Digital Commons Network^™

Physician Assisted Dying (Pad): An Investigation Into The Mechanistic Action Of Opioid, Benzodiazepine, And Barbiturate Administration As An Alternative Measure To Forgoing Life Sustaining Treatment And Aggressive Palliation., Jordana Chanel Deighton

CMC Senior Theses

Whilst modern medicine has increased longevity, the rise in life expectancy has brought about new struggles, namely that of aging and age related disease. Thus, humanity has been presented with a new problem: at what point is death preferable to aggressive life-prolonging treatment in the face of inevitable death? And if so, what right do individuals have to control the circumstances of their death? In the West, traditionally, individuals who seek to end their own lives in the face of terminal illness opt for forgoing artificial hydration and nutrition. Driven by an increase in desire for autonomous dignified death, a …

Effects Of Drought On Habitat Quality For Native Bees In Residential Gardens Of Claremont, Ca, Max Proctor

CMC Senior Theses

Over 1,500 of the 4000 bee species found in North America inhabit California. Native bees are declining however, largely due to climate change and agricultural intensification. Previous research shows that cities can sustain diverse bee communities, due to the diversity of ornamental flowers. Urban green space represents an opportunity for native bee conservation. Residential gardens provide lots of green space and are urban pollinator hotspots. Managing yards for increased floral resources and nesting habitat can benefit native bee communities. Turfgrass provides few floral or nesting resources and negatively correlates with bee diversity. The 2011-2017 California drought caused many homeowners to …

Building Our Own Houses: Aapis In Congress, Daenerys Pineda

CMC Senior Theses

During the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Asian hate peaked and came to national attention. Given the country-wide scope of this issue, a potential avenue for its address is through federal representatives, and particularly through those representatives who identify as Asian-American. This community’s political participation began long before 2020, and this thesis evaluates how Asian-American representatives have provided meaningful political representation in various situations for a national Asian-American constituency. For the purpose of this thesis, I define substantive representation as an action of a representative, using their particular political powers and privileges, in the interest of their constituents. I conduct three case studies …

The Past And Future Of Migration, Poverty, And Small-Scale Agriculture In Mexico, Kimberly Zamora Delgado

CMC Senior Theses

The conflated pattern between poverty, rurality, and indigeneity in Mexico signifies drastic inequality between populations. Poor, rural communities often do not receive as much public services, infrastructure improvements, and employment opportunities as urban areas, which causes out-migration into the cities. Some of the few jobs available in rural areas are in the agriculture sector, either through small-scale subsistence farming or seasonal employment on a large-scale farm. Historically, certain wealthy states such as Sinaloa, Michoacán, and Sonora received greater support to up-scale into modernized agriculture, which made them into the largest agro-exporters. On the other hand, poor states with greater indigenous …

Containing Compounding Container Congestion, Curtis Salinger

CMC Senior Theses

The Covid-19 pandemic caused major disruptions throughout the container shipping supply chain. Professor Dongping Song of Liverpool University wrote a paper discussing the logistical vulnerabilities in the supply chain, including the issue of congestion in ports. This paper examines the Port of Los Angeles from 2018-2021 as it relates to Song’s paper to see how its operations were impacted during the Covid-19 timeframe. It is found that labor shortages, chassis shortages, and change in trade behavior each contributed to the congestion. Unfortunately, the implemented policies were insufficient to bolster the port against sustained challenges and congestion continues to worsen.

