Digital Commons Network^™

Va Dent J April, May And June 2015

Virginia Dental Journal

No abstract provided.

Letter To The Editor Mission Accomplished!, Robert B. Allen Dds

Virginia Dental Journal

No abstract provided.

Public Use On The Loose: Clarifying The Takings Clause’S Public Use Requirement, Megan Hoefs

Pepperdine Law Review

The Fifth Amendment permits the taking of private property for “public use,” but modern courts refuse to question legislative determinations of that use. Although the Supreme Court has implicitly reserved a prohibition on takings done under a “mere pretext of public purpose,” lower courts are unsure of how to identify or evaluate such pretext. This Comment argues that the Public Use Clause requires a showing of good faith to be constitutionally sufficient. By reframing public use around good faith, this Comment offers a modest but necessary clarification that preserves the structure of existing doctrine while restoring the Clause’s function as …

Liberty In Death? An Analysis Of The Ethics And Laws Regarding Physician-Assisted Suicide, Ross Leavitt

DePaul Journal of Health Care Law

I seek to analyze physician-assisted suicide with the following two goals in mind: (1) Evaluating how ethical and legal arguments surrounding suicide developed throughout history and how they inform our understanding today; (2) What a regulatory scheme governing physician-assisted suicide looks like and if it can adequately safeguard the interests of the individual and the collective.

Uninformed Consent: Legal Failures In The Treatment Of Female Patients, Eva Zagarzhevskaya

DePaul Journal of Health Care Law

Surgeries are a common practice globally, with 51.4 million procedures performed in the United States alone. [1] Going in for a procedure typically has a variety of risks involved such as shock, wound infection, or a bad reaction to anesthesia. [2] However, a risk no patient should have to consider is the risk of an alternative exam being performed on them without their knowledge or consent during surgery. Yet, there is no federal statute preventing this practice. Rather, in 34% of US states, doctors do not need their patient’s consent to have medical students and other doctors perform invasive exams …

Cybersecurity Disparities In U.S. Healthcare: Regulatory Gaps, Equity Failures, And Systemic Risks, Erica Patterson

DePaul Journal of Health Care Law

U.S. healthcare relies on digital infrastructure that now shapes clinical safety. However, the governing law remains a patchwork. The HIPAA Security and Breach Notification Rules, layered with uneven federal and state mandates and voluntary frameworks, do not yield a clear, enforceable floor of protection for small, rural  hospitals which are institutions with thin budgets, legacy systems, limited vendor leverage, and scarce IT staff. This Article identifies the gap, namely that minimum safeguards are not articulated as testable outcomes that low-resource providers can implement and sustain, and offers a remedy. Using doctrinal analysis and comparative assessment of federal and state regimes …

Diversity Regulations For Clinical Trials & The Underrepresentation Of Native American Women, Alka Meresh

DePaul Journal of Health Care Law

The exclusion of women and racial minorities from research currently compromises the generalizability of findings. Native American women, are particularly underrepresented in clinical trials due to the complicated history between Native American health and the US government. Congress, the NIH, and the FDA are the most prominent actors involved in regulating the diversity of clinical trial participants. This article will identify and analyze the deficiencies of the current regulations promoting diversity in clinical trials and suggest some solutions to build community with Indigenous communities and promote their participation in clinical trials.

Never Trust, Always Verify, Securing Medicare's Future To Defend Against Ai Driven Cyber Threats, Dana G. Jones

DePaul Journal of Health Care Law

Healthcare cybersecurity stands at a pivotal juncture, analogous to the Cold War's most perilous moments. When President Ronald Reagan declared "trust but verify"^[1] during nuclear disarmament negotiations with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, he established systematic verification as the cornerstone of security in high-stakes environments where the cost of misplaced trust meant potential human extinction. Today, the rapid integration of artificial intelligence and networked medical devices into America's healthcare infrastructure has created stakes equally grave for the nation's sixty-five million Medicare beneficiaries^[2]; however, the threat landscape has evolved beyond Reagan's paradigm. Modern healthcare cannot afford even conditional …

Death Wish: A Comprehensive Analysis Of Physician Assisted Suicide, Janna George

DePaul Journal of Health Care Law

Physician-assisted suicide is an extremely complex and controversial legal issue, deeply rooted in morality, legality, and ethics. Countries around the world are split as to how to approach this concept, with some permitting physician-assisted suicide under particular circumstances, and others strictly prohibiting it. ^[1] This division is evidence of the subject’s complex underpinnings. According to the United States Declaration of Independence, all Americans are deserving of certain unalienable rights, “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”^[2] But what about the right to die?

