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From Stranger To Self: The Role Of Familiarity In Modulating The N170 And N250 Erp Components, Tabish Gul

Dissertations

This study investigated how varying levels of face familiarity modulate the N170 and N250 event-related potential (ERP) components, two neural markers of face perception and recognition. While the N250 is widely considered familiarity-sensitive, the N170 has traditionally been linked to the structural encoding stage of face perception. However, recent research suggests that face familiarity may also influence N170 amplitude and latency. While most previous studies have compared up to three familiarity levels, the present study examined five levels of familiarity: own face, friend’s face, famous face, experimentally familiar face, and unfamiliar face. Twenty-six participants viewed face images while completing a …

Inconsistencies Emerge Between Regional And Local-Scale Water Security Metrics At Military Installations, Abigail Birnbaum, Michael L. Berg, Caitlin Grady, Daniel J. Weeks, Christopher M. Chini

Faculty Publications

Recent United States federal policy for military installations has emphasized the importance of developing a standardized approach for water security assessment to monitor changes in water resources and the ability for an installation to meet both its civilian and mission needs. For military installations in the United States, these assessments must consider demands both inside and outside the installation’s fence line, as regional resources are required to meet mission readiness. Focusing on physical water scarcity, this study compares four water security metrics with unique formulations and spatial resolutions, including an installation-scale metric and multiple regional metrics defined for either baseline …

Change Of Accessibility In The Izu Islands Before And After Tourism Development In The Pre-World War Ⅱ Period, Kantaro Takahashi

International Journal of Islands Research

This study compares accessibility on the Izu Islands, an inhabited archipelago. part of Tokyo Prefecture, from around the 1910s to the 1930s, during the early years of tourism development. Most islands in the archipelago started attracting tourists during the economically prosperous 1960s and 1970s; uniquely, Izu Oshima, the largest island, had been a tourist destination since before World War II. Tourism research on this region and period has predominantly employed a descriptive approach; quantitative studies have been rare owing to the dearth of data. Addressing this gap, this study conducts a network analysis of data acquired from the books of …

What History Shows: A Structural Account Of Fixed-Point Theory Formation, Griselda Poe

Publications and Research

Theory generation has long been subsumed under categories such as creativity, genius, and innovation. These categories do not distinguish assembly-based conceptual synthesis from fixed-point theory generation.

This paper makes that distinction explicit. The termination condition of assembly is external: data, citation, endorsement, usability. The termination condition of fixed-point theory generation is internal: consistency with internally held constraints, resolution of structural contradiction. The two operate under different processing conditions.

The historical record confirms this distinction. What Darwin, Einstein, Spinoza, and Kant produced was not assembly. Their processes involved unresolved branch retention and decomposition necessity, arriving at internally constrained fixed-point termination. Freud …

Interpreting American Sign Language: A Literature Review Of Assistive Technologies, Natalie Louise Paradiso, Emma Grace Kochenderfer

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

American Sign Language (ASL) is a visually elaborate, spatially oriented linguistic methodology that relies on combinations of hand movements, body positioning, facial expressions, and motion/spatial perception, aspects of which make interpretation difficult for automated machine recognition. Current assistive technology approaches to ASL interpretation are generally within the categories of computer vision models (including deep learning, multi-focus image fusion, and keypoint tracking) and wearable, multimodal/sensor-based approaches (such as smart glasses and inertial-sensor gloves). Within controlled environments, computer vision models perform well. However, when applied to conditions such as non-manual signs/features, signer variability, and rapid assimilation, they falter in processing all aspects …

Propasafe-Hybrid: A Text-Based Hybrid Propaganda Detection Tool, Thomas Kimmeth, Avijit Roy, Vivek Sharma

Publications and Research

Propagandistic content increasingly circulates through online news and social media, where readers often encounter it with limited scrutiny, highlighting the need for reliable and fine-grained detection. This paper introduces Propasafe-Hybrid, a sentence-level system that integrates a fine-tuned transformer classifier with LLM-based technique classification to identify, label, and explain specific propaganda strategies. The pipeline generates actionable outputs, including highlighted sentences, technique assignments, and concise rationales, so users can immediately understand why a sentence was flagged and how each label was determined. To control inference cost, Propasafe-Hybrid employs a cost-aware pre-filtering stage that forwards only high-likelihood sentences to LLMs, reducing token usage …

“Overworked, Undernourished, And Weak In The Eyes”: The Portrayal Of Librarians In Comics, Alessandro Camarra

Staff publications

Librarians and library workers have frequently appeared as characters within the medium of comics, perhaps more so than people realize. While the discussion usually begins and ends with Barbara Gordon/Batgirl, the number of examples that can actually be found is astoundingly vast.

