Digital Commons Network^™

Tort Reform & The Takings Clause, Bailey D. Barnes

Faculty Publications

The United States tort reform movement has capped noneconomic damage awards in many jurisdictions, thereby preventing the most injured plaintiffs from being fully compensated for their suffering. While litigants have asserted numerous state constitutional challenges to these tort recovery limits, with varying degrees of success, aggrieved plaintiffs have underutilized the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause. This Article advocates that judicial reduction of a jury's noneconomic damage calculation after the court has informed the successful plaintiff of the full verdict is a regulatory taking in violation of the federal Takings Clause, as incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.

A Takings …

Tremblings, May 2023, Western Aspen Alliance

Tremblings

The WAA: Fifteen Year Status

Paul C. Rogers

Aspen, the species, unites our member community. We reach out, connect, sprout new growth, and respond to ever-present change like a hidden root web supporting an above-ground grove of swaying pale stems and flickering foliage. Carbohydrates, stored subterranean, represent the future of such networks; linkages unseen nourish future forests, enrich ecosystems, and fuel organizations like ours. After 15 years, the Western Aspen Alliance has flourished following disturbance, but faces an uncertain outlook given uncertain funding prospects. The good news is that this WAA community, buried junctures and all, represents a resilience in …

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind? Remote Work And Contractual Distancing, Nicola Countouris, Valerio De Stefano

Articles & Book Chapters

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, remote work has acquired quasi-Marmite status. It has become difficult, if not impossible, to approach the issue in a measured and dispassionate way, which is one of the reasons books such as the present one are being published. Remote work is often seen as anathema by some who associate it with laziness, low productivity and the degradation of the social fabric of firms and of their creative and collaborative potential. The notorious views of CEOs such as Tesla and Twitter’s Elon Musk or JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon come to mind, indicative – in the view of …

Maidstone Estates: Utilizing Research-Based Design To Create The Luxury, Location, And Lifestyle Of A Continuing Care Retirement Community, Jake Hardin

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The nature of this essay explores the implementation of research-based design to the senior living concept and showcases how design can improve and empower the lives of our seniors as they hit retirement age. Over the course of the essay, the project will begin as a concept and navigate its way through the design processes until the concept is fully developed as a stand-alone package that speaks for itself. Maidstone Estates is built upon the guidelines of the Green House Project and outlines the mixed-use nature of design involving branding, building code, ADA compliance, universal design, and the three acuity …

Libby In Limbo, Moriah Claire Hall

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Libby in Limbo is a scripted narrative podcast that follows Libby as she moves back to her small hometown, gets a job as a librarian, and learns to navigate life in a small, tight-knit community. This podcast serves two main purposes: to create entertainment media about a library that does not promote harmful stereotypes about libraries and to create awareness and accessibility of scripted podcasts.

Face Off: Overcoming The Fifth Amendment Conflict Between Cybersecurity And Self-Incrimination, Zachary E. Jacobson

Journal of Law and Health

The Founders included the privilege against self-incrimination in the Constitution to protect individual privacy and ensure a fair judicial process. Courts have failed U.S. citizens by neglecting to protect them from compelled unlocking of biometrically encrypted devices. This inaction has created a loophole that contradicts the framework of the privilege against self-incrimination. To correct this mistake courts should reconsider the trend they have set for the Constitution and the Fifth Amendment and consider adopting a forward-thinking cybersecurity lens to conclude that biometric authentication is testimonial. Courts should consider that biometric encryption is akin to a compelled password entry for the …

Table Of Contents, Cleveland State Journal Of Law And Health

Journal of Law and Health

No abstract provided.

Adolescents With Family History Of Alcohol-Use Disorders Have Reduced Structural Coherence Of Anterior Insula To Nucleus Accumbens Tract, Grace Wood

Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Genetics play a significant role in predisposition towards alcohol use disorders. Analyzing the neural phenotypes related to alcohol use disorder development could allow researchers to predict one’s predisposition. The anterior insula (AIns) contributes to binge drinking tendencies while exhibiting downstream signaling towards the nucleus accumbens (NAcc). Recent research has examined this relationship simultaneously with alcohol consumption, but the genetic effect of the AIns and NAcc functional relationship prior to alcohol consumption has yet to be examined. In this study, we used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study to analyze the structural coherence of the AIns to NAcc …

