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A Blunt Reality: How § 922(g)(3) of the Gun Control Act Violates the Second Amendment Rights of Marijuana Users
No full textOver 98% of Americans live in a state that has some form of legal marijuana, with over half of Americans having used the drug at least once. The United States also has a strong historical tradition of individual gun ownership for the purposes of self-defense, with gun ownership currently at its highest level in decades. In this modern era of both rising gun ownership and marijuana usage, could it truly be the case that any American who uses cannabinoids forfeits her presumptively protected constitutional right to firearm possession? The answer depends upon whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) unconstitutionally infringes on the Second Amendment as applied to locally lawful users of this federally unlawful substance.
The purpose of this article is to examine the constitutionality of § 922(g)(3) as applied to marijuana users through the “historical tradition” test that the Supreme Court established in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen and recently clarified in United States v. Rahimi. This article does so through analysis of the historical record and of federal court cases confronting this question, including the Fifth Circuit’s opinion in United States v. Connelly, which is arguably the most prominent post-Rahimi circuit opinion directly confronting this issue. This article also examines arguments in United States v. Hemani, which—arising out of the Fifth Circuit and bound by Connelly—was recently granted certiorari by the Supreme Court. The logical conclusion of this article’s cogitation of the Second Amendment’s text, history and tradition is that § 922(g)(3) is indeed unconstitutional as applied to marijuana users, and the Supreme Court should adopt the Fifth Circuit’s reasoning and evaluation as outlined in Connelly to hold the law unconstitutional as applied in Hemani and to other marijuana user
AI-Driven Optimization of Wind Energy Distribution in Texas Using Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
No full textAbstract. The integration of large-scale wind power into modern electrical grids presents persistent challenges due to variability, curtailment, and compliance with operational constraints. This study proposes a multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) framework for optimizing wind energy distribution within the Texas power grid. The system employs three specialized agents—managing wind curtailment, storage utilization, and load adjustments—to collaboratively balance supply and demand under dynamic grid conditions. Using historical operational data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the framework was trained and evaluated on a range of scenarios encompassing both typical and extreme operating conditions. Results demonstrate substantial performance improvements compared to baseline dispatch strategies, including a measurable reduction in supply–demand mismatch, improved storage state-of-charge stability, and enhanced coordination among agents. The approach offers a scalable, adaptable, and regulation-compliant pathway for renewable integration in grids with high penetration of variable energy resources
A Virtual Reality Platformer with an In-Game Level Editor
No full textArchiLeapVR is a first-person platformer in Virtual Reality (VR) with an in-game level editor. The artifact is developed in my custom C++ game engine using OpenXR for VR and its goal is to allow rapid level design for the game in VR. Designers can create maps for the game and quickly switch between edit and play modes to allow rapid iteration on levels. The editor allows operations such as creating new objects, translation, rotation and scaling of existing objects, and cloning objects, all using VR controls in a manner that is intuitive in accordance with the affordances of VR controllers
Aviation Cybersecurity and Third-Party Software Service Providers: Do Companies Like CrowdStrike Get a Free Pass to Create Cyber Vulnerabilities?
No full textCommercial aviation has steadily become the busiest and most efficient means of travel across the world. In order to keep up with the increasing demands of its customers, the industry has undergone numerous digital and technological transformations in recent years. Collision avoidance systems have allowed for more planes in the skies, online ticket reservations have made booking a flight as simple as a few clicks, and in-flight wi-fi allows passengers to engage in both work and leisure at 30,000 feet. Overall, these innovations have increased safety, capacity, and convenience for both airlines and their customers. However, these transformations have also exposed the aviation industry to a higher possibility of cyberthreats and attacks with the potential of negative ramifications to systems and lives. With these vulnerabilities mounting and cyberattacks becoming more sophisticated, it has become increasingly important to not only ensure proper regulations and plans are in place to prevent cyberattacks, but also that negligent actors are held accountable when their systems fail to protect American consumers.
The outage caused by CrowdStrike’s defective software update during the summer of 2024 not only caused major inconveniences and financial loss to air travel, but also highlighted the need for a closer look into how our country regulates third-party service providers, specifically as it pertains to cybersecurity in the civil aviation sector. Subject only to the liability they have agreed to in their contracts—if they agreed to any at all—these third-party service providers of cybersecurity software to our nation’s most valuable industries can get away with lax cybersecurity practices that leave their customers vulnerable to the effects of cyberattacks without penalty. As it pertains to the commercial aviation industry, this lack of accountability may not only impose costs to airlines by way of profit loss and legal fees, but it also to their consumers by way of personal data loss, potentially resulting in identity theft and credit card theft.