Whether they are fictional beings wholly created by the artists, or based on real-life individuals, librarians represent a standard archetype within popular culture that creators often reference in order to convey a specific image to their audience. Usually, but not always, this involves an emphasis on negative stereotypes associated with the profession: demanding silence from patrons, outdated modes …

Substantive Biases? Analyzing Ideological Bias In Substantive Due Process Claims On The Roberts Court, Nicholas J. Ginsberg

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis examines whether judicial ideology has a stronger influence on Supreme Court decision making in substantive due process claims when compared to other areas of law through the Roberts Court. Previous scholarship has noted that ideology is a factor in judicial decision making, however, there is little scholarship on if specific areas of law makes ideology play a larger factor in decision making. Utilizing justice-level voting records from the Roberts Court and Segal-Cover scores to measure judicial ideology, a logistic regression model is utilized to analyze the relationship between ideology and voting behavior in substantive due process cases and …

The Economics Of Technical Debt: Venture Capital, Cybersecurity, And Engineering Quality, Joao Henrique Avila Alves Dimas

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation studies the economic consequences of technical debt—the accumulated cost of expedient engineering decisions in a firm’s software codebase—and how external forces shape it. Using direct codebase analysis of over 80,000 monthly snapshots from 600+ open-core technology firms (2010–2025), I develop the first dollar-denominated measure of technical debt in the finance literature and apply it across two empirical settings. Chapter 1 examines whether venture capital monitoring extends to firms’ technical practices. Using a stacked difference-in-differences design around first VC entry (225 treated firms, 330 controls, 85 cohorts), I find that VC-backed firms reduce critical code defect density by 24% …

Femininity And Dateability: A Look At The Perception Of Asian Faces, Grace Yang

Caravel Undergraduate Research Journal

Over the last decade, Asian Americans are the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States (Lam, 2016), and the visibility of Asian influence on popular culture has increased as well (Jin & Yoon, 2017).  As a fast-growing minority community, the Asian community has been relatively overlooked in studies about attraction and the effects of ideals of masculinity. The aim of the current study was to investigate factors that influence the perception of the Asian and non-Asian faces with respect to attractiveness, dateability and masculinity.  The current literature suggests that both Asian men and women are stereotyped to be relatively …

The Effects Of Government Policies On The Stock Market, Samruddhi Somani, Dr. Holger Kern

Caravel Undergraduate Research Journal

What is the most effective government policy to boost stock returns and, subsequently, to foster economic growth, especially during an economic crisis? This paper examines the effects of various government actions on stock market performance during the global financial crisis of 2007. As expected from rational investors, nearly all of the variation in index levels is explained by the variation in index futures levels, which reflect market expectations. Index and future levels were collected for June 2007-December 2009 using Bloomberg, which tracks data for various financial instruments. The financial crisis timeline furnished by the New York Federal Reserve Board on …

An Exploration Of The Application Of Threshold Concepts In Sport Management, Debra Burke, Kadie Otto, Aj Grube, Charlie Parrish, Dan Grube

Global Sport Business Journal

Jan Meyer and Ray Land introduced the theory of threshold concepts to identify learning outcomes that represent a fundamental shift in the understanding of a subject which distinguishes how experts in the discipline internalize the discipline (Meyer & Land, 2006). They described the mastery of threshold concepts as being “akin to passing through a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something” (Meyer & Land, 2006, p. 3). Threshold concepts as defined by Meyer and Land (2006) are characterized by these features:

• Transformative: Once understood, a threshold concept changes the way in which the student …

