18736 research outputs found
Sort by
Asset-Based Financing For Space Activities
Get PDFThe space industry—whose numbers are already substantial—has undeniable potential for further growth. However, because it no longer consists of only multibillion-dollar companies, the industry needs access to traditional financing. Venture capital alone is insufficient. This Article discusses some difficulties for the space industry’s access to traditional—and especially asset-based—financing. Some are common to all space activities, while some exist only for novel space activities. These difficulties cover a broad range of legal, regulatory, and factual issues (including insurance). While the problems are difficult, ideas to solve them are plentiful, a number of which the paper discusses. The paper also presents ways in which the industry can do much to advance its own interests. In addition, actions by governments, both at the domestic and the international level, are recommended
Orphans of the Orissa Famine: Capital, Charity, and Coercion in the Missionary System
Get PDFSome of the most profound effects Britain imposed on society in Orissa, India came as a result of the missions that formed the majority of the protective infrastructure during the Orissa famine. Shortly after the British began their occupation of Orissa, a network of Protestant Christian missions based in England began to move into the region. Leadership came from the Christian Missionary Society, an Evangelical Anglican group, as well as Baptist figures such as Rev. J. Buckley. Their move was difficult, and for many years unsuccessful. However, the British East India Company and the Raj that followed it would pave the way for an increase in mission power through their laissez-faire policies of ignoring preexisting infrastructure and discontinuing preexisting social support systems. The missions, through their network of periodical publications, were then able to position themselves as a charitable counterpoint to the mainstream ideology of free markets at the time. In 1865, when a harvest failed as a result of British lack of infrastructure maintenance, the Protestant mission network’s opportunity arrived. The famine left many children without caretakers, and the missions, having begun a precedent of taking in orphans, became one of the only options for these children. The missions completed their takeover after the British first refused to acknowledge the famine, and then offered an ineffective response. The mission takeover quickly became so complete that secular authorities turned those seeking to give charity to the missions, since missions were some of the only organizations with a history of working directly with people in the region. The lives and identities of these famine orphans formed a microcosm of the changes to Orissa over the course of the Orissa famine
CECL Adoption and the Contractual Usefulness of Accounting Earnings in Bank CEO Compensation
No full textThe adoption of the Current Expected Credit Losses (CECL) model, a new methodology for accounting for expected credit losses, has significantly increased bank earnings volatility. Using a difference-in-differences design around adoption, we examine how more volatile earnings impact CEO compensation design. We find that post-CECL, bank CEO pay becomes less sensitive to earnings, but more sensitive to other performance measures, such as stock returns and revenues. Additionally, total executive compensation increases, consistent with the higher risk premia demanded by bank executives. Overall, our results suggest that compensation committees view accounting earnings as having lower contractual usefulness for incentives after CECL
Enhancing Customer Support Operations through GPT & Q-Learning: A Model Study
Get PDFAbstract. “Growth strategies that are purpose-led, customer-centric, experience-driven, data/AI-enabled, and technology-scaled require new mindsets…” (Cornfield, 2021). What can we take from this? Business growth and customer experience are inextricably tied together. Therefore, thriving, as an organization, is dependent on reimagining enterprise operations through modern, scalable data and AI technologies. Our study aims to enhance support operations with emerging AI capabilities, including OpenAI’s LLM models, built on self-attention mechanism transformer architecture, and tailored for business needs through prompt engineering. Our research uses Markov Decision Process and the Q-learning algorithm to evaluate synthetically created support incidents. Through this set of methods, our study seeks to determine the optimal policy to apply for each incident, including demarcating low-cost self-service approaches, in which an agent leverages AI tools to support a support ticket resolution process versus following a traditional, resource-driven approach wherein higher-level expertise intervention and escalation is required. Our research also explores different aspects of AI model development and performance, including grounding data for content relevance, breadth of user intent, and the quality of user prompts, aspects which are fundamentally enabled through prompt engineering methods. Ultimately, in this analysis, we aim to elevate the support experience for Microsoft customers, reducing support staff burnout, while providing a blueprint for other businesses to improve support operation costs, and thereby, their bottom lines
Investigation of Surface Motion with Soft Alginate Microrobots at Low Reynolds Numbers
Get PDFThis thesis utilizes a soft alginate microbot for targeted drug delivery. To achieve this aim, we present an adaptive backstepping controller for the reference tracking of an alginate artificial cell. An adaptive controller was implemented to precisely manipulate a magnetic artificial cell actuated by rotating magnetic fields. The rolling motion of a small-scale robot in a fluidic environment is challenging, especially when the fluid imparts an unknown response at low Reynolds number. In order to compensate for this uncertainty, an unknown tuning parameter encapsulating these effects was added to the governing equations of motion. A controller with an update law was then designed to estimate the unknown parameter and force the artificial cell to produce the desired response. The stability of the proposed controller was established by a candidate Lyapunov function. Real-time experiments were conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed controller at guiding an artificial cell to an arbitrary target position. Alginate cells were guided through a maze using the controller and were later combined with wall constraints to allow multiple alginate cells to reach the same target location. This controller can be applied to both surface motion and swimming-based small-scale robots in future applications for micro-assembly and targeted drug delivery.
