Digital Commons Network^™

Decommissioning Offshore Oil And Gas Infrastructure: Report Of Proceedings, May 2, 2025 Offshore Decommissioning Workshop, Martin Lockman, Ashwin Murthy, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

On May 2, 2025, Ocean Conservancy and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law organized a workshop at Columbia Law School on offshore oil and gas decommissioning in the United States. The overarching goal of the workshop was to bring together offshore law and policy experts to outline a research and policy agenda for offshore decommissioning. Within this broad goal, we sought to (1) identify key opportunities to reform offshore decommissioning law in the United States, both in the short term and over the next decade, (2) identify knowledge gaps and highlight areas for future research, and (3) begin to …

Preconstruction Services For Land Conservancy San Luis Obispo Deck Replacement, Russell Sprague

Construction Management

This senior project centers around a preconstruction collaboration between Semmes & Co. and the Land Conservancy of San Luis Obispo (LCSLO) for a new deck at the Santa Rita Ranch house in Templeton, CA. The existing deck was in poor condition and not ADA compliant, prompting the need for a safe, accessible, and aesthetically pleasing replacement. This project supported the nonprofit by providing volunteer-based preconstruction services, including quantity takeoffs, a detailed material list, scope breakdown, labor estimates, scheduling, and logistics planning. Material options and scope variations were presented to LCSLO in a flexible pricing proposal using a Time and Materials …

2025 Annual V.E.S.T Hackathon: Renovating Safety Harnesses, Mason P. Chamberlin

Construction Management

This paper presents the organizational framework and logistical planning involved in executing the 2025 Verifying Everyone’s Safety Together (V.E.S.T.) Hackathon, an annual innovation workshop hosted by the Construction Management Department at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. The event brings together students, faculty, and industry professionals to reimagine and redesign common construction equipment with a focus on safety, usability, comfort, and inclusivity across diverse user profiles. The 2025 hackathon, held April 15–16, concentrated on safety harnesses, an essential component of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the construction industry. Participants engaged in the two-day event that included conceptualization, prototyping, and …

Skip The Grid: Solar Installation For Navajo Communities, Emilio Tiziano Cervantes

Construction Management

In March 2025, a group of 20 students from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo took part in Skip the Grid, a hands-on service initiative aimed at expanding access to reliable solar energy in the Navajo Nation. In partnership with SOLV Energy, NextTracker, and the non-profit Heart of America, the team traveled to Chinle, Arizona, where they installed off-grid solar systems in 40 homes across the Chinle School District. Each setup included solar panels, a battery with electrical outlets, lighting, and a refrigerator—providing essential power to families whose homes were previously without it. All of the households served kids …

Measuring Children’S Reward And Punishment Sensitivity: An Initial Psychometric Evaluation Of The Contingency Response Rating Scale, Daniel A. Waschbusch, Vanessa T. Cao, Delshad M. Shroff, Pevitr S. Bansal, Michael T. Willoughby

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Existing research shows that children’s responses to rewards and punishments are essential for understanding attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, and callous-unemotional traits. The present study developed the Contingency Response Rating Scale (CRRS) to fulfill the need for a reliable and valid measure of children’s contingency response style that is brief, easy to use in applied settings, and provides additional information to existing clinical measures. We examined the psychometric properties of the CRRS in a sample of 196 children (ages 5–12), most of whom were referred to evaluate attention and behavior problems in an outpatient clinic. Using principal axis …

Interpretation As Creation: Article Vi Of The Outer Space Treaty, Charles Stotler

Chicago Journal of International Law

From the launch of Sputnik I in 1957 to proposals for In-Space Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing (ISAM) and new lunar activities such as resource utilization, advancing technology has always been a driving factor in the creation of space law. From a legal-historical perspective, the notion of law as creation should be contextualized in a broader legal-philosophical transition that began with the rise of positivism. Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty orbits unsteadily between international obligations and national implementation measures, rendering significant States’ understandings of those provisions. Our understanding of Article VI turns on perhaps the most creative legal endeavor: …

Satellite Infrastructures And Law In The Making Of Planetary Knowledge, Benedict Kingsbury, Yirong Sun

Chicago Journal of International Law

Imaginations of Planet Earth as-a-whole—that is, Earth conceived in planetary terms by wide publics—have been shaped over several decades by the growing capabilities of artificial Earth satellites to image the whole Earth, to specify all locations, and to integrate the Earth’s diverse orbital space with everyday human activities. Different Earth orbits are becoming more densely used, more securitized, more intensely managed from Earth, and more integral to activities on Earth.

