Digital Commons Network^™

Recovery And Resilience Of Survivors Of Sex Trafficking In Nepal, Bishnu Sapkota, Glenn M. Miles, Chitra B. Buthathoki

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This exploratory qualitative study examines how trafficking survivors in Nepalese rehabilitation centres perceive recovery and experience resilience within Nepal's specific socio-cultural context. This qualitative study employed in-depth interviews with six female sex trafficking survivors in Bagmati Province rehabilitation centres and analysed them through Bronfenbrenner's socio-ecological framework under the themes such as Hindu purity concepts, caste discrimination, joint family dynamics, and non-governmental organization dependency which shape their recovery experiences. The findings of the study reveal recovery as gradual emotional stabilization and future orientation rather than complete healing. Survivors describe stigma in terms of religious purity/pollution binary, with Dalit participants experiencing compounded …

In The Shadow Of The Ballot: Children As Victims Of Zimbabwe's 2008 Election Violence, Baldwin Hove, Chitja Twala, Bekithemba Dube

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

The year 2008 witnessed one of the most violent electoral processes in Zimbabwean history. While extensive research has examined the 2008 election violence, limited scholarly attention has been paid to its effects on children. Using the structural violence framework, this study examines how the 2008 electoral violence affected children in Zimbabwe. The study analysed media reports and secondary texts, complemented by retrospective observations, to explore children's experiences during the electoral crisis. It seeks to expose the less examined consequences of political violence on children. The findings reveal that children witnessed assaults, murder, rape, forced displacement, the destruction of homes and …

Whose Mind Is It Anyway? A Phenomenological Reflection On The Experience Of Spiritan Christian Thinking, Jeffrey Mccurry Phd

Spiritan Horizons

No abstract provided.

2026-10-01 Caudill Connection, Morehead State University. Caudill College Of Arts, Humanities And Social Sciences.

Caudill Connection

Caudill Connection newsletter for October of 2026.

The Legal Risks Posed By Ai Chatbots: Unfair And Deceptive Practices And Other Authorities, Stephanie T. Nguyen, Adam Teitelbaum

Center for Law and the Economy

Growing alarm about existential risks and other harms posed by AI technology have given rise to calls for the government to regulate AI platforms.

This issue brief addresses a related but distinct problem: the use of AI technology by large corporations — including AI platforms themselves — to deploy AI customer-service chatbots1 in ways that may violate existing consumer protection laws. Law enforcers and the plaintiffs’ bar can and should use existing law to stop and deter those violations, and all businesses using AI chatbots should take immediate steps to ensure their AI chatbot practices are compliant with consumer protection …

Crossing Digital Borders: Student Success, Peer Mentorship And Ethical Ai Literacy In Community College Curricula, Adrian Bordoni, Jody A. Resko

Open Educational Resources

A changing job market set wthin the context of new Generative Articial Intelligence applications and technology requires academia to integrate, innovate and implement updated materials in their classes. Lack of training and awareness of ethical use of emerging technologies by students will be addressed, and best practices will be modeled, by Peer Mentors.

Faculty Coordinators will train 4 students to serve as Peer Mentors to develop materials as part of an interdisciplinary, career focused set of workshops. These workshops will be hosted in Education and Criminal Justice Classes in person- as well as a hybrid session in collaboration with Faculty …

Dei Impact: A Radically Simplified Approach For Organizations, Tessa L. Dover, Claudia Toma, Fransika Krings

Psychology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This chapter introduces a radically simplified approach to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practice in organizations. DEI Impact is defined as an equitable reduction in disparities between employees from advantaged and disadvantaged groups. We argue that organizations should pursue DEI Impact as the primary—or even sole—goal of their DEI practice. We outline four steps to achieving DEI Impact: (1) Identifying the disparity, (2) Operationalizing DEI Impact, (3) Implementing policies/practices aimed at the disparity, and (4) Measuring impact and adjusting. This iterative design process is flexible to the specific needs of a given organization in a given cultural/political context. Importantly, it …

The Insular Cases “Are Not A Life Preserver”: The Covenant And Self-Determination In The Northern Mariana Islands At Fifty, Neil Weare

