Digital Commons Network^™

Deep-Learning-Based Classification Of Digitally Modulated Signals Using Capsule Networks And Cyclic Cumulants, John A. Snoap, Dimitrie C. Popescu, James A. Latshaw, Chad M. Spooner

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper presents a novel deep-learning (DL)-based approach for classifying digitally modulated signals, which involves the use of capsule networks (CAPs) together with the cyclic cumulant (CC) features of the signals. These were blindly estimated using cyclostationary signal processing (CSP) and were then input into the CAP for training and classification. The classification performance and the generalization abilities of the proposed approach were tested using two distinct datasets that contained the same types of digitally modulated signals, but had distinct generation parameters. The results showed that the classification of digitally modulated signals using CAPs and CCs proposed in the paper …

Continuity Of Formal Power Series Products In Nonlinear Control Theory, W. Steven Gray, Mathias Palmstrøm, Alexander Schmeding

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Formal power series products appear in nonlinear control theory when systems modeled by Chen–Fliess series are interconnected to form new systems. In fields like adaptive control and learning systems, the coefficients of these formal power series are estimated sequentially with real-time data. The main goal is to prove the continuity and analyticity of such products with respect to several natural (locally convex) topologies on spaces of locally convergent formal power series in order to establish foundational properties behind these technologies. In addition, it is shown that a transformation group central to describing the output feedback connection is in fact an …

A Survey Of Using Machine Learning In Iot Security And The Challenges Faced By Researchers, Khawlah M. Harahsheh, Chung-Hao Chen

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

The Internet of Things (IoT) has become more popular in the last 15 years as it has significantly improved and gained control in multiple fields. We are nowadays surrounded by billions of IoT devices that directly integrate with our lives, some of them are at the center of our homes, and others control sensitive data such as military fields, healthcare, and datacenters, among others. This popularity makes factories and companies compete to produce and develop many types of those devices without caring about how secure they are. On the other hand, IoT is considered a good insecure environment for cyber …

A Review Of Iot Security And Privacy Using Decentralized Blockchain Techniques, Vinay Gugueoth, Sunitha Safavat, Sachin Shetty, Danda Rawat

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

IoT security is one of the prominent issues that has gained significant attention among the researchers in recent times. The recent advancements in IoT introduces various critical security issues and increases the risk of privacy leakage of IoT data. Implementation of Blockchain can be a potential solution for the security issues in IoT. This review deeply investigates the security threats and issues in IoT which deteriorates the effectiveness of IoT systems. This paper presents a perceptible description of the security threats, Blockchain based solutions, security characteristics and challenges introduced during the integration of Blockchain with IoT. An analysis of different …

Comparison Of Machine Learning Methods For Classification Of Alexithymia In Individuals With And Without Autism From Eye-Tracking Data, Furkan Iigin, Megan A. Witherow, Khan M. Iftekharuddin

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Alexithymia describes a psychological state where individuals struggle with feeling and expressing their emotions. Individuals with alexithymia may also have a more difficult time understanding the emotions of others and may express atypical attention to the eyes when recognizing emotions. This is known to affect individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) differently than neurotypical (NT) individuals. Using a public data set of eye-tracking data from seventy individuals with and without autism who have been assessed for alexithymia, we train multiple traditional machine learning models for alexithymia classification including support vector machines, logistic regression, decision trees, random forest, and multilayer perceptron. …

Implications Of Cyberbiosecurity In Advanced Agriculture, Simone Stephen, Keitavius Alexander, Lucas Potter, Xavier-Lewis Palmer

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

The world is currently undergoing a rapid digital transformation sometimes referred to as the fourth industrial revolution. During this transformation, it is increasingly clear that many scientific fields are not prepared for this change. One specific area is agriculture. As the sector which creates global food supply, this critical infrastructure requires detailed assessment and research via newly developed technologies (Millett et al, 2019; Peccoud et al, 2018) . Despite its fundamental significance to modern civilization, many aspects of industrial agriculture have not yet adapted to the digital world. This is evident in the many vulnerabilities currently present within agricultural systems, …

