Digital Commons Network^™

Transforming The World With Reparations, Ingrid Wuerth Brunk, Monica Hakimi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This special issue of the American Journal of International Law—devoted entirely to reparations in international law—offers a range of perspectives on reparations for large-scale harms relating to colonialism, slavery, industrialization, and transboundary pollution. As the symposium authors describe, the gap between the reparations that justice might demand and the ones that international law provides is enormous. The international law for reparations does not come close to remedying such harms and is not poised to do so anytime soon.

Is There Life In The Ruins? A Look At Post-Sveen Contract Clause Jurisprudence, James W. Ely, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Seven years ago, in Sveen v. Melin, the Supreme Court applied the prevailing multipart test and rejected a contract clause claim. The result was hardly a surprise. The Court has not invoked the contract clause to invalidate a state law in more than forty years. The decision broke no new ground and seemingly signaled that the Court was content with the current multipart test, one that appears calculated to uphold state regulatory authority rather than vindi- cate the rights of contracting parties. Justice Neil Gorsuch force- fully dissented in Sveen, insisting that the multifactor test "seems hard to square with …

Latinos In Massachusetts Selected Areas: Chelsea, Phillip Granberry, Florita Coto Tristán

Gastón Institute Publications

Established in 1989, the Massachusetts Legislature created the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy in response to a need for an improved understanding of the Latino experience in the commonwealth. Now in its 34th year, the Gastón Institute continues its mission of informing the public and policymakers about issues vital to the state’s growing Latino community and providing information and analysis necessary for effective Latino participation in public policy development. To learn more about the Gastón Institute, visit: www.umb.edu/gastoninstitute

Underrepresentation Of African American Women Superintendents In The Public Schools Of Texas: Descriptions Of Their Lived Experiences, Shani R. Wyllie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The problem addressed through this study was the underrepresentation of African American women superintendents in the public-school districts of Texas, despite women making up a majority of the public-school workforce. The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe the lived experiences of African American women superintendents regarding the support and barriers they encountered as they navigated their journeys to the position of public school district superintendent in Texas. The study was grounded in the Black feminist thought framework. Five semistructured interviews were conducted with currently serving African American women superintendents in Texas. The participants had been in the …

Item 6: Activity: Finding Your Civic Fit, Michael Williams Jr.

Michael Williams, American National Government 100-200 Level Introductory Course

This activity introduces students to civic organizations and their importance in community building. The exercise guides students in defining “civic organization,” exploring interests, and researching civic organizations. Students identify local civic organizations and understand how these organizations contribute to the community.

Item 1: Syllabus - Information Literacy And Civic Responsibility, Troy Martin

Troy Martin, Information Literacy and Civic Responsibility

This is a seven-week unit designed for a first or second-year, undergraduate, general studies program. The American Association of Colleges and Universities includes information literacy as an “essential learning outcome”. This unit highlights pressing questions and problems related to democracy, civic responsibility, the contemporary information ecosystem, information disorder, and information literacy skills. It outlines objectives, resources, learning activities and assignments.

Item 1: Syllabus Introduction To U.S. Government And Politics, David Hubert

David Hubert, Introduction to U.S. Government & Politics

This is an adaptable syllabus for an introductory US Government and Politics course. It provides learning outcomes, an outline for seven 2This is an adaptable syllabus for an introductory US Government and Politics course. It provides learning outcomes, an outline for seven 2-week modules, and the spacing of in-class activities and other assignments

E. Assignment Four: Scopes Trial History Lesson & Class Activities, Frankie Nicole Weaver

Frankie Nicole Weaver, Comparative Twentieth Century South African and United States Civil Rights and Voting Rights Histories

Build on introductory context and engage with themes tied to the 1925 Scopes trial, particularly highlighting public discourse and civic engagement in culture and politics, TN law and state judicial proceedings, science and technology, religion and Christianity in the US, notions of evolution and human evolution, public education, journalism and media, national politics or political ideologies, and US Constitutional liberties of speech, press, and religion.

Item 2: Activity 1: The Optimal United States Presidential Ticket, Mary Anne K. Clarke

Mary Anne K. Clarke, Democracy, Citizenship, and the Media Course

This classroom activity provides an opportunity for students to discuss potential presidential and vice presidential candidates and determine what qualities, qualifications, and characteristics would make the ideal ticket.

