Digital Commons Network^™

Helixcross – Design And Development Of An Ai-Powered Cross-Examination Simulation For Forensic Expert Testimony Training, Mark Barash, Bruce Budowle

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Forensic testimony is where science meets the courtroom, and it is one of the critical forensic skills taught largely by apprenticeship. An examiner who overstates a match, mishandles a probability, or cannot support a method under direct or cross-examination can weaken the evidence in precisely the cases that rely on it. Yet in most forensic laboratories, testimony preparation remains largely informal, mentor-dependent, and unscalable. Consequently, many practitioners first face rigorous cross-examination at trial. To address this gap, HelixCross, an alpha-stage, publicly accessible, prompt-engineered large language model (LLM) agent, was developed. It uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to simulate defense counsel cross-examination …

Assessing Awareness And Use Of Artificial Intelligence Tools Among Library Personnel In Public And Private Institutions In Ekiti State, Nigeria, Thomas Aanu Ojo

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Artificial Intelligence is a technology integrated into libraries as a tool to help eliminate tedious and repetitive tasks. However, its awareness and use in libraries are still in the early stages. Therefore, this study investigated the awareness and use of AI tools among library personnel in public and private institutions in Ekiti State, Nigeria. The study population comprised 107 library personnel in Ekiti State. The questionnaire was used to elicit data. Descriptive statistics of frequency count, percentage, mean and standard deviation were used to analyse the data. The findings revealed that the level of awareness of AI tools among library …

Spartan Daily, October 14, 2026, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2026

Volume 167, Issue 23

Spartan Daily, October 13, 2026, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2026

Volume 167, Issue 22

Global Research Trends In Library And Medical Information Science, Mahshid Lotfi, Zahra Kalhori, Zahra Bahrani Pour, Faeze Rahmati, Ensieh Badi

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Introduction

Determining research directions is an essential method for charting the publication landscape of a scientific discipline. The goal of this study was to explore research trends in library and medical information by reviewing articles indexed in Web of Science, PubMed, Ovid, ProQuest, and Scopus databases between 2000 and 2024.

Methods

This study used scientometric and descriptive methods to analyze librarianship and medical information research trends from 2000-2024, using data from selected databases. Vocabulary co-occurrence and social network analysis were applied, with VOSviewer used for visualization and to identify key elements in the field.

Discussion

The keyword "medical information" appeared …

Pe2prompt: A Large Language Model-Native Framework For Interpretable Static Malware Analysis, Yilin Sun, Mohammad Masum

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Large Language Models (LLMs) possess strong general-purpose reasoning abilities, yet their integration into static malware analysis pipelines remains limited due to the representational gap between high-dimensional numerical features and the natural-language input format required for inference. This study introduces PE2Prompt, a Large Language Model-native framework for interpretable and industrially deployable static malware analysis. PE2Prompt formalizes a modular process that bridges numeric PE features and LLM reasoning through three key components: (1) LLM-guided feature curation directly from raw EMBER JSON fields to identify semantically relevant attributes; (2) numerical feature summarization, compressing byte-histogram and entropy distributions into interpretable descriptors; and (3) structured …

Spartan Daily, October 8, 2026, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2026

Volume 167, Issue 21

Spatio-Temporal Analysis Of The Roadside Transportation-Related Air Quality (Startraq 2024): Time-Series Analysis, Jaymin Kwon, Yushin Ahn, Steve Chung

Mineta Transportation Institute

Transportation-related air pollution remains a significant environmental and public health challenge in California’s San Joaquin Valley. This report presents a spatio-temporal analysis of roadside transportation-related air quality in Fresno County, California, from 1985 to 2023 with projections from 2024 through 2032. Using historical emissions inventories, projected vehicle miles traveled (VMT), infrastructure data, and land cover analysis, the study examines how transportation activity and urban expansion have influenced air quality across the region over time. Findings reveal that while PM10, PM2.5, NOx, SOₓ, CO, and CO₂ emissions from on-road mobile sources have declined significantly due to regulatory programs and cleaner technologies, …