A Reflection Of Typology And Verification Flaws In Consideration Of Biocybersecurity/Cyberbiosecurity: Just Another Gap In The Wall, Luke Potter, Kim Mossberg, Xavier Palmer

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Verification is central to any process in a functional and enduring cyber-secure organization. This verification is how the validity or accuracy of a state of being is assessed (Schlick, 1936; Balci, 1998). Conversely, breakdown in verification procedures is core to the interruption of normal operations for an organization. A key problem for organizations that utilize biology as an interlock within their systems is that personnel lack sufficient ability to verify all practically relevant biological information for procedures such as a nurse logging a blood draw, or a molecular biology technician preparing agar to culture microbes for study. This has several …

Diabetic Retinopathy And The Role Of Vegf, Aishwarya Gatiganti, Laura Valdez, Andrew Tsin Ph.D.

School of Medicine Publications

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the leading cause of blindness in the working-age population. It works by disrupting the neural and vascular components in the retina and leads to loss of neural interaction/function, vascular permeability, and angiogenesis. It can be classified into two general stages: non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR) and proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR). DR can also lead to vascular leakage and cause diabetic macular edema (DME), the most common cause of vision loss in DR (Duh, Sun et al. 2017). There are currently a wide range of therapies, but they are limited in their efficacy and side effects. None of …

Conceptualizing Socio-Emotional Disablism: A Duoethnography Of Crohn’S Disease And Ocd During Covid-19, Kristen L. Cole, Brandi Lawless

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

We utilize duoethnography to help readers better understand the constitutive nature of disability in the contexts of chronic illness and mental health. By doing so, we articulate the concept of socio-emotional disablism, which expands structural and psycho-emotional theories of disablism to account for the ways socio-material interactions trigger emotion-work—the communicative labor and fatigue that accompanies negotiating our own emotions as well as the emotions of others in disabling contexts—thus limiting relational and ideological engagement with disability. We conclude by discussing what the concept of socio-emotional disablism teaches us about how to build more inclusive social futures through deeper interpersonal engagement …

Learning From The First Citizen Science Association Virtual Conference, Abigail Hils, Skye Kelty, Angel Hjarding, Linda Silka, Alison Cawood

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

The Citizen Science Association (CSA) is a member-driven organization that connects people with interest in community/citizen science (c*science) from a wide range of backgrounds, disciplines, and experiences. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the bi-annual CSA conference pivoted away from an in-person format to a virtual format. CitSciVirtual: Local, Global, Connected occurred throughout May 2021 and brought together more than 700 attendees from 36 countries. The conference prioritized interactive experiences for attendees, including 16 collaborative poster sessions featuring 240 virtual posters, 55 workshops to learn and practice new skills, and 7 social events. This paper summarizes the impacts of the …

Network Anatomy In Logopenic Variant Of Primary Progressive Aphasia, Maria Luisa Mandelli, Diego L. Lorca-Puls, Sladjana Lukic, Maxime Montembeault, Andrea Gajardo-Vidal, Abigail Licata, Aaron Scheffler, Giovanni Battistella, Stephanie M. Grasso, Rian Bogley, Buddhika M. Ratnasiri, Renaud La Joie, Nidhi S. Mundada, Eduardo Europa, Gil Rabinovici, Bruce L. Miller, Jessica De Leon, Maya L. Henry, Zachary Miller, Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

The logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA) is a neurodegenerative syndrome characterized linguistically by gradual loss of repetition and naming skills resulting from left posterior temporal and inferior parietal atrophy. Here, we sought to identify which specific cortical loci are initially targeted by the disease (epicenters) and investigate whether atrophy spreads through predetermined networks. First, we used cross-sectional structural MRI data from individuals with lvPPA to define putative disease epicenters using a surface-based approach paired with an anatomically fine-grained parcellation of the cortical surface (i.e., HCP-MMP1.0 atlas). Second, we combined cross-sectional functional MRI data from healthy controls and longitudinal …

Maximizing External Action With Information Provision Over Multiple Rounds In Online Social Networks, Masaaki Miyashita, Norihiko Shinomiya, Daisuke Kasamatsu, Genya Ishigaki