Cardozo Law Review

The Insular Cases—Supreme Court rulings from the early 1900s addressing the constitutional status of U.S. Territories—are facing what Justice Neil Gorsuch has called “a long overdue reckoning.” In 2022, Gorsuch declared that the Insular Cases “deserve no place in our law” because they “have no foundation in the Constitution and rest instead on racial stereotypes.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor agreed, stating that the Insular Cases “were premised on beliefs both odious and wrong.” Together, these Justices—who do not agree on much—expressed a shared “hope [that] the Court will soon recognize that the Constitution’s application should never depend on . . . …

The New Investment Horizon For The National Football League, Sam Nacht

Cardozo Law Review

In August 2024, the National Football League became one of the last major North American sports leagues to permit private equity investment in its member teams. The league’s new bylaws, however, impose significant restrictions on this investment: only six pre-approved private equity funds may invest, each purchase is capped at a ten percent equity stake, and all investments are subject to a minimum six-year lock-up period. While these restrictions reflect the league’s understandable caution about outside influence, they may have inadvertently created a significant antitrust problem. This Note argues that the NFL’s private equity bylaws constitute an unreasonable restraint of …

Territorial Inequality In A Warming World: The Icj’S Climate Opinion And The Future Of Self-Determination For Puerto Rico, Ashley Olita Nemeth

Cardozo Law Review

This Article examines how climate change and Puerto Rico’s territorial status operate as mutually reinforcing constraints on the archipelago’s right to self-determination. While Puerto Rico is highly exposed to intensifying climate impacts, its status as an unincorporated U.S. territory limits its ability to respond, resulting in federal control over fiscal policy, disaster recovery, and economic regulation, as well as exclusion from international climate finance mechanisms. Together, these structural limitations create a “climate-colonial feedback loop” in which environmental harm deepens political and economic dependency, further undermining adaptive capacity and autonomous development. The Article advances a two-part analysis. First, it demonstrates how …

Empire By Gaslight, Christina D. Ponsa-Kraus

Cardozo Law Review

This Article argues that the constitutional law of U.S. colonialism as it applies to Puerto Rico should be understood as a form of collective gaslighting. The United States has been gaslighting Puerto Ricans for a century-and-a-quarter. By defining their constitutional status as a series of contradictions—starting with defining Puerto Rico as “foreign,” but only in a “domestic sense”—the federal government has caused Puerto Ricans to question their capacity to judge their own reality, thereby solidifying U.S. power over the island and undermining Puerto Rican resistance. Not only has the United States been gaslighting Puerto Ricans since annexation, but it has …

Doctrinal Interregnum In The Law Of United States Territories, Anthony M. Ciolli

Cardozo Law Review

The past decade witnessed an unprecedented renaissance in interest in the constitutional treatment of U.S. territories. Once derided as “a marginal debate about marginal places” or “‘a footnote within a footnote’ of an already niche field,” law journals published a staggering seventy articles between 2022 and 2023 focused on the law of the territories. The American Bar Association, whose founder Simeon Baldwin played an instrumental role in laying the foundations for the racist Insular Cases, and which itself actively discriminated against the territories for more than a century, passed numerous resolutions repudiating many of its past positions. Even Congress, after …

Enhancing Gru With Long-Short Attention: A Case Study Of Saudi Stock Market Prediction, Hussein Samma, Qusay Shihab Hamad, Ali Salem Bin Sama, Adnan Bakather, Khaled Alhashash

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

Predicting stock market movements accurately is a challenging task due to the inherent complexity and volatility of financial markets. In recent years, deep learning techniques, particularly the Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), have shown promising results in financial time series prediction. However, capturing the most relevant information from large volumes of data remains a critical challenge for improving prediction accuracy. This work introduces an attention-enhanced GRU model for forecasting the Saudi stock market. The proposed model integrates attention mechanisms to dynamically prioritize different input patterns, enabling the network to focus on the most relevant information for prediction. Two types of attention …

Improving Performance For Dco-Ofdm Based Vlc Via Convolutional Coding And Viterbi Decoding, Maha F. Shatti, Samir M. Hameed, Atheer A. Sabri