There are a number of reasons as to why physician assisted suicide is complicated, including …

Revolutionizing Campus Operations: Using Ai For Intelligent Resource Optimization, Jared Evans

Staff Professional Development Week

Jared Evans from GTS will present a case study in using AI to combine information from multiple sources to create solutions that save time, achieve more, and maximize the use of limited resources. Technical? Maybe a bit. Boring? Not at all!

True Leases Versus Disguised Installment Sale/Purchases: Factors The Courts Use To Distinguish, Ray A. Knight, Lee G. Knight

Tax Adviser

No abstract provided.

Tax Reform Act Of 1986 Changes Affecting Real Estate Investment Trusts, Linda Galler

Tax Adviser

No abstract provided.

Tax Clinic, Gerald W. Padwe

Tax Adviser

No abstract provided.

Real Time Transfer System Using Multiple Networks, Ramji Sethuraman

Defensive Publications Series

Present disclosure provides a method comprising: receiving, by a network computer from a sending entity computer, a first transfer message for a transfer interaction from a sender to a receiver, comprising a receiver alias and a value; transmitting, by the network computer, the first transfer message to an intermediate entity computer, wherein the intermediate entity computer resolves the receiver alias to a credential, and transmits a second transfer message to a receiver entity computer, wherein the receiver entity computer credits the value to a record of the receiver, wherein the first transfer message is received by the intermediate entity computer …

Modular Aerial Suppression Architecture (Masa), Michael Victor Caldwell Mr.

Defensive Publications Series

The Modular Aerial Suppression Architecture (MASA) is an open-hardware conceptual aerial firefighting platform designed around segmented ballistic fire-suppressant deployment rather than conventional liquid-tank dumping systems. The architecture proposes the use of modular cargo-based deployment systems integrated into reversible commercial or cargo aircraft platforms, allowing suppressant payloads to be delivered through stabilized aerodynamic cone units intended to improve directional placement accuracy in high-wind wildfire environments.

Unlike traditional airtankers that rely on large liquid retardant releases susceptible to wind drift, atomization, and severe center-of-gravity slosh dynamics, MASA utilizes discrete suppressant payload units engineered with forward-weighted ballistic stability and passive fin-controlled descent characteristics. …

Light Straw Clay Alternative Building Material, Natalie M. Durdle Miss

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure details a 100% organic, non-hazardous, and fully biodegradable insulation system engineered specifically as a high-performance alternative to traditional light straw-clay (leichtlehm) construction in northern, non-agricultural, or arctic climates. The system completely replaces both geological clay and agricultural straw with locally harvested, invasive, and wild northern biological inputs. The structural insulation matrix utilizes a high-silica, woody, and hollow-stemmed fiber substrate sourced from standing dead, wild invasive perennial weeds—specifically European Common Reed (Phragmites australis), Common Mullein (Verbascum thapsus), Canada Thistle (Cirsium arvense), or Giant Reed Sweetgrass (Glyceria maxima). These plants …

Boreal Dome Tension Ring System, Natalie M. Durdle Miss

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure establishes a low-cost, portable, field-expedient geodesic and hexagonal framework optimized for rapid deployment in remote, sub-arctic, or northern environments. The system replaces heavy, old-growth timber and manufactured metal connectors with high-flexibility juvenile saplings (under 25 years old) reinforced via an exterior high-tensile biocarbon matrix. This document establishes prior art to prevent corporate patenting or monopolization of low-tech, non-industrial tensegrity framing systems that utilize local biomass and organic binders for disaster relief, medical evacuation shelters, or off-grid construction.

