Digital Commons Network^™

Prevalence Of Exposures And Moral Injury In First Responders, Shira Maguen, Soma De Bourbon, Adam Batten, Michael Mason, April Sloan, Daniel Nazzareta, Joseph Graterol, Simon Pang, Miranda Worthen

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Objectives: Workers in high-stakes occupations, such as first responders, are at risk of exposure to potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs) and moral injury, yet research with first responders has been scarce. This study aimed to assess the frequency of exposure to PMIEs, the prevalence of moral injury, and the correlation between moral injury and other mental health symptoms. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, firefighters, emergency medical technicians (EMTs), and paramedics working for a large urban Fire Department in California were invited to complete an online, confidential survey using validated scales to assess exposure to PMIEs, moral injury symptoms, and symptoms …

Acoustic Wave Manipulation Through Sparse Robotic Actuation, Tristan Shah, Noam Smilovich, Feruza Amirkulova, Samer Gerges, Stas Tiomkin

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Recent advancements in robotics, control, and machine learning have facilitated progress in the challenging area of object manipulation. These advancements include, among others, the use of deep neural networks to represent dynamics that are partially observed by robot sensors, as well as effective control using sparse control signals. In this work, we explore a more general problem: the manipulation of acoustic waves, which are partially observed by a robot capable of influencing the waves through spatially sparse actuators. This problem holds great potential for the design of new artificial materials, ultrasonic cutting tools, energy harvesting, and other applications. We develop …

Using Large Language Models To Investigate The Origin Of Chronic Wasting Disease, G. Kent Webb

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This use case reports on the impressive output, hallucinations, instability, and limitations of three Large Language Models (LLMs): ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok. The LLMs were prompted in an investigative sequence and responses checked. The collected information supports the common theory that chronic wasting disease (CWD) in North America originated in 1967 at a research facility in Fort Collins, Colorado, where deer were reported to have been exposed to sheep with a similar disease - scrapie. Findings include that: no sheep with scrapie were detected in the area around Fort Collins prior to 1967; domestic sheep reportedly exposed to scrapie were …

Deep Learning-Based Drowsiness Detection System For Driver’S Safety, Sindhu Vidyanathan Dixith, Shrikant Jadhav, Youngsoo Kim, Naveenkumar Jayakumar

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Driver drowsiness is a leading contributor to road accidents, accounting for over 100,000 crashes and approximately ~1000 fatalities each year in the United States alone, as per National Safety Council (NSC). To mitigate this urgent public-safety risk, we propose a real-time Driver Drowsiness Detection System that achieves both high accuracy and fast inference on standard hardware. Our key idea is to combine two complementary deep-learning strategies: 1) a custom Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) paired with a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier, and 2) a lightweight transfer-learning model built upon a pre-trained convolutional backbone. We evaluate these approaches on two datasets: …

Decadal Change In Deep-Ocean Dissolved Oxygen In The North Atlantic Ocean And North Pacific Ocean, Henry A. Ruhl, Christine L. Huffard, Monique Messié, Thomas P. Connolly, Thomas Soltwedel, Frank Wenzhöfer, Rodney J. Johnson, Nicholas R. Bates, Susan Hartman, Anita Flohr, Edward W. Mawji, David M. Karl, James Potemra, Fernando Santiago-Mandujano, Tetjana Ross, Kenneth L. Smith

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Declining dissolved oxygen concentrations are documented at upper and mid ocean depths, but less is known about the deep ocean. Long time-series measurements of dissolved oxygen analyzed with Winkler titration over several decades reveal regional differences at six stations in the abyssal North Atlantic Ocean and North Pacific Ocean. A significant decline in dissolved oxygen was evident at two stations in the northeast Pacific Ocean at 4000–4200 m depth (Stations PAPA and M). A similar decreasing but insignificant trend was recorded in the Arctic region of the North Atlantic Ocean (HAUSGARTEN). However, there was no significant decrease in dissolved oxygen …

Exploring The Use And Misuse Of Large Language Models, Hezekiah Paul D. Valdez, Faranak Abri, Jade Webb, Thomas H. Austin

