Digital Commons Network^™

Impact Of Location Spoofing Attacks On Performance Prediction In Mobile Networks, Nikhil Sai Kanuri, Sang Yoon Chang, Younghee Park, Jonghyun Kim, Jinoh Kim

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Performance prediction in wireless mobile networks is essential for diverse purposes in network management and operation. Particularly, the position of mobile devices is crucial to estimating the performance in the mobile communication setting. With its importance, this paper investigates mobile communication performance based on the coordinate information of mobile devices. We analyze a recent 5G data collection and examine the feasibility of location-based performance prediction. As location information is key to performance prediction, the basic assumption of making a relevant prediction is the correctness of the coordinate information of devices given. With its criticality, this paper also investigates the impact …

Word Embeddings For Fake Malware Generation, Quang Duy Tran, Fabio Di Troia

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Signature and anomaly-based techniques are the fundamental methods to detect malware. However, in recent years this type of threat has advanced to become more complex and sophisticated, making these techniques less effective. For this reason, researchers have resorted to state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to combat the threat of information security. Nevertheless, despite the integration of the machine learning models, there is still a shortage of data in training that prevents these models from performing at their peak. In the past, generative models have been found to be highly effective at generating image-like data that are similar to the actual data …

Robustness Of Image-Based Malware Analysis, Katrina Tran, Fabio Di Troia, Mark Stamp

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

In previous work, “gist descriptor” features extracted from images have been used in malware classification problems and have shown promising results. In this research, we determine whether gist descriptors are robust with respect to malware obfuscation techniques, as compared to Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) trained directly on malware images. Using the Python Image Library (PIL), we create images from malware executables and from malware that we obfuscate. We conduct experiments to compare classifying these images with a CNN as opposed to extracting the gist descriptor features from these images to use in classification. For the gist descriptors, we consider a …

Twitter Bots’ Detection With Benford’S Law And Machine Learning, Sanmesh Bhosale, Fabio Di Troia

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Online Social Networks (OSNs) have grown exponentially in terms of active users and have now become an influential factor in the formation of public opinions. For this reason, the use of bots and botnets for spreading misinformation on OSNs has become a widespread concern. Identifying bots and botnets on Twitter can require complex statistical methods to score a profile based on multiple features. Benford’s Law, or the Law of Anomalous Numbers, states that, in any naturally occurring sequence of numbers, the First Significant Leading Digit (FSLD) frequency follows a particular pattern such that they are unevenly distributed and reducing. This …

Fake Malware Generation Using Hmm And Gan, Harshit Trehan, Fabio Di Troia

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

In the past decade, the number of malware attacks have grown considerably and, more importantly, evolved. Many researchers have successfully integrated state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to combat this ever present and rising threat to information security. However, the lack of enough data to appropriately train these machine learning models is one big challenge that is still present. Generative modelling has proven to be very efficient at generating image-like synthesized data that can match the actual data distribution. In this paper, we aim to generate malware samples as opcode sequences and attempt to differentiate them from the real ones with the …

Blackcurrants: A Nutrient-Rich Source For The Development Of Functional Foods For Improved Athletic Performance, Ali Ali Redha, Shahida Anusha Siddiqui, Reza Zare, Daniele Spadaccini, Silvia Guazzotti, Xi Feng, Nur Alim Bahmid, Yuan Seng Wu, Fathima Zahraa Ozeer, Rotimi E. Aluko

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Blackcurrants are nutrient-rich fruits with a significant amount of bioactive compounds including vitamin C and polyphenols, especially anthocyanins. The high phytochemical content of blackcurrants promotes this fruit to become a valuable functional food ingredient with varying health-promoting activities targeting different consumers including athletes. Athletes experience oxidative stress during intense exercise, which can result in inflammation and reduced exercise performance. Antioxidants such as vitamin C and polyphenols can restore the regular oxidative status of the body. Blackcurrant supplementation has shown potential ergogenic activity to improve athlete performance during high-intensity training. Clinical trials have evaluated the effectiveness of blackcurrant supplementation on exercise …

Characterizing The Feedback That Learning Assistants Give To Faculty, Sadhana Indukuri, Gina M. Quan

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Learning assistants are undergraduate peer educators that help facilitate learning in a university classroom environment. Jardine (2019) found that learning assistant feedback to faculty roughly fell into three categories: course logistics, student behavior, and student understanding. We built from this previous work by further characterizing the feedback given to faculty by learning assistants and found the following categories: student experience, classroom content, classroom structure, accessibility, empathy, and broad feedback. Using interview data with learning assistants and faculty working with learning assistants, we created a preliminary framework for the types of feedback and examples by learning assistants. This framework may be …

Leveraging Hispanic-Serving Institutions Within Physics Education Research, Brianne Gutmann, Rebecca Rosenblatt

