Digital Commons Network^™

Level Up! Priming Hobbyist Political Identity Using Survey Experiment, Pavel Bačovský

All Faculty Scholarship

Recent research suggests that a strong identity attachment to leisure activity affects the hobbyists' political preferences and behavior. This paper further evaluates the claim that hobbyists - in this case, gamers - react differently to political stimuli that directly involve their hobby of choice. Using original survey experiment data, this paper shows that gamers become more interested in foreign trade policy when presented in the context of video games. This finding indicates that even seemingly apolitical identities matter in framing political behavior. Aspects of hobbyist identities seep into political attitudes, even if preferences in the strictest meaning of the word …

Employers And The Privatization Of Public Health, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

This Article focuses on the role of employers in public health and argues that they constitute increasingly important actors in the U.S. public health arena. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, a series of judicial decisions and newly enacted statutes enfeebled the public health powers of the federal and state governments. In a 2023 statement, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch clearly articulated his antagonism towards government-initiated COVID-19 interventions, describing them as “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.” All too many share his views.

Employers may be highly motivated to safeguard their workers’ …

Manual Qualitative Data Coding Using Ms Word For Students And Early Career Researchers In Resource-Constrained Settings, Kahabi Isangula, Susan Kelly, Joyce Wamoyi

School of Nursing & Midwifery, East Africa

In recent years, the field of qualitative data collection, management, and analysis has undergone significant evolution, with researchers worldwide increasingly leveraging technological advancements to streamline and simplify their practices. Despite the advantages of using qualitative data coding software, several challenges persist, particularly in resource-constrained settings. Issues such as the high cost of software licenses, the time required to learn and use these tools, and the complexity of advanced features often hinder researchers, especially students and early career researchers in low-income contexts, and contribute to the generation of poor-quality research evidence. This paper aims to provide a simplified, step-by-step guide to …

A Qualitative Exploration Of Nurses’ And Midwives’ Experiences In Designated Covid-19 Healthcare Facilities In Rural And Urban Tanzania, Kahabi Isangula, Lucy Kisaka, Loveluck Mwasha

School of Nursing & Midwifery, East Africa

Background:

Frontline healthcare providers, particularly nurses and midwives, are at higher risk of COVID-19 infection due to frequent patient contact. However, studies examining their experiences, particularly in low-income countries like Tanzania, are limited.

Objective:

This study aimed to explore the experiences of nurses and midwives providing care in COVID-19-designated healthcare facilities in selected regions of Tanzania.

Methods:

A qualitative descriptive approach was used to investigate the experiences of nurses and midwives in COVID-19 care. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 purposefully selected participants from Dar es Salaam, Shinyanga, and Pwani regions. Data were coded with NVivo 12 software and analyzed …

Chinese Fintech Goes Global: Political Challenges And Business Strategies, Yujia He

Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce Faculty Publications

Fintech (the application of digital technology to financial services) has witnessed unprecedented growth, bringing significant implications for the financial system and sustainable development.1 The Financial Stability Board, an international body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system, defines fintech as “technologically enabled financial innovation that could result in new business models, applications, processes, or products with an associated material effect on financial markets and institutions and the provision of financial services.”2 The use of technology in finance is certainly not new—consider the growth of electronic banking and high-frequency trading in the early 2000s. In the past two …

Originalism's Selection Problem, Darrell A.H. Miller

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

Originalism is called a “family” of theories. If that’s true, they all suffer from a congenital malady: the problem of selection. This vulnerability afflicts every branch of the family, whether we speak of original intentions originalism, original public meaning originalism, original methods originalism, or original law originalism—any originalism that descends from Attorney General Ed Meese’s legendary speech before the American Bar Association in 1985.2 To the extent originalism of any variety purports to make descriptive, falsifiable claims about language, history, tra- dition, practice, or law, all of them must confront problems common to any empirical project—what data to collect, how …

New Model Of Tele-Healthcare For Consultation, Diagnosis, And Treatment Of A Cicatricial Pemphigoid Case Using Mobile Phones For Communication Among The Patient, The Clinic Dentist, And The Oral Pathology Specialist, Chung-Pin Chiang, Feng-Chou Cheng, Julia Yu-Fong Chang

Journal of Dental Sciences

No abstract provided.

