Digital Commons Network^™

Timothy Booth V. Scott Drissel

2024 Decisions

USDC for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Palani Karupaiyan V. Lee Solomon

2024 Decisions

USDC for the District of New Jersey

Technology, Tradition, And “The Terror Of The People”, Darrell A.H. Miller, Alexandra Filindra, Noah Kaplan, Craig M. Burnett

Notre Dame Law Review

In New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, the Supreme Court mandated a text, history, tradition, and analogy–only approach to Second Amendment cases.

No longer can policymakers rely on empirical data alone to carry their litigation burden. Now such data must conform to a still-emerging “historical tradition of firearm regulation” to meet constitutional muster. Some despair that reams of data, careful experiments, and rigorous statistical analyses no longer have any relevance to the gun debate.

But those that claim that Bruen signals the end of empirically grounded policy solutions badly misread the opinion. Empirical studies can still …

Bruen’S Enforcement Puzzle: Unearthing And Adjudicating The Historical Enforcement Record In Second Amendment Cases, Andrew Willinger

Notre Dame Law Review

The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen brings historical complexity to the fore by instituting a history-focused test for the Second Amendment that demands analogues from the Founding or Reconstruction eras to support modern gun regulations. The majority opinion in Bruen considers, in multiple places, how certain historical gun regulations may have been enforced. In each instance, the Court suggests that evidence of racially disparate enforcement of a historical law is relevant to whether that law is part of the American historical tradition and an appropriate analogue. Historical enforcement data appear to …

The General-Law Right To Bear Arms, William Baude, Robert Leider

Notre Dame Law Review

In this Article, we argue that Bruen's intended methodological shift has been widely misunderstood by the bench and bar. This has led to confusion and misapplication in the lower courts, as well as much scholarly criticism of the test that is, we think, misdirected. As we will explain, Bruen calls for a form of legal originalism, applying a classical view of fundamental rights as a form of unwritten customary law. This is consistent with the text and history of the Constitution and leads to results that are less mechanical and more sensible than many lower courts have thought. Understanding …

Diverse Originalism, History & Tradition, Christina Mulligan

Notre Dame Law Review

The Supreme Court’s New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen decision appears to be an originalist opinion, ostensibly looking for the meaning of the Constitution’s text by looking to the public’s understanding of the language used. But Bruen's test actually fails to follow a public meaning originalist methodology. The Court focuses present-day constitutional interpreters on evidence of constitutional meaning that only reflects a portion of the public—the politically empowered men who were in a position to pass legislation. Two unfortunate outcomes follow. First, by limiting potential evidence of public meaning so severely, the Court raises the risk …

Historical Fact, Ryan C. Williams

Notre Dame Law Review

The growing emphasis on history as a criterion of constitutional decision-making in Supreme Court jurisprudence has raised the importance of a distinctive type of judicial fact-finding—namely, the investigation and resolution of contested questions of historical fact. Although history has always played an important role in constitutional adjudication, its primary role has traditionally been as an input to constitutional interpretation. But in cases like New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, the Court has increasingly demanded that factual determinations regarding the content, meaning, purposes, and effects of decisions taken in the distant past should also guide the lower …

Strengthening State Constitutions, Jared C. Huber

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note argues that state constitutions should have more difficult amendment procedures than most states currently do. Part I highlights the ease of amending most state constitutions by evaluating state constitutional amendment procedures. Next, Part II argues that because constitutions are fundamental, organizing laws, their amendment procedures should reflect such status. Finally, Part III of this Note examines state constitutional amendments that resulted from national political turmoil and argues amendment procedures should be stringent enough to temper such reactionism. If a constitution is to be a constitution, it must be resilient enough to function as one. State constitutions largely fail …

Malivhu: A Comprehensive Bioinformatics Resource For Filtering Sars And Mers Virus Proteins By Their Classification, Family And Species, And Prediction Of Their Interactions Against Human Proteins, David Guevara-Barrientos, Rakesh Kaundal

Computer Science Student Research

COVID 19 pandemic is still ongoing, having taken more than 6 million human lives with it, and it seems that the world will have to learn how to live with the virus around. In consequence, there is a need to develop different treatments against it, not only with vaccines, but also new medicines. To do this, human-virus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) play a key part in drug-target discovery, but finding them experimentally can be either costly or sometimes unreliable. Therefore, computational methods arose as a powerful alternative to predict these interactions, reducing costs and helping researchers confirm only certain interactions instead …

