Digital Commons Network^™

Reconsidering The Take It Down Act, Cate Thorpe

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

In the past decade, there has been an increase in digital forgeries leading to the phenomena many have called “revenge porn.” This form of Nonconsensual Intimate Imagery (NCII) has been facilitated by AI-models that allow users to create false images or videos of someone’s likeness, often referred to as deepfakes. In an attempt to combat the dissemination of such forged NCIIs, Congress enacted the TAKE IT DOWN Act. The Act institutes a notice-and-removal procedure for victims to request the removal of  NCIIs depicting their likeness on covered platforms. While the TAKE IT DOWN Act sufficiently addresses some concerns, certain aspects …

Fluctuating Hallucinations: On The Boundaries Of Immigration Judges’ Discretion In The Determination Of Asylum Based On Political Opinions, Yan Zhang

Immigration Law Blog

This article examines the enigmatic nature and blurred boundaries of the discretionary power exercised by immigration judges in asylum cases, highlighting how the scope of such discretion—whether broad or narrow—proves decisive for the applicants and their families. Through a comparative analysis of specific cases, the article underscores the critical importance of immigration judges seeking to discern and follow the true intent of the law—specifically, by deeply understanding and defining the threshold of “persecution,” delineating the boundaries of “political opinion,” and appropriately weighing and prioritizing immigration policies within their specific historical contexts. Furthermore, it is essential that judges conduct a comprehensive …

Book Clubs And Young Adult Literature: Preparing Preservice Special Educators In Inclusive Literacy Practices, Marie Tejero Hughes, Juana Abarca, Marta Mohammad

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

The study presented in this article explored how book clubs centered on young adult (YA) literature supported 67 preservice special educators (PSEs) in developing inclusive literacy practices. The study examined PSEs’ reflections on social, cultural, and personal themes in YA narratives and how these informed their planning for students with disabilities. Using a qualitative descriptive approach, researchers analyzed online discussion posts collected over a 6-week book club course component. Findings reveal that PSEs engaged with themes such as identity, resilience, systemic inequities, and disability representation, often connecting literature to their own positionalities and future teaching roles. PSEs also identified a …

Physiological Correlates Of Health-Related Anxiety - An Investigation Between Heart Rate Variability (Hrv) And Blood Pressure Reactivity In Clinical Settings, Alvaro Villarreal, Sarah Headapohl, Chase Parks, Melanie Gonzalez, Sage Olsson, Mounyjwok Odhong

SPARK Symposium Presentations

White coat syndrome – also known as white coat hypertension –  consists in a sharp increase in blood pressure as a result of increased underlying anxiety (Mancia et al. 1677) in clinical and health settings. White coat syndrome has had conflicting results surrounding it, with early research suggesting it requires no serious clinical attention or diagnosis, while more recent research suggests the contrary, that white coat syndrome is clinically problematic and associated with increased cardiovascular risk, metabolic abnormalities, cardiovascular fatalities, and asymptomatic organ damage. This study aims to fill a gap in literature by investigating the impact of induced white …

Mobility Without Retention: Reforming The Compact Of Free Association To Address Human Capital Flight, Ellery Miller, Porter O'Reilly

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

In the aftermath of United States nuclear testing in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), which rendered several atolls uninhabitable, the country now confronts a different threat: sustained human capital flight. To compensate the RMI for nuclear damages, the United States signed into law the Compact of Free Association (COFA), a treaty structured around three core commitments: (1) defense and security, (2) economic assistance, and (3) unrestricted migration rights. Under COFA, Marshallese citizens may live and work in the United States without a visa, which has resulted in large-scale outmigration of the working-age and educated population. This Note argues …

Rethinking Antitrust In The Age Of Fintech, Quaid Knell, Olivia Mossman

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

In cases involving large technology firms, current antitrust laws are proving difficult to enforce when applied through the traditional framework of price-centered metrics. Financial technology (fintech) companies are firms that integrate digital technology into financial services and operate through multi-sided platforms, and they are growing in number. This increased number of firms introduces the next challenge for antitrust enforcement, as traditional definitions of market dominance and monopolistic behavior are ill-suited to the realities of the digital landscape. Although there are no current antitrust lawsuits against major fintech firms, their existing structures and business models, if left unexamined, allow these firms …

“Loophole Of The Century”: Routine Use And The Privacy Act Of 1974, Joslynn Jensen