This Article focuses on two categories of satellite systems that contribute directly to planetary knowledge, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and Earth Observation Satellite Systems (EOSS). GNSS and EOSS have …

Interplanetary Risk Regulation, Jonathan B. Wiener, Charles (Chase) Hamilton

Chicago Journal of International Law

Space exploration promises new opportunities but also new risks. After centuries of national settlements and international conflicts on Earth, and the Cold War era of two great power states racing to the Moon, today we see a rapidly proliferating arena of actors, both governmental and non-governmental, undertaking bold new ventures off-Earth while posing an array of new risks. These multiple activities, actors, and risks raise the prospects of regulatory gaps, costs, conflicts, and complexities that warrant reconsideration and renovation of legacy legal regimes such as the international space law agreements. New approaches are needed, beyond current national and international law, …

The Click-And-Commit World Order, Melissa J. Durkee

Chicago Journal of International Law

This Article explores the rise of a new model of global governance: the “click-and-commit world order,” characterized by digitally mediated pledging platforms through which a wide array of actors—states, corporations, cities, NGOs, and individuals—publicly commit to addressing global problems through non-binding promises. In contrast to traditional treaty-making, these pledging platforms offer a decentralized, voluntary framework for international cooperation that relies on public declarations rather than negotiated obligations.

Within the U.N. system, this mode of governance developed within the United Nations Global Compact and the Paris Climate Agreement, where bottom-up pledges were institutionalized within formal and informal international structures. The internet …

The Law Of Armed Conflict – In The Dark, Laurie R. Blank

Chicago Journal of International Law

In a potential future peer-on-peer or near peer conflict, the technological capabilities that are both taken for granted and a source of military superiority will be an immediate and high- value target. Global navigation and positioning systems, satellite imaging, precision guidance, instantaneous communication, and much more— the adversary will seek to shut down these capabilities. Turning off the technology, or fighting “in the dark,” presents complex operational and tactical challenges of navigation, logistics, communication, command and control, coordination, and targeting, to name just a few. However, executing military operations in such a technology-deprived environment also requires the application and implementation …

Distinction, Proportionality, And Precautions In Attacks At Sea In The New Era Of The Law Of Naval Warfare, James Kraska

Chicago Journal of International Law

China has upset the security balance in East Asia through the development of a long- range strike complex composed of anti-ship ballistic missiles, drones and cruise missiles, and hypersonic missiles that put U.S. naval fleets at risk. Beijing’s innovative approach to sea control through the projection of power from land-based fires highlights three important differences between the law applicable to naval warfare and the law of armed conflict (LOAC) as it is implemented on land.1 These legal distinctions are subtle in law, but they shape concrete choices available to naval commanders and could determine the outcome of war at sea. …

Technology And The Law Of Jus Ante Bellum, Asaf Lubin

Chicago Journal of International Law

The temporal boundaries of the international rules governing military force are myopic. By focusing only on the initiation and conduct of war, the legal dichotomy between Jus Ad Bellum and Jus In Bello fails to address the critical role of peacetime military preparations in shaping future conflicts. Disruptive military technologies, such as artificial intelligence and cyber offensive capabilities, only further underscore this deficiency. During their pre-war development, these technologies embed countless design choices, hardcoding into their software and user interfaces policy rationales, legal interpretations, and value judgments. Once deployed in battle, these choices have the potential to precondition warfighters and …

Revolutions In Justice: Advancing The Rome Statute System To Fight Impunity In Future Wars, Lindsay Freeman

Chicago Journal of International Law

The modern system of international criminal justice, which was born out of World War II and built in its current form during the early 1990s, is both revolutionary and a relic. The ideals, innovation, and vision that created the international legal order were ground-breaking at the time but have failed to evolve at a pace that ensures its relevance and efficacy. The challenges we face today are drastically different from those in the period in which the framework was conceived, the institutions were formed, and the laws were drafted. While these changes have been incremental over several decades, technological advances …

Scaffolded Integration: Aligning Ai Literacy With Authentic Assessment Through A Revised Taxonomy In Education, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

The accelerating prevalence of generative artificial intelligence in educational and professional spheres necessitates a reevaluation of when and how such technologies are introduced within pedagogical practice. The principal challenge for educators is not merely the imperative to prepare students for an AI-driven world, but rather to ensure that assessment practices remain authentic—providing an accurate measure of what students can independently achieve before leveraging the augmentation potential of intelligent systems. This article contends that the incremental introduction of AI, mapped onto a scaffolded framework aligned with a revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, constitutes a methodologically sound approach for maintaining academic integrity, fostering transferable …

Water Flowing Down Wall Street, Vanessa Casado-Pérez

Faculty Scholarship

Water scarcity is a perennial problem with dire consequences for the United States and governments around the world. A lack of adequate water resources is a systematic cause of environmental harm, economic damage, and societal division. Climate change has exacerbated these problems making water even more valuable and essential.

