Digital Commons Network^™

From Licensure To Localism: How Overregulation Is Hindering The Cannabis Supply Chain, Ralph Setton

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Preliminary Report 2021: Coring And Excavations At Hof In Hjaltadalur, John M. Steinberg, Zachary N. Guttman, Guðný Zoëga

Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research Publications

This report outlines the 2021 work at Hof as part of the Hjaltadalur Archaeological Survey Project (HASP). The results of soil coring suggest that the site of Hof is relatively small compared to other settlement farms. The footprint of the farmstead expands substantially after the 11^th Century. The midden from the 11^th and 12^th centuries appears to be located just north of the main farmhouse (Hof 1). Cores from this area show an abundance of midden on either side of the white AD 1104 tephra. There is a notable absence of post-1300 midden deposits. The excavation unit …

Umass Boston Bike Share Survey Instrument And Dataset, Philip Troped

Exercise and Health Sciences Faculty Publication Series

This site contains the survey instrument and survey data that were collected in the fall of 2014 from students, faculty, and staff at the University of Massachusetts Boston. These data were used for a manuscript to be published in PLOS ONE in 2022. The publication is entitled, “Correlates of bike share use and its association with weight status at an urban university” and the authors are Lawrence H. Stahley, Sarah M. Camhi, Julie A. Wright, and Philip J. Troped.

Trespass Plus: Ag-Gag And The Right To Exclude, Anthony B. Derron

Publications

The recent proliferation of agricultural anti-whistleblower legislation, or "ag-gag," has finally given the right to exclude the weight that property theory claims it deserves. By offering hefty fines and imprisonment to would-be agricultural trespassers, ag-gag is one of the few legal frameworks to treat the right to exclude seriously. Scholars and judges are taking notice. Given the significant environmental harms that agriculture causes – nearly one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions – and the conspicuous First Amendment concerns, it’s no wonder. But what commentators aren’t noticing is just how radical ag- gag is when compared to the legal regimes of …

Impact Of Religion On Mental Health Care Use Among African Immigrants In The United States, Mary Nganga

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Mental health illnesses are the leading causes of disability worldwide with one in every five people suffering from mental illness in the United States. African Immigrants are the fastest growing immigrant group in the United States, yet their mental health care use remains relatively low. African immigrants face stressors that may lead them to be more prone to mental illness, yet they depend on religion and family support rather than formal mental health care. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand the impact of religion on mental health care use among African immigrants in the United States. The …

The Long-Term Effects Of Short Selling And Negative Activism, Peter Molk, Frank Partnoy

UF Law Faculty Publications

We investigate the long-term effects of short selling and “negative activism,” where activists seek to profit from declines in the share prices of targeted firms. We show that negative activism is associated with significant and declining long-term share returns and operating performance, as well as an increase in securities litigation and regulatory actions against targeted firms. We explore the policy implications of this new evidence, including ways that policy makers and market participants might take advantage of the potential benefits of short selling negative activism. Our message is straightforward: resist impulses to curb short selling, and instead embrace attempts to …

Psychosis, Heat Of Passion, And Diminished Responsibility, E. Lea Johnston, Vincent T. Leahy

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article calls for the creation of a generic partial excuse for diminished rationality from mental disability. Currently, most jurisdictions recognize only one partial excuse: the common law heat-of-passion defense. Empirical research demonstrates that populations with delusions experience similar impairments to decision-making capacities as people confronted with sudden, objectively adequate provocation. Yet, current law affords significant mitigation only to the latter group, which only applies in murder cases. Adoption of the Model Penal Code’s “extreme mental or emotional disturbance” (EMED) defense could extend mitigation to other forms of diminished responsibility. However, examination of jurisdictions’ adoption and utilization of the EMED …

Delusions, Moral Incapacity, And The Case For Moral Wrongfulness, E. Lea Johnston

UF Law Faculty Publications

Responsibility is a legal—not medical—construct. However, science can be useful in exposing faulty assumptions underlying current doctrine or practice, illuminating changes in practice or evidentiary standards to better effectuate the law’s animating purpose, and even suggesting updates to legal standards to account for modern understandings of functionalities of concern. This Article uses the science of delusions to assess the law regarding, and practice of establishing, criminal irresponsibility for defendants with psychosis. Over the last two decades, researchers from the cognitive sciences have compiled strong evidence that a host of cognitive and emotional impairments contribute to the origin and maintenance of …

Assuming The Risks Of Artificial Intelligence, Amy L. Stein

UF Law Faculty Publications

Tort law has long served as a remedy for those injured by products—and injuries from artificial intelligence (“AI”) are no exception. While many scholars have rightly contemplated the possible tort claims involving AI-driven technologies that cause injury, there has been little focus on the subsequent analysis of defenses. One of these defenses, assumption of risk, has been given particularly short shrift, with most scholars addressing it only in passing. This is intriguing, particularly because assumption of risk has the power to completely bar recovery for a plaintiff who knowingly and voluntarily engaged with a risk. In reality, such a defense …