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Online social networks have increased their impact on the real world, which motivates information senders to control the propagation process of information to promote particular actions of online users. However, the existing works on information provisioning seem to oversimplify the users? decision-making process that involves information reception, internal actions of social networks, and external actions of social networks. In particular, characterizing the best practices of information provisioning that promotes the users? external actions is a complex task due to the complexity of the propagation process in OSNs, even when the variation of information is limited. Therefore, we propose a new …

Ordinary Meaning And Ordinary People, Kevin Tobia, Brian G. Slocum, Victoria Frances Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article considers the relationship between ordinary meaning and ordinary people in legal interpretation. Many jurists give interpretive weight to the law's ordinary meaning (i.e., general, nontechnical meaning). Modern textualists adopt a strong commitment to ordinary meaning and justify it by alluding to ordinary people: people understand law to communicate ordinary meanings. This Article begins from this textualist premise and empirically examines the meaning that legal texts communicate to the public. Five original empirical studies reveal that ordinary people consider genre carefully, and regularly take phrases in law to communicate technical legal meanings, not only ordinary ones. Building on the …

The Who’S 75th Anniversary: Who At A Pivotal Moment In History, Lawrence O. Gostin, Danwood Mzikenge Chirwa, Helen Clark, Roojin Habibi, Björn Kümmel, Jemilah Mahmood, Benjamin Mason Meier, Winnie Mpanju-Shumbusho, K. Srinath Reddy, Attiya Waris, Miriam Were

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The World Health Organisation (WHO) was inaugurated in 1948 to bring the world together to ensure the highest attainable standard of health for all. Establishing health governance under the United Nations (UN), WHO was seen as the preeminent leader in public health, promoting a healthier world following the destruction of World War II and ensuring global solidarity to prevent disease and promote health. Its constitutional function would be ‘to act as the directing and coordinating authority on international health work’. Yet today, as the world commemorates WHO’s 75th anniversary, it faces a historic global health crisis, with governments presenting challenges …

Gender Mainstreaming In Trade Agreements: "A Potemkin Façade"?, Katrin Kuhlmann, Amrita Bahri

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The distributional outcomes of trade agreements have historically been uneven, creating both “losers” as well as “winners” and benefitting certain stakeholders while leaving others without benefits or even with negative repercussions. In particular, distributional outcomes can vary between women and men, since they play different roles in society, markets, and economies, and they enjoy different opportunities as well. At times, and sometimes by their very nature, trade agreements can restrict opportunities for women and further increase the gender divide. But in recent years, there has been a drastic upsurge in the number of countries that are incorporating commitments on gender …

Infrastructuring The Digital Public Sphere, Julie E. Cohen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The idea of a "public sphere"--a shared, ideologically neutral domain where ideas and arguments may be shared, encountered, and contested--serves as a powerful imaginary in legal and policy discourse, informing both assumptions about how public communication works and ideals to which inevitably imperfect realities are compared. In debates about feasible and legally permissible content governance mechanisms for digital platforms, the public sphere ideal has counseled attention to questions of ownership and control rather than to other, arguably more pressing questions about systemic configuration. This essay interrogates such debates through the lens of infrastructure, with particular reference to the ways that …

Noticing Patents, John R. Thomas

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Patents take the form of public letters that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) actively disseminates. Whether these documents sufficiently provide the public with notice of the technologies they describe, as well as the proprietary rights that they assert, has been subject to long-standing debate. Many commentators conclude that patents are often filed too early in the research and development cycle, are deliberately drafted in a vague or obtuse manner, or are simply too numerous. As a result, identifying the relevant patent landscape is not just difficult for technology implementers, but possibly undesirable as a matter of innovation policy. …

Beyond The Business Case: Moving From Transactional To Transformational Inclusion, Jamillah Bowman Williams

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

While workplace diversity is a hot topic, the extent to which the diversity management movement has effectively improved intergroup relations and reduced racial inequality remains unclear. Despite large investments in diversity and inclusion training and other company wide initiatives, historically excluded groups remain vastly underrepresented in leadership and the most lucrative careers, such as finance, law, and technology. This calls the efficacy of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts into question, particularly with respect to reducing racial inequality in the workplace.

