Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

Sjsu Erfa Board Minutes, November 3, 2025, San Jose State University, Emeritus And Retired Faculty Association

SJSU ERFA Minutes

SJSU ERFA Executive Board Minutes

November 3, 2025

Scaling Pedestrian Crossing Analysis To 100 U.S. Cities Via Ai-Based Segmentation Of Satellite Imagery, Marcel E. Moran, Arunav Gupta, Jiali Qian, Debra Laefer

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Accurately measuring street dimensions is essential to evaluating how their design influences both travel behavior and safety. However, gathering street-level information at city-scale with precision is difficult given the quantity and complexity of urban intersections. To address this challenge in the context of pedestrian crossings — a crucial component of walkability — we introduce a scalable and accurate method for automatically measuring crossing distance at both marked and unmarked crosswalks, applied to America’s 100 largest cities. First, OpenStreetMap coordinates were used to retrieve satellite imagery of intersections throughout each city — totaling roughly three million images. Next, Meta’s Segment Anything …

Hybridsense-Llm: A Structured Multimodal Framework For Large-Language-Model–Based Wellness Prediction From Wearable Sensors With Contextual Self-Reports, Cheng Huan Yu, Mohammad Masum

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Wearable sensors generate continuous physiological and behavioral data at a population scale, yet wellness prediction remains limited by noisy measurements, irregular sampling, and subjective outcomes. We introduce HybridSense, a unified framework that integrates raw wearable signals and their statistical descriptors with large language model–based reasoning to produce accurate and interpretable estimates of stress, fatigue, readiness, and sleep quality. Using the PMData dataset, minute-level heart rate and activity logs are transformed into daily statistical features, whose relevance is ranked using a Random Forest model. These features, together with short waveform segments, are embedded into structured prompts and evaluated across seven prompting …

Generative Algorithms For Wildfire Progression Reconstruction From Multi-Modal Satellite Active Fire Measurements And Terrain Height, Bryan Shaddy, Brianna Binder, Agnimitra Dasgupta, Haitong Qin, James Haley, Angel Farguell, Kyle Hilburn, Derek V. Mallia, Adam Kochanski, Jan Mandel, Assad A. Oberai

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Highlights: What are the main findings? Conditional generative algorithms trained on simulations of historic wildfires may be used to effectively reconstruct the early-time progression of wildfires given satellite active fire measurements and terrain height data. When applied to real wildfires, generated fire progression estimates compare favorably to ground-truth high resolution infrared perimeters measured via aircraft, with the ability to gather additional information about model uncertainty from generated samples. What are the implications of the main findings? Once obtained, fire progression estimates may be used to perform data assimilation, wherein the estimated fire state is used to initialize subsequent wildfire spread …

Evaluating Impact Of Occupational Exoskeletons On Physical Fatigue Using Wearable Sensors And Deep Learning, Hardik Vora, Fatemeh Davoudi Kakhki, Armin Moghadam

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Musculoskeletal disorders remain a leading source of occupational injury in manufacturing and logistics industries, often resulting from repetitive lifting and load transfer tasks. While back-support exoskeletons have shown promise in alleviating physical strain, their biomechanical impact under realistic task conditions and their integration with intelligent monitoring systems require further exploration. This study investigates the efficacy of a passive lumbar-support exoskeleton in reducing muscle fatigue during manual material handling tasks by combining high-resolution surface electromyography (sEMG) data with a deep learning-based classification framework. Ten participants performed lifting and rotational (twisting) tasks with and without exoskeleton assistance, while EMG signals were collected …

Development And Characterization Of Compression-Molded Chitosan Composite Films Reinforced With Silica And Titania Fillers, Bhuvaneswari Koti, Vuong Do, Yanika Schneider, Vimal Viswanathan

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This study investigates the development of biodegradable chitosan-based films as a sustainable alternative to conventional non-biodegradable food packaging materials. Chitosan, a naturally occurring polymer, possesses inherent film-forming ability and biodegradability; however, its limited mechanical and thermal properties constrain its practical applications. In this work, chitosan films were fabricated via compression molding, and their thermo-mechanical performance was systematically evaluated. The incorporation of fillers, such as titanium dioxide and silica, resulted in a 50% enhancement in tensile strength and an 86% improvement in flexibility. Further optimization of dual-filler compositions led to an additional 45% increase in elasticity, demonstrating the potential of synergistic …