Malisa Neilson, Appellee V. Stephan Thomas Olsen, Appellant : Brief Of Appellant, Utah Court Of Appeals

Utah Court of Appeals Briefs (2020 –)

On Direct Appeal to the Utah Court of Appeals Appeal from the Fifth District Court, Washington County, Utah District Court Case No.: 224500531, Hon. Eric A. Ludlow presiding

Kit Erickson, Counsel for Appellee

Benjamin K. Lusty, Meaghan E. Farris, Counsel for Appellant

Recurrent Inflammatory Myofibroblastic Tumor Of Larynx Harboring A Novel Thbs1::Alk Fusion, Namra Ajmal, Stacey Gargano, Ujwala Gosavi, Madalina Tuluc

Computational Medicine Center Faculty Papers

Inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor (IMT) is a rare soft tissue tumor primarily occurring in the abdominopelvic region of young patients, and it is characterized by spindle-shaped myofibroblasts, or fibroblasts surrounded by inflammatory infiltrate. Herein, we report a case of a 24-year-old male with a firm submucosal mass in the anterior right vocal fold diagnosed as an IMT that recurred 14 months later. The tumor demonstrated a novel THBS1::ALK fusion containing Exons 1-7 of the thrombospondin 1 (THBS1) gene fused to Exon 19 of the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene via next-generation sequencing with the NextSeq sequencer. The fusion of THBS1 to …

Assessing Patterns Of Metazoans In The Global Ocean Using Environmental Dna, Nathan R. Geraldi, Silvia G. Acinas, Intikhab Alam, Josep M. Gasol, María Luz Fernández-De-Puelles, Caterina R. Giner, Santiago Hernández León, Ramiro Logares, Ramon Massana, Pablo Sánchez, Vladimir Bajic, Takashi Gojobori, Carlos M. Duarte

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Documenting large-scale patterns of animals in the ocean and determining the drivers of these patterns is needed for conservation efforts given the unprecedented rates of change occurring within marine ecosystems. We used existing datasets from two global expeditions, Tara Oceans and Malaspina, that circumnavigated the oceans and sampled down to 4000 m to assess metazoans from environmental DNA (eDNA) extracted from seawater. We describe patterns of taxonomic richness within metazoan phyla and orders based on metabarcoding and infer the relative abundance of phyla using metagenome datasets, and relate these data to environmental variables. Arthropods had the greatest taxonomic richness of …

Tfeb Activation Hallmarks Antigenic Experience Of B Lymphocytes And Directs Germinal Center Fate Decisions, Matthias Münchhalfen, Richard Görg, Michael Haberl, Jens Löber, Jakob Willenbrink, Laura Schwarzt, Charlotte Höltermann, Christian Ickes, Leonard Hammermann, Jan Kus, Björn Chapuy, Andrea Ballabio, Sybille D Reichardt, Alexander Flügel, Niklas Engels, Jürgen Wienands

Duncan NRI Faculty and Staff Publications

Ligation of the B cell antigen receptor (BCR) initiates humoral immunity. However, BCR signaling without appropriate co-stimulation commits B cells to death rather than to differentiation into immune effector cells. How BCR activation depletes potentially autoreactive B cells while simultaneously primes for receiving rescue and differentiation signals from cognate T lymphocytes remains unknown. Here, we use a mass spectrometry-based proteomic approach to identify cytosolic/nuclear shuttling elements and uncover transcription factor EB (TFEB) as a central BCR-controlled rheostat that drives activation-induced apoptosis, and concurrently promotes the reception of co-stimulatory rescue signals by supporting B cell migration and antigen presentation. CD40 co-stimulation …

The Impact Of Health Shocks On Worker Performance: Evidence From Professional Sports, Yulia Chikish, Brad R. Humphreys

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

Workplace injuries generate substantial costs to workers and employers. We analyze consequences of a workplace injury, ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) damage in elbows of baseball pitchers. Once career ending, a method to repair torn UCLs, Tommy John surgery, was developed in the 1970s. We analyze performance of pitchers before and after undergoing this surgery and also compare them to a matched sample of uninjured pitchers. Surgical repair of UCL injuries extends post-injury careers by roughly one season relative to matched uninjured pitchers, generating economic benefits for players and teams. Post-injury performance, in terms of batting success of hitters faced by …