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Language modeling has evolved from simple rule-based systems into complex assistants capable of tackling a multitude of tasks. State-of-the-art large language models (LLMs) are capable of scoring highly on proficiency benchmarks, and as a result have been deployed across industries to increase productivity and convenience. However, the prolific nature of such tools has provided threat actors with the ability to leverage them for attack development. Our paper describes the current state of LLMs, their availability, and their role in benevolent and malicious applications. In addition, we propose how an LLM can be combined with text-to-speech (TTS) voice cloning to create …

Covid-19 Prevention Behaviors Are Congruent Within Social Networks Of Disenfranchised Hispanic And Criminal Legal Involved Community Members, Victoria Umutoni, Khavita Bhavan, Nickolas Zaller, Amelia Knopf, Moctezuma Garcia, Russell A. Brewer, Makenna Meyer, Faye Taxman, O’Dell Johnson, Matthew Aalsma, John Schneider

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

The COVID-19 (COVID) pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on people who have low income and identify as Hispanic or Latinx (PLIH) as well as those with criminal Legal Involvement (CLI). These two groups, and their intersection, are often disenfranchised from livable wage employment, basic social services, and healthcare, which are vital to prevent the spread of COVID. We examined baseline data from the Community Network-Driven COVID Testing of Marginalized Population in the Central US (C3) which included 1036 participants: 32.1% PLIH, 39.6% CLI, 10.6% who identified as both PLIH and CLI, and 17.6% who were neither PLIH nor CLI. …

Spartan Daily, August 28, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 4

Spartan Daily, August 27, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 3

Accelerating The Fusion Workforce In The Usa, Carlos Paz-Soldan, Eva Belonohy, Troy Carter, Laleh E. Coté, Evdokiya Kostadinova, Calvin Lowe, Subash L. Sharma, Sybil De Clark, Jaydeep Deshpande, Kate Kelly, Bobbi Makani, David A. Schaffner, Kathreen E. Thome

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

The fusion energy research and development landscape has seen significant advances in recent years, with important scientific and technological breakthroughs and a rapid rise of investment in the private sector. The workforce needs of the nascent fusion industry are growing at a rate that academic workforce development programs are not currently able to match. This paper presents the findings of the Workforce Accelerator for Fusion Energy Development Conference held in Hampton, Virginia, United States of America (USA), on 29-30 May 2024, which was funded by the National Science Foundation of the USA. A major goal of the conference was to …

Context-Aware Natural Language Processing For Malware Detection, Helen Liu, Summer Mccune, Quang Duy Tran, Fabio Di Troia, Younghee Park

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

As malware continues to evolve and cyber attacks become increasingly prevalent, it is critical to develop effective malware classification techniques for the detection and prevention of such malicious attacks. In our research, we approach malware classification from a natural language processing perspective to explore how various tokenization techniques on malware opcode features can enhance classification accuracy and combat malware obfuscation and evolution techniques with a deep learning approach, previously unaddressed by existing research. We bridge this gap by conducting extensive hyperparameter tuning experiments that examine the effects of five common tokenization methods, that is, White Space Separation, Top Single Words, …

Testimonios: The Experiences Of An Undocumented Student In California Post-Daca Rescindment, Isabel Rangel

McNair Research Journal SJSU

After Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA, 2012) was rescinded

by the Trump Administration in 2017, many students were left in “limbo

legality” (Gonzalez 2012) This study addresses the question, “What are the

experiences of undocumented students regarding their academic motivation

toward graduation now that DACA has been rescinded at San Jos. State

University (SJSU)?” Grounded in a Chicana Feminist Epistemology

approach, the methodology of testimonio is used to capture the experiences

of the author alongside an undocumented graduate student. Findings

suggest that college campuses should incorporate faculty knowledgeable in

policies that affect undocumented students, Undocumented Ally trainings

in college …

Same Face, Different Name - Colonialism, Colonization, And Capitalism: How To Combat The Insidious Capitalist Individualism That Denies Basic Human Rights To Us Citizens Via Community Centric Bartering, Nadia Loney

McNair Research Journal SJSU

This paper examines the effects of colonialism, colonization, and capitalism

on the social fabric of the United States and how severing key connections

within society has hindered the direct benefits of community. As has been

tested in various cities around the world, intentional bartering can create a

sustainable community and combat the devastating effects that these

systems have had on the environment and the escalation of violence both

internally and globally. Art aimed at community rebuilding and a

decentralization of the US dollar, can help facilitate innovation that heal

various social wounds.

