Liberta Revisited: A Call to Repeal the Marital Examption for All Sex Offenses in New York\u27s Penal Law

This Note argues that to fully protect victims of spousal sexual assault, the New York Legislature should codify the Liberta decision and repeal the marital exemption for all sex offenses. It outlines the history of the marital rape exemption and its evolution in New York. It discusses the Liberta decision and the barriers to effective prosecution of marital rape, such as the legal standard for force, prosecutorial discretion in charging husbands, and gender bias in the courts. It gives policy arguments for a statutory amendment and offers a proposed statute to replace the current sex offenses section of the Penal Law. The Note concludes that victims of marital sexual assault will receive full protection under the law only when the Legislature amends the New York Penal Law to expressly criminalize marital sexual assault

Liberta Revisited: A Call to Repeal the Marital Examption for All Sex Offenses in New York\u27s Penal Law

This Note argues that to fully protect victims of spousal sexual assault, the New York Legislature should codify the Liberta decision and repeal the marital exemption for all sex offenses. It outlines the history of the marital rape exemption and its evolution in New York. It discusses the Liberta decision and the barriers to effective prosecution of marital rape, such as the legal standard for force, prosecutorial discretion in charging husbands, and gender bias in the courts. It gives policy arguments for a statutory amendment and offers a proposed statute to replace the current sex offenses section of the Penal Law. The Note concludes that victims of marital sexual assault will receive full protection under the law only when the Legislature amends the New York Penal Law to expressly criminalize marital sexual assault

Choosing an allograft or autograft in orthopedic surgeries for athletes

Athletes and their doctors have the choice of using an allograft or autograft in reconstruction surgeries. The purpose of this study is to see if there is a difference in the healing mechanism and surgical outcome in using an allograft or autograft during orthopedic surgical procedures, as well as to analyze graft rejection and disease transmission through donor tissue. Doctors and athletic trainers were interviewed in order to learn about the healing mechanisms and advantages and disadvantages of allografts and autografts in order to conclude if one was better than the other. College level athletes on different sports teams were given a questionnaire that asked questions on the surgical procedure they got and whether or not the surgeon used an allograft or autograft. Specific questions relating to recovery time, stability, and overall function of the area of surgery were asked in order to analyze the outcome. The subjects were screened by choosing athletes with the same surgical reconstruction except one using an allograft and one using an autograft. The questions relating to the outcome of the surgery were compared in order to see if one produced a better outcome over the other. Athletes were found to have better success with autograft as predicted by doctors

Slavery in Rhode Island: Awakening a Forgotten Past (poster)

This map serves to raise awareness about the history of slavery in Rhode Island. Despite having played an active role in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, Rhode Island’s involvement is often overlooked or omitted from what we are traditionally taught in historically influenced classes at Providence College. Instead of integrating local history and knowledge into our own curriculum, we learn about slavery through a Eurocentric, Westernized lens. We aim to challenge our narrow teachings about slavery and widen our perspectives by constructing alternative narratives that go against the metanarrative. This map displaces the untold narratives of four areas in Rhode Island: Providence, Bristol, Narragansett and Newport. Through these stories, we seek to highlight and draw attention to the set of skills, the culture, and the sense of humanity that Black individuals retained throughout their enslavement. By presenting Rhode Island’s involvement in the slave trade, we aim to remind our community that slavery not only existed thousands of miles away from us but also occurred in many familiar places we visit every day. We would not only like to shed light on the hidden history of slavery, but to also raise consciousness about how this history should play a vital part in our education at Providence College

Two Steps Forward and One Step Back: An Assessment of How Uneven Economic Development Affects the Number of Civil Wars