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

The reliability of Visible Light Communication (VLC) is affected by several parameters, the most significant being high peak-to-average power ratio(PAPR) and nonlinear distortion. This study presents an adaptive direct current O-OFDM (DCO-OFDM) based VLC system as a solution, which integrates error correction the Convolutional coding and Viterbi decoding (by hard and soft decision methods) with a PAPR reduction technique that combines Vandermonde-like Matrix (VLM) precoding with a nonlinear companding transform (NCT). This proposed system enhances resistance to channel impairments, thereby reducing BER while maintaining the gains of PAPR reduction. Moreover, examined the system under realistic VLC propagation conditions both Line …

Power-Efficient Target Tracking And Coverage In Under-Provisioned Wireless Visual Sensor Networks, Muna M. Jawad

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

Due to their ability to detect the physical environment, directional sensors have attracted a lot of attention in wireless visual sensor networks (WVSN). These sensors perform two key functions: communication and sensing. A WVSN comprises numerous configurable limited fields of view sensors, comprising distinct angular sectors, arranged with multiple targets randomly scattered in the same surrounding region. Therefore, there is a critical need to improve the network's lifetime and reduce power demand while providing complete target coverage. This paper looks at under-resourced visual networks with an inadequate number of sensors to match applications' needs and develops a viable model to …

Cost-Efficient High-Capacity Radio Over Fiber (Rof) Transmission: Integrating Coarse And Dense Wdm Techniques, Hilal A. Fadhil, Fadia N. Hummadi, Feras N. Hasoon, Haider J. Abd, Hussein A. Kazem

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

Using Radio over Fiber (RoF) has expanded lately to the point where a key component of it link between central office and base station would be useful from the whole industry. As the market grows towards communication products of ultra-high-speed, like 5G applications, capital expenditure (CapEx) is crucial. The two primary types regarding wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) techniques Dense WDM and Coarse WDM are integrated in the presented work to create cost-effective, new design paradigm for RoF. The suggested system is tested and put into use at 10 Gbps data transmission rate. In addition, it describes how the two systems-based …

A Triple-Verification Framework For Swift, Real-Time Detection Of Anomalous Sensor Readings In Large-Scale Iot Systems, Taha E. Al-Jarakh, Inas Jawad Kadhim, Ayad Al-Dujaili, Eduardo Campos Mercado

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

Due to the massive expansion of Internet of Things systems and the variety of anomalous data resulting from faulty sensors, cyberattacks, or communication failures, it has become difficult to handle this type of data. Although current machine learning and statistical analysis techniques offer high accuracy in detecting anomalies, these methods alone are not sufficient for handling massive amounts of data in real-time. Therefore, the idea arose to propose a Triple-Verification Framework to detect and block anomalous data. The first stage of the framework acts as a firewall to block incoming messages from blocklisted/unauthorized sensors or carrying unknown schemes. In the …

A Corpus Linguistics-Driven Hybrid Deep Representation Framework Incorporating Majority Voting For Enhanced Automatic Spoken Language Identification, Lubin Balasubramanian, J. Uthayakumar, Niranjana Kumara M, Sariga Arjunan

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

Spoken Language Identification (SLID) is a well-researched area. It has previously been recognized as a crucial first stage in every multi-lingual speech recognition system. Latest developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning (DL) are used to highly strengthen the performance of SLID systems, allowing them to perform a crucial part in mainstream applications The gathered speaker utterances have been entered into the DL network for training phase. The language equivalent to the great posterior probability is then recognized as the target language. This study introduces an Enhancing Automatic Spoken Language Identification with Corpus Linguistics and Ensemble Deep Representation (EASLI-CLEDR) …

Prevalence Of Vitiligo In East Africa: Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Kedir Seid, Chala Getaneh Jaleta, Sintayehu Samuel Lorato, Mitiku Desalegn, Dawit Tesfaye Rundasa, Yohannes Godie Ashebir, Olyad Kuma Getahun, Gebeyehu Lakew, Mathewos Mekonnen Gemmechu, Mulualem Endeshaw Zeleke, Yibeltal Assefa Atalay, Amlaku Nigusie Yirsaw, Eyob Ketema Bogale, Abiy Hailu Tikuneh, Abas Ali Hassen, Eyasu Alem Lake, Tadesse Nigussie, Bushra Bibi, Fikiru Yigezu Y. Jaleta, Abebe Gedefaw Belete, Genanew Kassie Getahun

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Background: Vitiligo is a chronic skin disorder characterized by the loss of melanocytes, resulting in depigmented macules and patches. No accurate estimate has been made of the prevalence of vitiligo in East Africa.

