Digital Commons Network^™

Lgbtqia+ Hate Crimes And State Non-Discrimination Policies: An Analysis, Jillian Jones

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

While LGBTQIA+ rights have been increasing in the United States for decades, many states do not have non-discrimination policies that protect individuals based on their gender identity and sexual orientation. This lack in protection leaves many LGBTQIA+ individuals vulnerable to experiencing discrimination and harassment, which could lead to hate crimes, cultivating an environment of passive tolerance rather than active resistance. Active resistance can be achieved through the passage of non-discrimination policies, as well as addressing minority stress that LGBTQIA+ individuals can be susceptible to when they are actively experiencing or anticipating discrimination and harassment. This research paper addresses whether the …

Women Leaders' Lived Experiences Of Bravery In Leadership, Michelle E. Bartlett

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

Purpose

The research aims to understand the stories of women leaders who have demonstrated bravery in leadership. By analyzing their lived experiences through storytelling and narratives, it seeks to shed light on the challenges and motivations behind their brave actions, contributing to a deeper understanding of bravery in leadership within gender and organizational contexts.

Design/methodology/approach

This study adopts a qualitative multiple case study approach, focusing on the autobiographical accounts of three women leaders to explore their experiences of bravery in leadership. Utilizing narrative analysis (NA), it is grounded in ethical leadership theory and narrative identity theory. The research method involves …

Supporting Social Justice In Physical Education Teacher Education Programs: A Qualitative Analysis Of Adapted Pe Teachers' Perspectives, Ann-Catherine Sullivan, Christianna Blanchard-Alworth, Cynthia K. Piletic, Linda Hilgenbrinck

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

Despite attention to sociocultural issues in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE), the role of Adapted Physical Education (APE) teachers as social justice advocates remains underexplored. A primary responsibility of APE teachers is to provide specially designed instruction to students with disabilities (SWD), so they have access to the general physical education curriculum to make progress toward grade-level standards. This study presents a qualitative analysis of the perspectives of National Adapted Physical Education Teachers of the Year (APE TOYs) on advocating for social justice within PETE programs. A phenomenological approach with mixed-methods design was used. Findings emphasise the importance of fairness, …

Towards Dynamic Learner State: Orchestrating Ai Agents And Workplace Performance Via The Model Context Protocol, Mohan Yang, Nolan Lovett, Belle Li, Zhen Hou

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

Current learning and development approaches often struggle to capture dynamic individual capabilities, particularly the skills they acquire informally every day on the job. This dynamic creates a significant gap between what traditional models think people know and their actual performance, leading to an incomplete and often outdated understanding of how ready the workforce truly is, which can hinder organizational adaptability in rapidly evolving environments. This paper proposes a novel dynamic learner-state ecosystem—an AI-driven solution designed to bridge this gap. Our approach leverages specialized AI agents, orchestrated via the Model Context Protocol (MCP), to continuously track and evolve an individual’s multi-dimensional …

The Solicitor General, Consistency, And Credibility, Margaret H. Lemos, Deborah A. Widiss

Faculty Scholarship

This Article offers the first comprehensive look at cases in which the Solicitor General (SG) rejects a legal argument offered on behalf of the United States in prior litigation. Such reversals have received considerable attention in recent years, as shifts in presidential administrations have produced multiple high-profile “flip-flops”—as the Justices sometimes call them—by the SG. Even those observers who defend the SG, including veterans of the office, caution that inconsistency in legal argument poses a threat to the SG’s credibility with the Court. Our goal is to better understand the circumstances that lead the SG to change its position on …

The Credit Markets Go Dark, Jared A. Ellias, Elisabeth De Fontenay

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past generation, conflicting trends have reshaped the ownership of corporate equity on the one hand and corporate debt on the other. In equity, the two great trends have been the shift from public markets to private ownership and the consolidation of American companies’ stock in the hands of powerful investment funds. In debt, by contrast, the great trends have been a shift from private loans to quasi-public markets and dispersed ownership.

