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Agreement between vestibular elective physical therapy students and experienced physical therapists in identifying nystagmus during positional testing and diagnosing benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV)
No full textPurpose: The aim of this study is to measure the effectiveness of a vestibular elective in preparing students to perform nystagmus identification and diagnosing benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) through an investigation of agreement between student performances and experienced physical therapists.
Methods: Seven students watched eye movement videos during positioning testing of 14 patients. Students recorded the nystagmus characteristics for each position and made diagnoses. The students completed additional surveys. Pairwise percent agreement and kappa statistics (κ) were used to compare agreement between each students’ conclusions to those of an experienced physical therapist obtained from a previous study. Krippendorff’s alpha (α) was used to analyze the overall reliability of student ability for these skills.
Results: Interrater agreement between students and the expert was fair to almost perfect (κ = 0.22 to 1) in identifying nystagmus, and slight to almost perfect (κ = −0.02 to 1) in diagnosing BPPV. There was moderate agreement between students to identify nystagmus (α = 0.58–0.65, average agreement = 80–83%) during positional testing, and fair to moderate agreement to diagnose BPPV (α = 0.38 to 0.53, average agreement = 64–74%). Agreement was higher in cases of typical BPPV presentations. Students reported the task as difficult, had the necessary knowledge, and wanted more practice. Correlations (r = 0.76 to 0.82) were seen between clinical experience with BPPV and lower perceived difficulty.
Conclusion: Students are capable of identifying nystagmus and diagnosing typical BPPV; however, students may require more practice, clinical experience, and mentorship to improve reliability. The results may help determine educational needs to prepare clinicians to manage individuals with BPPV
What can social workers do to help the growing number of people experiencing homelessness? The view from an urban hospital Emergency Department
No full textHomelessness is a growing problem nationwide. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the number of people experiencing homelessness rose 12% from 2022 to 2023 (HUD Exchange, 2024b). Low vacancy rates, increased rent costs, and income inequality all comprise difficult structural factors locking people out of the housing market. Those who most harshly bear the brunt of this crisis are people with social vulnerabilities. This paper analyzes the social problem of homelessness from the perspective of an urban hospital Emergency Department (ED), Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH) in New Haven, Connecticut. Social workers in these settings have a dual role: working directly with individuals and families to connect them with available services and resources and advocating for structural interventions that can ultimately ease this problem. Social workers are also at the forefront of combating any stigma unhoused persons face by both approaching patients experiencing homelessness with dignity and respect while educating others that this problem is not one of the individual, but is rather a consequence of multiple other social problems we have collectively failed to address
What's in a "Latinx?": Considerations When Utilizing Pan-ethnic Identifiers of Latinidad
No full textPeople of Latin American origin use many different terms to self-identify their ethnicity. To date, there are very few scholarly articles that have investigated the growing use (and potential outcomes) of the term “Latinx.” Over the past decade, this pan-ethnic identifier has been wholly ascribed to a group of people who do not all identify with it. The dearth of empirical understanding on this topic is especially concerning given its significant implications on one’s positive identity development and overall psychosocial functioning. This conceptual essay is meant to introduce readers to the role that U.S. colleges and universities played in the promulgation of the word “Latinx.” It also aims to stimulate discussion amongst readers who may question how “Latinx” came to be the pan-ethnic identifier for this community as well as those who may question whether they should adopt or reject the label. To address the aforementioned inquiries, this composition includes a brief history of the most commonly used pan-ethnic terms for the Latin American diaspora. The implications of ascribing gender-inclusive vs. gender-neutral labels on positive identity development, as well as recommendations and best practices for social work researchers, practitioners, and other stakeholders, are also discussed
Deconstructing the Blueprint for Infringement: Remedying Flawed Interpretations of the § 120(a) Exception to Architecture Copyrights
Get PDFDrafting the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act of 1990 (“AWCPA”) consisted of a bizarre hodgepodge of considerations.Ostensibly, the goal of the Act was to bring the United States unquestionably into compliance with the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, which the United States had just recently joined, with as minimal an impact on U.S. law as possible. In reality, this goal—itself not without built-in tensions—was but one of several competing forces at play in the drafting process. The other forces generally fell into three camps. There were the proponents of preserving the interests and expanding the rights of America’s architects in one corner. In the opposite corner, with a seemingly outsized influence, were the proponents of the rights of America’s architectural photographers. Finally, and most abstractly, there were the proponents of preserving the elusive integrity of copyright law itself. As a testament to this elusiveness, the most active debates were fought not between the architects and photographers, but rather among America’s foremost copyright experts whose various normative frameworks led them to competing views on how best to facilitate the progression of the law.