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

This Note examines structural weaknesses in the Privacy Act of 1974 and argues that the statute no longer provides meaningful safeguards for personal information held by federal agencies. Enacted in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, the Act was designed to ensure transparency, accountability, and individual control over government recordkeeping systems. However, two core features—the routine-use exception and the Act’s narrow remedial structure—have undermined these protections. The routine-use provision permits agencies to disclose personal records without individualized consent so long as the disclosure is deemed “compatible” with the purpose of collection and published in the Federal Register, a form of …

Etsu Today - Spring 2026, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU Today [magazine]

Bucs Go Beyond

Celebrating ETSU's Impact

At East Tennessee State University, our pursuit of knowledge is inseparable from our commitment to service. That commitment is evident not only in our classrooms and laboratories but also throughout the region we serve. Through hands-on learning, cross-sector partnerships, and a deep sense of purpose, our students, faculty, and staff extend ETSU’s reach far beyond our formal campus borders.

This year, ETSU was honored with the Carnegie Foundation’s Elective Classification for Community Engagement, a distinction awarded to just a fraction of institutions nationwide. This recognition affirms the ongoing and intentional work taking place across …

Prevalence Of Plasmodium Ovale And Plasmodium Malariae Mixed Infections And Associated Mortality In Children With Severe Falciparum Malaria, Giselle Lima-Cooper, Dibyadyuti Datta, Caitlin Bond, Kagan Mellencamp, Ruth Namazzi, Mahesh Gupta, Andrea Conroy, Robert Opoka, Chandy John

Paediatrics and Child Health, East Africa

The prevalence and clinical significance of mixed Plasmodium infections in children with severe Plasmodium falciparum (P. falciparum) malaria are not well characterized. In a cohort of 440 Ugandan children hospitalized with severe malaria who were diagnosed with Plasmodium species via microscopy, nested polymerase chain reaction (nPCR) testing was used to detect P. falciparum, Plasmodium ovale (P. ovale), Plasmodium malariae (P. malariae), and Plasmodium vivax (P. vivax) infections and assess their association with adverse clinical outcomes during hospitalization. Using nPCR testing, the Plasmodium 18S small-subunit ribosomal RNA gene was detected in 440 children. Plasmodium falciparum mono-infection was identified in 329 (74.8%) …

An Eschatological Investigation Of Fatherlessness Through A Christological Lens: Exploring Identity, Hope, And Restoration In A Fatherless Generation, Derrick Marshall

Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

This dissertation analyses the relationship between fatherlessness across generations and selected indicators of cultural development and social stability in contemporary society. It also evaluates how a local church context may function as a site of intervention to address the relational, emotional, and spiritual consequences associated with father absence. The study is conducted within LIFEchurch in El Paso, Texas, and is situated within theological reflections on sonship, identity, and restoration. The research employed a multi-method descriptive design and utilized a single Qualtrics survey instrument comprising both structured quantitative items and open-ended qualitative questions. Participants were adults affiliated with the LIFEchurch community. …

Lego®-Based Cubesats For Space Outreach, Stefan Brandle, Joshua Brown, Evan Smith, Drew Nye, Sydney Reddy, Twidy Kwae, Kaiya Grzesiak, Matthew Roderer, John Hetz

Faculty-Led Student Projects in CSE

Taylor University Computer Science and Engineering, in collaboration with NearSpace Education, has initiated a multi-year effort to enhance space-awareness by offering K-12 students career-impacting opportunities to build and fly satellites that have a LEGO®-robotics-based payload. This effort is intended as an outreach in the spirit of the ThinSat project (2017-2021) supported by Virginia Space, Twiggs Space Lab, Orbital ATK, NearSpace Launch, and the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, among others. We hope to receive permission to name the satellite LEGO-SAT-0.

Partisanship And Patriotism: How Political Parties Influence Citizen Perceptions Of American Symbols And National Unity, Carl Picerno

Political Science Undergraduate Theses

Over the past decade, there has been an increase in political polarization across the United States. National symbols such as the American flag, the national anthem, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the military have become disputed markers of unity and identity. This study explores the following research question: How does political party affiliation influence Americans’ perceptions of key symbols of American pride and patriotism, and further, what do these perceptions reveal about national unity and political polarization? This study examines the following hypotheses more specifically: first, Republicans are more likely to associate national symbols with unity and patriotism and therefore …

Founded In Faith, Forward In Mission, John Wesley Taylor V

Lake Union Herald

No abstract provided.