The Impatience Of Winning: An Analysis Of Time Discounting, Predictive Modeling, And The Nba Draft, Alec R. Plante

Business and Economics Honors Papers

This paper examines whether NBA draft decisions can be better explained by incorporating non-geometric time discounting into a model of general manager decision making. Using a dataset of 285 NBA draft prospects over a 12-year period, the impact of college statistics on Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) is determined, and these impact values are then used to create a “predicted” VORP for the first 4 seasons of each player’s career: a projection of what a general manager might think of a prospect’s future value given their college statistics. Following this, geometric and hyperbolic time discounting models are applied to estimate …

Mitigating "Weird": How Undergraduate Teaching Assistants Navigate Role Conflict With Ease Through Repertoires Of Action, Emery Teague

Sociology Honors Projects

Research in role theory has generated insufficient knowledge about how role conflict and role strain intersect, leaving questions of how actors navigate and manage these phenomena in real time. Drawing inspiration from cultural sociology and contentious politics, I theorize that individuals use repertoires of action to mitigate role challenges. Empirically, I investigate how undergraduate teaching assistants manage conflicting and contradictory social roles at a small liberal arts college, given their extensive contact with students outside of the classroom. Analysis of over 15 interviews and ethnographic shadowing of key participants of this population demonstrates the multifaceted, yet recurring, ways that teaching …

A Comparison Of Simple And Differentially Signaled Vr Exchange-Production Schedules, David Duong

Thesis Projects

Token systems typically rely on the conditioned reinforcement effects of tokens to increase responding; however, there may be additional effects and properties as well. This study aims to compare rates of responding between simple VR exchange-production schedules, differentially signaled VR exchange-production schedules, and a control condition to evaluate the operant and respondent effects that token correlated stimuli have on responding. The rates of acquisition of flashcards terms with two college students were tracked. Results indicate that the schedule of reinforcement in place had little impact on the acquisition of flashcard terms, with similar rates of responding across all three conditions. …

The Impact Of Monetary Policy Announcements On Trading Reactions To Earnings Reports, Sean A. Maxfield

Economics Honors Projects

This paper examines trading reactions to quarterly earnings reports and the impact of recent monetary policy announcements by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). It argues that the market, as a product of rational and irrational investor behavior, interprets firms’ financial performance within a broader macroeconomic context, affirming the causal channels found in similar studies. This study differs from prior research by looking at the recent, not simultaneous, monetary policy announcement for each earnings announcement in order to understand if the two types of information remain complementary. By conducting an event study model, this study confirms that the interaction of …

The Role Of Viewing Traditionally Gendered Media In Childhood On Influencing Adult Ideas Of Gender Roles And Relationship Ideology, Haille Mark

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Research suggests that the media children watch in their childhood has implications for their socialization, including identity formation, and understanding of gender roles. This study examines the role of children’s films on traditional gender roles and relationship expectations in adulthood. In the current study, female college students were surveyed to assess how the films they watched affected their “MRS” Degree seeking ideology, benevolent sexism, and traditional gender roles. Movies were coded using a scheme, which assesses themes of sexualization, objectification, agency and gender roles. A general linear model (GLM) was used to assess the association. The researcher hypothesizes a relationship …

Neurodiversity In The Workplace: Organizational Approaches To Supporting Neurodiverse Employees, Madison Vasquez

M.S. in Leadership

Despite growing conversation around neurodiversity in the workplace, many organizations lack clear understanding and structured strategies to support neurodivergent employees. This study examines existing research on how organizations can more effectively support neurodiverse employees across the employee lifecycle. Using a qualitative literature review, this study addresses the research question by examining literature on neurodiversity within workplace contexts. This includes investigating common representations of neurodiversity and reviewing the strengths and challenges of neurodiverse individuals, including those who have autism, ADHD, and other forms of neurodivergence. The study also reviews workplace barriers, support strategies, and organizational outcomes identified across the literature. Key …

Losses And Labor: Experimental Insights Into Worker Effort Supply And Behavioral Biases, Maia Lemov