In this Article, we chronicle the recent and dramatic reversal of these trends in the debt markets. Private investment funds executing a “private credit” strategy have become …

Bankruptcy Appeal Barriers, Jonathan M. Seymour

Faculty Scholarship

Appeals in bankruptcy do not look like appeals elsewhere in the federal court system. In particular, bankruptcy appeal barriers are strikingly distinctive. These barriers serve outright to block an appeal from being decided. An appellate court may dismiss an appeal, rather than consider the merits, if facts on the ground have changed so much since the original decision that providing a remedy to an appellant, even if victorious, would not be prudent. Take ongoing litigation in the Boy Scouts bankruptcy case. A plan of reorganization was confirmed fixing the entitlements of victims to compensation. Dissenting creditors argued bitterly the plan …

Cost–Benefit Analysis, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter will address the place of cost–benefit analysis (CBA) in constitutional law, by way of a case study. I’ll describe, and puzzle over, CBA’s absence from most U.S. constitutional doctrines, notwithstanding its major role in U.S. administrative law. The general questions that I seek to illuminate are by no means limited to the U.S. How might CBA figure within the tests that constitutional courts use to adjudicate alleged violations of constitutional rights? How might it serve to determine the structure of constitutional institutions? Would it be justified for CBA to play these doctrinal roles? But these general questions are …

Artificial Intelligence And Procedural Due Process, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

Artificial intelligence (AI) violates procedural due process rights if the government uses it to deprive people of life, liberty, and property without adequate notice or an opportunity to be heard. A wide range of government agencies deploy AI systems, including in courts, law enforcement, public benefits administration, and national security. If the government refuses to disclose the reasons why it denied a person bail, public benefits, or immigration status, serious due process concerns arise. If the government delegates such tasks to an AI system, the due process analysis does not change. One asks whether a person received adequate notice and …

Money: A Functional Analysis, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

Most people currently think of money as government-issued paper certificates or coins that specify units of currency, such as dollars or euros. The advent of digital currencies, which appear abstract because of their intangibility, is therefore confounding almost everyone.

This Article argues that money should also be viewed functionally—as a “right” that serves one or more of the generally accepted functions of money. The Article focuses on two of money’s most generally accepted functions: to serve as a medium of exchange to facilitate the sale of goods and services, and to serve as a store of value. To perform these …

The Reliability Response To Patent Law’S Ai Challenges, Arti K. Rai

Faculty Scholarship

Pervasive AI use adds newfound importance to longstanding debates over patent timing and reliability. Patent claims on speculative ideas generated by AI, or even the infusion of speculative AI-generated ideas into the public domain, may defeat patent incentives for more careful research. Although challenges that AI use poses for patent validity requirements like human inventorship and nonobviousness have received more attention, reliability is equally important.

Indeed, as this Article argues, the issues are linked. If requirements for inventorship and nonobviousness were adjusted to emphasize reliability, a human role could be preserved, and AI use would not necessarily threaten patents. Currently, …

A Critique Of Findings On Gun Ownership, Use, And Imagined Use From The 2021 National Firearms Survey: Response To William English, Deborah Azraek, Joseph Blocher, Philip J. Cook, David Hemenway, Matthew Miller

Faculty Scholarship

For a paper that has not yet been through peer review or even been formally published, William English’s “2021 National Firearms Survey” has been remarkably prominent in gun rights advocacy and scholarship. As of December 2024, it has been cited in roughly sixty-five briefs, invoked at oral argument in the Supreme Court and multiple courts of appeals, and regularly cited in public writings and published academic work.

This response is offered in the spirit of a peer review. Our focus is on methodological issues, questionable statistical results, and problematic conclusions. Because of serious methodological issues, English’s draft fails to provide …

The Invention Of The Judicial Administrative State, Marin K. Levy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Defining The Field Of Judicial Administration, Marin K. Levy

Faculty Scholarship

This Keynote address, as part of a symposium on "Theorizing the Judicial Process," aims to make a case for the field of judicial administration and to define the field more generally. Specifically, it seeks to raise the organizing questions of the field and to note the kind of work--descriptive, empirical, and theoretical--that is needed to answer them. The hope is to map out a collective research agenda for courts scholars to pursue into the future for the benefit of the academy and judiciary, both.

