Digital Commons Network^™

Trade Liberalization Under Safta And Bimstec: Evidence From A Cge-Gtap Case Study Of A Small Open Economy, Gita Bhushal, Pankaj Lal

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Regional trade liberalization via preferential agreements increasingly shapes economic outcomes in small open economies embedded in overlapping regional frameworks. This study evaluates the short-run economy-wide effects of tariff and non-tariff measure (NTM) reforms under the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) and the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) using a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model calibrated to the GTAP 10 database. Gravity-based estimates of ad valorem equivalents (AVEs) of NTMs are integrated into the CGE framework, enabling explicit modeling of regulatory barriers alongside tariff reductions. Policy simulations examine scenarios involving a 90 percent tariff …

Watch Me Watch: Reaction Videos As A Social Form Of Online Video Engagement, Rodney Okyere, Carlos Augusto Bautista Isaza, Jaehoon Pyon, Ihudiya Finda Ogbonnaya-Ogburu, Shuo Niu, Sang Wong Lee

Computer Science

Reaction videos (RVs) are surging in popularity, emerging as a distinctive facet of participatory culture on modern social video-sharing platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch. This study aims to explore not only the motivations and engagement patterns of viewers towards RVs, but also the underlying nature of the virality and community-building phenomena that this sub-genre of video content fosters. We conducted 16 semi-structured interviews with individuals who identified as regular viewers of reaction videos to gain a deeper understanding of how they discover reaction videos (RQ1), the values that drive their motivations for viewing RVs (RQ2), and the ways …

Targeting Oncogenes: Development And Characterization Of Aurka And Her2 Inhibitors, Itzel Montoya

Chemistry Theses

Targeted inhibition of oncogenes has remained a key strategy in the development of more potent, effective, and less toxic therapeutic anticancer agents. Among the most clinically significant signaling pathways are those mediated by the Human Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor 2 (HER2) and Aurora Kinase A (AurKA). HER2 is a member of the ErbB receptor family that supports cell growth and proliferation through downstream signaling of the PI3K and MAPK pathways and is closely linked to more aggressive tumors and therapeutic resistance. AurKA is a protein kinase essential for mitotic spindle assembly, centrosome maturation, and other key processes in cell cycle …

Can Financial Literacy Enhance Esg Disclosures?, Xiaoran Jia, Kiridaran Kanagaretnam, Kiat Bee Jimmy Lee, Chee Yeow Lim

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using an international sample of firms and two country-level measures of financial literacy, we find robust evidence of a positive relation between financial literacy and firms' Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) disclosures. In cross-sectional analyses, we find that the effect of financial literacy in enhancing ESG disclosures is more prominent in poorer information environments, weaker legal institutions and weaker ESG reporting environments. Lastly, we find that financial literacy also enhances ESG performance. Our study contributes to and extends the literature by providing strong evidence that citizens' financial literacy enhances firms' ESG disclosure and the associated ESG performance.

Conflogger: Enhance Systems’ Configuration Diagnosability Through Configuration Logging, Shiwen Shan, Yintong Huo, Yuxin Su, Zhining Wang, Dan Li, Zibin Zheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Modern configurable systems offer customization via intricate configuration spaces, yet such flexibility introduces pervasive configuration-related issues such as misconfigurations and latent softwarebugs. Existing diagnosability supports focus on post-failure analysis of software behavior to identify configuration issues, but none of these approaches look into whether the software clue sufficient failure information for diagnosis. To fill in the blank, we propose the idea of configuration logging to enhance existing logging practices at the source code level. We develop ConfLogger, the first tool that unifies configuration-aware static taint analysis with LLM-based log generation to enhance software configuration diagnosability. Specifically, our method 1) identifies …

Causality-Aware Safety Testing For Autonomous Driving Systems, Wenbing Tang, Mingfei Cheng, Renzhi Wang, Yuan Zhou, Chengwei Liu, Yang Liu, Zuohua Ding

