systems are being made more resilient, which conditions they are becoming resilient to, and who the resilience is for. Addressing such questions require more exploratory and reflexive means for anticipating and imagining the future than are currently mainstream in the water sector. In this scenario modelling study, I partnered with the Red River Basin Commission and the International …

Full-Text Retrievals And Ebsco Discovery Service: Assessing Usage Of E-Journals Across Multiple Platforms, Simon Robins

Roesch Library Faculty Publications

This study utilizes COUNTER 5 data from the University of Dayton (UD) to measure full-text retrievals of e-journal articles from five major academic journal publishers (Taylor & Francis, SAGE, Oxford, Wiley, and Springer). Usage data from these publishers’ e-journals within EBSCO is compared to the same content when accessed from publisher platforms such as Wiley Online Library or SpringerLINK. Building on previous studies that have largely focused on links (or referrals) from the library discovery layer to publisher platforms, this study analyzes usage of full text-articles stored within EBSCO Discovery Service and EBSCOhost subject databases to consider how these full-text …

The Great Migration And Educational Opportunity, Cavit Baran, Eric Chyn, Bryan A. Stuart

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper studies the impact of the First Great Migration on children. We use the complete-count 1940 Census to estimate selection-corrected place effects on education for children of Black migrants. On average, Black children gained 0.8 years of schooling (12 percent) by moving from the South to the North. Many counties that had the strongest positive impacts on children during the 1940s offer relatively poor opportunities for Black youth today. Opportunities for Black children were greater in places with more schooling investment, stronger labor market opportunities for Black adults, more social capital, and less crime.