To increase the drug-carrying capacity, we demonstrate a manipulation of snowman-shaped soft microrobots under a uniform rotating magnetic field for complex locomotion modes. Each microsnowman robot consists of two biocompatible alginate microspheres with embedded magnetic nanoparticles. The soft microsnowmen were fabricated using a microfluidic device by following a centrifuge-based microfluidic droplet method. Under a uniform rotating magnetic field, the microsnowmen were rolled on the substrate surface, and the velocity response for increasing magnetic field frequencies was analyzed. Then, a microsnowman was rolled to follow different paths, which demonstrated directional controllability of the microrobot. Moreover, swarms of microsnowmen and single alginate microrobots were manipulated under the rotating magnetic field, and their velocity responses were analyzed for comparison.
Moreover, the motion characteristics of soft alginate microsnowman robots were analyzed with wireless magnetic fields in complex fluidic environments. Polyacrylamide (PAA), a water-soluble polymer, was characterized to produce a challenging environment with a non-Newtonian fluid. The robots were fabricated by an extrusion-based droplet method. To increase the payload and achieve complex actuation, the shape of the soft microrobot resembles a snowman. This shape allows for the creation of complex locomotion modes. Under the rotating magnetic field, tumbling and rolling motions of the robots were achieved in non-Newtonian fluidic environment. A comparison study with respect to the traveled distance of various robots is presented to demonstrate the success of the soft sodium alginate microsnowman microrobot. Additionally, the controllability of the robots for potential use in drug delivery was shown by tracking a square pattern with swarm control.
In the last chapter, a feasibility study of our alginate robotic platform is presented. This study investigates the navigation capabilities of a mesoscale soft robot made from biocompatible alginate material in complex mazes. The primary objective is to assess the motion characteristics of these robots in a constrained environment for biomedical applications, such as targeted drug delivery or minimally invasive surgery. The soft robots were fabricated by a 3D bioprinter by using the droplet ejection method. The soft robot material, alginate, is encapsulated by using calcium chloride. In order to impart magnetic properties, paramagnetic nanoparticles were added to the encapsulated robot. This method enables precise navigation under external rotating magnetic fields. The mazes, created with silicone tubes, resemble the vascular system to create a realistic and constrained environment
The Dynamic Response and Damage Evolution of High-Strength Concrete
No full textConcrete stands as the most extensively used construction material in both military and civil structural applications, attributed to its excellent durability and high impact resistance. Over the years, high-strength concrete (HSC) has evolved to withstand higher compressive strengths, making it a viable substitute for conventional concrete (CC) in many applications. Hence, HSC is commonly used for structures and structural elements that are exposed to extreme loading conditions such as hurricanes, wave impacts, ship-bridge collisions, explosions, earthquake loads, etc. The mechanical response of concrete subjected to dynamic loading conditions differs dramatically from its response under quasi-static conditions due to its inherent strain rate sensitivity. Furthermore, external loading leads to the initiation and accumulation of damage inside the concrete structure elements at microscopic and macroscopic levels. The accumulated damage results in the degradation of the material\u27s physical and mechanical properties. Continuum damage mechanics express the transition of a material from an intact to a damaged state via a single scalar damage variable, D, which ranges from 0 for the intact/undamaged to 1 for the completely damaged/fractured material. Consequently, continuum damage models have been extensively utilized to predict the mechanical response and damage evolution of concrete under dynamic loading conditions. The validation of these models requires an accurate characterization of the mechanical properties of concrete materials under a wide range of strain rates. Nonetheless, the current dataset on the mechanical properties of HSC under dynamic loading circumstances has three primary gaps that are compromising the accuracy of the finite element (FE) simulation results.
