Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring Music Representation Learning For Detection Of Finer-Grained Details, Vishnu Pendyala, Samhita Konduri, Kriti Pendyala

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

The foundational tonic in Indian classical music presents a crucial element for algorithmic understanding. This research investigates the efficacy of modern machine learning techniques for detecting this fine-grained musical attribute from diverse audio representations. Addressing limitations in prior work that used spe-cialized techniques, this study pioneers the integration of audio representations with non-linear dimensionality reduction and machine learning classifiers for tonic classification. The methodology employs various machine learning algorithms on music represented by audio features such as Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients and Mel spectrograms. Spectral analysis using Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection (UMAP) offers novel insights into music representation learning. The …

Spartan Daily, February 24, 2026, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2026

Volume 165, Issue 14

Spartan Daily, February 19, 2026, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2026

Volume 166, Issue 13

Spartan Daily, February 18, 2026, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2026

Volume 166, Issue 12

Motivating Passion And Purpose In Grade Six Students Through Game-Based Learning, Violet H. Harada, Patricia Louis

Learning Hub

This article examines how a sixth-grade pathways course at Kamehameha Schools in Hawai‘i leveraged Game-Based Learning (GBL) and Indigenous knowledge to foster student agency, creativity, and environmental stewardship. Designed and taught by school librarian Patricia Louis with support from a multidisciplinary instructional team, the Nā Lawai‘a Hawai‘i (Fishing, Hawaiian Style) elective engaged students in researching the ‘Ama‘ama (Hawaiian striped mullet) and the ecological challenges it faces, then translating their learning into the design of a board game, ‘Ama‘ama Escape. Grounded in constructivist, learning-by-making principles, the course guided students through an iterative design process that included inquiry, collaboration, prototyping, and playtesting. …

Vulnerability Of Marine Megafauna To Global At-Sea Anthropogenic Threats, Michelle Vancompernolle, Juliet Morris, Hannah J. Calich, Jorge P. Rodríguez, Sarah A. Marley, Jessica R. Pearce, Briana Abrahms, Katya Abrantes, André S. Afonso, Alex Aguilar, Andrews Agyekumhene, Tomonari Akamatsu, Susanne Åkesson, Nyimale G. Alawa, Joanna Alfaro-Shigueto, R. C. Anderson, Tycho Anker-Nilssen, Javier A. Arata, Scott A. Shaffer, For Full Author List, See Comments Below

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Marine megafauna species are affected by a wide range of anthropogenic threats. To evaluate the risk of such threats, species’ vulnerability to each threat must first be determined. We build on the existing threats classification scheme and ranking system of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species by assessing the vulnerability of 256 marine megafauna species to 23 at-sea threats. The threats we considered included individual fishing gear types, climate-change-related subthreats not previously assessed, and threats associated with coastal impacts and maritime disturbances. Our ratings resulted in 70 species having high vulnerability (v > 0.778 …

A Constructive-Engaging Analysis Of Descarrtes (European) And Oyeshile (African) On Personhood, Olanrewaju Shitta-Bey

Comparative Philosophy

An examination of the nature of the human person provides a crucial foundation for understanding human life and identity. Conceptions of personhood have far-reaching implications beyond philosophy, influencing politics, ethics, religion, and epistemology. Beliefs about what constitutes a person shapes theories of rights, responsibility, and justice; moral views on duty and accountability; religious understandings of the soul and the afterlife; and epistemological reflections on the sources and limits of knowledge. Inquiry into human nature is therefore not merely abstract, but central to understanding social organization and individual conduct. This paper examines two influential accounts of human nature drawn from distinct …

Father Knows Best? Not Here: Metaphors Of Kinship And Kingship In Haudenosaunee, Aristotelian, And Confucian Political Thought, Ian Kalman

Comparative Philosophy

The notion that the organization of large-scale social structures are rooted in domestic ones has a longstanding history in both Chinese and Greek classical political philosophy. Aristotle and Confucius independently reasoned that a good family, one with a strong father, mapped onto a good state, one with a strong king - though they differed on the details. While there is a strong literature juxtaposing these two titans, less attention has been paid to how their ideas compare with other philosophical traditions. This article provides an anthropological intervention to the comparative study of Confucius and Aristotle – while both autonomously argued …

The Coherence Of Navayāna Pragmatism: Ambedkar And The Pragmatist Reconstruction Of Buddhist Philosophy, Danish Hamid

