Digital Commons Network^™

Pragmatic Conceptualism, Public Nuisance, And The American Opioid Litigation, Benjamin C. Zipursky

Washington and Lee Law Review

Public nuisance as a part of American tort law has been as high profile in the first decades of this century as products liability law was in the last several decades of the twentieth century. The American opioid litigation over the past decades is a spectacular example, filling headlines and generating billions of dollars of settlements. There is a plausible argument, however, that the doctrinal core of the opioid litigation is meritless because there simply is no “interference with public right” as required by public nuisance law. The first aim of this Article is to articulate and assess that argument. …

Universal Injunctions And The Executive-Judicial Relationship In America, Jeremy Kang

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis examines a specific type of legal controversy surrounding the Trump administration’s dealings with the judicial branch. Central to the matter is the concept of universal injunctions: how a federal court can enjoin even non-parties to a case from behaving in certain ways.

The history of universal injunctions, from pre-Enlightenment England to modern America, is initially discussed. Then special attention is given to their use against President Donald Trump in particular, culminating in the Supreme Court curtailing them, and district court judges ignoring the high court’s ruling. Finally, previous examples of conflict between the American executive and judicial branches …

Managing Risks Under Nuclear Power Plant Projects: A Latent Similarity-Guided Contract Customization, Mariam Elazhary, Islam H. El-Adaway

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Global energy is transforming, with nuclear power emerging as a pivotal player in achieving sustainable and low-carbon energy goals. The nature of nuclear technology introduces unique challenges, such as stringent safety and environmental requirements. Existing studies focus on general risk identification, such as supply chain delays, cost overruns, and public perception issues. However, these studies fail to address integrating these risks into tailored contractual provisions, which are critical for navigating the unique challenges of nuclear projects. The goal of this paper is to examine how standard construction contracts can be tailored to better accommodate the risks inherent in nuclear power …

Examining The Relationship Between Trauma-Informed Safety Drill Practices And School-Level Chronic Absenteeism In Maine Secondary Schools, Tina Nightingale

Dissertations

School safety practices can influence students' perceptions of safety, emotional well-being, and engagement in the educational environment; however, limited research has examined whether trauma-informed safety drill practices are associated with measurable educational outcomes. The purpose of this quantitative, non-experimental, correlational study was to examine the relationship between trauma-informed safety drill practices and school-level chronic absenteeism in Maine middle and high schools. Guided by trauma-informed care, adolescent neurodevelopment, and Protection Motivation Theory, the study investigated whether higher levels of trauma-informed implementation of safety drills, as measured by the Trauma-Informed Safety Drill Practices Index (TISDPI), were associated with lower rates of chronic …

Analysis Of Emerging Pfas Contaminants In Water: Review And Future Perspectives, Baljit Singh, Zina Fredj, Rangasamy Savitha, Abhijnan Bhat, Gayathree Thenuwara, Isha Dahiya, Suneha Goswami, Simrjit Singh, Xolile Fuku

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are widely used in numerous industrial and consumer products. These compounds exhibit remarkable environmental persistence which allows them to accumulate in ecosystems and pose serious risks to water quality, the environment and human health, thereby underscoring the urgent need for effective monitoring and control. To mitigate the long-term impacts of PFAS contamination, robust and reliable advanced analytical methods and sensor technologies are essential. This review critically examines current analytical methods, including coupled chromatographic techniques, emerging sensor-based (optical and electrochemical sensors) methods and separation-based electrophoresis for PFAS detection. Recent progress in device miniaturisation coupled with integration …

Strengthening The Shield: Exploring Post-Traumatic Growth In Law Enforcement, Aaleiyah C. Spaulding

Dissertations

Law enforcement officers are routinely exposed to traumatic incidents that can lead to psychological distress, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, emerging literature highlights the potential for posttraumatic growth (PTG), a positive psychological change following adversity. This study examined the prevalence and predictors of PTG in a sample of 33 police officers from a Midwestern department. Using validated self-report measures, the study assessed the role of trauma exposure, cognitive restructuring of core beliefs, and perceived organizational culture, particularly supervisor support. Results indicated that both internal (core belief reflection) and external (supervisory support) factors significantly predicted PTG. Additionally, involvement in a …

Explainable And Hybrid Machine Learning For Predicting Fatal Crash Risk, Hussein Khanjar, Abdolmajid Erfani

Michigan Tech Publications

Road traffic fatalities remain one of the most persistent public safety challenges, demanding predictive models that are not only accurate but also reliable and interpretable. While numerous machine-learning models have been developed for crash severity prediction, most remain limited in three critical dimensions: they simplify the unit of analysis by focusing only on the driver or the most severe occupant per crash, they emphasize predictive performance while neglecting model confidence and probability calibration, and they often function as black boxes lacking interpretability for real-world decision support. To address these gaps, this study proposes a calibrated hybrid machine-learning framework for nationwide, …

Core Sipp Community Collaboration Report, Yvonnie Baik, Mahtab Soleimani, Camille Velarde, Elena E. Martinez, Theresa H. Cruz

Reports & Documents

The New Mexico Core State Injury Prevention Program (Core SIPP), in partnership with the University of New Mexico Division of Prevention and Population Sciences, implemented the Community Collaboration Initiative to support community-led, upstream approaches to injury and violence prevention. Five community-based organizations across New Mexico received funding to develop and implement projects addressing shared risk and protective factors identified through advisory group input and community listening sessions. Programs emphasized youth leadership, mentorship, cultural identity, healthy relationships, mental and behavioral wellness, community connectedness, and access to supportive adults and resources.