Cultural Resistance In The African Diaspora: A Historical And Contemporary Analysis Of Land-Based Community Care, Toluwani Roberts

CMC Senior Theses

“Cultural Resistance in the African Diaspora: A Historical and Contemporary Analysis of Land-Based Community Care” explores the use of land for the self-liberation and sustenance of African and African descendant peoples. It argues that collective cultivation of land is key to the development of African-derived cultures and forms the foundation of resistance against Western-capitalist cultural domination. Maroon societies, also known as runaway communities, of the 16th to 19th centuries are one of the earliest examples of land-based resistance in slave colonies that have contributed to the development of what we now call the African Diaspora. Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities …

Language In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence, Axel Ahdritz

CMC Senior Theses

AI language models can now produce text that is indistinguishable from our own, forcing us into a confrontation with the romantic assumptions underlying ‘natural language’ in the West. In this thesis, I will conduct a genealogy of the ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ qualities of language through the literary, philosophical, and mathematical texts in which our ideas of authorship are premised. My hope is that this discussion will deepen our understanding of the language produced by AI models, answer why we feel compelled to anthropomorphize these machines, and situate readers in the reality of our present linguistic moment.

Cross-Cultural Examination Of Vacation Policy On Employee Satisfaction And Happiness, Ketan D. Parekh

CMC Senior Theses

With the advent of technological advancement, entrepreneurship, and a higher emphasis on meritocracy, societies across the globe have experienced intense competition to outdo one another. This has pushed companies to place increased importance on worker productivity; large and small companies want to see their employees work harder, longer, and faster. With this increased demand for work, companies today are making sure they have suitable reward systems to ensure worker satisfaction and quality work production. However, what these reward systems look like and how they function contrast significantly across cultures, especially as it pertains to corporate leave policies. This thesis examines …

Improved Warehouse For Smt Material Management Using Modern Technology Retrieval System And Better Traceability, Ferdinand Mabeya

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Warehouse plays a vital role in the manufacturing and distributing goods from raw material to manufacturer and finally to the end-user. Optimizing warehouse material management will make an impact on productivity, quality, and on-time delivery. My thesis focuses on material management of surface mount (SMT) from suppliers, receiving and inspection, and warehouse to maximize efficiency. With SMT line costing over 2 million, the warehouse material management is improved. Things like cycle count and picking material are much faster. It makes the overall equipment efficiency (OEE) very low. To make this material management process possible, manufacturers must embrace Six Sigma and …

Effects Of Perchlorate Exposure On Swimming Performance Of Zebrafish (Danio Rerio) And Organ Development Of Mice (Mus Musculus), Quentin Phillips

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Biomimetic properties of endocrine disrupting compounds (EDC) enable these chemicals to induce physiological responses in organisms at the cellular level, affecting fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Perchlorate is a ubiquitous EDC to which nearly all humans of industrialized countries are exposed. Perchlorate competitively inhibits the sodium-iodide symporters located within the follicular cells of the thyroid gland, reducing the body’s ability to uptake iodide and synthesize thyroid hormone (TH), a crucial hormone in the regulation of many metabolic processes. Threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) and zebrafish (Danio rerio) are aquatic model organisms used in perchlorate exposure research. Exposure causes many common …

On Discovering Motifs And Frequent Patterns In Spatial Trajectories With Discrete Fréchet Distance, Bo Tang, Man Lung Yiu, Kyriakos Mouratidis, Jiahao Zhang, Kai Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The discrete Fréchet distance (DFD) captures perceptual and geographical similarity between two trajectories. It has been successfully adopted in a multitude of applications, such as signature and handwriting recognition, computer graphics, as well as geographic applications. Spatial applications, e.g., sports analysis, traffic analysis, etc. require discovering similar subtrajectories within a single trajectory or across multiple trajectories. In this paper, we adopt DFD as the similarity measure, and study two representative trajectory analysis problems, namely, motif discovery and frequent pattern discovery. Due to the time complexity of DFD, these tasks are computationally challenging. We address that challenge with a suite of …

Six Examples Applying The Meta-Principle Linguistic Method: Lessons For Indigenous Law Implementation, Naiomi Metallic

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Building on "Five Linguistic Methods for Revitalizing Indigenous Laws," this article explains and analyses six examples of implementation of the 'meta-principle' or 'word-bundle' linguistic method for Indigenous law revitalization. The method refers to using a word in an Indigenous language that conveys an overarching, normative principle of the Indigenous group, and is the most utilized form of the five linguistic methods to date. The examples span its use by judges, public governments as well as Indigenous governments, and these actors employ different methods for identifying and interpreting the meta-principles. The variations between them reveal four categories of approaches to identifying, …