Comparative Philosophy

This paper examines the philosophical coherence of B.R. Ambedkar’s reconstruction of his (Navayāna) Buddhism in relation to John Dewey’s pragmatism. Building on Scott Stroud’s reading of Ambedkar as a Deweyan Pragmatist (2017, 2023), it argues that Dewey’s evolutionary naturalism, his conception of growth, and pragmatic redefinition of concepts provide Ambedkar with the methodological tools for a naturalistic and socially reconstructive reinterpretation of Buddhist doctrines such as anicca (impermanence), dhamma (Buddha’s teaching), nirvāṇa (enlightenment), karuna (compassion), etc. Ambedkar transforms impermanence from a metaphysics of flux into an ethics of progressive growth, and recasts dhamma as a social morality grounded in fraternity …

Marine Cold-Spells In The California Current System: Modeling Changes In Frequency And Impacts On Endangered Species Habitat, Kaila J. Frazer, Heather M. Welch, Michael G. Jacox, Nerea Lezama-Ochoa, Briana Abrahms, Mercedes Pozo Buil, Scott R. Benson, Daniel M. Palacios, L. David Smith, Thomas A. Clay, Steven J. Bograd, Elliott L. Hazen

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Marine cold-spells are an understudied phenomena which can both negatively impact marine wildlife and provide thermal refugia for species displaced by climate change. To develop forward-looking and climate-ready management schemes, it is critical to examine how marine species respond to cold-spells, how long-term warming will affect marine cold-spells over the next century, and how these future cold-spells will in turn affect species of conservation concern, particularly in marine protected areas. To this end, we detect marine cold-spells across the California Current System, a productive Eastern Boundary Upwelling System, relative to a fixed baseline (1980–2009) and to a detrended time series …

Only One Percent Of Important Shark And Ray Areas In The Western Indian Ocean Are Fully Protected From Fishing Pressure, Jesse E.M. Cochran, Ryan Charles, Andrew J. Temple, Peter M. Kyne, Emiliano García-Rodríguez, Adriana Gonzalez-Pestana, Amanda Batlle-Morera, Théophile L. Mouton, Asia O. Armstrong, Christoph A. Rohner, Darren J. Coker, Royale S. Hardenstine, Alexander Kattan, Ashlie J. Mcivor, Viktor Nunes Peinemann, Kaitlyn A. O'Toole, Lea Palm, Eloise B. Richardson, David A. Ebert, For Full Author List, See Comments Below

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

The Western Indian Ocean (WIO) is known for its high diversity of chondrichthyans (sharks, rays, and chimaeras). However, intense fishing pressure has led to severe population declines and local extinctions of several species. The Important Shark and Ray Area (ISRA) process is a collaborative, evidence-based approach used to identify critical habitat for chondrichthyans. We analysed ISRAs across the WIO to quantify the diversity of research methods used to identify them, evaluate spatial overlap with designated marine protected areas (MPAs), model the influence of several species- and jurisdiction-specific variables on ISRA delineation, and explore the importance of incorporating unpublished data into …

Cost-Aware Predictive Routing For Vision-Language Models, Sahil Sait Naveed

Master's Projects

Vision-language models (VLMs) are increasingly used for multimodal tasks, but their inference costs vary widely across model tiers. This work presents a predictive routing framework that assigns each query to the most cost-effective VLM by using multimodal embeddings, clustering, and per-cluster model error estimates. Evaluated on six commercial VLMs, the selected router reduces average cost by about 49 percent relative to the quality-first setting on both validation and test. This comes with accuracy losses of 0.4 percentage points on validation and 0.9 on held-out test data. It also outperforms K-NN and ZeroRouter routing baselines while providing lowercost operating points than …

South Asian Nutrition Guide For Heart Health: A Practical Guide To Sodium, Saturated Fat, Packaged Foods, Recipes And Meal Planning, Ashwini Wagle

Open Educational Resources

South Asians, including people with ancestry from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives, have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes than many other populations. They often develop heart disease at younger ages and sometimes at lower body weights. (Jose, 2024; Patel et al., 2021; Volgman et al., 2018).

This increased risk is not caused by a single factor. Evidence points to a combination of inherited, metabolic, lifestyle, and social influences. Common contributors include insulin resistance, abdominal or visceral fat, type 2 diabetes, high triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol, elevated lipoprotein(a), family history, stress, migration-related changes …

South Asians And Renal Disease: Traditional Food Lists For Management Of Chronic Kidney Disease, Ashwini Wagle

Open Educational Resources

The renal food list is a culturally tailored nutrition education tool designed to address the specific dietary needs of the South Asian population. It is an original intellectual work created by Ashwini Wagle, Ed.D., MS, RD, FAND, Chair and Professor, Department of Nutrition, Food Science, and Packaging at San José State University (SJSU).