The effects of economic development are enormously important in understanding the causes of civil war and the requirements for successful post-conflict reconstruction. In recent decades we have seen an increase in the number of civil wars because of a phenomenon known as the conflict trap. I question why we see an increase in civil wars and what role unstable economic development plays in contributing to the conflict trap. This paper offers evidence to support the hypothesis that uneven economic development increases the risk of multiple civil wars occurring in a short amount of time. Based on the results of testing my hypothesis I suggest that the conflict trap can be broken, and the risk of civil war decreased, when economic growth is stabilized. I suggest participation in the global economic community as a mechanism for stabilizing economic growth

Testing the Disk-Locking Paradigm: An Association Between U-V Excess and Rotation in NGC 2264

We present some results from a UVI photometric study of a field in the young open cluster NGC 2264 aimed, in part, at testing whether accretion in pre-main sequence stars is linked to rotation. We confirm that U-V excess is well correlated with H-alpha equivalent width for the stars in our sample. We show that for the more massive stars in the cluster sample (roughly 0.4-1.2 M_sun) there is also a significant association between U-V excess and rotation, in the sense that slow rotators are more likely to show excess U-band emission and variability. This constitutes significant new evidence in support of the disk-locking paradigm.Comment: Accepted by ApJ Letter

Exploring Biomarkers for Point of Care Bladder Cancer Detection

Bladder cancer is the 5th most common non-cutaneous human cancer in the United States. While effective methods of detecting bladder cancer are currently practiced, they are often expensive and invasive. There is a need for a noninvasive detection method that can be used in areas with few medical resources. Cell free DNA in urine is normally present only in very low concentrations. Abnormally high levels of cell free DNA in urine could be indicative of disease. This study tests the hypothesis that DNA present in urine can be used as a biomarker for bladder cancer before hematuria is seen in vivo. First, different DNA probes were compared, and SYBR green was selected as an ideal probe due to factors such as cost, safety concerns, and specificity. Second, a detection threshold of cells was determined using MB49 and MBT2 bladder cancer cell lines. Cells were lysed with either tap or DI water to determine which kind of water was more effective at creating a hypotonic solution for the cells. Two cell lines were used to determine if there was a statistical difference in the DNA detection threshold. A detection limit of between 600 cells/200μL and 300 cells/200μL was seen in both MB49 and MBT2 cells. Lastly, an in vivo study was done in which a group of mice was implanted with 75,000 MB49 cells. Urine samples were obtained for five days before implantation, as well as for seven days after implantation. Evidence of excess DNA in the urine was seen as early as four days before hematuria was observed. This study provides evidence that quantifying levels of cell free DNA is an effective method of detecting bladder cancer before hematuria is present. Future studies will determine if the DNA being detected is mammalian, and eventually, a low cost, quantitative home test will be developed to aid in early detection of bladder cancer

The Long-Run Impacts of Same-Race Teachers

Black primary-school students matched to a same-race teacher perform better on standardized tests and face more favorable teacher perceptions, yet little is known about the long-run, sustained impacts of student-teacher demographic match. We show that assigning a black male to a black teacher in the third, fourth, or fifth grades significantly reduces the probability that he drops out of high school, particularly among the most economically disadvantaged black males. Exposure to at least one black teacher in grades 3-5 also increases the likelihood that persistently low-income students of both sexes aspire to attend a four-year college. These findings are robust across administrative data from two states and multiple identification strategies, including an instrumental variables strategy that exploits within-school, intertemporal variation in the proportion of black teachers, family fixed-effects models that compare siblings who attended the same school, and the random assignment of students and teachers to classrooms created by the Project STAR class-size reduction experiment

Faculty Service Loads and Gender: Are Women Taking Care of the Academic Family?

This paper investigates the amount of academic service performed by female versus male faculty. We use 2012 data from an online annual performance reporting system for tenured and tenure‐track faculty at two campuses of a large public, Midwestern university as well as 2014 data from a large national survey of faculty at more than 140 institutions. We find evidence in both data sources that women faculty perform significantly more service than men, controlling for rank, race/ethnicity, and field or department. Our analyses suggest that the male‐female differential is driven primarily by internal service – i.e., service to the university, campus, or department – rather than external service – i.e., service to the local, national, and international communities