The Connections Among Worry, Sleep Hygiene, And Sleep Quality, Anna Quesada

Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Sleep disturbances commonly plague undergraduate students (Buboltz et al., 2001). In fact, being an undergraduate student is a risk factor for developing a sleep disturbance (Medic et. al., 2017). Understanding the impact of worry on the relationship between sleep hygiene and sleep disturbances could inform strategies for improving sleep quality in undergraduate populations. Given the fact that sleep issues affect health and academic performance negatively (Buboltz, et al., 2001), improving sleep patterns may boost academic performance, physical health, and mental health. This study investigated relationships between sleep hygiene and worry in an undergraduate sample by using a longitudinal design. Participants …

Examining Fear Of Negative Evaluation In Oral Contraceptive Users And Naturally Cycling Women, Emily Furlow

Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Oral contraceptive use has gained popularity over recent decades and is currently the most used form of contraception. However, women who take oral contraceptives may experience significant side effects that impact their bodies, moods, and emotions. The current study examined fear of negative evaluation in women taking oral contraceptives and women who were naturally cycling following a social stress test. I hypothesized oral contraceptive users would have a higher fear of negative evaluation in comparison to naturally cycling women following the Trier Social Stress Test. Results did not support this hypothesis. There was marginal support for the opposite effect. Following …

Optimum Time To Add The Feed Additive Availa-Zmc To Reduce The Incidence Of Bacterial Chondronecrosis With Osteomyelitis Lameness In Broiler Chickens, Ashley Ault

Biological Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

Lameness is a health condition threatening the welfare of broiler chickens in the poultry industry. It can be caused by a bacterial infection called Bacterial Chondronecrosis with Osteomyelitis (BCO). Zinpro has created Avalia-ZMC, a feed additive that has been proven to reduce lameness by 20% in wire-flooring pens and 25% in litter-flooring pens (Alrubaye et al., 2020). This experiment focuses on the optimal time to add Availa-ZMC to the diet of the broiler chickens to help reduce the incidence of lameness. This trial took 56 days with 26 pens at the University of Arkansas Poultry Research Farm. At the start …

Measuring Energy Demands Of Dynamic Remodeling Events During Embryogenesis In Live Drosophila Embryos, Grayson Young

Biological Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

Embryonic development is a complex process requiring dynamic cell movements to create complex tissue structures. We assume that these embryonic dynamic remodeling events are highly energy intensive and that this energy expenditure is mediated by mitochondria. However, this has been difficult to demonstrate in live embryos. Convergent extension of the Drosophila neuroectoderm is a promising system to study the bioenergetics of tissue remodeling because it changes from a static to a dynamically remodeling tissue with temporal precision. We hypothesize that the switch from static to dynamic development at the onset of convergent extension will be accompanied by an increase in …

Prevalence Of Ehrlichia And Rickettsia Within Ticks In Arkansas State Parks, Haley Stanton

Animal Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Within the past few decades, the number of diagnoses of tick-borne diseases – such as spotted fever rickettsiosis and ehrlichiosis – has steadily increased throughout the United States, with Arkansas having one of the highest rates in the country. These diseases pose a risk to both humans and animals, as both can acquire these infections from ticks. Due to the increasing geographic range of ticks, rise in cases, and likely underdiagnosis of these diseases, this study aimed to identify the infection rate of ticks themselves in multiple state parks in Arkansas. Four Arkansas state parks were each visited once a …

The Influence Of Racial Labeling And Gender On Illusory Correlation And Perceived Hireability, Kyndall Jackson

2023 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Black and African American refer to the same demographic of people; however, describing someone as Black can lead to the belief that they are lower in competency when compared to someone described as African American. The goal of this study was to determine whether gender and the use of the racial labels of Black and African American would lead to an illusory correlation which would affect the perceived hireability of candidates. Participants were given a survey with randomly assigned mock resumes and reference letters to evaluate. Findings showed that participants remembered more negative traits about female applicants compared to their …

The Impact Of Sleep And Mental Health On Undergraduate Student’S Academic Performance: A Multi-Measure Examination, Janine Shuman

2023 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

College students represent a vulnerable demographic of sleep and mental health disturbances. Prior research on the impact these pervasive struggles have on academic performance in college student populations has yielded mixed findings and has largely been limited to the exclusive use of subjective sleep measures. The present study investigates the impact of sleep efficiency, subjective sleep quality, and mental health on the academic performance of college students. In this study, a sample of undergraduate students (N =92) wore a Fitbit actigraphy monitoring device for 21 days and completed a battery of self-report questionnaires assessing sleep quality and mental health, including …

Boomtowns - Mirage Of Paradise: An Investigation Of Urban Typologies In The U.S.’ Largest Energy Corridor, Tabitha L. Kelly