Telling Tales About Law School: Reflections On Care, Holism, And Marginality In Law Teaching, Nayha Acharya, Angela Lee

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this reflective piece, we explore why and how adopting principles of holistic education can help mitigate the crisis of well-being in legal education and in the legal profession. This project emerged from a series of informal conversations in which we discussed various factors influencing our pedagogical styles and found a shared central essence in both our approaches that align with holistic teaching. Given that this paper emerged through subjective conversation, we present subjective narratives about our experiences as early-career faculty members at Canadian law schools, and then critically analyze the narratives by distilling common emergent themes and threads relating …

Animals As Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders, By Maneesha Deckha, Jodi Lazare

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Scholarship on animal rights has long been dominated by the widely held idea that justice for nonhuman animals will not be achieved until they are granted legal personhood. In Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders, Maneesha Deckha provides an alternative legal classification for nonhuman animals. “Beingness,” rooted in relational feminism, post-colonial theory, and critical animal studies, recognizes nonhuman animals’ inherent value, while avoiding some of the downsides to legal personhood, namely, its embeddedness in the imperialist liberal individualism that characterizes western legal systems. Given its anthropocentric nature, personhood must be displaced as the aspirational classification for animals. …

Navigating The Structural Coherence Of Sea Life, Aldo Chircop, Philip Steinberg, Greta Ferloni, Claudio Aporta, Gavin Bridge, Kate Coddington, Stuart Elden, Stephanie C. Kane, Timo Koivurova, Jessica Shadian, Anna Stammler-Gossmann

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Ice breaking by ships can cause irreparable harm to the ecologies and cultures of northern regions. This chapter revolves around a central question: what are the barriers preventing the development of a legal mechanism to limit this act of environmental violence? The chapter suggests that the central barrier is not so much legal as it is ontological: foundational conceptions of space that underpin Western legal institutions are unable to value the form of water, reducing it instead to an ed space that is used for movement or resource extraction. This chapter demonstrates how a consideration of the environmental violence of …

Maritime Transportation: Let's Slow Down A Bit, Maxime Sèbe, Pierre Scemama, Anne Choquet, Jean-Luc Jung, Aldo Chircop, Phénia Marras-Aït Razouk, Sylvain Michel, Valérie Stiger-Pouvreau, Laura Recuero-Virto

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Maritime transportation is a major contributor to the world economy, but has significant social and environmental impacts. Each impact calls for different technical or operational solutions. Amongst these solutions, we found that speed reduction measures appear to mitigate several issues: (1) collision with wildlife; (2) collision with non-living objects; (3) underwater noise; (4) invasive species; and (5) gas emission. We do not pretend that speed reduction is the best solution for each individual issue mentioned in this paper, but we argue that it could be a key solution to significantly reduce these threats all together. Further interdisciplinary research is required …

How Icebreaking Governance Interacts With Inuit Rights And Livelihoods In Nunavut: A Policy Review, Breanna Bishop, Jade Owen, Lisette Wilson, Tagalik Eccles, Aldo Chircop, Lucia Fanning

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Sea ice is a contested space when it comes to navigation in ice-covered regions. For Inuit in Nunavut, Canada, sea ice is an integral platform of coastal connectivity, allowing access to areas of subsistence and cultural value. For vessels transiting Arctic waters, sea ice poses potential risks to vessel, crew, and passenger safety consequently, icebreaking is considered an essential service. Yet, many communities in Nunavut have described icebreaking as having, or potentially having significant negative impacts on community and ecological wellbeing. Several policies regulate and provide guidance to icebreakers operating in ice-covered waters. With anticipated increases to icebreaking demand in …

On What Basis Did Health Canada Approve Oxycontin In 1996? A Retrospective Analysis Of Regulatory Data, Jessie Pappin, Itai Bavli, Matthew Herder