Henze, Rosemary C., San Jose State University

Emeritus and Retired Faculty Biographies

Stanford University, Education (Language, Literacy & Culture), Ph.D. 1988

San Francisco State University, English (TESL), M.A. 1980

University of California, Santa Cruz, Art, B.A. 1974

A Recurrent Neural Network For Forecasting Dead Fuel Moisture Content With Inputs From Numerical Weather Models, Jonathon Hirschi, Jan Mandel, Kyle Hilburn, Angel Farguell

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This paper proposes a recurrent neural network (RNN) model of dead 10 h fuel moisture content (FMC) for real-time forecasting. Weather inputs to the RNN are forecasts from the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR), a numerical weather model. Geographic predictors include longitude, latitude, and elevation. Forecast accuracy is estimated in a study that utilizes a spatiotemporal cross-validation scheme. The RNN is trained on HRRR forecasts and observed FMC from weather station sensors within the Rocky Mountain region in 2023, then used to forecast FMC at new locations for all of 2024. The model is evaluated using a 48 h forecast window. …

Sjsu Erfa News, Winter 2026, San Jose State University, Emeritus And Retired Faculty Association

Emeritus and Retired Faculty Association (ERFA) Newsletter

Volume 39, No 2

Seeds Of Sovereignty: Critical Public Health, Radical Sisterhood, And The Fight For Agricultural Justice, Andrew L. Carter

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This book explores the historical and contemporary influence of African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) women farmers in the fight for food justice. ACB foodways have been dismantled over time due to centuries of settler colonialism, discriminatory agricultural policies, land and knowledge theft, cultural erasure, and direct forms of violence and intimidation—creating vast inequities in today’s food system. At the same time, mainstream public health responses to food insecurity and access in ACB communities often focus on short-term solutions that do not empower local communities and keep the status quo intact. These approaches overlook the broader structural constraints that maintain and …

Multimodal Emotion Detection System, Shubhankar Sameer Munshi

Master's Projects

Trying to understand emotion from speech is a problem that is present in human computer interaction. Nevertheless, there are still some shortcomings in current SER methods. Text-based systems may miss vital vocal cues, such as sarcasm, tone changes, and delivery. On the other hand, purely audio-based systems are prone to noise and unstable acoustic features. The combination of linguistic and acoustic features in multimodal approaches partially solves this problem, but many existing approaches use inflexible multimodal fusion techniques that cannot adjust their behaviors according to the quality of input signals. In this work, we propose a multimodal approach based on …

Emotional Patterns In Conversational Social Media Using Graph-Based Context, Sai Sanjay Yerunkar

Master's Projects

Most social media datasets for emotion detection have not been constructed to account for conversational structure‚ so we investigate whether it carries signal for emotion prediction. Using Sentiment140 and GoEmotions Reddit threads‚ we construct their thread-based conversation graphs and compute the aggregated features of neighbors as well as the transformer and TF-IDF representations of comments. Connected comments are 4.5× more similar in emotions than expected by chance. Pairwise emotional similarity decays exponentially with geodesic distance (e.g.‚ after 2 hops). Pairs separated by a 30s timestamp difference have the highest emotional similarity. These results suggest that emotion is structured locally and …

Exploring Parents’ Perspective Of Outdoor Occupational Therapy Sessions, Harold Ho, Michelle Huynh, Christina Le, Amy Morrison

Master's Projects

Introduction: Outdoor play is recognized as critical for supporting children’s development across physical, cognitive, and social-emotional domains (Firby & Raine, 2022; Walker & Ray, 2024; Zhu et al., 2024). The current literature suggests that outdoor play strengthens executive functioning, early learning skills, and enhances social-emotional competency (Dinkel et al., 2019; Walker & Ray, 2024; Zhu et al., 2024). Furthermore, accessibility to outdoor play is shaped by contextual factors, including parental perceptions of safety, environmental barriers, and broader societal influences (Cox et al., 2025; Faulkner et al., 2025; Jelleyman et al., 2019). The research suggests that common parental concerns have emerged …

Searching For Cause Of Unexplained Protein Interaction With Multiple Assembly Methods, Gavin Anderson