2023 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Boomtowns have historically been a vernacular urban typology found in resource-extracting territories across the globe. The Permian Basin in West Texas is a territory with numerous petrochemical clusters extracting, refining, and transporting fossil fuels as part of a dense extraction and distribution network. This work aims to (1) locate boomtown territories, and (2) identify the urban elements of boomtowns to classify this typology based on site-specific studies in the era of anthropogenic climate change. Methodologically, a series of geospatial analysis tools are applied to study the morphology of four West Texas cities. The identified elements of boomtowns serve as a …

Exploration Of The Relationship Between The Mean Power Spectral Density Of Electrogastrography And Gestational Maturation Of Preterm Infants, Elizabeth Ann Rhodes

2023 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Feeding preterm infants can be a challenge due to gastrointestinal (GI) immaturity which can lead to feeding intolerance, malnutrition, and poor neurodevelopment. Currently there is no non-invasive and quantitative method to determine GI maturity in infants. Electrogastrography (EGG) provides a non-invasive method of measuring gastric myoelectrical activity and has been used on adults to determine gastric abnormalities. EGG was explored as an option for determining GI maturity in preterm infants by quantifying the power spectral density (PSD) of EGG data and its spectral means. The power spectral density and spectral means were calculated during three gastric rhythm (GR) bands (mPSDgr) …

Examining Maternal Health Disparities Through Global Comparison And Stakeholder Perspectives, Madison Mitchel

2023 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Maternal mortality is a pressing global public health problem that disproportionately affects Black women and birthing people. In part one of this mixed- methods study, Black maternal health stakeholders (ages 18+) in North Texas were recruited to complete a 25-item survey to understand their perspectives on community- based approaches to health equity. Survey participants (N=16) reported inadequate financial, human, and social resources for addressing Black maternal health (75%) and that they rarely see local efforts focused on policy, systems, and structural changes (70%). In part two, a systematic document review was performed to identify and analyze national maternal health policies …

Determination Of The Absorption Coefficient Of Open And Closed Cell Materials, Fernando Agustin Alejandre

2023 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

With the growing development of self-driving vehicles, the issue of passenger discomfort due to noise pollution has infiltrated the automobile industry. The computer driving these vehicles requires multiple fans to maintain optimal temperatures. To reduce the noise level created by the fans, this senior design team was tasked with developing a sound dampening solution that can be implemented to the computer superstructure while maintaining aesthetics, functionality, and accessibility for repair of the computer. This extended project was performed to investigate the sound absorption properties of open and closed cell materials that could then be used to create a solution. The …

Evaluating Plastic Bending Using The Cozzone Method And Material Non-Linear Fea, Mikaela Leevy

2023 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

In a wide range of practical applications, plastic bending analysis methods are important in understanding the structural capability of a part beyond the elastic range of a material. In the senior design project of which I am a member, a 3/8 inch diameter pin is a key structural component for a mooring cam product targeted at marine applications. The goal of this project is to compare two analysis methods of plastic bending in this pin to elastic calculations and experimental data. The two plastic analysis methods used are the Cozzone method and material non-linear finite element analysis with three-point bending …

Parthenogenesis Investigation Of The F1 Generation From A Cross Between Daphnia Pulex Tex 23 (Males) And Tex 85 (Females), Efe Amrovhe

2023 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Daphnia pulex is a species of Daphnia that is capable of both cyclic and obligate parthenogenesis. In this experiment, two cyclically parthenogenetic (CP) isolates are crossed to access the frequency of obligately parthenogenetic (OP) offspring that will be produced. If OP animals are produced at a significant frequency from a CP-CP cross, the ‘why’ behind it must be examined. Prior research revealed that OP animals produced from CP isolates are genetically linked through introgression from a sister species, Daphnia pulicaria. This may be relevant to the results and serve as a focal point when researching the implications of them. The …

Efficacy Of Different Laboratory Methods To Infect Leptoglossus Phyllopus With Symbiotic Caballeronia Bacteria, Lillian Storm

2023 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

The insect Leptoglossus phyllopus and some other members of the true bug family must acquire their bacterial symbiont every generation from the environment during their second instar. This poses a problem for researchers wanting to study the bugs in vitro. We set out to assess five different methods of introducing bacteria into the insect's environment. We tested the introduction via inoculated water, broth, plant sprig, potting soil, and uninoculated agricultural soil. No significant difference was seen in average adult weight or the development time between treatments. The method of infection did affect the number of insects that reached adulthood which …

The Increasing Demand For Offering Construction Management Programs., Koosha Jamali