Financial actors have turned water into the new oil. These large financial actors profiteer from buying and selling water without any interest in its actual use as an input of production. Instead, they typically seek to hold these rights until dire situations, like droughts and fires, cause temporary, but large, spikes …

War, Wounds, And Strategy: Patient Movement Lessons From The World Wars For Great Power Competition, Phillip R. Jenkins

Faculty Publications

This thesis examines the evolution of the U.S. military's patient movement system during World War I and World War II to evaluate how well it may perform under the conditions of future large-scale combat operations. It asks whether the United States can move, treat, and sustain wounded personnel at the scale and pace required to preserve combat power in a prolonged, high-intensity conflict. Using detailed case studies of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and the Battle of the Bulge, the analysis focuses on how transportation platforms, organizational structure, and standard operating procedures (SOPs) shaped patient movement under conditions of attrition, disruption, and …

Librarians And The Data Literacy Ecosystem: Workforce Perspectives On Competencies And Skills Development, Wendy G. Pothier, Patricia Condon

Faculty Publications

Given the rapid growth of data creation, increasing automation and AI, and expanding daily interactions with data, our collective need to increase data literacy is of key importance. However, the literature identifies a data literacy gap highlighting a need for improving data literacy skills in the workplace. This session will share seven proposed business data literacy competencies, demonstrate the competencies’ alignment with the ACRL Framework, and discuss findings from a two-part research study with industry professionals on how data literacy competencies move from classroom to workplace practices. The presenters will share findings from a recent research study, which surveyed over …

The Financial Effects Of Enrolling Students With Disabilities In Catholic High Schools In States That Offer Vouchers Or Scholarships For Students With Disabilities, Susan M. Noonan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the financial effect of enrolling students with disabilities in Catholic high schools located in states that offer vouchers or scholarships for these students. Furthermore, the research aimed to understand the school’s experience in collaborating with the U.S. Department of Education to meet the criteria for voucher acceptance. It is important to note that enrollment and tuition revenue is the key to a school’s financial stability. Using an exploratory case study approach, information was gathered from a variety of stakeholders including the superintendent, administration, business manager, admissions coordinator, teachers, and counselors. The findings indicated that parents of children …

Organizational Cyber Resilience In Higher Education: How Administrative Leaders Experience A Disruptive Cyber Attack, Elizabeth R. Brentzel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite increasing cyber threats to higher education, little research examines how administrative leaders experience and navigate these crises to keep their institutions operational. This hermeneutic phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of seven administrative leaders in three higher education institutions following cyber attacks that disrupted normal operations. This study examined how leaders make sense of cyber crisis experiences and what factors shape their decision-making during response and recovery. Key findings reveal five critical areas of impact. First, cyber attacks can have deep emotional impacts on leaders and staff. Despite these effects, they maintain a strong dedication to enacting the educational …

Weight Recidivism Post-Bariatric Surgery: A Lifestyle Modifications Educational Intervention, Kimeshia N. Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Weight recidivism after bariatric surgery is a frustrating phenomenon for bariatric surgery patients and healthcare professionals. A 90-day lifestyle modification intervention for patients at least 18 months postsurgery was performed in the primary care setting to determine if a structured program could promote or maintain weight loss. The intervention aimed to investigate if participation in a structured lifestyle modification program would impact the body mass index of bariatric patients at least 18 months postsurgical intervention. In coordination with a nutritionist specializing in addiction and obesity education, a booklet detailing the guidelines for a 12-week program was provided to 41 bariatric …

A Standardized Bathing Protocol To Prevent Central Line–Associated Bloodstream And Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus Infections, Lindsy L. Phillips

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Central line–associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs), including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections, in medical–surgical inpatients increase mortality, length of stay, and readmissions. In this project, the investigator sought to decrease CLABSIs and MRSA infections through quality improvement by implementing a standard chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG) bathing process. An urban hospital in the Midwestern United States experienced more CLABSIs and MRSA infections than expected in 2024. This unit had a standardized infection ratio of 1.4, with three CLABSIs rather than the 2.1 predicted. Also, they had 10 hospital-acquired MRSA isolates, which was higher than the 3.3 average of the other medical–surgical units. The …

Leadership And Peer Support Of Surgeons Post-Adverse Event: A Phenomenological Study, Maxine E. Trent

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract Surgeons are leaving the active practice of surgery and fewer physicians are pursuing surgical training, as a result the United States is predicted to have a shortage of surgeons until 2050. Surgery hosts a multitude of occupational stressors, one of which is interoperative adverse events and the subsequent experience of second victims. The literature indicates surgeons prefer psychological/emotional support from peers after interoperative adverse events. However, best practices for how to deliver peer and leadership support responses when surgeons experience second victims have not been established. This was a phenomenological qualitative study targeting practicing surgeons across the United States. …