Spartan Daily, August 26, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 2

Alameda Song Sparrow Habitat Use Of Salt Pond Restoration Sites In South San Francisco Bay, Bradley A. Speno

Master's Theses

Restoration is acknowledged worldwide as a conservation need to return ecosystem functions. However, projects require monitoring to track system changes and assess restoration progress. In the San Francisco Bay, several large restoration projects are implementing plans to return salt-producing ponds to the historical ecosystem, tidal salt marsh. The Alameda song sparrow (Melospiza melodia pusillula), a California species of special concern, has been documented to use restored and historic marshes, but their use of restored salt ponds is not fully understood. The birds’ use of restored marshes may be a useful measure of restoration progress. This research investigated the relationships comparing …

California Utility-Scale Solar Energy Land Use Impacts On Species And Ecosystems, Ingrid Salazar

Master's Theses

Utility-scale solar energy (USSE), defined as projects of at least 1 megawatt, is rapidly expanding in California, which generated 37.5% of its electricity from renewables in 2023, with 24% coming from solar. While USSE supports decarbonization, it can also cause environmental harm, including biodiversity loss, habitat fragmentation, and land conversion. This study uses ArcGIS Pro 3.4.0 and public environmental data to analyze the spatial distribution of USSE projects, land use changes from 2013 to 2023, and occurrences of at-risk species across California’s bioregions. USSE development is heavily concentrated in the Mojave Desert, San Joaquin Valley, and Colorado Desert, which are …

Dynamics And Lipid Membrane Coupling Of The Ras-Raf Complex Revealed Via Multiscale Simulations, Timothy S. Carpenter, Fikret Aydin, Chris Neale, Que N. Van, Xiaohua Zhang, Harsh Bhatia, Jason W. Sidabras, Peter H. Frank, Konstantia Georgouli, Jeremy O.B. Tempkin, Violeta Burns Casamayor, Gulcin Gulten, Rebika Shrestha, Debanjan Goswami, Francesco Di Natale, Joseph R. Chavez, Liam G. Stanton, For Full Author List, See Comments Below

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

To gain molecular and mechanistic insights into initiation of the RAS-RAF signaling cascade, we developed and used a combination of multiscale simulation and experimental approaches. The influence and impact of the membrane on RAS and RAF proteins is a factor we are just beginning to understand and appreciate in more detail. Molecular simulation is an ideal methodology to further study this complicated relationship between the membrane and associated proteins. Our previous work using Multiscale Machine-learned Modeling Infrastructure investigated different lipid compositions solely around the KRAS4b protein and the interplay between protein behavior and these membrane environments. Multiscale Machine-learned Modeling Infrastructure …

Riparian Restoration Increases Soil Microbial Biomass In Marin County Rangelands, But Soil Carbon Stock Is Less Responsive, Sherilyn Kathryn Reinhart

Master's Theses

Land use change has caused the degradation of 70% of the Earth’s soils, directly altering soil microbial communities and carbon cycling. Interest in carbon farming practices is growing, but studies that document the nuances of soil carbon flux in specific bioregions are still too few. In this study, I examined how one practice, riparian restoration, alters soil carbon stock and microbial community structure over time. Using a paired sampling time series design, I collected soil samples from twelve riparian forests and adjacent rangelands near Marin County, California. Young and mature sites ranged from five to 29 years since restoration, and …

Deep Learning For The Early Detection Of Invasive Ductal Carcinoma In Histopathological Images: Convolutional Neural Network Approach With Transfer Learning, Naga Shreya Chilumukuru, Pragya Priyadarshini, Yawo Ezunkpe