Economics Honors Projects

Worker effort supply is influenced not only by rational expectations but also biases such as framing and numerical presentation of incentives. Identifying these effects is essential for designing effective incentives. To study left-digit manipulation, loss aversion, and loss aversion prediction, I conducted an experiment in an online labor market. Participants completed a real-effort typing task, a willingness- to-pay (WTP) task, and a self-reported loss aversion survey. Loss framing and left-digit manipulation had no statistically significant effects on effort, with no interaction effect, suggesting their influence on effort-supply may be overstated or highly heterogeneous. Despite null treatment effects, behaviorally elicited loss …

Propasafe-Hybrid: A Text-Based Hybrid Propaganda Detection Tool (Ila 2026 Presentation), Thomas Kimmeth, Avijit Roy, Vivek Sharma

Publications and Research

This presentation introduces Propasafe-Hybrid, a hybrid system for sentence-level propaganda detection that combines offline transformer-based classification with selective large language model (LLM) explainability. The system employs a two-stage pipeline in which a local BERT-based classifier evaluates all input text and filters non-propagandistic content, while only high-confidence candidates are forwarded to an LLM for rhetorical technique labeling and explanation. This design enables cost-aware, privacy-conscious, and scalable analysis by reducing unnecessary reliance on external models.

Propasafe-Hybrid identifies propagandistic techniques such as loaded language, obfuscation, and appeal to fear, and generates concise natural language rationales that make these techniques interpretable to users. By …

Progress, Characteristics And Prospects Of Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration At Home And Abroad:Research Based On Literature Published In The Past Five Years, Yueliang Zeng, Ying Yu, Ruirui Gao

Journal of Scientific Information Research

[Purpose/significance] Interdisciplinary research collaboration is an important way to promote knowledge innovation and solve complex social problems in the new era. Reviewing the research progress of interdisciplinary research collaboration at home and abroad in the past five years can help grasp the research frontiers in this field and provide direction for future research. [Method/process] This paper adopts a systematic review method, selecting literature closely related to the theme of interdisciplinary research collaboration from inWeb of Science and CNKI from 2020 to 2024, condensing the research topic, analyzing the main research viewpoints, and summarizing the changing characteristics, then proposing future research …

A Survey On Knowledge-Enhanced Healthcare Question Answering Systems, Junnan Su, Pu Han, Jianxiang Wei

Journal of Scientific Information Research

[Purpose/significance] This paper aims to review the research progress and applications of knowledge enhancement techniques in healthcare question answering systems, in response to the limitations of traditional systems in knowledge representation and reasoning, as well as challenges faced by current large language model-based systems, such as insufficient domain knowledge, privacy concerns, and hallucination. The review provides a systematic reference for improving the precision and knowledge reliability of such systems. [Process/method] Focusing on knowledge enhancement strategies, this paper firstly outlines their fundamental concepts and overall framework. The strategies are then categorized into explicit and implicit types, with an analysis of their …

Research On Academic Journal Evaluation Based On Factor Dimensionality Reduction, Data Weighting, And Journal Characteristics Orientation, Liping Yu, Jing Zhang

Journal of Scientific Information Research

[Purpose/significance] The characteristics of academic journals have important value, and current evaluation systems lack assesment for this dimension. [Method/process] This paper proposes a variable weight method for factor reduction data, firstly uses factor analysis combined with manual classification to determine the characteristics of the journal, and uses Sigmoid function to standardize the public factors to determine the characteristic journals, and then uses the variable weight function to modify the original data for the characteristic indicators of the characteristic journals based on the data of forestry journals in CNKI. Three representative methods including linear weighted aggregation, weighted TOPSIS, and factor analysis, …

A Meta-Analysis Of Corporate Innovation Intention And Its Driving Mechanisms, Yaping Hu, Xuerong Shen, Yi Zheng

Journal of Scientific Information Research

[Purpose/significance] Stimulating corporate innovation intention is a pivotal issue for promoting innovation. However, the academic discourse on its key drivers presents significantly divergent and even contradictory conclusions, leading to theoretical ambiguity and practical guidance challenges. This study aims to systematically and quantitatively integrate empirical research in this field to clarify the true effects of core driving factors and their operational boundaries. [Method/process] Adopting a meta-analysis approach, this study systematically retrieves and screens literature, ultimately analyzes 29 empirical studies and examine four potential moderating variables which include location, data type, industry, and culture. [Result/conclusion] The study finds that government support, internal …