Objectives: To determine the prevalence of vitiligo in East Africa via a systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature.

Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis were performed in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines. Eleven articles were retrieved from PubMed/MEDLINE, Embase, Scopus, Google Scholar, Science Direct, Web of Science and African Journals Online. Microsoft Excel was used to extract the data, which were then exported to STATA 17 …

Women's Experiences Of Menstrual Pain And Perceptions Of Acupuncture: A Qualitative Study, Weiting Liu, Amanda Towell-Barnard, Khui Hung Lee

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Introduction: Menstrual pain is a common reproductive health concern that can substantially disrupt physical, emotional, and social well-being, yet it is frequently normalised and insufficiently addressed within healthcare encounters. Acupuncture is increasingly used as a complementary approach for menstrual pain management; however, little qualitative research has explored how women understand, interpret, and navigate this option within their menstrual care.

Methods: A qualitative descriptive study was conducted using four online focus groups with 14 women aged 19–46 years residing in Australia who self-reported primary dysmenorrhea. Participants were purposively sampled from respondents to a previous cross-sectional survey study who had indicated willingness …

Festivalization As A Tool For Revitalizing Historic Sites The Case Of Maqa’Ad El-Sultan Qaitbay, Cairo, Egypt, Mona Helmy, Sherin Ashraf

Architectural Engineering

Historic sites are vital components of cities' urbanism, embodying distinctive spatial, architectural, and cultural narratives that shape their character. Their significance extends beyond the built environment, arising from the interplay between tangible elements, such as building forms and spatial organization, and intangible socio-cultural aspects. In many historic sites in Egypt and the Arab world, underuse has led to a decline in social vibrancy, reducing their contribution to the urban fabric. To address this issue, global strategies and tools such as adaptive reuse, placemaking, and festivalization have been employed to revitalize historic public spaces. This research explores the potential of festivalization …

How Did We Get Here?, Michael J. Klarman

Fordham Law Review

President Donald J. Trump’s second administration has transgressed basic rules and norms of democracy and the rule of law in myriad ways. Below, I have laid out my own top ten list of transgressions, though others could surely have made out a good case for their own “favorites.” It would not be difficult to come up with a longer list, yet the purpose of my Levine Lecture is less to describe where we are than to explain how we got here. Following an enumeration of Trump administration transgressions, my lecture turns to two questions. First, why have traditional checks on …

The Role Of Reliance In Stare Decisis Doctrine, Rochelle Hestnas

Fordham Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent treatment of reliance interests in stare decisis doctrine is in flux. The Court has overruled long-standing precedent such as Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey with scant analysis as to how reliance interests factor into stare decisis doctrine, despite continuing to name reliance as a factor that should be considered. Arguments for whether and how reliance interests deserve protection are inherently challenging because it cannot be the case that every precedent should stand. Using Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization as a case study, this Note analyzes the Court’s claim …

The Alien Enemies Act Of 1798, Andrew Kent

Fordham Law Review

For the first time since World War II—and for the first time ever outside a formally declared war—an American president has invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to detain and deport noncitizens. Enacted during the Quasi-War with France, the Act’s operative language remains largely unchanged today. In March 2025, President Donald J. Trump proclaimed that members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua present in the United States are “alien enemies,” asserting that their activities, allegedly coordinated with President Nicolás Maduro’s government, constitute an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” within the meaning of the statute. Litigation challenging the invocation of …

News That Will Not Break: How The First And Fourth Amendments Can Jointly Protect The Press From Secret Government Intrusions Into Newsgathering, Julianna Margolin

Fordham Law Review

The modern constitutional and statutory framework permits the U.S. government to obtain journalists’ confidential source information and work product by secretly serving third-party service providers with subpoenas. While the First Amendment protects journalists and the Fourth Amendment guards against unreasonable government searches, new technology and the involvement of third parties complicate the balance between independent newsgathering and government access.