An earlier version of this tool was published in 2011 with the assistance of graduate student Kalpana Balasubramanian. The development of this renal food list was strengthened by the encouragement and support of the registered dietitian community, whose contributions included verifying the accuracy of the nutritional information …

Ideology And Iconography In Gustav Machatý’S Ecstasy (1933), Karl E. Toepfer

Open Educational Resources

This essay discusses the cinematic construction of sexual ecstatic experience in Gustav Machaty's 1933 film Ecstasy. Sergei Eisenstein's theory of cinematic montage governs the shapes the way the filmmakers organize the representation of erotic desire and rapture. But the film also shows affinity with the Czech "Poetist" movement of the 1920s in constructing a guiding view of ecstatic experience. The essay analyzes many images in the film, and concludes with an application of montage theory of ecstatic cinema to the consumption of erotic videos and internet imagery.

Ending Gender-Based Sexual Violence On Canadian Campuses: Peer Educator Perspectives, Jason A. Laker

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Gender-based and sexual violence (GBSV) remains a pervasive problem in higher education, disproportionately affecting marginalized students and undermining their safety, well-being, and academic success. Post-secondary institutions (PSIs) increasingly rely on peer educators (PeerEds) to deliver prevention and response programs, leveraging their shared student experience to foster trust and engagement. This study explores the motivations and experiences of GBSV PeerEds in Canada and the United States, revealing how personal trauma, institutional critique, and allyship drive their involvement. Findings highlight the emotional labour, secondary trauma, and systemic constraints PeerEds face, alongside their contributions to campus culture and advocacy. The study critiques institutional …

Estimating Prey Capture Attempts And Activity Costs In Foraging Emperor Penguins (Aptenodytes Forsteri) Using Integrated Biologging Data, Taylor Rose Azizeh

Master's Theses

To forage efficiently in patchy and unpredictable prey landscapes, marine predators must optimize energy intake while minimizing costs. Central place foragers like emperor penguins face greater energetic constraints during demanding periods of high investment like chick-rearing. I used high-resolution tri-axial acceleration, depth, and GPS data from 25 birds from two feeding seasons (2019 and 2022) to quantify prey capture attempts and a proxy for energy expenditure (overall dynamic body acceleration; ODBA) across dive types (epipelagic, mesopelagic, benthic), phases (descent, bottom, ascent), and over time at-sea. While prey capture attempts per minute did not differ when looking across dive types alone, …

Latent Action Trajectory Optimization, Rahul Milind Kandekar

Master's Theses

Learning from demonstrations offers a path to bypass the sample inefficiency of reinforcement learning, but obtaining action-labeled expert demonstrations remains expensive and often impractical. Learning from Observations (LFO) addresses this by learning policies from observation-only demonstrations. Recent LFO work relies heavily on behavior cloning: VPT and LAPO use observation-only data combined with limited action labels to train BC policies, while AIME offers an alternative policy inference approach but requires the majority of its training data to have action labels. Through systematic experiments in the Lunar Lander environment, we investigate whether latent action methods can function when state and action dimensionalities …

Differential Impacts Of Wind And Waves On Albatross Flight Performance In Two Ocean Basins, Ian J. Maywar, Richard A. Phillips, Rachael A. Orben, Melinda G. Conners, Scott A. Shaffer, Lesley H. Thorne

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Background: Albatrosses can commute long distances to feed during the breeding season by avoiding energetically costly flapping flight. Energy from both wind and waves can be used to sustain soaring and reduce flapping flight, yet most studies of albatross flight have focused solely on the influence of wind. Methods: To examine how wind and waves allow albatrosses to reduce energetic costs by limiting flapping flight, we analyzed how the flap rates of five albatross species (370 individuals) across two ocean basins varied with wind speed and swell height. Results: For all study species, soaring using both wind and waves resulted …

A Functional Mri Meta-Analysis Encoding In Alzheimer’S Disease, Joanne Ha

Master's Theses

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia and is characterized by episodic memory impairment. Numerous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have examined brain activity differences between individuals with AD and age-matched controls during memory encoding. However, small sample sizes and methodological variability across studies have limited the ability to draw meaningful conclusions regarding brain activity underlying encoding impairments. We conducted a meta-analysis to identify consistent patterns of hyperactivity and hypoactivity in AD during episodic memory encoding. Using PubMed to identify studies that met our inclusion criteria, 1,002 studies were screened; ultimately, seven studies were included in …