Copyrighting Style, Christopher Buccafusco

Faculty Scholarship

Does copyright law protect an artist’s style? The federal courts that have considered the question are equally split. They all agree, however, that the answer to the question resides in copyright law’s idea/expression distinction. According to this doctrine, ideas, techniques, and methods cannot be copyrighted, but expressions of ideas can be. The question courts have faced, then, is whether artistic style is an idea or a matter of expression. The answer, perhaps unfortunately, is that style is both.

This is unfortunate because, this Article argues, copyright law’s idea/expression distinction is inadequate to the task of determining the copyrightability of style. …

As They Think Best: A History Of The "One Crowded Hour" Autograph Manuscript, Jennifer L. Behrens

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

What Belongs In A Constitutional Law Casebook?, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Teaching Firearms Law: One Big Opportunity And Three Pedagogical Challenges, Joseph Blocher, Jacob D. Charles, Darrell A.H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Supreme Court’s groundbreaking 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller ushered in a new era for the Second Amendment: one in which the right to keep and bear arms, long dormant as a matter of practical impact and even “embarrassing” as a matter of legal scholarship, vaulted into the front ranks of constitutional law. The Court itself has only revisited the Amendment a few times since then—albeit once by revolutionizing the doctrine. Meanwhile, lower courts have issued thousands of decisions giving shape to the right, while scholars have generated work that is increasingly deep, diverse, and challenging. …

Offline Guessing Games With Two Numbers, Justin Sciullo, Lisa Shen, Sarah Zaske

Mathematics Undergraduate Research

In an offline guessing game, there is a player called the Questioner and a player called the Responder. The Responder first picks two distinct numbers from the set {1, 2, 3, . . . , n}. The Questioner then creates a set of questions of the form “How many of your numbers are in the set q_i ⊆ {1, 2, 3, . . . , n}?” and sends them to the Responder who answers them. The Questioner wins if they can guess the Responder’s numbers no matter which numbers the Responder chose. The Responder wins otherwise. We …

Assessing Dental Hygienist’S Use Of Anxiety Reducing Practices Toward Patients With Dental Anxiety, Sara C. Steiger

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study was to assess dental hygienists' practices regarding anxiety-reducing techniques, their attitudes towards managing patients with dental anxiety, and the extent of their training on the topic. To collect data, an adaptation of the existing survey from the UNC Department of Dental Ecology Survey, was distributed to licensed dental hygienists. The findings of the research questions were analyzed using descriptive statistics in the form of frequencies and percentages. The results of this study indicate a substantial need for enhanced educational resources to better equip dental hygienists in managing patients with dental anxiety. Most participants do not …

Integrating Artificial Neural Networks Into The Gravity Model: Analyzing Apparel Export From Belt And Road Asian Countries To The United States, Man Hin, Eve Chan, Tsz Leung Yip, Hong-Oanh Nguyen, Yin Cheung Eugene Wong

Department of Design and Architecture

Launched by China in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aims to enhance trade connectivity between Asia and the global market while fostering mutually beneficial economic cooperation among participant countries. While previous research has highlighted the positive effects of the BRI on trade between China and its partner nations along the Belt and Road (B&R), there is limited understanding of its impact on trade among B&R countries themselves. This study seeks to fill this gap by examining bilateral apparel trade patterns, specifically focusing on clothing exports from China and 21 Asian B&R countries/cities to the United States (US). To …

I Am Not A Dictator; I Am A Defender: The Rhetoric Of Coup D’État In Francophone Africa, Isaac Asare Kwakye

