A Traditional and Textualist Analysis of the Goals of Antitrust: Efficiency, Preventing Theft from Consumers, and Consumer Choice

This Article ascertains the overall purpose of the antitrust statutes in two very different ways. First, it performs a traditional analysis of the legislative history of the antitrust laws by analyzing relevant legislative debates and committee reports. Second, it undertakes a textualist or “plain meaning” analysis of the purpose of the antitrust statutes, using Justice Scalia’s methodology. It does this by analyzing the meaning of key terms as they were used in contemporary dictionaries, legal treatises, common law cases, and the earliest U.S. antitrust cases, and it does this in light of the history of the relevant times. Both approaches demonstrate that the overriding purpose of the antitrust statutes is to prevent firms from stealing from consumers by charging them supracompetitive prices. When firms use their market power to raise prices to supracompetitive levels, purchasers pay more for their goods and services, and these overcharges constitute a taking of purchasers’ property. Economic efficiency was only a secondary concern. In addition, the textualist approach leads to the surprising conclusion that neither the Sherman Act nor the Clayton Act contain an exception for monopolies attained by efficient business conduct. A “plain meaning” analysis of the antitrust statutes reveals that they are supposed to prevent and condemn all privately created monopolies

Balanced entertainment: motivations behind watching cable news

[EMBARGOED UNTIL 6/1/2023] Cable news networks have a peculiar dynamic with their audiences compared to other television news mediums, as their privatized, highly competitive nature means they are especially dependent on attracting audiences and catering to viewer whims to maintain ratings. The nature of this dynamic has made it fertile ground for studies that examine it through a Uses and Gratifications Theory lens. Prior scholarly perspectives have focused largely on the partisan, ideological ways that cable news networks have catered to audiences, such as by decrying bias in competing networks or making vocal, performative gestures of their professed ideology. The Fox News Network is the most visible representation of this pattern of behavior, having over the decades cultivated a loyal, predominantly conservative audience, and a sizable amount of research on cable news networks has focused on Fox News and its audiences. This study sought to examine both Fox News and other cable news networks using Uses and Gratifications Theory, surveying cable news network audiences to get a sense of what uses and gratifications they tended to value and what areas they felt both their network of choice and other networks could improve in, so as to get a sense of what non-partisan factors may be serving as potential uses and gratifications for American cable news network viewers. The results of this study were mixed, and overall seemed to suggest that the independent variable that was aspects of one's personal identity and background such as age and political self-identity had a stronger influence on the dependent variable that was what uses and gratifications one prioritized instead of cable news network affiliation, which is true to the spirit of uses and gratifications theory.Includes bibliographical references

Securing Inter-Organizational Workflows in Highly Dynamic Environments through Biometric Authentication

High flexibility demands of business processes in an inter-organizational context potentially conflict with existing security needs, mainly implied by regulative and legal requirements. In order to comply with these it has to be ensured that access to information within the workflow is restricted to authorized participants. Furthermore, the system might be required to prove this retrospectively. In highly flexible environments, particularly when documents leave the owner’s security domain, the scope of trust must be expendable throughout the workflow. Usage control provides practical concepts. However, user authentication remains a major vulnerability. In order to ensure effective access control the possibility of process-wide enforcement of strong authentication is needed. Inherently, strong user authentication can be realized applying biometrics, though practical reasons still slow the broad application of biometric authentication methods in common workflow scenarios. This work proposes the combination of usage control and typing biometrics to secure interorganizational workflows in highly dynamic environments. On the one hand, usage control provides high flexibility for document-centric workflows but relies on the enforcement of strong authentication. On the other hand, authentication based on typing is flexible in both deployment and application. Furthermore, the inherent privacy problem of biometrics is significantly weakened by the proposed approach

Learning About Modeling in Teacher Preparation Programs

This study explores opportunities that secondary mathematics teacher preparation programs provide to learn about modeling in algebra. Forty-eight course instructors and ten focus groups at five universities were interviewed to answer questions related to modeling. With the analysis of the interview transcripts and related course materials, we found few opportunities for PSTs to engage with the full modeling cycle. Examples of opportunities to learn about algebraic modeling and the participants’ perspectives on the opportunities can contribute to the study of modeling and algebra in teacher education

Expanding window fountain codes for unequal error protection

A novel approach to provide unequal error protection (UEP) using rateless codes over erasure channels, named Expanding Window Fountain (EWF) codes, is developed and discussed. EWF codes use a windowing technique rather than a weighted (non-uniform) selection of input symbols to achieve UEP property. The windowing approach introduces additional parameters in the UEP rateless code design, making it more general and flexible than the weighted approach. Furthermore, the windowing approach provides better performance of UEP scheme, which is confirmed both theoretically and experimentally. © 2009 IEEE