First Amendment Battles Over-Anti-Deplatforming Statutes: Examining Miami Herald Publishing Co. V. Tornillo's Relevance For Today's Online Social Media Platform Cases, Clay Calvert

UF Law Faculty Publications

Florida adopted a statute in 2021 barring large social media sites from deplatforming-removing from their sites-candidates running for state and local office. Soon thereafter, Texas adopted its own anti-deplatforming statute. A trade association representing several major social media companies is now challenging the laws in federal court for violating the platforms' First Amendment speech rights. A central issue in both NetChoice, LLC v. Moody (targeting Florida's statute) and NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton (attacking Texas's law) is the significance of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1974 decision in Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo. In Tornillo, the Court struck down …

Mapping The Civil Justice Gap In Federal Court, Roger Michalski, Andrew Hammond

UF Law Faculty Publications

Unrepresented litigants make up a sizable and normatively important chunk of civil litigation in the federal courts. Despite their importance, we still know little about who these pro se litigants are. Debates about pro se litigation take place without sufficient empirical information. To help fill some of the gaps in our understanding of pro se litigants, this Article takes a new approach by mapping where pro se litigants live.

Using a massive data set of 2.5 million federal dockets from a ten-year period, we obtained addresses of non-prisoner pro se litigants. We then geolocated these addresses and cross-referenced that information …

Bankruptcy & The Benefit Corporation, Christopher D. Hampson

UF Law Faculty Publications

As pressure grows for money-making businesses to prioritize social responsibility, the benefit corporation - a recent innovation in corporate governance - promises to require the directors of socially minded businesses to balance public benefit with shareholder interests. But will that promise survive the crucible of financial distress? While most discussions of the benefit corporation give only passing treatment to insolvency (or ignore it altogether), this Article provides the first complete analysis of how bankruptcy principles would apply to benefit corporations, informed by the practical context of out-of-court workouts and negotiations that take place in the shadow of the bankruptcy laws. …

Essential Outcomes For Cop26, Pete Smith, Linda Beaumont, Carl J. Bernacchi, Maria Byrne, William Cheung, Richard T. Conant, Francesca Cotrufo, Xiaojuan Feng, Ivan Janssens, Hefin Jones, Miko U.F. Kirschbaum, Kazuhiko Kobayashi, Julie Laroche, Yiqi Luo, Andrew Mckechnie, Josep Penuelas, Shilong Piao, Sharon Robinson, Rowan F. Sage, David J. Sugget, Stephen J. Thackeray, Danielle Way, Stephen P. Long

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

The UK Government is hosting COP26 in Glasgow between 31st October and 12th November 2021. It plans to make progress in four key areas which summarize as ‘coal, cars, cash and trees’ (Carbon Brief, 2021). The first two of these aims—to get agreement for the rapid phase out of coal, the most polluting of fossil fuels, and to ensure a rapid transition away for cars fuelled by fossil fuels—are very important, but are not directly related to the remit of Global Change Biology. The latter two aims—ensuring that the financial support of $100 billion per year promised in 2010 by …

Patterning Ecological Restoration After Weeds, Stephen L. Young, Erik P. Hamerlynck

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

The United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration aims to prevent, halt, and reverse the degradation of ecosystems on every continent. Disturbances stemming from anthropogenic or natural causes make plant community restoration challenging. The introduction of fast-growing weeds that generate high biomass and produce copious seed is most threatening to plant communities. A paradigm shift in ecosystem restoration is needed that emphasizes traits and affected ecological processes similar to weeds. The repeated introduction of seed from native plants with weedy characteristics follows the propagule pressure and evolution of invasiveness hypotheses. In targeting areas with heavy weed populations, native plants could establish …

America's Misunderstood Constitutional Rights, Jonathan L. Marshfield

UF Law Faculty Publications

In contemporary rights jurisprudence and theory, the Fourteenth Amendment and the Federal Bill of Rights are most frequently conceptualized as bulwarks against majoritarian abuses. From Brown v. Board of Education to Obergefell v. Hodges and even District of Columbia v. Heller, federal rights are primarily understood as enforceable legal constraints on popular majorities (especially intra-state majorities). Viewed through this lens, state constitutional rights are often dismissed as fundamentally dysfunctional because they are too easily amended through majoritarian political processes to constrain popular majorities. After all, what good is a state constitutional right to marriage equality, for example, if it can …

New: First Amendment Battles Over-Anti-Deplatforming Statutes: Examining Miami Herald Publishing Co. V. Tornillo's Relevance For Today's Online Social Media Platform Cases, Clay Calvert