These gaps can be summarized as follows: (a) Residual mechanical properties: Concrete experiences a degradation of its residual mechanical properties when exposed to stress levels higher than the onset of plastic strain. However, the majority of strength-based plasticity damage models implemented in numerical simulations tend to overestimate the loss of residual strength at the early stages of damage without accurately capturing the corresponding reduction in stiffness. Accordingly, the reported FE simulations do not replicate the actual behavior of concrete as reported from laboratory experiments. The inaccuracy in modeling the behavior of concrete, particularly under dynamic compressive loading conditions, is due to the scant dataset that accurately quantifies the concrete\u27s residual mechanical properties under such conditions. Therefore, most of the damage models that have been developed to predict the dynamic damage evolution of concrete materials are not based on the actual physical mechanisms that drive this behavior but rather are fitted to a limited set of experimental data. (b) Constitutive damage parameters and crack morphology: The primary damage mechanism in concrete is the development and propagation of macrocrack networks, which impact the residual mechanical properties of the bulk material. Therefore, it is necessary to extend the current framework of damage models to establish a correlation between the measurements of damage-induced cracks and their impact on the residual mechanical properties as manifested by the constitutive damage parameters. Nevertheless, the majority of studies concerning this matter have predominantly focused on ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) and conventional concrete (CC), with HSC receiving comparatively less attention. (c) Dynamic tensile properties: The urgent need for dynamic tensile properties of concrete materials to accurately calibrate constitutive material models is met with significant challenges in developing an experimental technique for dynamic direct tensile testing under valid testing conditions. These challenges primarily stem from two factors: firstly, the necessity to design an appropriate clamping technique to secure the specimen without any slippage during the test, and secondly, the inherent characteristics of these materials such as high heterogeneity, pronounced brittleness, and asymmetrical mechanical responses in compression and tension. To date, there is no universally accepted experimental technique to accurately quantify the dynamic tensile response of concrete materials under direct tension. The aim of the present study is to fill the research gaps identified earlier.
The residual mechanical properties of HSC subjected to dynamic compressive loading were quantified using a modified Kolsky compression bar coupled with a momentum trapping technique. This technique was used to generate a precisely controlled pre/post-peak intermittent loading to introduce distinctive states of damage inside HSC specimens without complete fragmentation. Subsequently, the recovered specimens were subjected to a second monotonic loading using the Kolsky compression bar to evaluate their residual mechanical properties (e.g., residual stiffness and residual strength).
The X-ray micro-CT scanning technique was utilized to quantify the relationships between the damage-induced crack networks and the associated degradation of residual mechanical properties in HSC. A micro-CT scanner was used to examine the HSC specimens before and after loading with the Kolsky compression bar. Hence, the damage-induced crack measurements, such as crack volume and crack surface area, were extracted and correlated to the constitutive damage parameters. Moreover, a systematic analysis of the micro-CT scans was conducted to develop a better understanding of the inherent interaction between naturally preexisting voids inside the bulk material and the damage-induced crack network when subjected to dynamic compressive loading.