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The marketing and sale of oxycodone (OxyContin) by Purdue Pharma has commanded a great deal of legal and policy attention due to the drug’s central role in the ongoing overdose crisis. However, little is known about the basis for OxyContin’s approval by regulators, such as Health Canada in 1996. Taking advantage of a recently created online database containing information pertaining to the safety and effectiveness of drugs, we conducted a retrospective analysis of Purdue Pharma’s submission to Health Canada, including both published and unpublished clinical trials. None of the trials sponsored by Purdue Pharma sought to meaningfully assess the risks …

The Unfccc Regime At A Crossroads: Can You Trust Anyone Over 30?, Meinhard Doelle

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted in 1992 and it was opened for signature at Rio de Janeiro in June of that year. The 30th anniversary of its adoption offers an opportunity to reflect on more than a quarter of a century of UN climate diplomacy, and to consider the path ahead. This contribution takes a look back at the choices made that have led the regime to its current state. It then takes a look forward and considers the prospects of the regime meeting its ultimate aim of avoiding dangerous human interference with the climate …

Indigenous Rights And Interests In A Changing Arctic Ocean: Canadian And Russian Experiences And Challenges, Anna Sharapova, Sara L. Seck, Sarah L. Macleod, Olga Koubrak

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The Arctic has been home to Indigenous peoples since long before the international legal system of sovereign states came into existence. International law has increasingly recognized the rights of Indigenous peoples, who also have status as Permanent Participants in the Arctic Council. In northern Canada, the majority of those who live in the Arctic are recognized as Indigenous. However, in northern Russia, a much smaller percentage of the population is identified as Indigenous, as legal recognition is only accorded to groups with a small population size. This article will compare Russian and Canadian approaches to recognition of Indigenous peoples and …

Canadian And Russian Fisheries Management In The Arctic: Complexities, Commonalities And Contrasts, David Vanderzwaag, Vitalii Vorobev, Olga Koubrak

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article reviews and compares Canadian and Russian approaches to Arctic fisheries management through a three-part format. First, the complex array of laws and policies applicable to Arctic fisheries is described for each country. How Canada and Russia have addressed international fishery issues is also highlighted, including their participation in the 2018 Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Agreement. Second, commonalities in fisheries governance approaches are summarized, including national commitments to implement precautionary and ecosystem approaches. Finally, contrasts in Arctic fisheries management are discussed. Major differences include the greater devolution of management responsibilities by Canada to Indigenous communities through land-claim agreements and …

The Origins Of Supreme Court Question Selection, Benjamin B. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

Arbitrary control over its own docket is the hallmark of the modern Supreme Court. While the Court’s power to choose its cases is a frequent subject of study, its practice of preselecting questions for review has received almost no attention. This is particularly surprising since the Court openly adds or subtracts questions in some of its most consequential and politicizing cases. Yet, despite the significance of this practice, its origins are poorly understood. This is the first Essay to uncover the hidden history of the Court’s question-selection powers. It reveals an important---and possibly intractable---conflict between the Court’s legal authority and …

Marketing Authorization At The Fda: Paradigms And Alternatives, Adam I. Muchmore

Faculty Scholarship

In many critical industries, the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) marketing authorization decisions determine the range of products available in the United States. Because of the broad scope of the FDA’s marketing authorization responsibilities, the existing scholarship focuses on individual product categories, or small groups of product categories, regulated by the agency. This Article identifies how the existing literature has overlooked important connections between the FDA’s different marketing authorization programs. These connections suggest both explanations for existing programs and strategies for potential reforms.

The Article sets forth a two-level framework for analyzing the FDA’s marketing authorization role. At the first …

Informed By Joy: A Christian Librarian's Reflection On C.S. Lewis, David H. Michels

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In Surprised by Joy C. S. Lewis offers us his account of his conversion to Christianity. Using his experiences of joy as “signposts,” he leads us through his early life up to his conversion at age thirty-one. I reflect on Lewis’s account as a librarian, researcher, and fellow Christian, considering his information world and the people who aided and hindered him on his faith journey. I conclude with some thoughts on his and my own conversion, as both unique yet shared experiences within the Christian tradition.