UF Law Faculty Publications

Florida adopted a statute in 2021 barring large social media sites from deplatforming-removing from their sites-candidates running for state and local office. Soon thereafter, Texas adopted its own anti-deplatforming statute. A trade association representing several major social media companies is now challenging the laws in federal court for violating the platforms' First Amendment speech rights. A central issue in both NetChoice, LLC v. Moody (targeting Florida's statute) and NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton (attacking Texas's law) is the significance of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1974 decision in Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo. In Tornillo, the Court struck down a Florida …

Repurposing The Corporation Through Stakeholder Markets, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is immensely popular. Rhetorically, nearly all public corporations have committed to it. But corporations don’t act responsibly. That is because no system exists by which their responsibility levels can be measured and rewarded or punished. Thousands of organizations worldwide are engaged in a cooperative effort to build such a system. After two decades of work, the system is almost entirely in place. It may become effective in the next two to three years. When it does, the system will continually measure and report publicly as many as a thousand audited data points on the CSR of …

Archaeological Cultures Of The Sheyenne Bend, Michael G. Michlovic, George R. Holley

Digital Press Books

This volume presents the results of several decades of archaeological research in the Sheyenne Bend region of southeastern North Dakota. Piecing together evidence from disparate field projects, along with the work done by previous researchers, Archaeological Cultures of the Sheyenne Bend offers a status report on the pre-European era cultures of southeastern North Dakota. Presented in ordinary language, this book constitutes the essential details to make sense of the regional archaeological record.

Michael Michlovic is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Minne- sota State University Moorhead. He is a former editor of the Minne- sota Archaeologist and past president of the Council …

Economic Models Of Church Life: Three Nudges Towards Better Behaviour, Stephen Bullivant

Theology Papers and Journal Articles

Economic ideas have long shed light on diverse spheres of social and cultural life. Religion is no exception and has spawned a large and thriving subfield. However, whereas recent decades have famously witnessed a ‘behavioural’ turn in economics – with Nobel prizes going to two pioneers of the field, Daniel Kahneman in 2002 and Richard Thaler in 2017 – there has yet to be significant work done in the ‘behavioural economics of religion’. This is a shame; there are good reasons for thinking that behavioural-economic theories and findings might be particularly well suited to illumine several areas of practical church …

Solving The Procedural Puzzles Of The Texas Heartbeat Act And Its Imitators: The Potential For Defensive Litigation, Charles W. "Rocky" Rhodes, Howard M. Wasserman

SMU Law Review

The Texas Heartbeat Act (SB8) prohibits abortions following detection of a fetal heartbeat, a constitutionally invalid ban under current Supreme Court precedent. But the law adopts a unique enforcement scheme—it prohibits enforcement by government officials in favor of private civil actions brought by “any person,” regardless of injury. Texas sought to burden reproductive-health providers and rights advocates with costly litigation and potentially crippling liability.

In a series of articles, we explore how SB8’s exclusive reliance on private enforcement creates procedural and jurisdictional hurdles to challenging the law’s constitutional validity and obtaining judicial review. This piece explores defensive litigation, in which …

Algorithmic Destruction, Tiffany C. Li

SMU Law Review

Contemporary privacy law does not go far enough to protect our privacy interests, particularly where artificial intelligence and machine learning are concerned. While many have written on problems of algorithmic bias and data deletion, this Article introduces the novel concept of the “algorithmic shadow” and explains the new privacy remedy of “algorithmic destruction,” also known as algorithmic disgorgement or machine unlearning. The algorithmic shadow describes the persistent imprint of training data that has been fed into a machine learning model and used to refine that machine learning system. This shadow persists even if data is deleted from the initial training …

Bostock: A Clean Cut Into The Gordian Knot Of Causation, Melissa Essary

SMU Law Review

Regardless of merit, most individual employment discrimination claims die a fast death at summary judgment. Judges apply the fine mesh net created by McDonnell Douglas v. Green, and most cases are caught in its trap. This dated, obfuscatory Supreme Court case creates a complex and flawed binary approach to causation: either discrimination or an innocent reason caused an adverse employment action. For decades, all three levels of the federal judiciary have wrestled with McDonnell Douglas, creating snarls and knots in construing causation. Because of this causal confusion, the ideal of equal opportunity in employment is on life-support.