Master's Projects

Research into colistin adjuvants has identified interactions between a host of proteins and proteins found within certain strains of bacteria. BLAST, a widely adopted local sequence alignment tool, was used to create a database containing the genomes of relevant bacterial strains, which would then be used to query against the previously identified proteins. Many of these strains do not have publicly available assemblies, which makes database construction difficult. CATwalk, a new naïve fragment extender, is first described in this paper and used to extend fragments of interest. BLAST results first identified short fragments with sufficient similarity, which can then be …

Detection And Characterization Of Cancer Using Cfdna Fragmentomic Analysis, Guneet Bhogal

Master's Projects

Cell-free DNA (cfDNA) fragmentomics has emerged as a promising non-invasive approach for detecting and characterizing cancer by analyzing DNA fragmentation patterns. These fragment patterns are unique and can be used to distinguish between tumor and healthy DNA. This paper uses machine learning models to detect cancer by evaluating Shannon entropy of fragment lengths at the first coding exon 1 regions and correlating them to targeted cancer genes. This approach was applied to two datasets consisting of samples with prostate, breast, and lung cancers. Our results indicated that exon 1 fragmentation entropy captures biologically relevant differences in cancer-specific chromatin organization and …

Combining Crispr And Nanoasv To Uncover The Rare Bacterial Communities Of The Human Oral Microbiome, Gilma Ruth Sevilla Alvarez

Master's Projects

Studying the oral microbiome is vital because its health implications are not contained to the mouth. Cariogenic bacteria cause tooth demineralization and oral microbes that translocate to extra-oral organ systems are linked to conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Some of these pathogens belong to the most abundant phyla in the oral cavity: Bacillota, Pseudomonadota, Bacteroidota, Actinomycetota, Spirochaetota, and Fusobacteriota, which together comprise 94% of the oral microbiome. This project uses CRISPR-Cas9 to deplete sequences from highly abundant phyla and the Eubacteria domain, enriching the remaining 6% of rarer taxa. Paired with NanoASV for single-nucleotide resolution, this …

Uncovering The Disciplinary Pulse Of Library And Information Science Through Large-Scale Topic Modelling Of Openalex Scholarly Literature, Sailendra Malik, Sukumar Mandal

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Library and Information Science is among the oldest and intellectually pluralistic scholarly disciplines but the inner thematic structure has not been established. The article develops a systematic and data intensive mapping of the field by the Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modelling to 7,824 articles in the English language indexed in OpenAlex in the year 2000 to 2025. A ten topic solution is an optimised solution that identifies a group of readable and sensible thematic domains including information literacy digital libraries scientometrics archives and scholarly communication. The analysis of temporal trajectory reveals that there have been consistent expansion at the emergent …

Library Support For Massive Open Online Courses (Moocs) In The Philippines: The Case Of American Corners, Princess Grace Wooden, Darin Jan Tindowen

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This study examined the role of libraries in supporting Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in the Philippines, with particular focus on American Corners as library-based learning spaces. Grounded in the increasing demand for flexible and accessible education, the study aimed to assess the readiness of American Corner libraries and determine the extent of MOOC implementation, as well as examine the relationship between these variables. A quantitative descriptive-correlational research design was employed, involving 28 American Corner staff composed of directors and librarians from 14 participating institutions. Data were collected using a validated survey questionnaire and analyzed through frequency, percentage, weighted mean, …

Impact Of Cigarette Smoke On Immune And Stromal Cells, Justin Wong

Master's Projects

Cigarette smoke is a plight on human health, being a major contributor to lung diseases. The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) directs immune regulation and metabolic adaptation in response to environmental toxins. This study investigates transcriptomic changes between wild-type and AHR knockout mouse lung tissue under smoke and air conditions. Single-cell RNA sequencing data were generated by the Butcher Lab and analyzed in Seurat for differential gene expression (DGE) analysis. A two way ANOVA framework was used with DGE analysis to classify genes as smoke induced or suppressed in an AHR dependent or independent manner, and these gene sets were analyzed …

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 …

Workforce Development Academy For Youth, Hassan Hashemian

Mineta Transportation Institute

To address the need for a diverse workforce in the 21st century and create an awareness of the career paths and opportunities that exist in the transportation industry, the College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology at the California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA) has created the Workforce Development Academy for Youth (WDAY). The goal of this program is to build a pipeline of diverse, well-qualified young professionals for the transportation industry. The program works with high school students and teachers to offer academic courses, basic skills, workforce readiness training, internships, extracurricular activities, and career placements to prepare students and …