Turning the shelves: empirical findings and space syntax analyses of two virtual supermarket variations

The spatial structure of a virtual supermarket was systematically varied to investigate human behavior and cognitive processes in unusual building configurations. The study builds upon experiments in a regular supermarket, which serve as a baseline case. In a between-participant design a total of 41 participants completed a search task in two different virtual supermarket environments. For 21 participants the supermarket shelves were turned towards them at a 45° angle when entering the store, giving high visual access to product categories and products. For 20 participants the shelves were placed in exactly the opposite direction obstructing a quick development of shopping goods dependencies. The obtained differences in search performance between the two conditions are analyzed using space syntax analyses and comparisons made of environmental features and participants’ actual search path trajectories

Expanding window fountain codes for unequal error protection

A novel approach to provide unequal error protection (UEP) using rateless codes over erasure channels, named Expanding Window Fountain (EWF) codes, is developed and discussed. EWF codes use a windowing technique rather than a weighted (non-uniform) selection of input symbols to achieve UEP property. The windowing approach introduces additional parameters in the UEP rateless code design, making it more general and flexible than the weighted approach. Furthermore, the windowing approach provides better performance of UEP scheme, which is confirmed both theoretically and experimentally

Expanding window fountain codes for unequal error protection

A novel approach to provide unequal error protection (UEP) using rateless codes over erasure channels, named Expanding Window Fountain (EWF) codes, is developed and discussed. EWF codes use a windowing technique rather than a weighted (non-uniform) selection of input symbols to achieve UEP property. The windowing approach introduces additional parameters in the UEP rateless code design, making it more general and flexible than the weighted approach. Furthermore, the windowing approach provides better performance of UEP scheme, which is confirmed both theoretically and experimentally. © 2009 IEEE

Another Missed Opportunity in Shoemaker v. Gindlesberger: Strict Privity Lives On in Ohio Legal Malpractice Cases

This Note surveys the development of the strict-privity rule in Ohio and other jurisdictions and will argue that the Ohio Supreme Court missed yet another opportunity to modify its outmoded strict-privity rule. This Note only suggests that the Ohio Supreme Court should again reevaluate its strict-privity rule to at least provide relief to intended beneficiaries of negligently prepared wills. Part II provides a brief overview of the development of the strict-privity rule in legal malpractice cases in Anglo-American law, particularly Ohio, as well as a few of the arguments for and against the strict-privity rule. Part III provides the statement of facts, the procedural history, and the Ohio Supreme Court’s decision in Shoemaker. Finally, Part IV examines the decision in Shoemaker and argues that the Ohio Supreme Court missed a valuable opportunity to overrule the misstated holding of Simon and bring attorneys and other professionals under the same standard of liability. It further discusses why a relaxing of strict privity is the accepted standard among the majority of jurisdictions. It concludes with why Shoemaker was the ideal case in which to overrule Simon and discusses a federal estate tax issue in the Shoemaker opinion

The life stories of women warriors: an exploratory study of female student-veterans balancing the transition to college

Currently, there is an increase in veterans returning to colleges, yet little understanding exists of their unique circumstances. Limited resources, programs, and staff for veteran services, along with physical injuries, cognitive impairments, and emotional disturbances due to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), and military sexual trauma (MST) further complicate the transition to college. Further, female student-veterans have additional pressures, such as women\u27s health issues and motherhood, creating additional exigencies which affect their return to college. Few studies have specifically sought to understand female student-veterans transitioning to college. Obtaining insight on the experiences of female student-veterans, utilizing the life story framework (Giele, 2010; Weber, 2011) and Schlossberg\u27s transition theory (1984), allows for the discovery of how one\u27s life course impacts the transition to college. Therefore, this exploratory study uses a qualitative, phenomenological approach. Using semi-structured interviews, this study sought to examine the experiences and challenges of female student-veterans, as well as their identities, relationships, motivation, adaptability, strategies employed, and the role of health to determine the impact on transition from the military to college. 17 women participated in the study. Findings indicated a need to be different than family expectations or education level, with many female student-veterans being first-generation college attendees. Relationships played an important role in supporting and mentoring female student-veterans. Having a strong drive to succeed, pursue career goals, and obtain a better life were the prevalent motivating factors for college education attainment. Female student-veterans demonstrated the ability to be adaptive to many demands and milieus, although transitioning to college presented many challenges. Anxieties were further escalated when the added responsibility of motherhood compounded demands, and created work-life-school balance issues. In understanding that there are individual factors in the perceptions of work, life, and school demands, as well as strategies employed to cope with these obligations, a greater awareness and understanding can be realized. Further research in this area is necessary to develop a greater cognizance, discover additional issues, and ultimately inform and develop policies, programs, and services that can be implemented to meet the needs of female veterans transitioning from the military to college