Successive Measurement Errors Of Consecutive Computed Tomography For Airway-Related Craniofacial Dimensional Measurements, Jenny Zwei-Chieng Chang, Jui-Sheng Sun, Shih-Ying Lin, Chi-Yeh Hsieh, Min-Chih Hung, Han-Cheng Tai

Journal of Dental Sciences

Abstract Background/purpose The use of computed tomography (CT) for craniofacial measurements is common in medical imaging, but concerns about accuracy and reliability persist, especially with different CT technologies. This study assessed the accuracy of twenty-six common measurements on consecutive CT images from the same patients, using multidetector CT (MDCT) and cone-beam CT (CBCT) with two software programs (Amira and Dolphin). Materials and methods Ten adult subjects with consecutive CBCT scans within one year were randomly selected. Another ten subjects with consecutive MDCT scans were paired with the CBCT group based on age, gender, race, occlusion, and craniofacial pattern. All digital …

Are Late Talkers Just Late? Neighborhood Density And Word Frequency Properties Of Late Talkers' Spoken Vocabularies, Elizabeth Schoen Simmons, Rhea Paul

Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

Purpose: Typically developing toddlers extract patterns from their input to addwords to their spoken lexicons, yet some evidence suggests that late talkersleverage the statistical regularities of the ambient language differently than dopeers. Using the extended statistical learning account, we sought to comparelexical-level statistical features of spoken vocabularies between late talkers andtwo typically developing comparison groups.Method: MacArthur–Bates Communicative Developmental Inventories AmericanEnglish Words and Sentences (N = 1,636) were extracted from Wordbank, adatabase of CDIs. Inventories were divided into three groups: (a) a late talkergroup (n = 202); (b) a typically developing age-matched group (n = 1,238); and(c) a younger, typically developing …

Social Support After Tbi: An Investigation Of Facebook Posts In Open Access Support Groups, Nicole Cruse, Helena R. Sabo, Melissa Brunner

Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) significantly affects social interactions and emotional well-being. Following COVID-19, there has been growing interest in how individuals with TBI use online social media groups for support. This study examined engagement patterns in four Facebook support groups: two for TBI and two control groups. A deductive approach was used to categorize 4,133 posts and comments into a framework of support discourse, including seeking and giving support, and non-social support. Each category was further subdivided to analyze post content in more detail. Comments on posts were coded for helpfulness/appropriateness. Results revealed that posts in all groups fell into …

The Communication Conundrum: Weighing The Need To Prove Intent In Erisa Misrepresentation Claims, Kristen Hobbs

Emory Law Journal

In 1974, Congress enacted the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) to provide oversight to voluntary employee benefit plans in the private sector. The statute, which draws from a deep well of common law history, places robust requirements on fiduciaries who safeguard such plans. Shortly after ERISA’s enactment, courts were forced to interpret the broad fiduciary duties set forth in 29 U.S. § 1104, which simply mandates that fiduciaries must discharge duties solely in the interest of the participants and beneficiaries. Considering this broad language, courts set out to define specific standards to which fiduciaries should be held, particularly surrounding …

Using Explainable Ai (Xai) For Identification Of Subjectivity In Hate Speech Annotations For Low-Resource Languages, Madhuri Sawant, Arjumand Younus, Simon Caton, Muhammad Atif Qureshi

Conference proceedings

The proliferation of hate speech on digital platforms has become a significant issue, and automated content moderation systems built on machine learning are a proposed solution. However, they face challenges in multilingual and low-resource settings due to the need for extensive labelled data. This paper introduces an explainable AI framework designed to identify annotation discrepancies in low-resource languages, focusing on Hindi, the third most-spoken language worldwide, which lacks comprehensive research in hate speech detection. By examining the labelling quality of the Hate speech and Offensive Content Identification in English and Indo-Aryan Languages (HASOC) challenge, we use unsupervised learning methods to …

Antisemitism: A View From Within The Rabbinic Legal Tradition, Suzanne L. Stone

Book Chapters

What does it mean to reflect on antisemitism and law? From an interdisciplinary perspective, the contributors examine the connections within this field of research for the first time. Approaches from diverse disciplines, including history, philosophy, sociology, literary studies, and law, fill initial gaps but also reveal problems, challenges, and areas for further study. Ultimately, this volume lays the foundation for a deeper understanding of antisemitism in legal scholarship and practice.

Interpretation Of The Hurricane Ian Cone Forecast Impact On Evacuation Decision Making Of Individuals Aged 55 And Older, Jack Gulisano, Rashida Jones, Elizabeth Dunn, Maria Paula Ibarcena Woll

Weather, Climate, and Society REU

Pinellas County, which has a large percentage of 55+ adults (42.5%) was affected by Hurricane Ian in 2022. The Forecast cone changed paths many times in the days leading to landfall (Figures 1-4). At one point Pinellas County was forecasted to be the area of landfall for Ian at major hurricane strength, but forecasts shifted south before landfall. By definition of the National Hurricane Center, the cone represents the probable track of the center of a tropical cyclone, its designed so that two-thirds of historical official forecast errors over a 5-year sample fall within the cone. Research conducted by Scotney …

Mitigating The Effects Of Excessive Heat In Hillsborough County's Vulnerable Neighborhoods, Paige Burchell, Robin Ersing, Beverly Ward

Weather, Climate, and Society REU

In 2023, Hillsborough County faced a particularly hot summer. Maximum daily heat indices in Tampa reached at least 100°F for 90 days, 55 of which had heat indices of at least 105°F, and 26 of which had heat indices of at least 108°F.