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the rhetorical strategies used by coup leaders in Francophone Africa to authorize their actions and garner public support. Focusing on recent military takeovers in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger since 2020, I investigate how coup leaders construct narratives of legitimacy within the context of contemporary geopolitical dynamics. I utilize Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to analyze speeches by three key coup leaders: Colonel Assimi Goïta, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, and General Abdourahamane Tchiani. My analysis reveals four interconnected rhetorical frameworks: framing interventions as emergency measures, cultivating savior personas, weaponizing anti-colonial grievances, and deploying anti-corruption narratives. A comparative analysis of …

Measuring Resistivity With Low-Cost 3-D Printed Four-Point Probe, Benjamin Siens

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Resistivity is an intrinsic property that determines how strongly electrical current is resisted. Measurement of the resistivity of materials is vital for many fields of science and engineering. This is easily accomplished with a four-point probe. However, commercial probes can be costly. Using 3-D printing and based on the design in Lu et al. (J. Chem. Educ. 2017), a functional four-point probe has been built at a much lower cost in materials. Additionally, the probe design has been simplified for easier construction and better compatibility with Belmont University’s 3- D printers. ITO glass was used to determine the accuracy of …

Washington University Magazine, August 2025

Washington University Magazine

No abstract provided.

Becker Medical Library Annual Report 2025

Library Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Washington University Magazine, April 2025

Washington University Magazine

No abstract provided.

Coaching Authors With Generative Ai, Christopher J. Smiley

AADEJ - The Communicator

This paper outlines a systematic methodology for dental editors to coach authors in the ethical use of generative artificial intelligence (GAI). By adopting "AI-First" or "Write-First" strategies, editors can help authors refine their thesis statements and improve logical flow while maintaining human oversight and intellectual integrity. Dr. Smiley asserts that GAI should be used as a tool to enhance communication rather than replace human creativity, ensuring authors remain accountable for their final expressions.

Factors Affecting Rehabilitation Participation In Patients With Spinal Cord Injury, Gul M. Civelek, Selen Tulunoglu, Zuhal Ozisler

Neurosciences

ABSTRACT Objectives: To investigate the factors affecting participation in rehabilitation in patients with spinal cord injury. Methods: Our prospective clinical follow-up study included 87 patients with spinal cord injuries who were hospitalized in a tertiary Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Hospital. General characteristics of the patients were noted. Depression, neuropathic pain, independence in activities of daily living, and participation in the rehabilitation program were assessed using the Beck Depression Scale, DN-4 score, Spinal Cord Injury Independence Measure (SCIM), and Pittsburgh Rehabilitation Participation Scale, respectively. Results: Nearly one-third of patients (31%) showed low participation. The frequency of tetraplegics was higher, the median …

Fisheries Research Report No. 345: Metropolitan Monitoring Program 2024, Alissa C. Tate, Claire B. Smallwood, Karina L. Ryan

Fisheries Research Reports

Ongoing monitoring of recreational fisheries in the Metropolitan zone is essential to ensure the sustainable use of fisheries resources. Surveys of shore- and boat-based recreational fishers within the Metropolitan zone of the West Coast bioregion provide information on human dimensions and catch-per-fisher as well as mean length and weight of key recreationally caught species. For shore-based fishers, estimates of fishing effort, catch and harvest are also presented for key nearshore species. Information in this report is used to support ongoing assessments for key nearshore species and inform the development and evaluation of harvest strategies and other management actions, such as …

The Federal Government Cannot Prohibit The Exercise Of A Core State Sovereign Function: Haaland V. Brackeen And Expanding The Anticommandeering Doctrine, George Bach

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

The Tenth Amendment’s anticommandeering doctrine limits the ability of the federal government to issue directives to state legislative bodies and executive officials. While the Supreme Court’s path through the Tenth Amendment has been less than direct, New York v. United States and United States v. Printz clarified that the federal government cannot “commandeer” state legislatures or executives to implement federal policy. While the core of the Court’s approach to anticommandeering remains focused on halting congressional efforts to press state agents into implementing federal regulatory programs, the Haaland v. Brackeen decision may be read to expand the anticommandeering principle. That is, …