F. Assignment Five: Scopes Trial Creative Assignment, Frankie Nicole Weaver

Frankie Nicole Weaver, Comparative Twentieth Century South African and United States Civil Rights and Voting Rights Histories

This creative assignment encourages students to reflect on independent exploration, class group learning, discussions, and to use research to think critically and to present their ideas in a 5-6-page essay. Students will also think like educators and create 8-10 PowerPoint slides.

Item 2: Activity 1: Cultural Mapping Workshop: Jambi Districts, Salah D. Hassan

Salah D. Hassan, Global Citizenship: Culture and Climate Justice in Indonesia

As an introductory activity for this education abroad course on global citizenship, students will work in small groups of 3 or 4 with local partners (Jambi students and faculty) to explore the relationship between cultural places and the environment of Jambi by creating cultural maps of the districts of Jambi. This classroom activity aims to prepare students for their community service and site visits in Jambi. They will learn about the local geography, acquire knowledge of the diverse cultural environment, and gain an understanding about specific sites of environmental concern in this mid-size city in central Sumatra. The activity will …

D. Assignment Three: Scopes Trial Introductory Assigned Activities: Learning From Tennessee’S Scopes Trial 100 Years Later, Frankie Nicole Weaver

Frankie Nicole Weaver, Comparative Twentieth Century South African and United States Civil Rights and Voting Rights Histories

This assignment encourages students to engage actively with scaffolded pre-learning necessary for the Scopes Trial unit. Students are introduced to the history of the 1925 Scopes Trial and the folk history connected to Inherit the Wind, in its various forms.

Item 6: Activity 5: Quiz On Voting, Scott Hicks

Scott Hicks, African American Literature

This quiz is designed to ensure students’ understanding of how to register and vote in North Carolina and is adaptable for use by faculty in other states. It may be used as a standalone activity, either during class time or as homework, or in conjunction with a guest presentation by a state, county, parish, or tribal elections official; completed individually or in groups; and completed on paper or via a learning management system. In my course, the quiz will be completed during the final exam period, when a state elections official will present a voter education seminar titled “Voter Registration,” …

Syllabus: Social Studies Curriculum And Methods In Secondary Education, John Shekitka

John Shekitka, Social Studies Curriculum and Methods in Secondary Education

This is a syllabus for a graduate-level or upper undergraduate course in preparing secondary social studies educators as part of a MAT program. Three weeks of the course specifically deal with civic engagement, and the remainder of the course contains a broader set of complimentary social science teacher skills. The assignments for the course center civic engagement as a central theme. The syllabus also includes a method for students to use ChatGPT or another AI tool ONCE, to experiment with the role of AI in becoming a secondary educator.

Item 4: Activity 2: Civic Engagement: The Power And Meaning Of Words, Mary Anne K. Clarke

Mary Anne K. Clarke, Democracy, Citizenship, and the Media Course

This classroom activity introduces students to the concept of civic engagement. As a class, students will learn a definition of civic engagement and then will work with various terms and concepts that apply to the topic of civic engagement. This activity attempts to broaden students’ understanding about why civic engagement matters and is much more than just voting.

A. Syllabus His 207 Comparative Twentieth Century South African And United States Civil Rights And Voting Rights Histories, Frankie Nicole Weaver

Frankie Nicole Weaver, Comparative Twentieth Century South African and United States Civil Rights and Voting Rights Histories

Originally shared as an in-person comparative upper-level undergraduate history course, this course was adapted for online, virtual use. It works well in either format; however, if you share it virtually, I strongly encourage at least one weekly synchronous class meeting and utilizing breakout rooms to promote discussion. Also, provide discussion questions and randomly enter breakout rooms to facilitate discussion --ensuring that engaging discussions occur. I recommend offering both in-person and virtual office hours, regardless.