Assessing The Co-Benefits Of Housing And Transportation Investments In Prohousing Designated Jurisdictions, Hongwei Dong

Mineta Transportation Institute

In response to California's ongoing housing affordability crisis, state and local governments have adopted a range of prohousing policies aimed at reducing barriers to housing production and promoting the integration of housing with transportation. This study examines two distinct but related dimensions of prohousing policies in California. One concerns the Prohousing Designation Program (PDP) (established by the 2019–2020 Budget Act), analyzing the adoption and implementation of prohousing policies in 56 California cities that received Prohousing Designation. The other examines recent state and local policy shifts aimed at promoting affordable housing in transit-rich areas. The study uses a mixed-methods research design, …

Servingness In Solidarity: How Filipina/X/O American Student Organizations Cultivate Belonging, Clarissa Mae Lico Calimbas

Dissertations

Filipina/x/o American college students represent one of the largest Asian ethnic subgroups in the United States, yet their educational experiences remain underexamined within institutional research and higher education scholarship. Aggregated under the broader Asian American category, Filipina/x/o American students are rendered invisible by data practices that obscure the distinct colonial histories, socioeconomic realities, and identity negotiations. This qualitative study examined how Filipina/x/o American students at Pacific State University (PSU) describe their involvement in Filipina/x/o American Student Organizations (FASOs) and how that involvement shapes their sense of belonging, cultural identity development, and academic persistence. Guided by a critical race phenomenological framework …

Special Education Teacher's Perceptions Of Genai For Creating Individualized Lesson Plans, Mahadevan Iyer

Dissertations

In the United States today, 7.3 million students are receiving special education (SPED) services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA, 2004). Rules and regulations governing SPED help ensure that SPED students receive good quality education. Section 1414(d) of IDEIA requires schools to provide specialized academic instruction as per each student’s Individualized Education Program (IEP). SPED teachers are responsible for accommodating, scaffolding, and individualizing the curriculum to meet the goals specified in the IEP. Defining the individualized curriculum is an added responsibility for a SPED teacher. This study examined SPED teachers’ access to instructional materials that implement EBPs …

Reducing Drag Of Vehicles With Half-Stepped Cylinder Surfaces Part I: Numerical Optimization, Ryan Moffit, Hamid Rahai, Komal Gada

Mineta Transportation Institute

Aerodynamic drag is a major source of energy loss for vehicles, increasing fuel consumption, reducing the driving range of electric vehicles, and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. For a vehicle, the major components of its drag are pressure and viscous drag. Engineers have developed a variety of strategies to reduce drag, including streamlined vehicle designs, surface modifications, and devices that alter airflow around the vehicle. This research focuses on reducing the viscous drag. Specifically, this study investigates whether microscopic surface features called half-stepped cylinder arrays can reduce skin friction by altering the turbulent boundary layer and promoting smoother airflow near …

Powers' Conjecture On The Third Largest Eigenvalue Of A Graph, Kevin Schmidt

Master's Theses

In 1989, David Powers conjectured that for any connected graph G on n vertices, the k-th largest eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix satisfies λk(G) ≤ ⌊n/k⌋ for every 1 ≤ k ≤ n/2. The conjecture has since been resolved case by case, in the sharper form λk(G) ≤ n/k − 1: the case k = 1 is classical, k = 2 was settled independently by Hong and by Powers in 1988, and k ≥ 4 was shown to fail by Nikiforov and Linz. This thesis surveys the resolution of the remaining case, k = 3, achieved in March 2026 by …

Performance Evaluation Of Fiber Reinforced Hot Mix Asphalt Containing Reclaimed Asphalt Shingles, Hani Alzraiee, Ashraf Rahim, Shadi M. Saadeh, Aaditya Ojha, Adam Mansara