A Morphological Cell Atlas Of The Freshwater Sponge Ephydatia Muelleri With Key Insights From Targeted Single-Cell Transcriptomes, Sally P. Leys, Lauren Grombacher, Daniel Field, Glen R.D. Elliott, Vanessa R. Ho, Amanda S. Kahn, Pamela J. Reid, Ana Riesgo, Emilio Lanna, Yuriy Bobkov, Joseph F. Ryan, April L. Horton

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

How animal cell types, tissues, and regional body plans arose is a fundamental question in EvoDevo. Many current efforts attempt to link genetic information to the morphology of cells, tissues and regionalization of animal body plans using single-cell sequencing of cell populations. However, a lack of in-depth understanding of the morphology of non-bilaterian animals remains a considerable block to understanding the transitions between bilaterian and non-bilaterian cells and tissues. Sponges (Porifera), one of the earliest diverging animal phyla, pose a particular challenge to this endeavour, because their body plans lack mouths, gut, conventional muscle and nervous systems. With a goal …

Digital Neuropsychology And Social Anxiety: The Effect Of Observer Presence And Personality On Stress And Cognition, Ava M. Dixon

Master's Theses

This study examined how observer presence and social anxiety influence stress and cognitive performance during neuropsychological assessments, focusing on the potential benefits of unsupervised digital testing environments. Eighty university students were randomly assigned to observed or unobserved digital neuropsychological conditions and completed assessments of social cognition and executive functioning and questionnaires of social anxiety and personality. Participants also completed measures of state anxiety and heart rate variability at baseline and after cognitive tests. The findings indicated that observation led to higher subjective anxiety, but it did not produce significant interactions with social anxiety on stress or cognitive performance. Post-hoc analyses …

Reclaiming Relational Pedagogies: The Role Of Talking Circles In Decolonizing Higher Education Classrooms, Veneice Lacy

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This article explores the use of Talking Circles as a decolonizing pedagogical practice within higher education, grounded in Indigenous epistemologies and relational worldviews. Drawing on the works of Indigenous scholars such as Graveline, Wilson, Archibald, and Simpson, the article positions Talking Circles not merely as instructional strategies but as ceremonial, spirit-centered pedagogies that resist the Eurocentric hierarchical and individualistic norms of Western academia. Through autoethnographic reflection and student narratives from undergraduate and graduate education courses, the article demonstrates how Talking Circles foster relational accountability, ethical engagement, and transformative learning. By centering oral tradition, reciprocity, and communal learning, Talking Circles reconfigure …

Spartan Daily, November 25, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 39

A Triple Bottom Line Analysis Of Food Waste-To-Bioenergy At California University Campuses: Social Enablers Break Down Economic Barriers, Anjali Sharma

Master's Theses

Greenhouse gas emissions from food waste (FW) and energy generation are two major hurdles to the climate crisis. Previous research shows that waste-to-energy systems may provide a solution to both these challenges, particularly at university campuses, due to their high FW generation and high energy needs. Despite this, few academic institutions in California, US, have adopted waste-to-energy systems, and campus-specific challenges and opportunities associated with these systems remain underexplored. For this study, I use an Environmental, Economic, and Social (EES) lens to document the current landscape of FW management and implementation of food waste-to-bioenergy at campuses in each of the …

Spartan Daily, November 20, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 38

Spartan Daily, November 19, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 37

Forecasting Pediatric Emergency Department Arrivals: Evaluating The Role Of Exogenous Variables Using Deep Learning Models, Egbe Etu Etu, Jordan Larot, Kindness Etu, Joshua Emakhu, Sara Masoud, Imokhai Tenebe, Gaojian Huang, Satheesh Gunaga, Joseph Miller

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Background Forecasting pediatric emergency department (ED) demand remains a critical challenge in healthcare operations. This study aimed to identify exogenous variables influencing pediatric ED visits and evaluate the performance of different forecasting models. Method Using a retrospective observational design, we analyzed 192,347 pediatric ED visits across nine hospitals in Southeast Michigan between 2017 and 2019. Patient data were aggregated into daily arrival counts and enriched with exogenous variables such as weather, air quality, pollen, calendar, Google search trends, and chief complaints. Feature selection was performed using XGBoost and SHapley Additive exPlanations to identify the most influential predictors. Three forecasting models …

Spartan Daily, November 13, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 35

Spartan Daily, November 11, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 34