Academic Brands and Online Education

Online education both does and does not radically transform higher education and higher education brands. On the one hand, providing courses online potentially allows universities to reach a worldwide audience, helps them globalize their brand, changes the cost structure for both students and institutions, and could reshape the competitive branding landscape among universities. On the other hand, university brands are surprisingly regional, low student–faculty ratios are still necessary for truly high-quality education, and the online competitive landscape might ultimately simply replicate reputational hierarchies forged over decades in the world of on-campus education. Thus, although the idea that online learning will completely “disrupt” the higher education model and existing university branding hierarchies is almost certainly overstated, online education will inevitably become more and more integral to universities, and over time the distinction between on-campus and online education is likely to become increasingly blurred. As a result, online education brings both promise and peril for universities as they manage their brands while increasingly adopting online education modalities. This chapter first provides an overview of the online education landscape in higher education. Then, it outlines some of the core issues that universities must address as they consider and implement online education strategies while managing their brand

The Future of Jurisdiction

A new paradigm for conceptualizing the doctrine of personal jurisdiction is long overdue. In the 19th century the U.S. Supreme Court established a firm territorialist approach to jurisdiction befitting a geographically spread-out country with many local micro-economies. The more flexible “minimum contacts” test articulated in 1945 by International Shoe v. Washington ushered in a 20th century vision responding to increased automotive transportation and national industrial production. But now, at least three decades into the Internet and information economy era, the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to land on a coherent jurisdictional framework for the new century. It’s not for want of trying. Since 2010, the Supreme Court has decided at least seven major jurisdiction cases. But all seven have resulted in conceptually problematic resolutions, and in two of them—including the most recent, Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway—the Court could not even muster a true majority rationale. Indeed, even the basic purpose of jurisdictional law—is it to ensure fairness to defendants or is it to prevent states from encroaching on other states?—has remained murky since the very beginning. And as Mallory makes clear, the Court’s confused and bi-furcated approach regarding the purpose of jurisdictional law can lead to very different outcomes in particular cases. Fundamentally, we need to recognize that “minimum contacts” has become an unsatisfying approach in a 21st century dominated by virtual social life, deterritorialized goods and effects, and the ability of both large industrialists and individuals to reach consumers anywhere anytime. In such a world, “contacts” with a territorially-based entity does not capture the reality of the underlying transaction. Instead, this Article proposes a distinct framework for analyzing jurisdiction cases, one based on community affiliation. The real question underlying jurisdiction, I argue, is whether a legal dispute sufficiently implicates a community such that it is appropriate for that community to assert dominion over the dispute without unduly encroaching on the sovereignty of other states. And though the answer to that question is surely not always beyond dispute, it at least focuses attention on the core issues that should determine a jurisdictional inquiry. My argument in favor of this approach proceeds in four Parts. Part One focuses on the problem of territoriality as the basis for jurisdiction, emphasizing the various ways in which a territorialist approach fails to capture the reality of 21st century social life and commercial activity. Part Two examines the U.S. Supreme Court’s conceptual confusion about the purpose of jurisdictional doctrine and argues for an approach based on the connection between the case and the community, rather than the due process rights of defendants. Part Three traces the development of the Supreme Court’s general v. specific jurisdiction dichotomy and argues for a less categorical approach. Finally, Part Four sets forth a set of principles that should guide the future of jurisdiction. And while these principles do not “solve” all difficult jurisdictional issues, they do provide a more coherent analytical framework for courts as they wrestle with jurisdictional conundrums in the 21st century