Mineta Transportation Institute

Reclaimed asphalt shingles (RAS) offer a promising avenue for increasing recycled content in hot mix asphalt, but the aged, stiff binder they contribute tends to reduce cracking resistance, particularly at intermediate temperatures. This study investigated whether polymer fiber reinforcement can offset that brittleness while preserving rutting and moisture performance in mixtures containing both reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) and RAS. Fourteen asphalt mixtures were designed using a base blend of 25% RAP combined with RAS at either 3% or 5% by total mix weight. Two commercially available polymer fiber types, designated Fiber A and Fiber B, were added at dosages of …

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

Spartan Daily, 2026

Volume 167, Issue 15

Knowledge-Enhanced Feature Store For Operational Ml And Llm Workflows, Saurabh Suman

Master's Theses

Modern machine learning (ML) organizations rely on feature stores to manage training and production data, yet as catalogs grow to thousands of features, semantic management becomes the bottleneck: discovery, governance, and metric selection remain largely manual. This thesis proposes and evaluates a knowledge-enhanced feature store that augments a dual-plane store with a hybrid knowledge layer—relational provenance, a lineage graph, semantic vector retrieval, and an online cache—and an LLM-driven multi-agent layer for profiling, matching, grounded metric recommendation, and pipeline generation. A working prototype was evaluated across three task families—semantic profiling, feature-matching retrieval, and discovery—using classification, ranking, and operational metrics computed by …

Ai-Based Environmental Code Checking Tool For Sustainability Best Management Practices Of Infrastructure Construction Projects, Joseph J. Kim, Pooja D. Chavan

Mineta Transportation Institute

Infrastructure construction and operation are major contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions, which account for approximately one-third of global CO₂ emissions and add to long-term environmental and air quality challenges. Sustainability rating systems such as Envision for infrastructure construction projects provide structured guidance to help teams reduce these impacts, but verifying compliance requires reviewing large volumes of project documents by hand, making the process time consuming and difficult to scale. Therefore, this research develops an AI-based environmental code checking tool that automates the interpretation of project documents and evaluates compliance on lifecycle GHG assessment under Credit CR1.2 of Envision—in other …

Sensing Safety: Developing A Flexible, Portable Alcohol Detection Patch For Community Wellness, Ava Hedayatipour, Ryan Huynh, Wahaab Ademola

Mineta Transportation Institute

Alcohol-impaired driving remains one of the leading causes of traffic fatalities and serious injuries in the United States, posing significant challenges to transportation safety and imposing substantial social and economic costs. Although breathalyzers and wearable alcohol monitoring devices can help detect alcohol consumption, many existing technologies are expensive, bulky, or impractical for continuous, long-term monitoring. This study investigates a lowcost electrochemical sensing platform that could support future wearable alcohol monitoring systems for transportation safety applications. Specifically, the report presents the design, fabrication, and experimental evaluation of a custom screen-printed electrode (SPE) integrated with the Texas Instruments LMP91000 potentiostat. Each disposable …

Spartan Daily, September 22, 2026, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2026

Volume 167, Issue 13

The Future Of Transit, Adam Cohen

Mineta Transportation Institute

Public transit agencies are adapting to a post-pandemic operating environment characterized by hybrid work, more dispersed travel demand, workforce constraints, and persistent fiscal pressures. This perspective paper examines how transit agencies, such as the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), can strengthen ridership while improving the financial sustainability and long-term resilience of its transit system. The analysis synthesizes peer-reviewed research, government and industry reports, publicly available data, transit agency case studies, and expert interviews with thought leaders. The findings indicate that reliability, travel time, frequency, and customer experience remain fundamental drivers of transit use, but that traditional peak-oriented service planning …

Spartan Daily, September 17, 2026, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2026

Volume 167, Issue 12

Spartan Daily, September 16, 2026, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2026

Volume 167, Issue 11

Identification Of At-Risk Rail Network Segments And Development Of Fragility-Based Resilience Metrics, Haizhong Wang, Brian M. Staes, Benyamin Ghoreishi