2023 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Those who wish to begin their careers in construction management do so primarily with either construction trade experience or academic backgrounds. There are narrow pathways through educational institutions for those seeking construction management careers. Many universities do not offer construction curriculums. Instead, students often study architecture or civil engineering as a gateway to the industry. Some work as tradesmen and move on to managerial positions. As those options are neither direct nor efficient, the solution would be to offer specific degree plans for construction management practices. Some universities provide construction management. However, there is a demand for much more. This …

Symptom Patterns And Their Association With Influencing Factors In Adults With Long Covid - A Secondary Analysis, Maaham Chaudhry

2023 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Currently available information on the risk factors, manifestation, treatments, and long-term effects of the long COVID is inconclusive, requiring further research to identify timely interventions that may help treat long COVID patients, reduce symptom burden and restore functional abilities. This research aims to analyze symptom patterns and their association with influencing factors in adults with long COVID by examining intercorrelations among symptoms, identifying influencing factors of symptoms, and examining the associations of symptoms with disability and quality of life over time in long COVID patients. The Theory of Unpleasant Symptoms developed by Lenz et al. (1997) is applied as the …

Life History Fitness Of F1 Hybrids Of Tex & Pa21 Populations Of Daphnia Pulex, Ohitha Reddy Sana

2023 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Evolutionary theory suggests that fitness decreases with hybridization as a result of negative epistatic interactions between alleles that rose independently in genetic backgrounds making hybrids incompatible with parents’ species. However, heterosis can occur as a result of the deleterious effects of negative epistatic interactions making hybrids fitter than their parents. To examine this, the fitness of first-generation (F1) hybrids of Tex and PA populations of Daphnia pulex was determined using body size as a life history trait. F1 hybrids obtained from crossing between seven Tex parental isolates and PA parental isolates were taken from stock and grown under standard conditions …

Is Artificial Intelligence (Ai) In Recruitment Getting Better?, Usra Asghar Qureshi

2023 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

In recent years, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the recruitment process has seen a significant increase, with many companies relying on third-party vendors to streamline their efforts. While AI has numerous advantages such as improving efficiency, reducing costs, and identifying the most qualified candidates, there are concerns about algorithmic bias and unfair treatment. Possible causes of these issues include insufficient training, improper technology use, and inadequate parameter specifications. The study examines the sentiment surrounding AI hiring over the last decade and determines whether advancements in technology and a better understanding of AI have made it mature enough to …

Design And Implementation Of Solar Powered Parking System, Fnu Mustansir Husain

2023 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

The demand for sustainable designs in civil engineering is increasing and the use of renewable resources is encouraged to reduce the environmental impact and increase industry standards. A solar powered system installation not only prioritizes sustainable development but also helps economically by reducing electricity costs. This report discusses the schematic design plans for a solar powered system installed over a parking lot, to generate green energy and minimize long-term running costs. This utilizes the parking space to provide shade to the vehicles along with stations to power the electric vehicles. The site features two different canopies, placed over the parking …

Social Equity Through Design, Jacqueline Lizbeth Hernandez

2023 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Historically targeted racialized policies and the continuation of socioeconomic inequality in Dallas have ushered in disparities in the quality of public spaces and amenities. Public spaces are significant because they provide cultural representation, economic opportunities, and social integration. The study analyzed five public spaces for six weeks across the city of Dallas to determine the success or challenges they provided to the community. The current demographics determined the location of the space of the research to show representation in each category of upper, middle, and lower-income communities. The visit to each park took place once a week for one hour …

Creating Tools To Investigate The Predictive Power Of Polygenic Score For The Big 5 Personality Traits And Math Ability, Roman Goff

2023 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Studies have shown that personality and mathematical ability are heritable traits. In the past, the genetic component of this heritability was investigated using twin studies where genetically identical twins are reared apart and the siblings’ traits are compared. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have obviated the necessity of such methods by combining genetic data with modern computing power. The exponential decrease in cost of human genome sequencing and increase in accessibility has made it trivial to use an individual’s alleles to correlate their genome to their phenotypic traits. In this study, the results of a GWAS for the Big Five personality …

Cesarean Birth And Postpartum Depression: A Comparison Between Adults And Adolescents, Prajita Karki

2023 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

The impact of cesarean birth (CB) on postpartum depression (PPD) has largely gone unstudied among adolescents. This study aimed to compare the prevalence of PPD between adolescents and adults following a CB. Participants were recruited from two large postpartum units at John Peter Smith (JPS) Hospital in Fort Worth, TX. The study design was a cross-sectional comparative study using secondary analysis of a merged dataset representing two separate studies: Study A, adolescents, and Study B, adults, with infants in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The resulting dataset provided data for 336 postpartum women ages 13 to 44. To control …