DEMOCRACY AND DEMOGRAPHY

American democracy is under siege. This is so because of the confluence of three trends: (1) demographic change and residential segregation, which increasingly have placed more racially diverse Democratic Party voters in cities and suburbs, while rural areas have become more white and Republican; (2) a constitutional structure—particularly the Electoral College, the composition of the Senate, and the use of small, winner-take-all legislative districts—that gives disproportionate representation to rural populations; and (3) the willingness of this rural Republican minority to use its disproportionate power to further entrench counter-majoritarian structures, whether through extreme partisan gerrymandering, increased voter suppression efforts, court-packing, or outright rebellion against the results of democratic elections. These three trends create the very real prospect that for the foreseeable future a mostly white rural Republican minority wields disproportionate, structurally locked-in, power over a more diverse urban and suburban Democratic majority. A democracy cannot survive long under those conditions. In order to rescue the possibility of democratic self-government, we argue that judges must begin to apply heightened scrutiny to legislation or executive action that seeks to entrench the political power of a rural electoral minority or that discriminates against urban and suburban populations. In making this argument, we seek to revive the political process rationale for heightened judicial scrutiny that has long been associated with constitutional scholar John Hart Ely and his interpretation of Chief Justice Stone’s famous footnote 4 of the decision in United States v. Carolene Products Company. Both Stone and Ely were particularly focused on the potential ways the political system was skewed to deny Black people effective political representation, as well as the many circumstances through which de jure racial discrimination denied racial minorities equal rights. But there is no reason that the Carolene Products theory as elaborated by Ely needs to be confined only to this context. To the contrary, the whole point of Ely’s theory of judicial review is that it contemplates judicial intervention whenever the prevailing political system is systematically disadvantaging one group in order to lock in political advantages to another group. In such circumstances the democratic process is not functioning properly, and judicial intervention is not a threat to democracy, but a necessity in order to preserve democracy. We argue that our current political moment calls for a robust application of the Carolene/Ely principles of judicial review, and we provide examples of situations where heightened judicial review is appropriate. The democracy-protecting approach advocated in this Article also provides an additional basis for criticizing the newly minted, ahistorical “independent state legislature” theory embraced by some Supreme Court justices because it would allow minority factions to further disenfranchise the majority of the population by severely reducing, if not eliminating, the possibility for meaningful judicial review by state or federal courts

Analysis of the results of the Washington County District 15 elementary school vision screening program: The Abbo study (volume I)

Analysis of the results of the Washington County District 15 elementary school vision screening program: The Abbo study (volume I

Analysis of the results of the Washington County District 15 elementary school vision screening program: The Abbo study (volume II)

Analysis of the results of the Washington County District 15 elementary school vision screening program: The Abbo study (volume II

Momentum transfer using chirped standing wave fields: Bragg scattering

We consider momentum transfer using frequency-chirped standing wave fields. Novel atom-beam splitter and mirror schemes based on Bragg scattering are presented. It is shown that a predetermined number of photon momenta can be transferred to the atoms in a single interaction zone.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Non-Vacuum Bianchi Types I and V in f(R) Gravity

In a recent paper \cite{1}, we have studied the vacuum solutions of Bianchi types I and V spacetimes in the framework of metric f(R) gravity. Here we extend this work to perfect fluid solutions. For this purpose, we take stiff matter to find energy density and pressure of the universe. In particular, we find two exact solutions in each case which correspond to two models of the universe. The first solution gives a singular model while the second solution provides a non-singular model. The physical behavior of these models has been discussed using some physical quantities. Also, the function of the Ricci scalar is evaluated.Comment: 15 pages, accepted for publication in Gen. Realtiv. Gravi

Acoustic Analog to Quantum Mechanical Level Splitting

A simple physical system is discussed that mirrors the quantum mechanical infinite square well with a central delta well potential. The physical realization consists of a continuous sound wave traveling in a pair of tubes separated by an adjustable diaphragm. The equivalence between the quantum system and the acoustic system is explored. The analytic solution to the quantum system exhibits level splitting as does the acoustic system

Critical behavior in the variation of GDR width at low temperature

We present the first experimental giant dipole resonance (GDR) width systematics, in the temperature region 0.8 $\sim$ 1.2 MeV for $^{201}$Tl, a near Pb nucleus, to investigate the evolution of the GDR width in shell effect & pairing dominated region. The extracted GDR widths are well below the predictions of shell effect corrected thermal shape fluctuation model (TSFM) and thermal pairing included phonon damping model. A similar behavior of the GDR width is also observed for $^{63}$Cu measured in the present work and $^{119}$Sb, measured earlier. This discrepancy is attributed to the GDR induced quadrupole moment leading to a critical point in the increase of the GDR width with temperature. We incorporate this novel idea in the phenomenological description based on the TSFM for a better understanding of the GDR width systematics for the entire range of mass, spin and temperature.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Lett. B, 7 pages, 4 figure