This Comment seeks to address the current state of cybersecurity law in civil aviation and propose suggestions to reduce risks and hold negligent actors accountable. First, this Comment will provide a detailed background of the increasing prevalence of cybersecurity risks in civil aviation as well as the role network security providers play in decreasing these risks. It will then discuss the current state of cybersecurity rules and regulations within civil aviation, as well as avenues for imposing liability upon cybersecurity service providers. Finally, this Comment will analyze current cybersecurity vulnerabilities despite these mitigation efforts, providing suggestions to not only reduce risks but also hold third-party software service providers accountable when their systems fail
Potential Competitors’ Antitrust Standing Against Preemptive Acquisitions
No full textThis Article revolves around potential competitors’ “antitrust standing” rights in private merger litigation, especially against preemptive acquisitions. It builds upon various cases in which courts had explicitly recognized that a potential competitor has standing to challenge an allegedly anticompetitive merger that foreclosed it from entering the market dominated by an incumbent firm. Such mergers can be categorized as “strategic preemptive acquisitions.” Specifically, the courts held in these particular cases that the potential competitor’s “antitrust injury,” that is—exclusion from the relevant market—stems from the incumbent’s intentional and strategic acquisition of a company or set of assets that were required for the successful entry of the potential competitor into the market. Accordingly, it was held that the “antitrust injury” that the potential competitor suffered is inseparable from the alleged harm to competition caused by the merger, and thus, potential competitors are eligible to bring antitrust claims against such strategic preemptive acquisitions. Hence, the main objective of this Article is to provide a coherent framework, supported caselaw, that aims to assist courts in the analysis of potential competitors’ standing rights against strategic preemptive acquisitions
The Law of First Impression
No full textJudicial decision-making is governed by a complex web of unwritten operational rules—rules made by judges themselves. Some of these rules, like stare decisis or canons of interpretation, garner endless attention. Others remain unnoticed, becoming entrenched without ever being evaluated.
This Article is the first to identify and evaluate one such category of rules—those governing issues of first impression Public and academic attention is focused almost entirely on judicial fidelity to precedent, not what courts do in its absence. But issues of first impression are decided regularly by all U.S. courts, and the first impression label can have concrete legal effects. I identify two areas of the law of first impression: (1) a set of procedural rules for issues of first impression, and (2) a set of consequences imposed on parties who litigate those issues. Both categories are grounded in the unquestioned assumption that issues of first impression deserve different and special treatment.
The law of first impression is flawed. The first impression designation is subjective, because whether an issue fits the first impression definition depends entirely upon the level of abstraction used to describe it. Moreover, the justification for special rules is the purported unpredictability of issues of first impression compared to other legal issues, a characterization that is entirely unproven. Yet first impression rules are routinely invoked and applied by judges across jurisdictions, treating some litigants differently than others in ways no one has carefully examined
The Future of Frozen Embryos
No full texthe 2024 Alabama Supreme Court decision in LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine, which declared frozen embryos to be “children,” represents a significant shift in the legal treatment of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the United States. This Article examines the context, implications, and potential consequences of LePage for family law, tort law, and access to reproductive technologies. The Article analyzes how this shift could impact disputes over embryo disposition, establishment of legal parentage, and liability for fertility clinics. It also explores the decision’s relationship to broader debates about fetal personhood in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. While Alabama quickly passed legislation granting immunity to IVF providers, the Article argues that a more comprehensive legal framework is needed to address the myriad issues raised by treating embryos as children. It concludes by proposing principles to guide future regulation of IVF, emphasizing the importance of patient autonomy, predictability, and continued access to fertility treatments
Predictive Analytics in Public Health: Developing AI Strategies to Combat High-Temperature Impacts on Violence and Overdoses in Las Vegas
No full textPublic violence and overdoses are key issues that Nevada agencies aim to address in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Area. A proven and effective strategy is via the implementation of a Cardiff Violence Prevention Model. This model provides a way for communities to gain a clearer picture about where violence is occurring by combining and mapping both hospital and police data on violence. In an effort to support this model, the exploration and implementation of AI models to predict the impacts of high temperatures on key public data and outcomes based upon historical data will be applied
Mobile Computer Vision Application for Agricultural Disease Detection of Pepper Diseases using Two-Stage Deep Learning System
No full textPlant diseases pose a significant threat to food security, particularly in developing countries where farmers often lack the resources and infrastructure for early detection. In nations like Mexico and the Dominican Republic, the spread of harmful plant diseases impacts key agricultural commodities, such as habanero peppers, leading to substantial yield losses. This study presents a computer vision system based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and an object detection model (YOLO) to help farmers detect pepper diseases efficiently. The system uses a two-stage approach: YOLOv11n first detects pepper leaves in images, then a lightweight MobileNetV3Small model classifies whether the detected leaves show signs of disease. The MobileNet model has been fine-tuned specifically for pepper disease classification and optimized for deployment on smartphones, offering a cost-effective and accessible solution. The mobile application operates in real-time and offline, maintaining functionality even in areas without network connectivity. Farmers can diagnose diseases by capturing images of affected leaves, enabling early intervention and improved crop management. By leveraging deep learning (DL) for on-device disease detection, this approach can enhance agricultural productivity, reduce economic losses, and contribute to food security. This work demonstrates the potential of mobile DL solutions to transform small-scale farming through accessible, and scalable disease diagnosis technology