"Real joy seems to me almost as unlike security or prosperity as it is …

Animal Rights Activism And The Constitution: Are Ag-Gag Laws Justifiable Limits?, Jodi Lazare

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Forthcoming in the Osgoode Hall Law Journal (2022).

It is a troubling time to be an animal rights activist in Canada. Recently, Alberta adopted legislation to create harsh penalties for trespassing onto private property, for obtaining permission to enter private property based on false pretences, and for interfering with vehicles on public highways. These laws relate to agricultural lands, to private property generally, and, where roads are concerned, to public property. Ontario, for its part, has adopted similar legislation aimed specifically at agricultural property. The legislation in both provinces purports to protect the security of farmers, their families, and rural …

A Gender-Based Approach To Historical Child Support: Comment On Colucci V Colucci, Jodi Lazare, Kelsey Warr

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In June 2021 the Supreme Court of Canada (the “Court”) released Colucci v Colucci, its second decision in twelve months dealing with the complex subject of historical (commonly referred to as retroactive) child support. The case worked a significant shift in the law, arguably the first major revision to the law since the Court’s initial consideration of historical child support in DBS, in 2006. This comment suggests that Colucci represents a new understanding of the way that claims for historical child support should be considered in Canadian family law. The comment argues that in changing the applicable framework, …

Scouts Bsa Wood Badge Through The Lens Of Senge’S Disciplines Of A Learning Organization, Wendy Marik

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study used researcher participation, participant surveys and participant interviews to explore the presence of the five disciplines of Senge’s learning organization in the training of adult volunteer leaders in Scouts BSA’s Wood Badge in 2021. It also examined how the prevalence of Senge’s five disciplines affected Scouters’ perceptions of Wood Badge training.The study included survey results from 30 participants and interviews with four participants at Northern Star Council’s Wood Badge course in 2021. Findings indicated that all five of Senge’s disciplines were present in Scouts BSA’s Wood Badge course. The study confirmed that Scouts BSA is a …

Countering The New Election Subversion: The Democracy Principle And The Role Of State Courts, Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Miriam Seifter

Faculty Scholarship

Among the threats to American democracy, the most serious may also be the most banal: future elections will be compromised by quiet changes to the law. State legislators across the country have introduced bills that give them power to reject the will of voters. They have established sham audits and investigations. And they have created new criminal offenses that undermine professional election administration. While power-shifting legislation, audits, and criminal penalties advertise their fealty to law, they threaten the franchise and electoral integrity, as well as nonpartisan, expert election administration. Because of its ostensibly legal, even legalistic, character, however, the new …

The Liberatory Potential Of Fashion, David Billie Suoth

Honors Theses and Capstones

Fashion has the potential to be liberatory and this can be seen in the ways fashion has been targeted by systems of oppression. Fashion is the use of clothes as a vessel to create a greater social meaning. According to Edward Sapir, the meaning of fashion “while it is primarily applied to dress and the exhibition of the human body is not essentially concerned with the fact of dress or ornament, but with its symbolism” (Barnard, 2007, p. 65). Fashion with the symbolism behind it is able to show the sentiments and attitudes of civilization at different points in history …

The Health Effects Of Anthropogenic Pm2.5 Emissions, Andrew Charles Meyer

Honors Theses and Capstones

This study analyzes the health impacts of particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5), a common anthropogenic pollutant resulting from vehicles, manufacturing, and wood burning. PM2.5 is an emission of particular concern given its small size of roughly 2.5 micrometers, allowing it to stay in the atmosphere for up to 10 days and penetrate the deepest area of the lungs, the alveoli. This penetration can lead to adverse respiratory and cardiovascular health outcomes, and ultimately lead to an increased mortality rate. This study utilizes data from 1,885 counties in the U.S. between 2001 and 2017, and included health outcome, PM2.5 , and demographic …