While all views were considered, the final product is unsurprisingly flawed: an amalgamation of poorly assimilated concepts with rampant logical loopholes. The flaws are most evident in § 120, the scope of copyright protection for architecture. Section 120(a) provides an exception, common to nearly all Berne Union members, allowing buildings to be replicated in other artists’ two-dimensional works without violating the copyright of the building’s architect. During the drafting process, while there was debate over the exact wording, there was little debate over whether to include this exception, as it seemed fairly innocuous and important for the endurance of the urban photography industry.In 2022, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas interpreted this exception to allow a realtor to reproduce and distribute the blueprints of a single-family home for marketing purposes without the consent of its architect. As confounding a conclusion as this may seem to those well-versed in copyright law, it is actually not entirely unfounded in the text. This is due in part to an edit that was made during the drafting of the definition section of the Act to include “architectural plans” in the definition of “architectural works,” thus arguably extending the same exception from the exterior of constructed buildings to their blueprints. As such, in an effort to meet its Berne obligations and provide added copyright protection for America’s architects, Congress may have inadvertently stripped architects of a right that they previously held.
Before the passage of the AWCPA, architectural blueprints were protected as “[p]ictorial, graphic, and sculptural works,” and were therefore protected against unauthorized reproduction in two-dimensional form. That said, these blueprints were not protected against construction of the buildings depicted in them because the buildings themselves were nearly always considered “useful articles,” with few to no conceptually separable elements. This protection for blueprints was clarified and codified in the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, which added “diagrams, models, and technical drawings, including architectural plans” to the definition of “[p]ictorial, graphic, and sculptural works.” Substantively, the result of this amendment—that architectural plans that contained copyrightable elements could not be reproduced and distributed without the consent of the copyright owner—made no difference except to appease those concerned about the lack of explicit statutory language responsive to Berne Convention requirements. The real substantive change came a year later with the AWCPA, which created a new copyright subject matter category: “architectural works.” This category covers both plans and constructed works, thus protecting against the construction of buildings from protected plans.
It is important to note here that the AWCPA was not intended to replace the copyright protection in blueprints as “pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works,” nor was it meant to take precedence over that right. After the AWCPA, architectural blueprints are simultaneously protected both as “architectural works” and as “pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works.” These two forms of copyright protection bring with them different standards and different exceptions, but they are meant to coexist. Protection as a “pictorial, graphic, and sculptural work” is subject to the conceptual separability test. However, those elements that are deemed copyrightable are always protected against unauthorized reproduction. As noted above, the AWCPA includes a pictorial representations exception. In applying the pictorial representations exception to architectural plans, as the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas did, however, the protection that copyright holders previously held against reproduction of their plans as “pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works” is lost. Loss of that protection means that there is no statutory means of preventing rampant copying and distributing of architectural blueprints of constructed buildings visible from public places. It also means that protection as “pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works” for architectural plans is rendered toothless.
This is a problem for a few reasons. First, for the most successful architects, there exists a market in their blueprints and architectural drawings as art forms themselves. A quick Google search reveals that one can purchase prints of the original architectural plans of renowned architectural works, such as those by Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Gehry, and Michael Graves. These prints contain as much artistic value as any other prints and thus Wright, Gehry, and Graves deserve the right to control the market for their original drawings just as much as Hopper, O’Keeffe, and Warhol do. Second, while it remains unlawful to construct buildings out of blueprints without the authority of the owners of the copyrights in the blueprints, there are other economic benefits that might come from copying and distributing the blueprint. Other architects might consciously or subconsciously copy those blueprints, without authorization from their authors. Realtors might circulate the blueprints to potential buyers, to promote houses on the market. The purpose of copyright law is to provide incentives to authors to create works by granting them limited monopolies on their works. With nearly no monopolies on their blueprints, architects may find that they lack incentive to create them. More abstractly, this would allow one section of the Copyright Act to invalidate another section of the Copyright Act, thus rendering the entire Act unstable. In order to ensure that architectural plans remain protected against reproduction and the integrity of copyright law is preserved, Congress or the courts must reiterate the persistent protection of plans as “pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works” and clarify that, while an “architectural work” could be any physical manifestation of architecture, the § 120(a) exception applies only to the constructed exterior (or publicly accessible interior elements, such as the interior of the Capitol building’s dome) of the work. This interpretation is simple, but understanding why it was necessary to add architectural plans to the definition of “architectural works,” how Congress failed to perceive the ambiguities that addition potentially introduced, and where to go from here requires in-depth analysis of the legislative history and text. Part I of this Note will present the requisite background information, including the history of the inclusion of architecture in the Berne Convention, U.S. implementation of the Convention, expert opinions on the language at issue, and international interpretations. Part II will address the problems that have emerged in subsequent case law and the paradox that the intended beneficiaries might not be the actual beneficiaries of this protection. Finally, Part III will present solutions to the problem
The Patent Law Origins of Science Fiction
Get PDFThis Article reveals the surprising role of patent law in shaping the literary genre of science fiction. Drawing on previously unpublished sources, the Article shows that Hugo Gernsback— the so-called “father” of science fiction who started the first all-science-fiction magazine in 1926—believed that works of science fiction are analogous to patents. Like patents, science fiction stories can disclose useful information to the public about new inventions. Like patents, science fiction stories can influence future inventors and drive innovation. Gernsback went even further, positing that some of the inventions depicted in science fiction should themselves be patentable. In 1952, he urged Congress to reform the Patent Act to make so-called “Provisional Patents” available to science fiction authors who depicted major technological developments before their time. He argued that science fiction authors who filed for Provisional Patents should get an extra thirty years in which to show their invention worked. If they could do so, they would thereafter be able to obtain an ordinary patent, to last another twenty years.