Technology And The Unique Challenges Of Applying Law To The Realm Of Outer Space And Space Activities, F.G. Von Der Dunk

Chicago Journal of International Law

For better or worse, technology at heart is—except to the extent that artificial intelligence fundamentally becomes involved—not so much a creator as a facilitator and enhancer of human acts, actions and activities, allowing them to become more effective, less costly, or sometimes even just merely feasible. Perhaps nowhere that is more pertinent then when it comes to human activities in outer space, which are still overwhelmingly conducted remotely and hence crucially dependent on technology. Given that “the law” has always been geared to address humans and their acts, actions, and activities, this gives rise to a rather special approach to …

The Reign Of Cerberus: International Law And Technological Innovation, Paul B. Stephan

Chicago Journal of International Law

This Essay sketches an informal theory of the impact of technological change on international economics, and hence international relations expressed as international law. The theory points to a policy trilemma, something that I call Cerberus in a perhaps futile attempt at an arresting metaphor. The Essay uses the trilemma to illuminate the general trends in technology policy we see playing out in China, Europe, and the United States. It argues that we have the privilege of witnessing an ongoing natural experiment in optimal technology regulation and legal policy, with no guarantee as to which approach will prevail.

Of course, like …

Digital Evidence: Facilitating What And For Whom?, Rebecca Hamilton, Adebayo Okeowo

Chicago Journal of International Law

The emergence of user-generated evidence has revolutionized how atrocities and human rights violations are documented globally. Since 2011, when Syrian human rights defenders began documenting atrocities on their smartphones, a professional field has emerged around the collection, authentication, and preservation of digital evidence. However, this professionalization has created unintended consequences, as expertise and verification power shifted away from frontline communities to Global North institutions. This Article examines this tension through two case studies: the Rohingya Genocide Archive, and Nigeria's #EndSARS movement. These examples demonstrate both the power of locally-informed evidence collection and the challenges when verification skills remain concentrated among …

Two Terribles: A Day Without Space And Ai Enabled Synthetic Biological Weapons A Warning Order, James E. Baker

Chicago Journal of International Law

A day without space, a term used to describe the loss or destruction of America’s space assets, and the potential generation of novel biological threats using AI and synthetic biology present catastrophic and potentially existential threats to U.S. security in a way that nuclear weapons did before and continue to do so today. Yet they have not received the level of attention from national security lawyers or commentators they warrant. This article describes the threats. It describes the current and inchoate nature of the law to address these threats. And it makes initial recommendations to policymakers and lawyers about how …

Vol 70 #3, Rebecca Chavez

MPLA Newsletter

No abstract provided.

On The Deployment Of Ris-Mounted Uav Networks, Anupam Mondal

Master’s Dissertations

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) enable smart wireless environments by dynamically controlling signal propagation to enhance communication and localization. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can act as flying base stations and thus, improve system performance by avoiding signal blockages. In this paper, we propose a gradient ascent and coordinate search based method to determine the optimal location for a system that consists of a UAV and a RIS, where the UAV serves cellular users (CUs) and the RIS serves device-to-device (D2D) pairs. In particular, by optimizing the net throughput for both the D2D pairs and the CUs, the suggested method establishes the …

Modeling And Verification Of Sigma Delta Neural Networks, Sirshendu Das

Master’s Dissertations

In the context of modern day embedded safety-critical systems and low-resource edge devices in particular, Sigma-Delta Neural Networks (SDNNs) offer a promising alternative to traditional Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) by leveraging eventdriven, sparse computations inspired by biological neural processing. This energyefficient paradigm makes SDNNs well-suited for neuromorphic hardware and realtime applications, particularly in scenarios with temporal redundancy, such as video processing. However, as neural networks become integral to safety-critical systems, ensuring their robustness against adversarial perturbations is an absolute necessity. In this work, we propose an end-to-end framework for formal modeling and verification of SDNNs using Satisfiability Modulo Theory (SMT). …

Energy-Efficient Uav Movement And User-Uav Association In Multi-Uav Networks, Subhadip Ghosh

Master’s Dissertations

These days, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based millimeter wave (mmWave) communication systems have drawn a lot of attention due to the increasing demand for faster data rates. Given the susceptibility of mmWave signals to obstacles and high propagation loss of mmWaves, ensuring line-of-sight (LoS) connectivity is critical for maintaining robust and efficient communication. Furthermore, UAVs have limited power resource and limited capacity in terms of number of users it can serve. Most significantly di↵erent users have di↵erent delay requirements and they keep moving while interacting with the UAVs. In this paper, first, we have provided an efficient solution for the optimal …