This Article explains why it is time for organizational leaders to move beyond the transactional case for diversity and …

When The Digital Services Act Goes Global, Anupam Chander

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The European Union’s Digital Services Act (“DSA”) establishes a “meta law”—public regulation of the private regulation conducted by internet platforms. The DSA offers an attempt to balance private technological power with democratic oversight. The DSA will likely prove an attractive model for other governments to assert control over massive global internet platforms. What happens when other countries borrow its approach, in an instantiation of the vaunted Brussels Effect? This Article evaluates the DSA using the “Putin Test”—asking what if an authoritarian leader were given the powers granted by the DSA? The Article argues that authoritarians might well exploit various mechanisms …

Advancing Racial Justice Through Civil And Criminal Academic Medical-Legal Partnerships, Yael Cannon, Vida Johnson

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The medical-legal partnership (MLP) model, which brings attorneys and healthcare partners together to remove legal barriers to health, is a growing approach to addressing unmet civil legal needs. But MLPs are less prevalent in criminal defense settings, where they also have the potential to advance both health and legal justice. In fact, grave racial health inequities are deeply intertwined with both civil and criminal injustice. In both spheres, health justice is racial justice. Building on the experiences of the authors in their respective civil and criminal law school clinics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., this Article argues that academic …

Race And Entrepreneurship: Reclaiming Narratives, Priya Baskaran, Alicia E. Plerhoples

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay makes the case for engaging in counter-narratives and inclusive storytelling within the transactional clinic curriculum. The authors leverage lessons from Critical Race Theory to amplify the voices and experiences of underrepresented entrepreneurs and marginalized communities in both clinic seminar and selected casework. In doing so, we challenge hegemonic narratives of entrepreneurship and expose our law students to the presence and impact of interlocking systems of subordination that minimize the existence and contributions of entrepreneurs of color. We challenge our law students and ourselves to become more creative and thoughtful lawyers to a more inclusive and diverse set of …

Executive Branch Control Of Federal Grants: Policy, Pork, And Punishment, Eloise Pasachoff

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

High-profile controversies in each of the last several administrations have involved the extent of Executive Branch control over federal grants. These challenges were particularly pronounced during the Trump Administration, when it seemed that each month brought a new grant-related controversy, from the opening week’s attempts to withhold funding from sanctuary cities to the last months’ effort to deny funding to “anarchist” jurisdictions. The aftermath of the Trump Administration thus provides an important opportunity to assess the bounds of Executive Branch control over federal grants writ large. In doing so, this Article makes three contributions. First, as a descriptive matter, it …

A Logical Proof That The Common Good, Not Economics, Underlies Copyright, Michelle M. Wu

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Copyright experts endlessly debate its purpose: economic or common good. Both sides cite to judicial language backing their interpretations, and the frequency and cost of litigation between those representing the two interests have noticeably increased over recent years.

This article aims at a simpler way to resolve the dispute, by taking a step back and starting with the definition of a government. The government of a democratic republic, particularly one described as “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” has a single purpose: to address the common concerns of its people.

The following philosophical argument is a …

Martyrdom And Criminal Defense, Abbe Smith

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

According to research on the emotional well-being of lawyers, public defenders may be among the happiest. This comports with my own anecdotal experience as a teacher and mentor of law students and post-graduate fellows interested in criminal defense, many of whom are now career defenders. They may be deeply frustrated by the system in which they work, but they are happy to do what they can to make a difference for their clients. They also adore their defender colleagues. My former students and fellows in large law firms don’t seem quite as happy.

Notwithstanding the data, there seems to be …

Problems With Authority, Amy J. Griffin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Judicial decisionmaking rests on a foundation of unwritten rules—those that govern the weight of authority. Such rules, including the cornerstone principle of stare decisis, are created informally through the internal social practices of the judiciary. Despite the central role of such rules in judicial decisionmaking, we lack a good account of how they are created, revised, and enforced. There is something paradoxical and troubling about the notion that the rules of the game are determined by the players as they play the game according to those rules. Because weight-of-authority rules are largely informal and almost entirely unwritten, we don’t even …

The 2022 Utah College Sexual Behavior Survey: Initial Findings Report, Cris Meier, Julie Gast, Susannah Harris, Melissa Ferguson, Brittany Hansen, Moni Butte

All Current Publications

Purpose: The purpose of the 2022 Utah College Sexual Behavior Survey project was to use retrospective sexual behavior and education measures to gain a better understanding of the sexual behaviors and perceptions of sex education of Utah youth by asking students aged 18-21 years old about their sexual behaviors as youth.