Hillsborough County is home to over 1.5 million residents, and it is composed of various types of communities. While the entire county faces excessive heat, some populations within the county are more at-risk of heat-related complications than others. Physically vulnerable populations include older adults, young children, pregnant females, and people with asthma or other disabilities that make …

Cooperative Bargaining During Mate Competition: A Test In Male Guppies, Maddisen Bell

All Master's Theses

Competition for mating opportunities among individuals of the same sex is a well-documented phenomenon, yet the extent of cooperation in such contexts remains underexplored. This study aims to investigate the occurrence of cooperative bargaining between two males in scenarios of limited and equal female availability, using non-wild descendants of the Trinidad guppy (Poecilia reticulata) as a model species. Four experimental trials assessed courtship length (in seconds) and male-female and male-male interactions, including courtship and aggressive behaviors based on previous research (Magurran et al., 1991). The analysis included the examination of the duration of courtship, the number of aggressive …

Echoes Of Internment: A Study Of The Removal And Reuse Of Buildings From The Former Minidoka War Relocation Center, Idaho, Ian Lennon Reischl

All Master's Theses

In the study of Japanese American relocation centers, much of the emphasis is put on the centers while they were still active detention centers, and not what happened to them after they closed. The buildings of the centers often were not scrapped and landfilled but removed and repurposed in the farms and towns surrounding the former center sites, and now blend into their current environments.

I built a comprehensive inventory of buildings that were part of the Minidoka Relocation Center, the site of which is now a National Historic Site. I compiled their former uses within the center, current uses, …

Towards An Engaging And Integrated Climate Change Pedagogy, Noor Ul Ain, Fozia Parveen, Nighat Rabbani, Afsana Shaheen

Books

Note Three years ago, we embarked on a journey to create open and free resources for teachers. We were overwhelmed by the positive response to each of our publications, whether in the form of activity booklets, dictionary, fiction, or early childhood lesson plans.
We were fortunate to receive a grant under the Climate Action Fellowship project from the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar. Initially, the project aimed to create a resource booklet of lessons and activities focused solely on climate change and climate change pedagogy. However, as we progressed, we realized the importance of first meeting with teachers to understand their …

Fostering Environmental Sustainability Through Early Childhood Education(Ece)., Tahira Jabeen, Fozia Parveen, Nasima Shakeel

Books

No abstract provided.

Applying The Normative Design Approach To Civil Engineering, Justin R. Vander Werff

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

In 1986, the book Responsible Technology [1] was published as an important compilation from a number of thoughtful Christians engaged in technology and engineering in that era. In many ways, this book and those involved with it laid the foundation for what has become the Christian Engineering Society. A particularly valuable aspect of this work was that it laid out a biblically normative framework for doing engineering based on Herman Dooyeweerd’s modal aspects [2], fleshing out how the higher aspects such as faith, ethics, and justice should play an integral role in engineering development, even though we often have a …

Cutworms (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) Affecting Crops On The Canadian Prairies, Jeremy Hummel

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

There is a complex of cutworm species that are pests in western Canada, with important species including Agrotis orthogonia (pale western cutworm), Euxoa auxiliaris (army cutworm), and Euxoa ochrogaster (redbacked cutworm). Cutworm damage is sporadic and patchy, and as a result is difficult to predict. During outbreak years, insecticide applications and/or reseeding are necessary and yield losses can be significant. Recently, field-collected cutworm larvae were reared in the lab to estimate levels of parasitism, which ranged from 2% to 25%, depending on the province and the year of sampling, and to identify the parasitoid complex attacking cutworms. The parasitoid Cotesia …

Genie Duty, Savannah S. Franklin

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

“The Magic in My Writing” follows the writing, inspiration, and brainstorming for an excerpt of the novel Genie Duty. Genie Duty follows the protagonist, who is later renamed Jane, with her newfound genie companion, Gene. She is put on trial after using her final wish to wish for more genies, against the rules. Her sentence to serve as a genie “temporarily.” Together they strive to fight their genie punishment and get to the root of the origins of genie-kind. Scholarly influences of the work include Lubomír Doležel, Franz Kafka, John Gardner and Wolf Schmid, who describe the unique first-person narration …

Evaluating The Normative Development And Efficacy Of The Life Functional Module, Kaitlyn A. Hui