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Simulation-based testing is essential for evaluating the safety of Autonomous Driving Systems (ADSs). Comprehensive evaluation requires testing across diverse scenarios that can trigger various types of violations under different conditions. While existing methods typically focus on individual diversity metrics, such as input scenarios, ADS-generated motion commands, and system violations, they often fail to capture the complex interrelationships among these elements. For instance, identical motion commands can produce different collision risks in varying scenes, and the same collision may result from different commands under different scenarios. This oversight leads to gaps in testing coverage, potentially missing critical issues in the ADS …

Developing Blockchain-Based Transparent E-Commerce Solutions For Danish Smes To Promote Sustainable Design Products, Somnath Mazumdar, Robert John Kauffman, Thomas Jensen, Raghava Rao Mukkamala, Jan Damsgaard

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Typically, a firm's objectives include establishing consumer confidence, preserving its brand image, and developing a profitable business strategy. Consumers now place greater emphasis on the sustainability and transparency of their purchases. Given environmental and economic limitations, firms are often compelled to implement sustainable production methods. This is especially a struggle for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with new technology, as it can increase their risk of failure. This has led to a problem for consumers, who must cross-check the sustainability-related claims of the firms they buy from. This is challenging because of limited process trace data and restricted enforcement capabilities. …

Bridging Draft Policy Misalignment: Group Tree Optimization For Speculative Decoding, Shijing Hu, Jingyang Li, Zhihui Lu, Pan Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Speculative decoding accelerates large language model (LLM) inference by letting a lightweight draft model propose multiple tokens that the target model verifies in parallel. Yet existing training objectives optimize only a single greedy draft path, while decoding follows a tree policy that re-ranks and verifies multiple branches. This draft policy misalignment limits achievable speedups. We introduce Group Tree Optimization (GTO), which aligns training with the decoding-time tree policy through two components: (i) Draft Tree Reward, a sampling-free objective equal to the expected acceptance length of the draft tree under the target model, directly measuring decoding performance; (ii) Group-based Draft Policy …

Thinktank-Me: A Multi-Expert Framework For Middle East Event Forecasting, Haoxuan Li, He Chang, Yunshan Ma, Yi Bin, Yang Yang, See-Kiong Ng, Tat-Seng Chua

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Event forecasting is inherently influenced by multifaceted considerations, including international relations, regional historical dynamics, and cultural contexts. However, existing LLM-based approaches employ single-model architectures that generate predictions along a singular explicit trajectory, constraining their ability to capture diverse geopolitical nuances across complex regional contexts. To address this limitation, we introduce ThinkTank-ME, a novel Think Tank framework for Middle East event forecasting that emulates collaborative expert analysis in real-world strategic decision-making. To facilitate expert specialization and rigorous evaluation, we construct POLECAT-FOR-ME, a Middle East–focused event forecasting benchmark. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of multi-expert collaboration in handling complex temporal geopolitical forecasting …

Discrete Diffusion For Bundle Construction, Teng Tu, Ai Li, Yunshan Ma, Shuo Xu, Xiaohao Liu, Haokai Ma, Liang Pang, Tat-Seng Chua

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As a central task in product bundling, bundle construction aims to select a subset of items from large item catalogs to build an entire bundle or, more practically, complete a partial bundle. Existing methods often rely on the sequential construction paradigm that predicts items one at a time, nevertheless, this paradigm is fundamentally unsuitable for the essentially unordered bundles. In contrast, non-sequential methods model a bundle as a set, but still face two dimensionality curses: the combinatorial space grows exponentially with both bundle length and catalog size. Accordingly, we identify two technical challenges: 1) how to effectively and efficiently model …

On Autopilot? An Empirical Study Of Human-Ai Teaming And Review Practices In Open Source, Haoyu Gao, Peerachai Banyongrakkul, Hao Guan, Mansooreh Zahedi, Christoph Treude