Judges and practitioners …

Volume V, Spring 2022, International Anchoritic Society

International Anchoritic Society Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Mechanisms Of Programmed Nutrition In Finishing Cattle In Vivo And Ruminal Parameters Of Amaize Supplementation In Vitro, Amanda Pesqueira Schiff

Theses and Dissertations--Animal and Food Sciences

Programmed Nutrition Beef Program (Alltech Inc.) is a dietary supplement that contains Aspergillus oryzae fermentation extract with α-amylase activity that could reduce the use of feed additives such as monensin and tylosin in conventional feedlot diets. This study examines the changes in rumen fermentation resulting from feeding monensin/tylosin and Programmed Nutrition Beef Finisher. The goal was to determine if these shifts in rumen fermentation contribute to the Programmed Nutrition response observed in vivo. This study also analyzes how different levels of α-amylase (Amaize)supplementation impacts feedstuff degradation and utilization in vitro. In vivo experiment used eight steers in a replicated …

The Discovery And Investigation Of Jig (Cg14850): A Previously Uncharacterized Novel Drosophila Melanogaster Protein, Sayem Hoque Bhuiyan

Theses and Dissertations

Despite Drosophila being one of the most studied model organisms in the world of research, one-third of 14,000 protein-encoding genes that the Drosophila genome possesses code for proteins that are yet uncharacterized. While investigating some of these uncharacterized Drosophila proteins, we identified a scarce protein type–a protein localized in both mitochondria and nucleus. Proteins, dual-localized in mitochondria and nucleus, establish communication between these organelles. This type of dual-localized protein is among the rarest of proteins, which limits us from fully understanding the mito-nuclear communication mechanism. Here, we tell the story of Jig, which we discovered to be one of those …

The Architecture And Dynamics Of Gene Regulatory Networks Directing Cell-Fate Choice During Murine Hematopoiesis, Joanna Handzlik

Theses and Dissertations

Mammals produce hundreds of billions of new blood cells every day througha process known as hematopoiesis. Hematopoiesis starts with stem cells that develop into all the different types of cells found in blood by changing their genome-wide gene expression. The remodeling of genome-wide gene expression can be primarily attributed to a special class of proteins called transcription factors (TFs) that can activate or repress other genes, including genes encoding TFs. TFs and their targets therefore form recurrent networks called gene regulatory networks (GRNs). GRNs are crucial during physiological developmental processes, such as hematopoiesis, while abnormalities in the regulatory interactions of …

Mosquito Fauna And Prevalence Of Avian Malaria In The Turtle Mountains, North Dakota, Kelsey J. Morin

Theses and Dissertations

Avian malaria is a disease caused by intracellular parasites transmitted by mosquitoes and is detrimental to individual birds and their populations. Although it is sub-lethal in most instances, avian malaria can result in anemia, lower fertility, and reduced migration ability. The Turtle Mountains is a unique ecoregion in North Dakota and provides habitat for various bird and mosquito species that differ from other parts of the state. Previous research has defined the mosquito fauna and occurrence of avian malaria in the Red River Valley region of eastern North Dakota and Northwest Minnesota; however, no research has been conducted in the …

Behavioral Responses Of Breeding Ducks To Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Surveys And Best Practices For Breeding Waterfowl Surveys Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Mason Ryckman

Theses and Dissertations

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become a popular wildlife survey tool. As such, biologists are exploring the use of UAVs for surveying waterfowl. The most cited benefit of using UAVs over traditional methods is the idea of reduced disturbance, but this has had limited formal evaluation across species. We conducted UAV surveys with associated behavioral observations of ducks on wetlands and on nests during the 2019 – 2020 breeding seasons. We found species-specific behaviors among blue-winged teal (Spatula discors), northern shoveler (Spatula clypeata), and gadwall (Mareca strepera) including ducks noticing the aircraft, but reactions were generally less than traditional ground …

Phylogenetic Relationships Of Noctuoid Moths With An Examination Of Complex Characteristics, Melissa Sisson

Theses and Dissertations

The tribe Noctuini comprise over 520 species; many are economically important species that impact human agriculture. Despite their diversity and relevance, relationships of the Noctuini have been difficult to resolve. There are extensive morphological revisions of these taxa (e.g., Agrotis, Euxoa); however, there are no studies that focus exclusively on the phylogenetic relationships of the Noctuini. Currently, the Noctuini are separated into two subtribes, the Agrotina and Noctuina, which each are further subdivided into two subgenera. In this study, we tested previous classification schemes using three loci. We sampled three outgroup taxa and 54 noctuine species that represent the majority …

Development Of The Share Your Story Program: Understanding How Self-Stigma And Mental Health Storytelling Influence Mental Health Experiences On College Campuses, Kyle Cromer Elliott

Theses and Dissertations

Mental health is a growing concern faced by college administrators. Self-stigma is a major barrier preventing mental health utilization and recovery on college campuses. The purpose of this research study is to understand how self-stigma influences the mental health experiences of college students.

The research study builds upon narrative inquiry—Honest, Open, Proud (HOP)—and the author’s lived experiences with mental health conditions to answer the research question: “How does self-stigma influence students’ mental health experiences on college campuses?”

Findings indicate that self-stigma and self-acceptance impacted if, how, and with whom research study participants shared their mental health conditions. Findings also show …