Mineta Transportation Institute

This report presents a multi-hazard risk and resilience assessment of the U.S. rail network. The research identifies at-risk rail segments exposed to flash flooding, riverine flooding, extreme heat, and landslides using historical hazard records, federal accident and incident data, and meteorological datasets spanning 2000–2024. Flood exposure is mapped nationally by linking storm records to rail alignments and estimating the frequency and intensity of events at the segment level. For extreme heat, a fragility analysis of 153 documented thermal buckling derailments reveals that a significant share of failures occurred under relatively mild environmental conditions, pointing to infrastructure and maintenance factors rather …

“Perceived Usefulness And The Role Of Electronic Libraries In Supporting E-Learning (2010–2025): A Systematic Review Of Empirical Studies, Comfort Oluwapelumi Egunyemi (Cln), Ifeoluwa Adenike Ayoola

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Abstract

Electronic libraries have become essential tools in supporting e-learning by providing users with timely and flexible access to digital academic resources. This study examined the perceived usefulness and role of electronic libraries in supporting e-learning, particularly within Nigerian universities.

The study adopted a systematic literature review methodology in which relevant empirical and scholarly studies were purposively selected and critically analysed. Findings revealed that students perceive electronic libraries as useful for accessing course materials, conducting research, completing assignments, and promoting independent learning. The review further showed that electronic libraries contribute significantly to knowledge organization, information accessibility, and flexible learning environments …

Back And Forth: The Status Of Ict Resources And Facilities For Opac Use In University Libraries In Nigeria, Perpetua O. Ukwueze, Jacintha U. Eze Prof, Docas Nnedinso Ugwu

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This study examined the status of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) resources and facilities supporting Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) utilization in university libraries in Nigeria. The paper specifically investigated the availability of ICT resources that facilitate OPAC utilization and identified the challenges preventing effective use of OPAC among library patrons in university libraries. Descriptive survey research design was adopted. The population of the study was 28,897 registered library users. The sample size for the study was three hundred and ninety five (395) respondents who were selected using Yamen’s formula. These respondents comprises both undergraduate and postgraduate library users. Data …

College Library Websites In West Bengal: Analysis Of Information Visibility And Digital Infrastructure Through A Content Analysis Approach, Niti Mollah, Debabrata Barman, Samim Haidar

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

In an era of digital boom and growing internet connectivity, college websites have become vital platforms for disseminating information and establishing communication among students, faculty members, researchers, and the general public who intend to use the library. The present paper aims to study the library web pages of various degree colleges in West Bengal by examining their structure, content, user accessibility, and interactability.  It explores and evaluates the contents of 465 college websites based on certain key parameters such as availability, visibility, comprehensiveness, navigability, design, and user experience (users’ ease). The research finds a significant disparity in the quality of …

Multimodal Solutions For The Detection Of Safety-Related Railroad Objects Under Adverse Weather: Architectures, Proof-Of-Concepts, And Performance Results, Hayder Radha

Mineta Transportation Institute

The emergence of high-resolution automotive grade lidar sensor technologies and the development of advanced deep- learning frameworks open the door for accurate and real-time perception of the surroundings of mobile trains for improved safety and operational efficiency. Under this project, we developed key components and proof-of-concepts of lidar-based multimodal solutions that rely on advanced deep- learning methods and utilize object detection approaches to demonstrate the feasibility of real-time detection of objects and events that could represent major safety issues for moving trains. The detected objects could be vehicles or people trespassing a railroad track, or they could be hazardous objects …

Spartan Daily, September 10, 2026, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2026

Volume 167, Issue 9

Spartan Daily, September 3, 2026, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2026

Volume 167, Issue 07

An Enduring Mission, Expanding Responsibilities: Reexamining Educating Students To Think Forty Years Later, Victoria Therriault

Learning Hub

This article reexamines the role of school librarians forty years after the publication of Educating Students to Think. It argues that the central mission of school librarianship, helping students locate, evaluate, synthesize, and use information thoughtfully, has remained consistent while librarians’ responsibilities have expanded. The article connects this mission to contemporary practices including inquiry learning, instructional collaboration, digital and media literacy, AI literacy, digital citizenship, equitable access, and instructional leadership. It also presents an updated framework and practical strategies for applying these responsibilities in modern school library programs.