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Large Language Models (LLMs) increasingly automate software engineering tasks. While recent studies highlight the accelerated adoption of “AI as a teammate” in Open Source Software (OSS), developer interaction patterns remain under-explored. In this work, we investigated project-level guidelines and developers’ interactions with AI-assisted pull requests (PRs) by expanding the AIDev dataset to include finer-grained contributor code ownership and a comparative baseline of human-created PRs. We found that over 67.5% of AI-co-authored PRs originate from contributors without prior code ownership. Despite this, the majority of repositories lack guidelines for AI-coding agent usage. Notably, we observed a distinct interaction pattern: AI-co-authored PRs …

Conservation Communication In Web 2.0: A Mixed Methods Analysis Of Alveus Sanctuary's Strategies On Twitch.Tv, Hope Denison

Senior Theses

This thesis examines how environmental creators can effectively transmit conservation messages in the evolving Web 2.0 media environment. The case of Alveus Sanctuary, a virtual sanctuary and education center on Twitch.TV, is used to explore the strategies currently used to engage audiences and raise ecological awareness online. Thematic analysis of interviews with the sanctuary’s founder revealed that Alveus combines traditional environmental education with an influencer business model to engage online audiences, leveraging parasocial behavior, interactivity, and collaboration to garner support. A quantitative content analysis of social media posts revealed that these strategies effectively induce parasocial engagement in online spaces. These …

Efficacy Analysis In Clinical Trials: A Comprehensive Review Of Statistical And Machine Learning Approaches, Dhrubajyoti Ghosh, Samhita Pal

Faculty Articles

Efficacy testing is a cornerstone of clinical trials, ensuring that medical interventions achieve their intended therapeutic effects. Over the decades, a wide range of statistical methodologies have been developed to address the complexities of clinical trial data, including parametric, nonparametric, Bayesian, and machine learning approaches. Parametric methods, such as t-tests, ANOVA, and LMMs, have traditionally been the foundation of efficacy testing due to their efficiency under well-defined assumptions. Nonparametric techniques, including the Friedman test, Brunner-Munzel test, and modern extensions like nparLD, have emerged as robust alternatives, particularly for skewed, ordinal, or non-normal data. Bayesian methodologies have enabled the incorporation of …

Wright State University's Celebration Of Student Research, Scholarship & Creative Activities From Wednesday, April 1, 2026, Wright State University

Celebration of Undergraduate & Graduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities Materials

The student abstract booklet is a compilation of abstracts from students' oral and poster presentations at Wright State University's Celebration of Student Research, Scholarship & Creative Activities on April 1, 2026.

Architecture-Agnostic Test-Time Adaptation Via Backprop-Free Embedding Alignment, Xiao Ma, Young D. Kwon, Pan Zhou, Dong Ma

PhD Student’s Publications Collection

Test-Time Adaptation (TTA) adapts a deployed model during online inference to mitigate the impact of domain shift. While achieving strong accuracy, most existing methods rely on backpropagation, which is memory and computation intensive, making them unsuitable for resource-constrained devices. Recent attempts to reduce this overhead often suffer from high latency or are tied to specific architectures such as ViT-only or CNN-only. In this work, we revisit domain shift from an embedding perspective. Our analysis reveals that domain shift induces three distinct structural changes in the embedding space: translation (mean shift), scaling (variance shift), and rotation (covariance shift). Based on this …

Ethical Issues Of The Advancement Of Artificial Intelligence, Primo G. Moreno

Augustana Center for the Study of Ethics Essay Contest

Artificial intelligence has rapidly become integrated into our modern society, allowing for new streamlined methods to reign supreme. These methods raise concerns about control, privacy, and the shifting boundaries between human and machine decision-making. This paper examines how AI has developed, how it is currently being used, and the ethical dilemmas that arise as societies integrate it into systems such as healthcare, law enforcement, and businesses. Through the expansion of historical, technical, and philosophical perspectives, this paper argues that society must prioritize having set guidelines and systems for monitoring newly created AI systems. Without them, the implementation of AI models …

Searching For Temporal Variations In The Fine-Structure Constant Using Espresso Spectrograph Data, David Hoffman Iv