The Relationship Between Physical Activity And Health-Related Quality Of Life In College Students, Shelia Ann Fritts

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the interaction effects of physical activity levels and race on college students' physical and mental health, focusing on Native American students. A total of 245 students participated, categorized by physical activity levels (low, moderate, and high) and race (Native American and others). Descriptive statistics outlined the sample characteristics and physical activity behaviors. At the same time, a two-way ANOVA was conducted to assess the effects of race and physical activity on health-related quality of life, measured through physical and mental composite scores (PCS and MCS). The results revealed a significant interaction effect between race and low physical …

Banking On Incumbents: How Do Fintech Start-Ups Benefit From Collaborations, Theodor Florian Cojoianu, Pia Helbing, Vladimir Pazitka, Dariusz Wojcik, Beiyun Xiao

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

We investigate whether collaborations with established incumbents bolster innovation and access to capital for FinTech start-ups. Collaborations increase patent applications and raise both short-and long-term citations. Collaborations with finance incumbents stimulate finance and technology citations and boost both short-and long-horizon venture capital fundraising. These effects persist after addressing endogeneity and conducting additional robustness tests. Theoretically, our findings test the resource based theory in the FinTech ecosystem and enrich the open innovation literature by showing that, despite power asymmetries, FinTech start-ups can sustain innovative momentum and capture innovation gains via collaborations with incumbents. Collaborations function as credible signals that confer capital …

The Return Of Chinese Emigrants: Legal Barriers And Local Practices, Jiaqi M. Liu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

While China has observed an increasing influx of foreign nationals, a notable phenomenon involves Chinese emigrants opting for return migration to reestablish themselves in their country of origin. The process of emigrants returning to China, referred to as “return and resettlement” (huiguo dingju 回国定居) in official terminology, however, is not automatic. Emigrant returnees must fulfill a set of selective and documentary criteria, implying that only economically affluent and duly documented migrants are permitted to resettle in China. Through a comprehensive review of national policies and an analysis of local practices in a diaspora hometown, this chapter argues that the hukou …

Reimagining U.S. Tort Law For Deepfake Harms: Comparative Insights From China And Singapore, Huijuan Peng, Pey Woan Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This Article explores how U.S. tort law can respond more effectively to the distinct harms posed by deepfakes, including reputational injury, identity appropriation, and emotional distress. Traditional tort doctrines, such as defamation, the right of publicity, and intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED), remain fragmented and ill-suited to the speed, scale, and anonymity of deepfake dissemination. Using a comparative functionalist approach, the Article analyzes how China and Singapore respond to deepfake harms through structurally divergent but functionally instructive frameworks. China’s model combines codified personality rights with intermediary obligations under a civil law regime, while Singapore adopts a hybrid approach that …

Flow, Immersion, And Presence: Creating Virtual Reality And Engagement In The Era Of Ubiquitous And Intelligent Technologies, Yi Maggie Guo, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Nannan Xi, Marshall Scott Poole

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Researchers use the concepts of flow, immersion, and presence to explain the usage of and engagement (e.g., cognitive absorption) with information technology. In this special issue, we showcase four papers on empirical investigations of flow and immersion, their antecedents, and their outcomes. These papers address research questions that range from investigating the antecedents and consequences of immersion in head-mounted displays of virtual reality, designing for the flow experience in extended reality, studying factors influencing user engagement in the metaverse, and identifying adverse effects of work-related flow. We also provide directions and suggestions for future research.

Lighttransfer: Your Long-Context Llm Is Secretly A Hybrid Model With Effortless Adaptation, Xuan Zhang, Fengzhuo Zhang, Cunxiao Du, Chao Du, Tianyu Pang, Wei Gao, Min Lin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Scaling language models to handle longer contexts introduces substantial memory challenges due to the growing cost of key-value (KV) caches. Motivated by the efficiency gains of hybrid models and the broad availability of pretrained large transformer backbones, we explore transitioning transformer models into hybrid architectures for a more efficient generation. In this work, we propose LightTransfer, a lightweight method that transforms models such as LLaMA into hybrid variants. Our approach identifies lazy layers -- those focusing on recent or initial tokens -- and replaces their full attention with streaming attention. This transformation can be performed without any training for long-context …

Map As A By-Product: Collective Landmark Mapping From Imu Data And User-Provided Texts In Situated Tasks, Ryo Yonetani, Kotaro Hara

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents Collective Landmark Mapper, a novel map-as-a-by-product system for generating semantic landmark maps of indoor environments. Consider users engaged in situated tasks that require them to navigate these environments and regularly take notes on their smartphones. Collective Landmark Mapper exploits the smartphone's IMU data and the user's free text input during these tasks to identify a set of landmarks encountered by the user. The identified landmarks are then aggregated across multiple users to generate a unified map representing the positions and semantic information of all landmarks. In developing the proposed system, we focused specifically on retail applications and …