This Note examines reporters’ privilege jurisprudence stemming from the seminal U.S. Supreme Court decision Branzburg v. Hayes, which declined to recognize a categorical privilege. This Note also explores the subpoena power in the digital age as it converges with privacy …

Public Libraries, Limited Forums: Critiquing The Fifth Circuit’S Decision In Little V. Llano County, Spencer Emelia Petrick-Knoll

Fordham Law Review

Conflicts over the collections of public libraries have become increasingly frequent in the twenty-first century. In 2025, the Fifth Circuit held that library collections are government speech, thereby preventing patrons from challenging book removals. This Note critiques that decision and analyzes which First Amendment doctrine should govern the curation decisions of a public library. It examines the historical evolution of the public library and First Amendment doctrine to argue for classification of the public library’s collection as a limited public forum. This classification allows libraries to make reasonable, viewpoint-neutral decisions about retaining books in their collections while ensuring that viewpoint …

Splitting The Baby: Determining The Causation Standard In Family And Medical Leave Act Retaliation Claims, Eliana C. Singer

Fordham Law Review

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) guarantees employees unpaid leave following certain qualifying events. The FMLA not only provides substantive rights but also prohibits retaliation against employees who exercise those rights. When employees face unlawful retaliation, they can bring retaliation claims against their employers. However, there is disagreement among courts as to how to evaluate these claims. More precisely, courts are split concerning whether employees must prove their use of leave was a but-for cause of retaliation, or merely that it was one of an employer’s mixed motives for retaliating. The U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second and …

The Mirage Of Meta Pixel Code: Redefining Pii In The Era Of Generative Ai, Sophie Venter

Fordham Law Review

Data privacy laws are intended to put consumers in control of whether their identifying data can be sold and used for targeted advertising. However, these laws do not provide adequate protections in the era of generative artificial intelligence (AI). This Note examines one way that existing privacy law permits companies to profit from selling data for targeted advertising without obtaining user consent: transferring video watching data in a pixel code. Some U.S. Courts of Appeals have determined that these data transfers do not sufficiently identify users and the videos they watched to constitute violations of user privacy. This has led …

Operationalising Equity In Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management, Riley Bibaud, Tom Mullier, Matthew Ashley, Holly Niner, Lauren Stewart, Siân Rees

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Equity is increasingly recognised as a critical dimension of sustainable ocean governance, yet operational frameworks for incorporating equity considerations into marine governance remain limited. Fisheries management practices have traditionally concentrated on stock sustainability and commercial extraction, often without fully addressing the broader ecosystem dynamics that underpin fish populations throughout key life stages. This study explores how Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) can support more equitable outcomes by applying a beneficiary-centric natural capital framework to the Celtic Sea and Western Channel Pelagic Fisheries Management Plan. A typology of beneficiaries was developed to assess the distribution of ecosystem service benefits, followed by a …

Timing Matters: Contrasting Public Sentiment During Wuhan’S And Shanghai’S Covid-19 Lockdowns, Xuanda Pei, Yuzuru Isoda, Tomoki Nakaya, Clive E. Sabel

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Optimal crisis management depends on how much the public can tolerate stringent measures. Using large-scale Weibo microblog data and two sentiment analysis models, this study investigated and compared public sentiment responses during the COVID-19 lockdowns in Wuhan and Shanghai, focusing on how residents’ emotional expressions evolved across different stages of the pandemic. Binary and six-emotion sentiment analysis models based on bidirectional encoder repre-sentations from transformers (BERT) were employed to examine how the two cities developed distinct emotional trajectories. Emotional responses in Wuhan followed emotional Phases of Disaster, with sharp tran-sitions from shock to solidarity, followed by disillusion-ment. Conversely, Shanghai’s residents …