Across the five projects, 68 youth participated in programming. A retrospective …

Neil L. Sobol, Neil L. Sobol

Faculty CVs

No abstract provided.

Improving Urban Search And Rescue Team Coordination Through Adaptive Context Awareness, Daniel Reyes Duran

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Modern multi-agent Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) operations heavily rely on mobile geospatial Common Operating Pictures (COPs) to maintain team coordination and Situational Awareness (SA). However, the proliferation of high-frequency sensor telemetry at the tactical edge has introduced a data saturation paradox challenge: while information theoretically drives informed decision-making, unmanaged data surges induce increased operator cognitive overload and alert fatigue on mobile End-User Devices (EUDs), while downstream data-broadcasting models inherently strain edge processing and viewport environments.

To resolve these constraints, this dissertation presents a context-aware Value of Information (VoI) data-management framework integrated directly with a custom, event-driven Android Team Awareness …

School Of Nursing Newsletter Summer 2026, Southern Adventist University

Southern Nursing - School of Nursing Newsletter

The Summer 2026 issue of the newsletter features information on the Hamilton County Homeland Security emergency preparedness event held in April, an update on the Nursing Simulation Center, the spring RHO IOTA induction ceremony, and mission trip experiences.

Using Recommender Systems To Help Revitalize Local News, Payam Pourashraf

Theses and Dissertations from DePaul University

Local news outlets have experienced steep declines in readership as national and global online news sources have expanded and consolidated audience attention. Because many local media companies rely primarily on subscription-based business models, they must increase user engagement and provide clearer value to local subscribers. Personalization and recommender systems offer one promising path toward this goal. However, many recommender systems assume that a user’s past behavior can be summarized in a single unified profile. In practice, preferences are often context-dependent: the same person may prefer different content depending on geography, time, task, or situation. Local news offers a socially important …

Breaking Point: Exploring Side Bets, Support, And Pension Investment As Predictors Of Turnover Intention In Urban Policing, Kenneth M. Quick, Kevin T. Wolff

Publications and Research

Guided by Becker’s side-bet theory, this study examines turnover intentions among officers in the New York City Police Department by assessing pension investment and affective commitment as accumulated organizational “side bets,” alongside job satisfaction, perceived organizational support, and workplace conditions. Data was drawn from an online survey of 1,454 officers. Population weights based on gender, race/ethnicity, and rank were applied to improve representativeness. Weighted multinomial logistic regression models examined predictors of turnover intention, while second-difference tests of average marginal effects (AMEs) assessed whether workplace factors operated differently across tenure groups. Results indicate that perceived organizational attitudes and workplace conditions significantly …

Subspace Decomposition For Spatial Parameter Estimation, Arthur Grik

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Passive emitter localization is an important capability for wireless sensing, interference detection, and spectrum awareness. Classical timing-based localization methods estimate emitter position from differences in signal arrival time across distributed sensor platforms, but their performance depends on precise receiver synchronization and favorable signal bandwidth characteristics. This thesis investigates subspace-decomposition-based spatial parameter estimation as an alternative approach in which directional information is extracted from coherent antenna-array measurements. This work develops the theoretical foundation and signal-processing framework for angle-of-arrival estimation. Various spatial parameter estimators are presented as supporting array-processing methods before focusing on a well-known subspace-decomposition-based approach called the Multiple SIgnal Classification …

An Intelligent System For Managing High-Priority Vehicle Routing In Smart Cities Using Artificial Intelligence And Spatial Data Analytics, Bahjat Abdulelah Madhloom

Al-Esraa University College Journal for Engineering Sciences

In developing metropolises, there is a risk to public safety in addition to the usual traffic jams. Traffic delays can have life-altering effects every second that fire trucks and ambulances are delayed. Large cities like Baghdad, which suffer from haphazard road sealing and incompetent traffic management, are especially affected, creating daily emergency crisis problems. We create a new intelligent routing system for these top priority vehicles in order to solve this life-or-death problem. Our method uses a trained model with real-time spatial information instead of outdated static maps. A Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural network at its core constantly forecasts …

Penolakan Penghapusan Kolom Agama Pada Kartu Tanda Penduduk: Krítík Terhadap Putusan Mahkamah Konstitusi Nomor 146/Puu-Xxii/2024, Krisna Bagas Purwopangestu, Nicholas Gerard Felix Simeone

Jurnal Konstitusi & Demokrasi

This article examines the Constítutíonal Court (MK) Decisíon No. 146/PUU–XXII/2024 which rejected the request to delete the religion column on the Identity Card (KTP). The Decision affirms that every Indonesian citizen must declare their religion or belief in God as expected by Pancasila and the constitutional mandate. The Constitutional Court stated that “not having a religion or belief in God cannot be considered as freedom of religion”. The Constitutional Court Decision has revived the dispute on the urgency of including religion identity on the KTP, especially about the relation between administrative requirements, the legal system of Indonesia, and protection of …

The Shorthorn: April 24, 1985

The Shorthorn Newspaper Collection: 1980s

No abstract provided.

The Shorthorn: April 17, 1985

The Shorthorn Newspaper Collection: 1980s

No abstract provided.

The Shorthorn: March 12, 1985

The Shorthorn Newspaper Collection: 1980s

No abstract provided.

The Shorthorn: March 6, 1985

The Shorthorn Newspaper Collection: 1980s

No abstract provided.

The Shorthorn: February 27, 1985

The Shorthorn Newspaper Collection: 1980s

No abstract provided.

The Shorthorn: February 8, 1985

The Shorthorn Newspaper Collection: 1980s

No abstract provided.

The Shorthorn: February 7, 1985

The Shorthorn Newspaper Collection: 1980s

No abstract provided.