Senior Theses

The fine-structure constant α is a dimensionless constant, defined as e²/(4πε₀ℏc) ≈ 1/137. On the order of human timescales, its value is very much unchanging, however, in recent years there has been extensive debate over whether or not the value of α has remained constant over cosmological timescales. With the natural corollary to a changing α being that either one or multiple of its constituent physical constants have also changed in value, observing a variation in the fine-structure constant would have vast ramifications for our understanding of the nature of the early universe and how it has evolved. While past …

Evolution As Spatial Projection, Charles H. Smith, Ngoc Nguyen

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

A theory combining explanations for the nature of three-dimensional systems and evolutionary processes is advanced, set to a geometric simulation, and then discussed in the context of several empirical studies bearing on its validity. The concept “evolution” is first discussed, then related to Baruch de Spinoza’s ideas on natural philosophy, including his concept of the conatus. These ideas are then extended by posing the possible existence of a general form of natural systems subsystemization leading to the extended space condition. A geometrical/topological simulation study projecting spatial relations among subsystem structures interpretable through entropy maximization and multidimensional scaling methods is presented, …

Columnas: The Honors Program Newsletter At Bentley University, Amanda Li, Wilson Jan, Michael Raphael, Alexandra Rieckehoff, Karina Wu, Michael Shehata, Nilufar Noorian, Eloise Weintraub

Honors Program

INSIDE THE MODERN WORLD

Page 2: Stepping Out by Amanda Li

Page 3: Inside the Corporate Slop Bowl by Wilson Jan

Page 4: The Silencing: An Evaluation of the Global Attacks on the Right to Protest by Michael Raphael

THE SOUND OF CHANGE

Page 5: The Social, Cultural, and Economic Impact of Bad Bunny by Alexandra Rieckehoff

Page 6: Streaming Changed Music, But Is It Fair to Artists? by Karina Wu

Page 7: Feeling the Music: How Haptic Wearables Are Changing the Way We Experience Sound by Michael Shehata

SHIFTING SYSTEMS

Page 8: The Story Behind Davos, One of the …

Imidacloprid Effects On The Survival And Cutaneous Microbiome Of Northern Leopard Frogs, Evelyn Margaret Osterloo

Honors Thesis

Amphibians are experiencing population declines due to habitat loss, climate change, and diseases, particularly chytridiomycosis caused by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. Protection from this fungal infection stems from the cutaneous microbiome. Pesticides have been shown to affect amphibians in a variety of ways, including reducing survival, locomotor performance, and accumulation in body tissues. Pesticides may also lead to changes in the cutaneous microbiome affecting amphibians who rely on these organisms as an anti-Bd defense mechanism. To investigate the effect of imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid insecticide, Northern Leopard frogs (Lithobates pipiens) were subjected to sublethal concentrations (control = …

Storycomposerai: Supporting Human-Ai Story Co-Creation Through Decomposition And Linking, Shuo Niu, Dylan Clements, Marina Margalit Nemanov, Hyungsin Kim

Computer Science

GenAI's ability to produce text and images is increasingly incorporated into human-AI co-creation tasks such as storytelling and video editing. However, integrating GenAI into these tasks requires enabling users to retain control over editing individual story elements while ensuring that generated visuals remain coherent with the storyline and consistent across multiple AI-generated outputs. This work examines a paradigm of creative decomposition and linking, which allows creators to clearly communicate creative intent by prompting GenAI to tailor specific story elements, such as storylines, personas, locations, and scenes, while maintaining coherence among them. We implement and evaluate StoryComposerAI, a system that exemplifies …

Scenarioxp: A Complete Scenario-Based Testing Framework For The Exploration And Exploitation Of Autonomous Vehicle Validation Scenarios, Quentin Goss

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Today is an age of exciting emerging technology where cutting-edge research in autonomous vehicles (AVs) reduces the active human participation in driving and extends awareness beyond human limitations of perception and reaction, improving driving safety and quality of the user experience as a result. The ever-increasing complexity of these autonomous systems poses many challenges towards the validation and verification (V\&V) of these complex systems under time and resource constraints, as the use of artificial intelligence and also the intricacy of the operating environment means that these systems are also black-box and non-deterministic. Scenario-based V\&V testing of such systems, which involves …