Clark V. Clark : Brief Of Appellant, Utah Court Of Appeals

Utah Court of Appeals Briefs (2020 –)

Appeal from the Fifth Judicial District Court, Iron County, State of Utah The Honorable Matthew L. Bell District Case 170500181

Frank D. Mylar (5116) MYLAR LAW, P.C. Counsel for Appellants/Defendants

Prekindergarten Teacher Experiences With Professional Development For Inclusive Practices, Clory D. Walker

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Teachers in inclusive prekindergarten (PK) settings often serve children with special learning needs without having had professional preparation or development (PD) for using inclusive practices. The problem addressed in this basic qualitative study was that many PK teachers have not received the PD they needed to promote inclusive practices to teach young children within inclusive early childhood classrooms. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore PK teachers’ perspectives on the PD they need to promote inclusive practices to teach all young children, including children with special learning needs, in inclusive early childhood classrooms. The conceptual framework used …

An Intronic Regulatory Element Limits Tcf7 Expression In Natural Killer Cells, Matthew Vincent Mccullen

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

To provide protection against a broad spectrum of threats, the immune system must give rise to a diverse range of cell types each with specialized roles in host defense. Transcriptional regulation is achieved by interactions between transcription factors and non-coding cis-regulatory DNA elements such as promoters and enhancers. One of the most important transcription factors in lymphocyte development and function is TCF1 (encoded by the Tcf7 gene). TCF1 is required for the efficient development of both innate lymphocytes, such as NK cells, as well as adaptive T cells. TCF1 also regulates the functional abilities of these cell types, such as …

Successful Strategies Of Small Business Owners Of Coffee Shops, Tom Gates

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Many small business owners of U.S. coffee shops lack effective strategies to sustain their business beyond the first 5 years. Small business owners are concerned that the use of ineffective strategies can negatively impact the coffee shop’s profitability and competitiveness. The purpose of the qualitative multiple case study was to explore what type of skills, business acumen, and strategies small business owners of coffee shops use to be successful within the first 5 years of operation. The conceptual framework that grounded this study was von Bertalanffy’s general systems theory. The participants were five small business coffee shop owners in the …

Hybridizing Mechanistic Modeling And Deep Learning For Personalized Survival Prediction After Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor Immunotherapy, Joseph D Butner, Prashant Dogra, Caroline Chung, Eugene J Koay, James W Welsh, Vittorio Cristini

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

We present a study where predictive mechanistic modeling is combined with deep learning methods to predict individual patient survival probabilities under immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) immunotherapy. This hybrid approach enables prediction based on both measures that are calculable from mechanistic models of key mechanisms underlying ICI therapy that may not be directly measurable in the clinic and easily measurable quantities or patient characteristics that are not always readily incorporated into predictive mechanistic models. A deep learning time-to-event predictive model trained on a hybrid mechanistic + clinical data set from 93 patients achieved higher per-patient predictive accuracy based on event-time concordance, …

Role Of The Antiparallel Double-Stranded Filament Form Of Ftsa In Activating The Escherichia Coli Divisome, Abbigale Perkins, Mwidy Sava Mounange-Badimi, William Margolin

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The actin-like FtsA protein is essential for function of the cell division machinery, or divisome, in many bacteria including Escherichia coli. Previous in vitro studies demonstrated that purified wild-type FtsA assembles into closed mini-rings on lipid membranes, but oligomeric variants of FtsA such as FtsAR286W and FtsAG50E can bypass certain divisome defects and form arc and double-stranded (DS) oligomeric states, respectively, which may reflect conversion of an inactive to an active form of FtsA. However, it remains unproven which oligomeric forms of FtsA are responsible for assembling and activating the divisome. Here, we used an in vivo crosslinking assay …

We Are The Ai Problem, Tonja Jacobi, Matthew Sag

Emory Law Journal Online

This Essay describes what we call “the Black Nazi Problem,” a shorthand for the sometimes-jarring text and images produced by AI, from the incongruous—such as female Indian popes—to the outrageous—such as depicting minorities as their own historical oppressors, including Black Nazis. These images were the result of overzealous efforts by AI developers to correct for a lack of diverse representation in the training data used to create Generative AI models. The overrepresentation of white, fully-abled, Western men in images of high status categories, and the invisibility of women, people of color, and the disabled, except in low status categories, and …

Nostos, Kleos, And "Great Responsibility": Homeric Reception In The Spider-Verse, Matthew Nickerson

Parnassus: Classical Journal

No abstract provided.

