Digital Commons Network^™

Reparations For Colonialism: Beyond Legal Responsibility, Steven R. Ratner

Articles

Reparations for colonialism and colonial-era atrocities have moved from an unrealized demand of citizens, politicians, and thinkers in the Global South to a project with some results in the real world. Key markers include the return of numerous art objects from museums in the Global North to their countries of origin; the release of the Caribbean Community and Common Market’s (CARICOM) proposal for reparations; and Namibia’s agreement with Germany on compensation for the German genocide against the Herero people in 1904–08 —along with the resultant controversy. These developments follow earlier claims for reparations directed to—and their eventual acceptance by—the governments …

The Law Of Energy Abundance, Alexandra B. Klass, Matthew Appel

Articles

For the first time in decades, electricity demand in the United States is increasing due to the growth of data centers to power artificial intelligence, new manufacturing hubs, and transportation electrification. At the same time, coalfired power plants have been closing in response to competition from lower cost natural gas and renewable energy. Clean energy is being rapidly deployed to replace fossil fuels but not quickly enough to address concerns about demand growth and grid reliability. Accordingly, there is a growing imbalance between electricity supply and demand in many regions of the country that threatens to increase electricity prices and …

The European Health Data Space As A Compass For Academic/Industry Collaborations, Gabriela Lenarczyk, Hannah Louise Smith, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Articles

Against the backdrop of a deepening funding crisis for academic research in the US, how and when can closer relationships between academia and industry better support the research enterprise? Spector-Bagdady (2025) explores this potential response, bringing insight from genetic data sharing between academia and industry—and the benefits and challenges that arise from that sharing. She calls for a response that aligns academic institutional policy to support the realization of any public good, recognizing the pitfalls and problematic incentives that shape individual responses. It’s a timely call, and an attractive one in a time of urgent uncertainty about funding and support. …

Synthetic Data Generation Of Health And Demographic Surveillance Systems Data: A Case Study In A Low- And Middle-Income Country, Dorcas G. Mwigereri, Nigel T. Kamotho, Akbar K. Waljee, Ryan T. Rego, Eileen M. Weinheimer-Haus, Farhana Alarakhiya, Anthony K. Ngugi, W. Nicholson Price, Ji Zhu, Stephen Peter Wong, Geoffrey H. Siwo

Articles

Objective: To evaluate effectiveness of open-source generative models in producing high-quality tabular synthetic data using a Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) dataset from rural Kenya, as a proof of concept in a low- and middle-income (LMIC) setting.

Materials and Methods: Three open-source models (CTGAN, TableGAN, and CopulaGAN) were used to generate synthetic data from the Kaloleni/ Rabai HDSS dataset. To assess the quality of the synthetic datasets generated by each model, we performed fidelity, utility, and privacy tests.

Results: CTGAN outperformed the other models, producing synthetic data that closely mirrored the statistical properties of the real dataset while preserving …

The Future Of Ai Regulation In Drug Development: A Comparative Analysis, Gabriela Lenarczyk, Timo Minssen, W. Nicholson Price Ii, Arti Rai

Articles

As artificial intelligence (AI) transforms drug development, regulatory frameworks are evolving to oversee its implementation, particularly at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA). This paper makes three contributions to understanding emerging regulatory approaches. First, we offer a comparative analysis of how these agencies have responded to AI-driven advances, incorporating new US executive orders and the European Union (EU)’s AI Act. Second, we propose a novel analytical framework to understand regulatory divergence: the FDA’s flexible, dialog-driven model contrasts with the EMA’s structured, risk-tiered approach, reflecting broader institutional and political-economic differences. While the former encourages …

Should The United States Abandon Citizenship-Based Taxation?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

President Trump proposed during the election campaign to end the “doubletaxation” of American citizens living overseas.To which the answer is,what double taxation?Americans living overseas already benefit from three significant provisions thatin most cases prevent any double taxation, and because of these most of them donot have any U.S. tax liability.Those who do are typically wealthier, derive incomefrom investments or from high wages, and are not subject to foreign tax becausethey live in tax havens or in countries that do not tax rich immigrants on foreignsource income, and they do not have any income from their country of residence.

Was The Niit A Treaty Override?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

Three court decisions have recently addressed the interaction of the NetInvestment Income Tax (NIIT) and U.S. tax treaties. The issue waswhether the treaty provided an independent basis for crediting a foreigntax against the NIIT, because no such credit is available under the Code.First,in Toulouse, the Tax Court held that there was no treaty-based credit.Second,in Christensen, the Court of Federal Claims held that a treaty-based credit wasavailable, distinguishing Toulouse.Third, in Bruyea, the Court of Federal Claimsissued a broader opinion that allowed the credit.

Periodic Adjustments And The Arm's Length Principle, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently issued AM 2025-001, whichrepresents a significant change in its interpretation of the periodic adjustment rules for transfers of intangibles within a multinational and forcost-sharing agreements.Arguably, this finally brings the IRS into compliancewith the “commensurate with income” language added to Code Sec. 482 in1986.

Actuator Disk Model For Aeropropulsive Coupling Effects In Vortex Particle Method, Eduardo Alvarez, Vineet Ahuja, Vinod Lakshminarayan, Aaron Perry, Ryan Anderson, Andrew Ning

Faculty Publications

Blown lift and distributed electric propulsion aircraft pose strong aeropropulsive coupling effects that cannot be ignored during the early stages of design. In this study, we develop an advanced actuator disk model (ADM) for aeropropulsive coupling effects of ducted fans with the vortex particle method (VPM). The advanced ADM consists of (1) an actuator disk at the rotor plane, (2) a surface vortex sheet modeling the mixing and convection of blade tip vorticity along walls, and (3) a powered wake at the exhaust. With these three components, a propulsion jet with an arbitrary velocity profile is formed and interactions with …

Artificial Intelligence In Educational Research And Scholarship: Seven Framings, Eamon Costello, Giselle Ferreira, Stefan Hrastinski, Jason K. Mcdonald, Ahmed Tlili, George Veletsianos, Victoria I. Marin, Henk Huijser, Sharon Altena

Faculty Publications

In a recent interview (Bender et al., 2025), Professor Emily M. Bender discussed the limitations of technical solutions in addressing harmful Artificial Intelligence (AI) bias. She described a particular point we may reach at which technical solutions stop working, and when we should then widen the lens to ask about the problem framing itself. This is a crucial step in any inquiry that is of concern to both novice and experienced researchers alike: moving from problem-solving to problematisation. This commentary aims to provide educational researchers with a glimpse into the wide array of research problems and problematisation of AI in …