How Many Supreme Court Justices Can Stand On The Point Of A Needle? Originalist Scholarship, Political Neutrality, And Other Constitutional Nonsense, Stephen M. Feldman

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

In the 1935 article, "Transcendental Nonsense and the Functional Approach," Felix Cohen compared formalist legal reasoning, as practiced by traditional legal scholars and Lochner-era Supreme Court justices, to the philosophical musings of scholastic theologians. Unconnected to empirical reality, formalist legal reasoning was as nonsensical as a disquisition on “‘[h]ow many angels can stand on the point of a needle?’” Nowadays, originalist scholars are similarly engaged in nonsense. These scholars defend, refine, and practice originalist methods of constitutional interpretation as if the Supreme Court justices truly decided cases in accordance with the theory. Regardless, the justices—even the avowed originalists—do not consistently …

Harmless In Name Only: Prosecutorial Misconduct And The Right To A Fair Trial, Jennifer Brinkman

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Prosecutorial misconduct during trial—particularly improper questioning of witnesses and improper argument—occurs in front of the jury and directly shapes its deliberations. Yet appellate courts routinely dismiss such misconduct as “harmless error,” allowing convictions to stand even when prosecutors violate defendants’ rights. This Article contends that the harmless error framework both underestimates the impact of misconduct on jurors and undermines the Constitutional guarantee of a fair trial. It proposes that certain instances of misconduct that occur during trial should be classified as structural error, requiring automatic reversal. This would protect defendants’ right to a fair trial and maintain the integrity of …

Reel It In: Untangling The Circuit Split On The Constitutionality Of Geofence Warrants Under The Fourth Amendment, Kate P. Risser

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

This Note examines geofence warrants and their ongoing threat to constitutionally protected rights such as privacy, speech, and assembly. Part I will provide background information on geofence warrants and examine the prominent justifications for the use of the warrants. Part II will examine how law enforcement’s use of geofence warrants threatens citizens’ constitutionally protected fundamental rights like privacy and reproductive rights. Specifically, Part II addresses how geofence warrants disproportionately target and affect women, people of color, and low-income individuals. Part III will detail the history of the Fourth Amendment tracing its roots to before the Founding Era then exploring applicable …

Remembering In The North: How The Civil Rights Movement Is Told Through Monuments, Courtney Wight

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

This thesis, titled “Remembering in the North: How the Civil Rights Movement is Told Through Monuments,” examines how the Civil Rights Movement is remembered in the North through public monuments. The Civil Rights Movement in the North has not received the same level of recognition compared to the South in public memory, yet the stories and activists in the North deserve the same acknowledgement. The cities of Newark, NJ, and Albany, NY, act as case studies to illustrate how the racism and discrimination, which prompted the Civil Rights Movement, were present in the North during the movement. Both cities, like …

“Let The Goddess Guide”: Athena, Columbia, And The Greco-Roman Roots Of American Imperial Rhetoric, Bridget Goguen

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

The goddess of wisdom and war models intellect without complacency, valor without rashness. Claiming this duality—a civilized militancy—from their patron goddess Athena, an ancient Athenian citizenry could rationalize imperial conquest as democratic goodwill. Millennia later, the United States, seeking subtle proclamation of classical succession, crafted their national personification Columbia from the mold of Athena. From the Civil War until the First World War, Americans called on Columbia to symbolically sanction and spectacularize their own imperial ascent. This paper explores the American adaptation of Greco-Roman rhetoric through the mediums of cartoons, sculptures, and paintings in order to reveal the ancient roots …

Deep Learning Frameworks For Biological Data Integration And Generation, Alexa Beachum

Statistical Science Theses and Dissertations

Data integration represents a key area of research for analyzing the rapidly growing volume of high-dimensional biological data across sources, stages, and modalities. To model and understand these complex, often non-linear relationships, deep learning has become an increasingly powerful tool. Here, we present two novel deep learning frameworks that address distinct but complementary integration challenges. The first framework aligns single-cell omics data across temporal stages, and the second bridges imaging and omics modalities to generate patient-level molecular profiles.