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Background: Invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) is considered the most common form of breast cancer, accounting for a significant percentage of mortality worldwide. Therefore, its early detection is vital to further improve patients’ outcomes and survival rates. However, conventional diagnostic methods in the form of manual histopathological examinations are time-consuming, subjective, and prone to errors. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop automated solutions for accurate IDC detection in histopathology images to assist pathologists in clinical decision-making. Objective: We aim to develop and validate a convolutional neural network (CNN) model for early detection of IDC by analyzing histopathological images. The …

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

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 1

Use Of Cigarettes, Cannabis, And Alcohol Among Asian American, Native Hawaiian, And Pacific Islander Adults: Community-Based National Survey Analysis, Vuong Van Do, Van My Ta Park, Nhung Nguyen, Pamela May Ling, Marian Tzuang, Bora Nam, Marcelle M. Dougan, Oanh L. Meyer, Janice Y. Tsoh

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Background: Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) populations have diverse cultural, immigra-tion, and sociodemographic characteristics. Aggregated data could mask substantial differences in substance use between cultural subgroups in this population. Yet, studies examining substance use among the AANHPI population are limited. Objective: This study aimed to describe cigarette, cannabis, and alcohol use among AANHPI adults by cultural subgroup and sex. Methods: We analyzed data from 3411 AANHPI respondents of a multilingual national survey “COMPASS” during December 2021-May 2022. Primary outcomes were self-report current (every day or some days) use of cigarettes, cannabis, and alcohol. Cultural subgroups included Asian …

High Abundances Of Crustose Coralline Algae Inside Cryptic Coral Habitats Linked To Coral Reef Functioning, Anna Rothstein, Orion S. Mccarthy, Sophie Luu, Emily L.A. Kelly, Philip Heller, Stuart Sandin, Jennifer E. Smith, Maya S. Devries

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Cryptic habitats on coral reefs consist of crevices, tunnels, and holes that are estimated to comprise 30%–75% of the total reef surface area. These large habitats are vastly understudied because they are often difficult to access. Crustose coralline algae (CCA) are thought to perform important ecological functions, including calcium accretion, both inside cryptic habitats and on the exposed (top) reef. Using GoPro cameras, we surveyed 250 coral crevices from 13 reefs on West Maui, Hawai‘i. We compared relative CCA cover between crevice microhabitats and the well-studied top-reef and identified abiotic and biotic factors that correlated with CCA abundance. We found …

Multimodal Emotion Detection And Analysis From Conversational Data, Abhinay Jatoth, Faranak Abri, Tien Nguyen

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

—Emotion recognition in conversations has become increasingly relevant due to its potential applications across various fields such as customer service, social media, and mental health. In this work, we explore multimodal emotion detection using both textual and audio data. Our models leverage deep learning architectures, including Transformer-based models such as Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), Robustly optimized BERT approach (RoBERTa), Audio Spectrogram Transformer (AST), Wav2Vec2), Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiL-STM), and four fusion strategies that combine features from multiple modalities. We evaluate our approaches using two widely used emotion datasets, IEMOCAP and EMOV. Experimental results show that fusion models …

Exploring The Ant: How Well Do Three Attention Networks Predict Road Hazard Perception, Xander Philip Martinez

Master's Theses

Hazard perception is the ability of a driver to anticipate emerging dangers. Driving is a complex activity requiring attention to various stimuli to prevent accidents. Prior studies have shown that older, experienced drivers detect more cues and perceive hazards better than younger, inexperienced drivers. Attention is multifaceted, and three visual attention networks were focused on in the study: alerting (readiness), orienting (spatial focus), and executive control (distraction inhibition). A sample of 95 participants completed two tasks: The Attention Network Test was used to assess these three attention networks, and to measure road hazard awareness, participants viewed short dashcam videos (~233 …

Learning Structure With Multivariate Information Bottleneck And Exploration Of New Methods In Sequential Decision Making, Volodymyr Makarenko