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 …

Empowering Students To Engage With Climate Change Action: A Project-Based Module For Artificial Intelligence Literacy And Sustainability Thinking, Gabriel Granco, Yu Chen, Heather Macias, Yunfei Hou, Frank A. Gomez

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

There is a growing need to prepare students to address complex environmental challenges, particularly climate change and the expanding role of artificial intelligence (AI). This article examines the adaptation of the Artificial Intelligence for Social Good (AI4SG) Ideation module, a pitch- and project-based teaching framework designed to integrate AI literacy and sustainability education. Implemented in an upper division climate change course, the module combines project-based learning, culturally responsive pedagogy, and geographic thinking to guide students in developing community-oriented AI proposals aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Students were encouraged to approach their communities not through deficit lenses, …

Federal Protections For Farmworker Health In The United States: A Scoping Review Of Three Decades Of Research, Kaitlyn Alvarez Noli, Stephane Labossiere, Becca Berkey, Joseph G. Grzywacz

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Objectives: This scoping review characterizes the scope, methods, and framing of empirical research evaluating the Field Sanitation Standard (FSS) and Worker Protection Standard (WPS) of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Labor respectively. Methods: Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, we identified empirical studies (1990–2024) assessing elements of either the FSS or WPS. Two reviewers screened and extracted study characteristics, designs, populations, and regulatory elements. Framing analysis of 1226 segments, identified using a large language model, from the studies' abstracts and introductions examined how authors conceptualized farmworkers' need for protection. …

Supporting Latine Older Adults’ Nutrition And Physical Health Goals In Counseling, Zachary P. Mcniece, Jacqueline J. Bergman

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Latine older adults face disproportionate risk of chronic nutrition-related conditions and food insecurity, which can exacerbate or contribute to the development of mental health-related concerns. Cultural stigma toward mental illness can result in Latine clients, especially older adults, somatizing symptoms and focusing on physical health goals in counseling. Despite these intersecting needs, counselors often overlook clients’ physical health goals due to limited training and the assumption that medical providers alone should address them. This article advocates integrating basic, culturally responsive nutrition information into counseling practice to support client well-being while staying within the scope of practice. We offer practical recommendations …

The Ideological Work Of Penal Reform: How Reformers Justify Penal-Welfare Hybridization, John Halushka, Brandon Miller

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This article uses the Santa Clara County Reentry Resource Center (RRC) as a case study to explore the cultural content of penal reform. Specifically, we explore the discourses that officials use to publicly justify projects of penal-welfare hybridization, or the linking of state systems of punishment and welfare to manage criminalized populations. Our qualitative analysis draws on a dataset consisting of county planning documents, budgets, videos, press releases, and newsletters published online between 2011 and 2023. By examining these materials over time, we are able to chart patterns of consistency and variation in how officials justify hybridization. We find that …

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 …

Developing A Vietnamese Text Summarization Large Language Model On Limited Hardware, Tin Pho

Master's Theses

Text summarization models have achieved significant growth during the last few years because of major Large Language Model (LLM) technological advancements. The application of LLMs are widely used in news distribution (TL;DR news), translation tools (DeepL Translate), or virtual assistants (ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Claude, etc.). However, the progress has not yet reached all languages equally. The Vietnamese language is used by more than 90 million people, but the language is not as highly developed for LLM as it has many homophones, five different tones that affect meaning of words, and irregular grammar compared to other languages (e.g. English, Spanish, etc.). Also, …

Mobile Markets And Farmers’ Markets: Evaluating Food Accessibility For Underserved Communities In The Bay Area, Rajeshwari Rajesh

Master's Theses

Studies indicate including farmers’ markets, mobile markets, and other local food systems improve fresh food access for low-income communities, especially when paired with food assistance programs that offer financial incentives. This study aims to evaluate mobile markets and farmers’ markets in the Bay Area using the five dimensions of food access: accessibility, availability, acceptability, affordability, and accommodation. The study is based on primary data collected from 173 in-person surveys at six mobile and eight farmers’ markets in the Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties. Key survey participants were market shoppers participating in food assistance programs. A mixed research methodology included …