Invisible Rotorcraft Using Boreal Glass Technology, Natalie M. Durdle Miss

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure establishes a low-tech, field-expedient, manned rotary-wing aircraft (specifically a gyroplane or autogyro) optimized for rapid tactical evacuation, medical casualty transport, or emergency egress from remote, unorganized, or contested sub-arctic environments. The aircraft completely eliminates the need for advanced industrial aviation manufacturing, mechanical gearboxes, complex transmission driveshafts, or petroleum-based internal combustion. Instead, it relies on un-milled juvenile wood cores, high-tensile algae-derived carbon fibers, unrefined conifer sap resins, and calcined bio-ceramic linear alternators powered by a closed-loop, phase-changing propane cycle. This document formally places these structural and mechanical configurations into the public domain to serve as un-patentable prior art for …

Creating Transparent Boreal (Wood) Glass, Natalie M. Durdle Miss

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure establishes a low-cost, field-expedient, non-industrial process for the manufacturing of optically translucent, structurally reinforced bio-synthetic wood composites (commonly referred to as "transparent wood"). The method utilizes commonly available household chemical equivalents and manual automotive tools to safely strip light-absorbing lignin from native wood veneers and replace the resulting empty cellular voids with clear plant or synthetic resins. This document explicitly establishes prior art to prevent the commercial monopolization or patenting of small-scale, decentralized, and DIY variations of this material processing cycle.

Implicit Bias In Hiring: Leveraging Avatars To Foster More Inclusive Hiring Practices, Alexa Trifilo, Gary Blau, Crystal Reeck

Engaged Management ReView

This research investigated implicit racial in-group bias in hiring and examined extended reality (XR) as a mechanism for masking visual identity cues during the interview process. By introducing avatars that obscure physical characteristics, such as race, the study extends the concept of “blind” hiring into immersive virtual environments. In our experimental design, randomly assigned participants evaluated job candidates represented by avatars that had three variations of racial identifiability (White, Asian, or racially unidentifiable avatar) and two qualification levels (strong and ambiguous). We controlled for gender by including only experienced, full-time female professionals as participants in the evaluation of female avatars …

The Tax Adviser, Volume 18, Number 1, January 1987, American Institute Of Certified Public Accountants

Tax Adviser

No abstract provided.

Home Office And Hobby Loss Deductions After Tax Reform, Christine L. Courtnage, Lisa Estes

Tax Adviser

No abstract provided.

Caldwell Adaptive Plasma Conditioning & Sensing System (Capcs V4.0), Michael Victor Caldwell Mr.

Defensive Publications Series

The Caldwell Adaptive Plasma Conditioning & Sensing System (CAPCS v4.0) is a next‑generation, fully autonomous microfluidic biosensing platform designed for real‑world plasma analysis under variable biological, thermal, and mechanical conditions. CAPCS integrates differential quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensing, surface acoustic wave (SAW) focusing, adaptive closed‑loop control, predictive fouling detection, dynamic thermal stabilization, and hybrid inertial–acoustic cell removal into a single disposable cartridge.

Unlike traditional biosensor concepts that rely on static assumptions, CAPCS v4.0 continuously adapts to fouling, drift, clogging, viscosity changes, hematocrit variability, and thermal fluctuations. Every major failure mode is paired with a dedicated countermeasure. The system uses dual‑QCM …

An Agentic Ai System For Meeting-Centric, Time-Bounded Security Policy Enforcement, Niranjan M M

Defensive Publications Series

Enterprises increasingly rely on meetings as the primary unit of collaboration for sensitive decision-making, training, customer engagement, and incident response. However, current firewall and network security systems remain largely static and topology-driven, forcing administrators to manually create, deploy, and later remove temporary security policies for short-lived events. This approach is operationally complex, error-prone, and does not scale in modern hybrid and highly collaborative environments.