The present study also introduced an improved experimental technique for the testing of cementitious materials under dynamic direct tensile loading on a Kolsky tension bar. This technique involves using a pair of aluminum adapters attached to the bars, with the concrete specimen secured to these adapters by epoxy adhesive. The proposed technique presents challenges caused by the inertia forces from the mass of adapters as well as the overestimation of the specimen strain due to the deformation of adapters. These challenges were addressed by modifications to the conventional approach of data post-processing in Kolsky bar experiments. In addition, pulse shaping techniques were utilized to develop an optimal loading wave, thereby enabling the attainment of valid testing conditions. The proposed technique was evaluated through the testing of steel fiber reinforced concrete
Piercing the Procedural Veil of Qualified Immunity: From the Guardians of Civil Rights to the Guardians of States’ Rights
Get PDFScholars have found that despite a split on the burden of proof for qualified immunity, courts agreed that defendants must bear the burden of pleading to raise qualified immunity as a defense. This article is the first to find that over the past decade, this established consensus has been disrupted, culminating in a fresh circuit split.This article investigates twelve Federal Courts of Appeals’ qualified immunity rulings on 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and finds that six have required plaintiffs to anticipate defendants’ qualified immunity arguments at the pleading stage, essentially treating the negating of qualified immunity as an element of § 1983. This article criticizes this approach, as it distorts the rule-of-law value of the Federal Civil Procedure, and it cannot consolidate with the statutory text and the 42nd Congress’s original intent in enacting the Civil Rights Act of 1871.This new circuit split should not be understood as merely a procedural split regarding the pleading burden. Courts often take advantage of procedural law’s elusive nature and use it as a veil to shield judicial activism. This circuit split is another example. Behind the veil of the pleading allocation is a clear policy agenda: anti-civil rights and unconditionally pro-law enforcement.Yet, one subtle, albeit salient, theoretical strand remains underexplored: the undertones of states’ rights embedded within the contemporary qualified immunity jurisprudence. Both the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts exhibited a predilection for interpreting the objective knowledge test in a manner favorable to law enforcement, leading to a predicament the Reconstruction Congress once grappled with: the enforceability of a federal right today often hinges upon a state actor’s acknowledgment of that right. Such an outcome, far from being serendipitous, resonates with the Court’s overt pro-states’ rights disposition on many civil rights matters. Thus, the contemporary qualified immunity jurisprudence reflects a departure from the vision of the Reconstruction Congress, which envisioned federal courts as guardians of civil rights. The prevailing sentiment at the Court suggests a reimagining of a new role for federal courts: guardians of states’ rights
Algorithmic Adjudication and Constitutional AI—The Promise of A Better AI Decision Making Future?
Get PDFAlgorithmic governance is when algorithms, often in the form of AI, make decisions, predict outcomes, and manage resources in various aspects of governance. This approach can be applied in areas like public administration, legal systems, policy-making, and urban planning. Algorithmic adjudication involves using AI to assist in or decide legal disputes. This often includes the analysis of legal documents, case precedents, and relevant laws to provide recommendations or even final decisions. The AI models typically used in these emerging decision-making systems use traditionally trained AI systems on large data sets so the system can render a decision or prediction based on past practices. However, the decisions often perpetuate existing biases and can be difficult to explain. Algorithmic decision-making models using a constitutional AI framework (like Anthropic\u27s LLM Claude) may produce results that are more explainable and aligned with societal values. The constitutional AI framework integrates core legal and ethical standards directly into the algorithm’s design and operation, ensuring decisions are made with considerations for fairness, equality, and justice. This article will discuss society’s movement toward algorithmic governance and adjudication, the challenges associated with using traditionally trained AI in these decision-making models, and the potential for better outcomes with constitutional AI models
Liability Rules for Automated Vehicles: Definitions and Details
Get PDFThis paper explains how the law ought to assign liability for automated vehicle accidents by providing an example of a proposed statute. We advocate for the creation of the legal fiction of a “Computer Driver,” which can have negligence liability, anytime a court or jury determines that the Computer Driver’s behavior failed to imitate or exceed the level of care we would expect of an attentive and unimpaired Human Driver in similar circumstances. We then use this concept to explain how to determine contributory negligence and comparative fault when control of a vehicle is transferred from a Computer Driver to a Human Driver by specifying a portion of time during the take-over transition period in which the Human Driver cannot have contributory negligence or comparative fault as a matter of law. We have proposed and defended these views in contemporaneous traditional law review articles, but to achieve the needed regulatory reform, our suggestions must be presented in a form containing proposed statutory language for adoption by a legislature. To that end, we make our case in this paper by presenting proposed legal definitions and explanatory legislative history for use by legislatures to implement our recommended structure. We use this non-traditional presentation because we believe the complexity associated with automated driving technology can only be fully conveyed by providing the details in a precise way, with technical definitions and wording that should be familiar to engineers and safety specialists