Without Knowing What Comes Next: A Review Of Jack Halberstam's 'Wild Things: The Disorder Of Desire', Alexandra Chiasson

Criticism

A review of Jack Halberstam's Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire

Method, System, And Computer Program Product For Capturing Temporal Dynamics, Liang Wang, Shubham Jain, Yingtong Dou, Junpeng Wang, Michael Yeh, Yan Zheng, Prince Osei Aboagye, Wei Zhang

Defensive Publications Series

Methods, systems, and computer program products may obtain ratings by users for products at time points; for each user and product pair: generate, for a time point, a user neighborhood that includes products rated by that user at or after that time point and a product neighborhood that includes users that rated that product at or after that time point, an individual-based rating of that user for that product at or after that time point being generated based on the user neighborhood, and a crowd-based rating of that product for that user at or after that time point being generated …

Privacy Perceptions On Personal Data And Data Breaches In South Africa, Phillip Nyoni, Mthulisi Velempini, Nehemiah Mavetera

The African Journal of Information Systems

Research shows that data breaches often occur when organizations fail to protect users’ personal data sufficiently well. Many devices are connected to the Internet such as mobile phones, smart cars, wearables and ‘Things’ which increase the number of potential entry points into data stores. This paper discusses the potential data privacy risks that users face online. The study used online content analysis and surveys to establish the privacy perceptions of users and trends of data breaches in South Africa. The findings reveal that users have a positive perception of data managers and view them as knowledgeable in data protection. Nevertheless, …

Eddie Williams V. Superintendent Greene Sci

2024 Decisions

USDC for the Middle District of Pennsylvania

Brian Lopez V. Brian Andrews

2024 Decisions

USDC for the District of New Jersey

A Review Of The Literature On The Utilization Of Stem Cells In Knee Osteoarthritis, Katrina Krist

Theses and Graduate Projects

Background: This literature review evaluates the utilization of various types of stem cells in the treatment of osteoarthritis.

Purpose: To assess the different types of stem cell therapy available in an attempt to determine its effectiveness and viability as a long term therapy option.

Methods: Articles were found by searching Augsburg Library Services, Google Scholar, and PubMed for recent, original studies using both allogeneic or autologous stem cells from a variety of cell lines including bone marrow and adipose tissue.

Conclusions: The utilization of stem cells as a viable treatment option for osteoarthritis shows improvement in pain management and return …

Attraction Is Altered Via Modulation Of The Medial Prefrontal Cortex Without Explicit Knowledge, Samantha Zorns, Claudia Sierzputowski, Sydney Ash, Molly Skowron, Anthony Minervini, Adriana Lavarco, Matthew Pardillo, Julian Paul Keenan

Department of Biology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Previous studies have demonstrated that brain stimulation can alter an individual's physical appearance via dysregulation of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). In this study, we attempted to determine if individuals who receive repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) delivered to the MPFC were rated as more attractive by others. It has been previously reported that 1 hertz (Hz) (inhibitory) TMS can alter one's facial expressions such that frontal cortex inhibition can increase expressiveness. These alterations, detected by external observation, remain below the level of awareness of the subject itself. In Phase I, subjects (N = 10) received MPFC rTMS and had …

The Lived Experiences Of Clinical Staff Nurses Who Provide Care For Transgender Patients In Florida, Twanna L. Crockam

Dissertations

Historically, transgender patients have experienced challenging interactions with healthcare providers. As a result, many transgender patients refuse to seek medical attention for a broad spectrum of healthcare needs. Although the transgender population has gained attention, a lack of research exists of clinical staff nurses' lived experiences providing care for transgender patients.

The purpose of this qualitative hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry was to uncover and understand the experiences of clinical staff nurses when providing care for transgender patients in Florida. The research question was this: "What is the lived experience of clinical staff nurses who provide care for transgender patients in Florida?"