The proposal introduces a meeting-centric, agent-driven firewall policy framework that automatically derives security intent from meeting context and participant composition. By treating the meeting identifier as the authoritative security signal, the system dynamically forms a meeting-specific …

Supernova-Ejected Planetary Core Fragments As A Mechanism For Anomalous Interstellar Objects: Application To 3i/Atlas, Daniel Austin Harbison

Defensive Publications Series

This paper proposes that the third confirmed interstellar object, 3I/ATLAS, is a dense fragment of a planetary core, ejected from its parent stellar system by a supernova event, rather than a primordial cometary nucleus. The hypothesis is constructed from first-principles physical reasoning and accounts for five anomalies observed in 3I/ATLAS that strain conventional cometary models: high inferred bulk density, nickel-rich coma chemistry, non-gravitational acceleration patterns, advanced age of the material, and the kinematic signature consistent with thick-disk galactic origin. The model further proposes that the same class of supernova event, when interacting with surrounding hydrogen clouds at the 1420 MHz …

The Whisper Web: A Mail Intelligence Framework For Semantic Coordination In Communication Systems, Johny Manuel-Devadoss, Joanna Johnson, Jayden Jack Johnson, Deepthi Prasad

Defensive Publications Series

This paper introduces The Whisper Web, a communication intelligence framework designed for post-static digital correspondence ecosystems operating under conditions of planetary-scale coordination complexity. Unlike conventional email systems that treat messages as isolated immutable payloads exchanged between endpoints, the Whisper Web reconceptualizes communication as a continuously evolving semantic biosphere composed of dynamic probabilistic entities known as Whisper Units. Each Whisper Unit functions as a compressed socio-semantic organism capable of propagating influence through adaptive trust topologies, negotiation-energy fields, obligation gradients, institutional resonance maps, and multi-agent predictive coordination networks.

The proposed framework abandons the traditional paradigms of inboxes, message queues, folders, labels, and …

Scalable High-Voltage Substation Architectures, N/A

Defensive Publications Series

A modular high-voltage substation architecture enables the scalable delivery of power to large-scale computing campuses. The system utilizes standardized high-voltage switching building blocks, typically rated for one gigawatt, which can be interconnected via sectionalizing breakers to expand capacity incrementally. Each module provides integrated connectivity for various energy sources, including utility lines, onsite backup generators, and battery energy storage systems. The design incorporates configurable switching mechanisms that allow backup resources to be deployed either for localized support of specific server buildings or as campus-wide assets. This decentralized but integrated approach enhances operational reliability by enabling islanded operations and automated power redistribution …

Gesture Control Of Operations Via Wearable, Russell William Myers, Yeabkal Assegid Wubshit

Defensive Publications Series

This document describes a wearable computing device (e.g., smart watch, smart ring, fitness tracker, hearable device, or other body-mounted devices or sensors) that facilitates gesture control of operations, such as media sessions and applications. For instance, the wearable computing device may allow a user of the wearable computing device to execute gesturebased commands to control a media application or launch specific applications without changing a visual display and/or navigating a menu of the wearable device. The wearable computing device may control media applications across devices (e.g., a video playing on a phone, music playing on headphones, etc.) and monitor gestures, …

Improvement Of Ac State Handling In Evpn, Anonymous

Defensive Publications Series

Systems and methods are disclosed for signaling Attachment Circuit (AC) state in an Ethernet Virtual Private Network (EVPN) without withdrawing Ethernet Auto-Discovery per EVPN Instance (ETH-AD per EVI) routes. A local Provider Edge (PE) router sets an AC Down Bit within the Layer 2 Attributes Extended Community of an ETH-AD per EVI route to indicate that an associated AC has transitioned to a non-operational state, while retaining the existing route advertisement and the associated label programming in the control plane and the data plane. A multi-homed PE that receives the route excludes the advertising local PE from Designated Forwarder (DF) …

A Qualitative Job Posting Analysis From Missouri To Guide Competency-Based Curriculum In Slp Education, Megan Batzer

Teaching and Learning in Communication Sciences & Disorders

Competency-based education is a major trend for health professions education and one of the topics the Ad Hoc Committee to Plan Next Steps to Redesign Entry-Level Education for Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) recently explored. Competency-based education is an outcomes-based educational model where the focus is on development and mastery of specific knowledge and skills through instruction, assessment, and feedback. Competency-based education encompasses multiple educational theories including the self-determination theory, self-directed learning, self-assessment, and self-efficacy. Understanding the perspectives of key constituents, such as employers, on the setting-specific and across-setting knowledge, skills, and attributes required for the clinical fellowship (CF) experience could guide …