Research On Smart Intelligence Service System Of National Defense Science And Technology In Complex Information Environment, Yang Yang, Keping Wang, Huawei Sun

Journal of Scientific Information Research

[Purpose/significance] National defense science and technology intelligence serves as a powerful guarantee for promoting national defense science and techndogy innovation and development. Exploring optimization paths for defense science and technology intelligence service systems holds practical significance in developing new quality combat capabilities and safeguarding national security and stability. [Method/process] Through literature review and summarization, this study clarifies the impact of complex information environments on intelligent defense science and technology intelligence services, as well as the core tasks of intelligent intelligence services. Based on activity theory, the study deconstructs system elements and employs systems engineering principles to construct an intelligent defense …

Research On Text Translation Model Based On Large Language Model And Knowledge Enhancement Framework, Chuanming Yu, Haoxuan Li

Journal of Scientific Information Research

[Purpose/significance] This paper aims to improve the translation quality of large language models and effectively alleviate the translation illusion problem, thereby enhancing cross-linguistic information retrieval capabilities. [Method/process] A translation generation method based on a knowledge enhancement framework is proposed. This framework optimizes the translation process from multiple dimensions, such as style, focus, and cultural adaptability, by combining external knowledge provided by the translation context building module and the knowledge base building and retrieval module, and then utilizing the guidance of the text attention module. [Result/conclusion] Experimental results show that the proposed method effectively enhances model performance. Specifically, on the WikiLingua, …

Ai Need Not Make One Slothful, Roy A. Kaelin Jr

Faculty Publications

As National Louis University seeks to plan and advance its way amid the potential perils and pitfalls of so-named artificial intelligence, one finds that with reasonable workflows and guard rails, the use of AI proposes both potential promise and prospect, to assist and augment the natural intelligence that students and teachers bring to the classroom, encouraging them to pursue STEM-related activities with the preparation and deployment of focused and directed AI-bots. This paper presents examples and a case study of that directed and focused approach, the incremental lessons learned to date, and a proposed path to advance worthwhile AI …

Gendered Socialization Of Comfort With Risk And The Selection Of A College Major, Eliza S. Staton

Sociology and Criminology Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study investigates the potential relationship between the gendered socialization of risk preferences and the selection of a college major. Women are underrepresented in many fields of study, but especially in those related to science, technology, engineering, and math (S.T.E.M). Careers in STEM fields tend to require degree paths that require difficult classes, with lower average grade points, and a high chance of failure. As of 2023, only 24% of the student body in the College of Engineering at the University of Arkansas was composed of women (Uark 2023). These high-pressure, male-dominated environments have been found to lose women at …

Exam Approach Impacts On Test Anxiety And Motivational Outcomes, Makenna Lynn Frias

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

In science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields students are facing exams with record high rates of worry and discomfort, this is known as test anxiety (Rajiah, et al., 2014). Factors such as self-concept (Simpkins et al., 2006) and views of control (Levenson, 1974) are negatively affected by examinations (the terms ‘exam’ and ‘test’ will be used interchangeably) (Spielberger, 1980). A student’s fear of failure, or how the students perceive setbacks or challenges, impacts and is impacted by test anxiety (Henry et al., 2021; Conroy, et al., 2002). Being established by the professor, the exam approach is beyond a student’s …

Exploring Urban School Counselors' Lived Experiences Engaging As Advocacy Leaders And Change Agents To Empower And Support Black And Brown Students, Linda M. ColóN

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

To make a difference in Black and Brown students' educational experiences, school counselor advocacy is crucial. A qualitative phenomenological study was conducted to explore the practices urban school counselors incorporate to engage as social justice leaders, advocates, and change agents to empower and support Black and Brown students. The goal was to identify practices urban school counselors utilized to create greater equity for Black and Brown students. Also, from school counselors’ lived experiences, the goal was to learn how they engaged key-school stakeholders in advocacy. In addition, the hope was to bring to the forefront how the intersecting cultural identities …