Developing A Multi-Band Gnss Remote Sensing Station To Measure Precipitable Water Vapor For Flash Flood Nowcasting, Madison Gleydura

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Flash flood nowcasting in Central and Southern Appalachia is particularly challenging due to steep terrain, narrow valleys, highly localized rainfall patterns, and limited measurement coverage. Traditional remote sensing methods, such as Doppler radar and microwave radiometry, suffer from reduced resolution at long range and signal blockage by mountains. GNSS-meteorology offers an established alternative for measuring precipitable water vapor and is currently integrated into several numerical weather models. Recent research demonstrates that commercial-grade GNSS receivers can produce tropospheric products comparable to those from geodetic-grade equipment. The gaps in mountain coverage can be addressed by developing a low-cost, self-contained embedded system that …

Standing Firm On Sustainability, Helge Muenkel

Asian Management Insights

As priorities evolve, sustainability continues to shape key business decisions for organisations.

Revisiting The Hydrostatic Assumption In The Marine Atmospheric Surface Layer, Karina Griffin

Honors Theses

The marine atmospheric surface layer (MASL), defined as the lowest ~100 m of the atmosphere overlying the ocean, is a complicated environment influenced by air-sea interactions and regional  weather patterns. In the absence of air motion, air pressure in the MASL decreases with altitude at  a constant rate due to the reduction in weight of the overlying air column. This relationship is  defined by a linear hydrostatic equation and is applied under the assumption that any dynamic  vertical pressure gradients will be small relative to the hydrostatic pressure gradient. The  hydrostatic assumption is commonly applied in the MASL despite the …

Fisheasy, Jake Rankin

Presentations - 2026

Problem: 
Inexperienced and experienced anglers lack necessary tools to begin fishing

Motivation:
Fishing is a fun hobby everyone should be able to enjoy – the lack of resources makes that difficult

Solution:
An application that integrates learning tutorials with helpful practices tools for both novice and experienced anglers

Sentra, David Aguilar

Posters - 2026

In the fast-paced space of event organization, fostering continuous collaboration among participants is essential. However, organizers often lose valuable time monitoring multiple, disconnected systems once an event is underway. Enter Sentra: an all-in-one Discord bot tailored specifically for weekend events like hackathons. Sentra bridges the gap between participants and organizers by consolidating seamless team matchmaking, robust support ticketing, and automated AI moderation into a single, unified interface.

Saved From The Brink Of Collapse: Evaluating The Success Of The Sussex Kelp Recovery Project, Keagan Farrell, Kelly Swyers, Adan Vasquez

Posters - 2026

Kelp forests are vital to ocean health, they provide habitat, food, and nursery grounds for a variety of marine species. These forests support fisheries, improve water quality, and help to protect coastlines (Eger et al. 2024). The Sussex Kelp Recovery Project is a marine conservation effort aimed at restoring their kelp forests along the Sussex coastline in southern England. This area lost up to 96% of its forests mainly due to the fishing practice trawling. Trawling is used to gather large amounts of fish, while dragging a net at the seafloor (Our history 2026). The main goal of the Sussex …

Evaluation Of Seal!Nd: School Year 2024-2025, Shawnda Schroeder, Rashid Ahmad

Indigenous Health Faculty Publications

Dr. Schroeder and Rashid worked with the team at the Oral Health Program to collect data on the clinical reach of the School-based Sealant program (SEAL!ND), the referral practices, dental sealant cost savings, and perceptions of school personnel regarding their experiences with the program. SEAL!ND continues to make a measurable difference in improving children’s oral health by increasing access to preventive care, reducing barriers for families, and supporting schools in meeting the needs of their students. The program’s impact is reflected not only in the thousands of services provided each year, but also in the strong satisfaction and gratitude expressed …

2026 Research Day Program, Lincoln Memorial University

Research Day

This program contains abstracts and presentation summaries from LMU's 2026 Annual Research Day conference.