Many will find Gernsback’s proposal deeply problematic from the perspective of patent policy, and rightly so. Granting patent rights too early in an invention’s lifecycle creates new and unjustified opportunities to hold up innovation. A science fiction author who obtained a Provisional Patent for a theoretical invention could crawl out of the woodwork half a century later and sue the very people who figured out how to make the invention work. Gernsback’s ideas for patent reform were half-baked and, the Article shows, probably self-serving. Nonetheless, exploring the connection he cultivated between patents and science fiction yields many surprising insights for science fiction and for innovation policy. Science fiction has more in common with patents than it might seem. Although science fiction does not typically impart enough information to “enable” others to make and use the inventions it describes, science fiction can inspire readers and supply them with a motivation—in Gernsback’s words, a “stimulus”—to implement science fictional inventions in the real world. Science fiction, like patents, can play a role in promoting innovation
Did the Solicitor General Hijack the Warhol v. Goldsmith Case?
Get PDFThe main dispute between Lynn Goldsmith and the Andy Warhol Foundation (AWF) between 2017 and 2022 was whether Warhol’s 1984 creation of sixteen works of visual art based on Goldsmith’s photograph of Prince under an artist reference license was fair use or infringement. Even though the trial court and the Second Circuit disagreed about whether these creations were fair use, the Court did not address that dispute at all because it interpreted Goldsmith’s merits brief as having abandoned that claim. This Article considers the influence of the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG)’s brief on the reframing of the Warhol case as only concerning the transformativeness (or not) of a 2016 license granted by the AWF to Condé Nast to the use of one of Warhol’s Prince Series works on the cover of a commemorative magazine.
After reviewing the evolution of this copyright litigation and the lower court decisions, this Article speculates about how and why OSG may have chosen to narrow the question presented in the Warhol case and why Goldsmith might have acquiesced in this. The OSG’s reframing of the issue enabled the Court to avoid addressing a largely invisible issue in the Warhol case: the implications of § 103(a) of the 1976 Copyright Act for AWF’s claims of copyright in Warhol’s Prince Series works. Even though the Court only ruled that AWF’s 2016 license grant was nontransformative, the Article suggests that much of the Warhol decision’s dicta is nonetheless likely to influence future fair use analyses. It also considers the viability of AWF’s claim of copyright in the Prince Series and suggests alternative ways the Court could have resolved the Warhol case
Understanding the MetaBirkin: Trademark Law and an Appropriate Legal Standard for NFTs
Get PDFThis note argues that the recently decided trademark case, Hermès v. Rothschild, highlighted the flaws of the Polaroid factors and their singular focus on determining consumer confusion, and makes a case for an expanded understanding of a copyright fair use defense in trademark law. Two forms of fair use are already acknowledged in the trademark context, but neither are comparable to the much stronger fair use exception in copyright law. The factors in the copyright fair use defense seem to strike directly at the heart of the most salient concerns in Hermes v. Rothschild, while the Polaroid factors seem to allow only tangential considerations of certain key factors
Copyright Is a Joke: Perspectives on Joke Theft in Stand-Up Comedy, and How To Save the Punchline
Get PDFIt seems that while comics are interested in using the law to enforce joke theft, no legal mechanism currently exists that would apply in a meaningful way to the intangible and ever-changing nature of performed comedic material. Perhaps the realities of the stand-up comedy industry are incompatible with a purely legal solution, and it would be better to get creative, break down the norms-based system, and determine how best to import components of legal redress in a way that not only preserves the efficacy of the current approach but also addresses some of the pitfalls leading to inconsistent enforcement. In attempting to bolster the protections against joke theft while respecting the preferences of comedians, learning from the law might be better than leaning on the law
Nikolai Bugaev’s Philosophy of Education: Arithmetic of Whole Numbers Textbook Analysis
Get PDFThis article explores the educational and philosophical contributions of Nikolai V. Bugaev, a prominent 19th-century Russian mathematician and founder of the Moscow philosophical-mathematical school. The study specifically focuses on Bugaev's textbook, Arithmetic of Whole Numbers, analyzing Bugaev's pedagogical approaches within the broader context of Russia's educational reforms during that era. Bugaev's work can be seen as a response to the evolving needs of a rapidly industrializing society, in which he emphasizes three fundamental components of mathematical education: integration of theory, calculation mechanisms, and practical problem-solving. While Bugaev’s textbook may not have achieved the widespread popularity of other contemporaneous works, it played a crucial role in fostering mathematical thinking and underscored his vision of mathematics as a tool for intellectual development and its interconnectedness with other fields of knowledge