Measures: The survey questions represented ten topical areas. These areas included questions about: basic demographics; non-penetrative sex; penetrative sex; contraceptive use and pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection (STI) prevention; communication and consent; sexting; sex education; attitudes about sex; current sex behavior; and university programming.

Method: A one-time survey was …

Employing The Houseless As Corporate Social Responsibility, Nicholas A. Smith, Larry R. Martinez, Shi (Tracy) Xu, Anna Mattila, Lisa Yixing Gao

Psychology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose

Many hospitality organizations see the benefits of engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR), which can take many forms. This study aims to examine one relatively unique form of CSR: hiring individuals experiencing houselessness. This research aimed to investigate the impact of hiring individuals experiencing houselessness on customers’ behavioral intentions, attitudes toward an organization and perceptions of CSR actions.

Design/methodology/approach

Across two experiments, this study investigated the impact of employing individuals experiencing houselessness on customers’ perceptions of the employee and organization using organizational legitimacy theory.

Findings

Results demonstrate that employees known to be houseless elicited more positive employee and organizational …

The Daily Association Between Affect And Alcohol Use: A Meta-Analysis Of Individual Participant Data, Jonas Dora, Marilyn Piccirillo, Kelly Arbeau, Stephen Armeli, Marc Auriacombe, Bruce Bartholow, Adriene M. Beltz, Shari M. Blumenstock, Cynthia Mohr, Multiple Additional Authors

Psychology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Influential psychological theories hypothesize that people consume alcohol in response to the experience of both negative and positive emotions. Despite two decades of daily diary and ecological momentary assessment research, it remains unclear whether people consume more alcohol on days they experience higher negative and positive affect in everyday life. In this preregistered meta-analysis, we synthesized the evidence for these daily associations between affect and alcohol use. We included individual participant data from 69 studies (N = 12,394), which used daily and momentary surveys to assess affect and the number of alcoholic drinks consumed. Results indicate that people are not …

Behavioral Improvements Following Lesion Resection For Pediatric Epilepsy: Pediatric Psychosurgery?, Huy Dang, Abdul Basit Khan, Nisha Gadgil, Himanshu Sharma, Cristina Trandafir, Fatema Malbari, Howard L Weiner

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Introduction: Resection of brain lesions associated with refractory epilepsy to achieve seizure control is well accepted. However, concurrent behavioral effects of these lesions such as changes in mood, personality, and cognition and the effects of surgery on behavior have not been well characterized. We describe 5 such children with epileptogenic lesions and significant behavioral abnormalities which improved after surgery.

Case descriptions: Five children (ages 3-14 years) with major behavioral abnormalities and lesional epilepsy were identified and treated at our center. Behavioral problems included academic impairment, impulsivity, self-injurious behavior, and decreased social interaction with diagnoses of ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, and …

Religion, Spirituality, And Coping During The Pandemic: Perspectives Of Dementia Caregivers, Katherine Carroll Britt, Kathy C Richards, Kavita Radhakrishnan, Andrea Vanags-Louredo, Eunice Park, Nalaka S Gooneratne, Liam Fry

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Religious and spiritual (R/S) practices support individuals during difficult situations. The COVID-19 social distancing restrictions may have limited access to R/S practices for older adults with Alzheimer’s disease related dementia (ADRD) and their caregivers, affecting coping and well-being. This qualitative study explored the impact of social distancing on R/S practices and coping in ADRD-caregiver dyads from the perspective of caregivers. Interviews were conducted with 11 family caregivers of older adults with ADRD residing in nursing homes (n = 4) or private homes (n = 7). Caregivers continued individual and started virtual R/S practices which improved their ability to …