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The Life Functional Module (Dixon, 2020) is an all-encompassing assessment and curriculum designed to promote learner’s independence and well-being by teaching daily living, social, leisure, and other functional or meaningful skills. There is a wide variety of curricula that is currently used in applied-behavior analysis services and programming, including the Essentials for Living, Assessment of Functional Living Skills (AFLS), and the Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB-MAPP). However, there is a lack of research in empirical evidence in regards to the efficacy of these curricula (Ackley et. al, 2019; Padilla et. al, 2023). The first manuscript of this …

Pioneering Plant Metabolomic Library Of Indonesian Plants For Research, Conservation, Capacity Building And Economic Development, Isabel Armas, Ernawati Sinaga, Nonon Saribanon, Noverita, Alvira Noer Effendi, Chairil Rohadi, Hanifa Nur Adilah, Vyacheslav Dushenkov, Ilya Raskin

Publications and Research

Indonesia, one of the world’s most biodiverse countries, is undergoing mass deforestation, exacerbating climate change and leading to accelerated loss of species. This project addressed the urgent need to conserve endangered Indonesian biodiversity. Specifically, the potentially life-saving bioactive compounds harbored within its plants. A group of Indonesian researchers from Universitas Nasional (UNAS) in Jakarta received training in RApid Metabolome Extraction and Storage (RAMES) technology, an ethical, low-impact, field-deployable and cost-effective methodology developed by Rutgers University. The team of Indonesian scientists used this technology to create the first metabolomic library of Indonesian plant species and an easily transportable collection containing 501 …

The Notes You Don’T Play: An Empirical Analysis Of The Ninth Circuit’S Filtration Problem In Music Copyright Cases, Robert D. Capodilupo

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

The Ninth Circuit’s approach to music copyright cases has failed to provide artists with a clear landscape of the boundaries of copyright protection for creative works. Perhaps most disconcerting is the doctrine’s lack of rigid guidance as to which elements of a composition are protected by copyright. Since the court’s controversial ruling in Williams v. Gaye, which showcased the court’s failure to differentiate between protectable and unprotectable musical elements, the literature has taken a greater interest in analyzing the effects of this muddied doctrine. In their 2019 article, Christopher Jon Sprigman and Samantha Fink Hedrick theorize how the doctrine of …

Forming A More Perfect Union With Blockchains And Nfts: Why The United States Should Embrace An E-Government, Alexandria Labaro

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

This Note analyzes blockchain and non-fungible token (“NFT”) technology in the government, emphasizing the benefits of technological integration for improved data security and streamlined bureaucratic processes. It follows the growing popularity of “e-government” practices across the globe and considers factors associated with integrating blockchain and NFT technology in U.S. governmental procedures.

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Section 702: The Good, The Bad, And A Proposal To Make It Less Ugly, Kevin Burns

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) has been controversial since its inception. Created to allow intelligence collection against targeted foreign persons, electronic surveillance under Section 702 casts a wide net, often capturing communications sent to or by United States persons. Opponents point to the invasion of privacy such collection presents, and to the well-documented abuse and biased use of Section 702 data against U.S. citizens. This Note argues that despite this, Section 702 is a vital tool in the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking and the case against Section 702 is weaker than it appears. This …

A Glance Not Taken—When Claim Interpretation Ignores The Best Evidence, David R. Soucy, Esq.

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

A little-known but longstanding rule of patent law is that the article “a” means one or more than one when recited within a patent claim. But the commonly understood meaning of “a” is a numerosity of just one. The case of Salazar v. AT&T Mobility is about the misapplication of the patent law general rule of indefinite articles to find that the term “a microprocessor” means just one microchip. That fundamental tenet states that “a” means one or more than one, unless a patentee disavowed that meaning as evidenced by: (1) other language of the claims (i.e., dependent …

Good Readers, Good Writers, And Ai: Tool, Collaborator, Author?, Katherine Jung

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) systems have revolutionized the world of creative writing. Beyond providing simple grammar or spelling assistance, the most advanced of these systems can now play a collaborative role in the writing process, increasing productivity while pushing content in new and surprising directions. AI-generated creativity raises compelling questions in the context of copyright law, which has long been predicated on the assumption of human authorship. The capacity of AI to one day generate writing at a level of mastery on par with human beings complicates traditional notions of creativity, the protection of which the entire copy …

Connection In An Age Of Connectivity: An Evaluation Of Synchronous And Asynchronous Law Classrooms, Mary Kate Kearney, Miranda E. Thompson

Western New England Law Review

As the world was thrust into a global pandemic, legal education was forced to confront the evolution of technological teaching modalities. While these technological advances allowed legal education to prosper in the short-term emergency education situation, their continued use creates barriers between the student and teacher which diminishes a student’s ability to develop critical lawyering skills. Based on our own roles as professor and student, we agree that deviating from in-person education will have detrimental effects for teachers and students and will undermine the collaborative relationship of the classroom. Legal institutions have refined in-person teaching methods, such as the Socratic …