(Trade)mark America Great Again: Should Political Slogans Be Able to Receive Trademark Protection?

In late 2016, Donald Trump was granted trademark protection for his presidential campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” This registration is one of few—if not the only—political slogans registered as a trademark with the USPTO. Four years later, and four years after the completion of the presidential campaign which effectuated the slogan, the MAGA registration is still live and President Trump and his campaign committee continue to sell merchandise featuring the slogan prominently. However, looking at the applications and the evidence presented therein, it is not clear that the MAGA slogan constitutes a phrase worthy of trademark protection. This Note examines whether the MAGA trademarks should have been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. In Part I, the Note will look at the doctrinal issues specific to the MAGA applications, highlighting ways in which the registrations may be problematic. Part II discusses the broader issues these applications introduce, namely, the ever-present tension between political and commercial speech in trademark law, and whether political slogans should ever receive trademark protection based on the state of this debate. Lastly, in Part III, the Note examines how President Trump’s treatment of his slogan may be illustrative of a larger issue that has been controversial in the first half of the Trump presidency: emoluments. In essence, this Note considers how Donald Trump is breaking the mold in terms of how presidents navigate and distinguish between their business and their politics

TeamSTEPPS In A Pediatric Operating Room

Despite numerous patient safety and quality programs available and in use in the healthcare environment, adverse events in operating rooms continue to occur. The operating room is a complex and chaotic environment where teamwork is necessary for safe patient care. Team training is a strategy that improves teamwork. TeamSTEPPS is an evidence-based team training program designed to integrate teamwork into clinical practice. This project aims to determine if TeamSTEPPS communication tools and strategies improve the perception of teamwork and efficiency in a pediatric operating room. The outcome objectives for this project are to increase the perception of teamwork and improve efficiencies in a pediatric operating room by using the TeamSTEPPS program. The project design is a quality improvement project using convenience sampling from a voluntary group of multidisciplinary team members. Pre and post-intervention data were obtained using the TeamSTEPPS, T-TPQ tool. Efficiency data were obtained from electronic medical records. Statistically significant results were demonstrated in two teamwork domains; Leadership and Situation Monitoring. The mean difference in efficiencies demonstrated that there was no improvement in efficiency metrics after the implementation of TeamSTEPPS. Implications for practice include the need for continued team training, a plan for sustainability of TeamSTEPPS concepts, and a plan to address team dynamics when unexpected stress or change is introduced into the work environment

Understanding the Mental and Emotional Impacts of Being a Caregiver of Socially Isolated Residents During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The mental health and emotional wellbeing of individuals has declined in many ways over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some groups have seen more drastic changes in their mental health and emotional wellbeing, especially those working in healthcare. While nearly all healthcare facility workers have experienced an increased burden brought about by the pandemic, long-term care facility workers have been tasked with caring for clients that, for periods of time, experienced complete social isolation. This project will attempt to answer the question of how caring for a group of socially isolated residents over an extended period has affected the emotional wellbeing and mental health of the healthcare workers both inside and outside the workplace. Data collection for this study is generated from a survey distributed to long-term care facilities and has been completed by nursing assistants, nurses, and facility administrators. My null hypothesis for this project was that there would not be an increase in the prevalence of mental health issues as a result of caring for socially isolated residents during the COVID-19 pandemic

Prevalence Rates and Factor Analysis of DSM-IV Specific Phobia Types

The Object and Situation Anxiety Survey (OSAS) was factor analyzed in a sample of 288 undergraduate participants. The OSAS is directly derived from DSM-IV (1994) criteria for specific phobia using the 5 diagnostic criteria across the 4 DSM-IV (1994) phobia types (animal, natural environment, blood-injection-injury, and situational), plus social phobia. Five reliable factors were derived from the OSAS that included each of the DSM-IV (1994) phobia types and social phobia. Prevalence rates for each phobia type were as follows: animal type (2.1%), natural-environment type (3.5%), blood-injection-injury type (6.6%), situational type (2.4%), and social phobia (8.7%). The prevalence of any type of phobia was 18.8%. In addition to these statistical measures, four case studies were analyzed regarding assessment of life impairment in specific phobia, animal type

Prevalence Rates and Factor Analysis of DSM-IV Specific Phobia Types

The Object and Situation Anxiety Survey (OSAS) was factor analyzed in a sample of 288 undergraduate participants. The OSAS is directly derived from DSM-IV (1994) criteria for specific phobia using the 5 diagnostic criteria across the 4 DSM-IV (1994) phobia types (animal, natural environment, blood-injection-injury, and situational), plus social phobia. Five reliable factors were derived from the OSAS that included each of the DSM-IV (1994) phobia types and social phobia. Prevalence rates for each phobia type were as follows: animal type (2.1%), natural-environment type (3.5%), blood-injection-injury type (6.6%), situational type (2.4%), and social phobia (8.7%). The prevalence of any type of phobia was 18.8%. In addition to these statistical measures, four case studies were analyzed regarding assessment of life impairment in specific phobia, animal type

On CAD Informed Adaptive Robotic Assembly

We introduce a robotic assembly system that streamlines the design-to-make workflow for going from a CAD model of a product assembly to a fully programmed and adaptive assembly process. Our system captures (in the CAD tool) the intent of the assembly process for a specific robotic workcell and generates a recipe of task-level instructions. By integrating visual sensing with deep-learned perception models, the robots infer the necessary actions to assemble the design from the generated recipe. The perception models are trained directly from simulation, allowing the system to identify various parts based on CAD information. We demonstrate the system with a workcell of two robots to assemble interlocking 3D part designs. We first build and tune the assembly process in simulation, verifying the generated recipe. Finally, the real robotic workcell assembles the design using the same behavior

A Conflict Resolution Tool for Project Managers: Evaporating Cloud

Today’s ever changing business environment requires managers to interact globally with people across functional areas with conflicting points of view. A preliminary literature review suggests that a generic tool to understand and resolve conflicts is desirable. This paper demonstrates how a theory of constraints-based logical tool, an evaporating cloud, can enable IT managers to better understand conflicts underlying most problems. Using a commonly encountered conflict as an example, we show how this tool verbalizes a problem through the logic of cause and effect, surfaces the assumptions causing the conflicting actions and decisions, and presents injections – potential solutions – that can cause the conflict to evaporate (i.e., disappear or be resolved). Using a real-world IT project management case study, we also explain the usefulness and versatility of this intuitive tool via a web app for novice users. We conclude this paper acknowledging its limitations and providing some future research directions

Gravitation as a Supersymmetric Gauge Theory

We propose a gauge theory of gravitation. The gauge potential is a connection of the Super SL(2,C) group. A MacDowell-Mansouri type of action is proposed where the action is quadratic in the Super SL(2,C) curvature and depends purely on gauge connection. By breaking the symmetry of the Super SL(2,C) topological gauge theory to SL(2,C), a spinor metric is naturally defined. With an auxiliary anti-commuting spinor field, the theory is reduced to general relativity. The Hamiltonian variables are related to the ones given by Ashtekar. The auxiliary spinor field plays the role of Witten spinor in the positive energy proof for gravitation.Comment: 11 pages, accepted for publication in Physics Letters