Master's Theses

Research in useful information extraction has been motivated by the increasing demand to extract insights from unstructured data, and by the need to store and transmit great volumes of information, often originating in unstructured data such as videos. Research in rate distortion and information bottleneck paved the path for understanding and guiding the design of lossy encoders, capable of extracting relevant information. Independently, research in deep representation learning has enabled numerous applications for unstructured high-dimensional data such as images. However, the interpretability of the deep learning methods remained limited. Several desired properties of learned representations have been suggested, including disentanglement. …

Seasonality In Terminus Ablation Rates For The Glaciers In Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat), K. C. Aman, Ellyn M. Enderlin, Dominik Fahrner, Twila Moon, Dustin Carroll

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Marine-terminating glaciers of Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat) have been losing mass since the 1990s, with a substantial portion caused by the effects of dynamic change. Conventional assessments of dynamic mass loss, however, often ignore the influence of terminus advance or retreat on the timing of mass loss. Here, we construct and analyze a decade (2013-2023) of monthly ice flux driven both by temporal variability in ice flow (i.e., discharge) and terminus position change - collectively called terminus ablation - for 49 marine-terminating glaciers in Greenland. We calculate terminus ablation rates using open-source datasets, including terminus position, ice surface elevation, ice thickness, …

The Effectiveness Of Kolmogorov–Arnold Networks In The Healthcare Domain, Vishnu S. Pendyala, Nivedita Venkatachalam

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Kolmogorov–Arnold Networks (KANs) have recently emerged as a powerful alternative to traditional Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), offering superior accuracy and interpretability, which are two critical requirements in healthcare applications. This study investigates the effectiveness of KANs across a range of clinical tasks by applying them to diverse medical datasets, including structured clinical data and time-series physiological signals. Compared with conventional ANNs, KANs demonstrate significantly improved performance, achieving higher predictive accuracy even with smaller network architectures. Beyond performance gains, KANs offer a unique advantage: the ability to extract symbolic expressions from learned functions, enabling transparent, human-interpretable models—a key factor in clinical …

Post-Fire Succession In An Old-Growth Coast Redwood (Sequoia Sempervirens) Forest, Mojgan Mahdizadeh, Will Russell

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

In 2020, a high-intensity wildfire burned over 35,000 ha in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, including over 1700 ha of old-growth coast redwood forest. This event created a unique opportunity to evaluate post-fire succession. We compared vegetation recovery in high versus low/moderate severity burned areas using data collected one year and four years following the fire. Random plot sampling was conducted at Big Basin Redwoods State Park to assess the regeneration of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous species. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were used to assess recovery over time and across burn severities. Results indicate significant increases in shrub …

Quantifying Erosion Rates Of The Mission Hills Along The Calaveras, Mission, And Hayward Faults In Northern California To Better Understand The Role Of Fault Geometry On Surface Topography, Ian Duncan Lord

Master's Theses

The San Francisco Bay Area lacks publications on erosion rates and their relationship to restraining bend fault geometry. This thesis presents a detailed geochronologic study of erosion rates from the Mission Hills along the Calaveras, Mission, and Hayward faults located northeast of San Jose, California. The goals are to provide erosion rate values where none currently exist and to gain a better understanding of how fault geometry influences topography along restraining bends. To quantify the erosion rate of these faults, river sediments containing 10Be were collected from 14 catchments using well-established protocols. Of the successfully processed samples, the erosion rates …

Moral And Ethical Nature In Confucian Liang-Zhi And Islamic Fitra: Comparative Perspectives On Innate Morality, Yanrong Shi

Comparative Philosophy

This article offers a comparative philosophical analysis of Confucian liang-zhi (innate moral knowledge) and Islamic fitra(primordial nature), focusing on their accounts of innate morality and moral epistemology. Drawing on classical Confucian sources—especially the praxis-oriented interpretation of Wang Yangming—and foundational Islamic texts and commentary, the study demonstrates that both traditions posit an inborn moral faculty grounding ethical universality and responsibility. Wang Yangming’s liang-zhi is conceived as an innate moral principle that, under the imperative of zhi (to actualize or extend), is continually activated through moral practice. In parallel, fitra is understood as a God-given orientation to truth, cultivated and safeguarded through …