Guiding Multiple Remote Users In Physical Tasks With Language-Driven Robotic Telepresence, Ruyi Li, Jingfei Guo, Xinyi Zhang, Xuji Zhang, Zeqing Li, Jiannan Li, Jiangtao Gong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Remote assistance through robotic telepresence could involve both control and memory challenges, particularly in one expert to multiple workers situation. In this work, we proposed a novelty language-driven interface to facilitate remote collaboration through telepresence robots. Through operations and maintenance expert interviews and a scenario simulation study, we identified key pain points in executing one-expert-multiple-workers remote guidance using the telepresence robot and proposed two design goals, which together consist of five sub-design goals with corresponding features. These features were integrated into a standard telepresence robot, resulting in the development of a Collaborative LLM-based Embodied Assistant Robot, named CLEAR Robot. A …

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal, Volume 14, William & Mary Law School

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal

Gideon Kanner Remembrance

September 12-13, 2024

Restructuring Property: A Tribute to Lee Fennell

Background Principles, General Law, & Constitutional Property

Roundtable: Unfinished Business & Emerging Issues

Property Rights and Housing In Crisis

Government Trespass: The Fourth Amendment "Open Fields" Doctrine Turns 100

2025 September, Morehead State University. Office Of Communications & Marketing.

Morehead State Press Release Archive, 1961 to the Present

Press releases for September of 2025.

Most-Favored-Nation's False Promises, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

Most-favoured-nation (MFN) protection seems decidedly straightforward both in meaning and operation, certainly as compared to other investment protections, such as fair and equitable treatment, which are plagued with indeterminacy. But the clarity of meaning and ease of application of MFN clauses are largely illusory. An examination of arbitral case law reveals seriously underestimated uncertainties surrounding the doctrine’s scope and workings. But the problems with MFN run far deeper. MFN may have the virtue of enhancing the level of protection of foreign investments. But States do not only extend benefits; they also withhold them. MFN disrespects the balance that States sought …

Bank Supervision And Article Ii, Kathryn Judge

Faculty Scholarship

The administrative state is again at a cross roads. The Supreme Court seems poised to continue its march toward trying to fit all of government neatly into one of the three constitutionally enumerated branches. An important front of this shift has been a flattening of the mechanisms through which officers of the United States may be held appropriately accountable for their actions. Waning are the days when Congress had the flexibility to create the institutions it believed were “necessary and proper” for carrying into execution important policy aims and to determine the appropriate mechanisms for accountability in conjunction with considering …

Improvement Of The Face Recognition Systems Security Against Morph Attacks Using The Developed Siamese Neural Network, Sura Abed Sarab Hussien, Thair Abed Sarab Hussien, Nada Hussein M. Ali

Mesopotamian Journal of CyberSecurity

Face Recognition Systems (FRS) are increasingly targeted by morphing attacks, where facial features of multiple individuals are blended into a synthetic image to deceive biometric verification. This paper proposes an enhanced Siamese Neural Network (SNN)-based system for robust morph detection. The methodology involves four stages. First, a dataset of real and morphed images is generated using StyleGAN, producing high-quality facial images. Second, facial regions are extracted using Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Networks (R-CNN) to isolate relevant features and eliminate background noise. Third, a Local Binary Pattern-Convolutional Neural Network (LBP-CNN) is used to build a baseline FRS and assess its susceptibility …

Current Controversies In Prenatal Diagnosis 2: Conventional Postmortem Examination Remains The Gold Standard For The Anatomical Examination Of Fetal Loss, J Ciaran Hutchinson, Lorraine Potocki, Ignatia B Van Den Veyver

Duncan NRI Faculty and Staff Publications

A comprehensive postmortem examination is an essential component of a work-up after stillbirth. Its findings can support accurate counseling of parents about causes and risk of recurrence. It also supports providers' decisions about most appropriate testing and management plans for future pregnancy to prevent recurrence. Informing parents about fetal autopsy and obtaining their consent is challenging, and conducting a fetal autopsy requires expertise that is, not universally available. Newer non-invasive or minimally invasive methods such as postmortem MRI and targeted biopsies can replace or supplement autopsies, but one must recognize that expertise in these methods is likewise not broadly available. …