In Chapter 1, we briefly summarize existing approaches---both statistical and deep learning-based---for single-cell omics data integration and discuss their limitations for handling …

Unl Emeriti And Retirees Association Newsletter, Spring 2019

UNL Emeriti and Retirees Association: Newsletters and Other Materials

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Emeriti and Retirees Association Newsletter, Spring 2019

Commonwealth Times 2026-04-01

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

Best Practices Of Designing Transitions Into Combat-Focused Gameplay That Encourage Player Commitment, Movement, And Flow, Xun Yang

Level Design Theses and Dissertations

This research addresses the “door problem” in FPS games, where poorly designed transitions cause player hesitation and camping, disrupting game pacing. By reframing this issue as a challenge of transition design, this study explores how movement into gameplay spaces determines player commitment and flow. Through a Fallout 4 artifact, this project implements best practices focused on clarifying objectives, balancing risk and reward, optimizing information and flow, and integrating diverse challenges. Playtest results from twelve participants show that transitions built on these practices did not produce widespread camping or stalling at combat entries, while two encounter-internal areas remained as friction points …

Cooperative Unmanned Aerial System (Uas) Geolocation Of Emitters, Christopher Peters

Electrical Engineering Theses and Dissertations

A collection of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) can be networked as a cooperative wireless sensor array to geolocate an unknown-location RF emitter using time-based measurements. In operation, however, environmental multipath and hardware errors in sensor positioning and timing can degrade emitter localization accuracy and limit the practicality of single-snapshot solutions. This dissertation evaluates time-of-arrival and time-difference-of-arrival (TOA/TDOA) geolocation for cooperative UAS arrays under realistic error sources and develops geometry-control strategies that actively reduce localization uncertainty through iterative UAS repositioning.

This work studies the Location on a Conic Axis (LOCA) method for emitter localization. Using Monte Carlo simulations with hardware error …

Spring/Summer 2026, Seattle University

Seattle University Magazine

No abstract provided.

Water Current, Volume 58, No. 1, Spring 2026

Water Current Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Piercing The Algorithmic Fog Of War: Ai-Enabled Decision-Support Systems And The Responsibility Gap For War Crimes Under The Rome Statute, Karen H. Cho

UC Law SF International Law Review

This article examines how the integration of artificial intelligence-enabled decision-support systems (AI-DSS) into military conflict complicates the attribution of individual criminal responsibility for war crimes under the Rome Statute. Unlike lethal autonomous weapons systems which are intended to supplant human agency, AI-DSS augments human decision-making across the targeting cycle while simultaneously introducing opacity and bias. These characteristics risk facilitating indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, undermining t4he principles of distinction and proportionality under international humanitarian law. Through a case study of Israel’s deployment of systems such as “the Gospel,” “Lavender,” and “Where’s Daddy?” in Gaza, this article illustrates how algorithmic mediation obscures …

The Romantic Movement As A Love Letter To Life, Mazzie Mcfadden

Hare & Bell Writing Contest

While the Romantic Movement of poetry could be described in many words, “insignificant” is not one of them.

With such an expansive artistic movement, there was no doubt that these ideals would lead to the creation of poetry that would both define and outlive the time in which it was written. This article that posits three poems of the Romantic Movement that have achieved this, which include “Ode to a Nightingale” and “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be” by John Keats and “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, due to how each used nature as a bridge …

Law Library Strategy: Positioning For Sustainable Relevance, Gregory A. Smith, Christine I. Dulac, Amy A. Emerson, Sara Y. Gras

Faculty Publications and Presentations

Law libraries of all sorts face evolving environments, presenting both challenges and opportunities. In the face of uncertainty, law library leaders must develop strategy to define and implement a viable mission in the foreseeable future. In this presentation, panelists from four academic law libraries explore how libraries can better understand their competitive environment, stakeholder relationships, and strategic priorities in the face of budget and staffing constraints, technological change, and shifting user perceptions. The presentation highlights four analytical frameworks—competitor analysis, SWOT analysis, the Business Model Canvas, and stakeholder analysis—and illustrates how these can inform strategic decision-making within a law library context. …

Caroliniana Columns - Spring 2026, University Libraries--University Of South Carolina

University South Caroliniana Society Newsletter - Columns

Fall Events Recap ... p.2

Letter from the President ... p. 4

Report from the Director/Letter from the Dean of Libraries ... p. 5

Echoes of Independence: 250 Years of Revolution and Memorialization ... p. 6

Primary Sources: Authors Rely on SCL Holdings for Their Research ... p. 14

A Dream Deferred: The Art and Activism of Edwin Augustus Harleston by M. Akua McDaniel ... p. 14

The Conise Guide to South Carolina State Government by Vincent Sheheen ... p. 15

South Carolina Scalawags by Hyman Rubin III ... p. 16

Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness …

Coastal Flooding And Community Resilience: Evaluating Management Strategies For Pawleys Island, Lindsey Degrendel

Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

No abstract provided.