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Hispanic serving institutions (HSIs) are an increasingly large set of higher education institutions in the United States. From 2010-2020 the number of HSIs increased from 311 to 569. Within the physics education research (PER) community, research perspectives from HSIs have provided critical insights into how to support racially and ethnically diverse students. Within the last decade, research from HSIs made up approximately 20% of publications from US higher education institutions in common PER journals. These publications do not always fully name and leverage their HSI context, though the work done at HSIs still more consistently centers students’ identities as compared …

Abortion Attempts Without Clinical Supervision Among Transgender, Nonbinary And Gender-Expansive People In The United States, Heidi Moseson, Laura Fix, Caitlin Gerdts, Sachiko Ragosta, Jen Hastings, Ari Stoeffler, Eli A. Goldberg, Mitchell R. Lunn, Annesa Flentje, Matthew R. Capriotti, Micah E. Lubensky, Juno Obedin-Maliver

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Background Transgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive (TGE) people face barriers to abortion care and may consider abortion without clinical supervision. Methods In 2019, we recruited participants for an online survey about sexual and reproductive health. Eligible participants were TGE people assigned female or intersex at birth, 18 years and older, from across the United States, and recruited through The PRIDE Study or via online and in-person postings. Results Of 1694 TGE participants, 76 people (36% of those ever pregnant) reported considering trying to end a pregnancy on their own without clinical supervision, and a subset of these (n=40; 19% of those …

Mapping Emotional Attachment As A Measure Of Sense Of Place To Identify Coastal Restoration Priority Areas, Timothy L. Hawthorne, Kayla R. Toohy, Bo Yang, Lain Graham, Elise M. Lorenzo, Hannah Torres, Morgan Mcdonald, Fernando Rivera, Kirsten Bouck, Linda J. Walters

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Our applied case study demonstrates how knowledge from community stakeholders about emotional attachment (as a key component of sense of place) can inform and influence future coastal restoration priorities at various scales in the Indian River Lagoon, Florida (USA). We map aggregate measures of emotional attachment from community stakeholders using Geographic Information Systems. We then analyze this human systems level data with kernel density estimation measures at the broader lagoon scale and with inverse distance weighted measures at more localized scales. By connecting these mapped results back to the primary reasons that participants provided for having high or low emotional …

The League Of Nations, Traffic In Women And The Transnationalization Of Criminal Law, Paul Knepper

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

During the 1920s, the Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women, of the League of Nations operated as a legal regime in the transnationalization of criminal law. This can be seen in its management of the first >worldwide< investigation into the traffic in women which sent undercover investigators to more than a 100 countries across Europe, the Americas, and the Mediterranean. The Advisory Committee initiated >trafficking< as a transnational crime and advanced the understanding of transnational criminal law beyond concepts of professional criminality.

Benchmarking Compositionality With Formal Languages, Josef Valvoda, Naomi Saphra, Jonathan Rawski, Adina Williams, Ryan Cotterell

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Recombining known primitive concepts into larger novel combinations is a quintessentially human cognitive capability. Whether large neural models in NLP can acquire this ability while learning from data is an open question. In this paper, we investigate this problem from the perspective of formal languages. We use deterministic finite-state transducers to make an unbounded number of datasets with controllable properties governing compositionality. By randomly sampling over many transducers, we explore which of their properties contribute to learnability of a compositional relation by a neural network. We find that the models either learn the relations completely or not at all. The …

Improving The Process Of Pain Management By Implementing Best Practices In A Nursing Home, Sukhjit Dhillon

Doctoral Projects

Pain is often untreated or undertreated among older adults living in nursing homes. The lack of standardized pain management protocols makes it difficult to address pain in this population. Deficiencies in pain management and documentation were identified in a nursing home and a performance improvement project was implemented with the aim to improve pain management, pain documentation, and staff knowledge of pain management. A pre-and post-intervention study design was used, and data analysis included descriptive statistics and a paired samples t-test. Participants (n=12) included seven registered nurses and five licensed vocational nurses who provide direct care to the residents in …

Educational Intervention With Visual Cues To Increase Compliance With Postoperative Warming, Michael J. Domingo

Doctoral Projects

Millions of operations are performed annually in the United States. However, postoperative hypothermia still affects surgical patients who are not thermoregulated and can occur among them during the postoperative period. Postoperative warming compliance rates across countries and institutions are generally poor (Koh et. al, 2021). Therefore, the focus of the DNP project was to assess how providing education on postoperative warming and providing visual cues to the PACU RNs would increase postoperative warming compliance. The PACU RN participants were provided postoperative warming education with visual cues. Specifically reviewed with the PACU RNs was taking the patient’s temperature, connecting the patient …

Impact Of Mindfulness Practice On Compassion Fatigue In Pediatric Cardiovascular Critical Care Nurses: A Quality Improvement Project, Kendy Luu

Doctoral Projects

Background: A considerable proportion of the extant literature on healthcare has documented compassion fatigue (CF) as a major factor that contributes to poor job performance, satisfaction, and negative patient outcomes (Figley, 2002). CF is well known to negatively impact patient care and outcome, relationships, and job satisfaction among pediatric cardiovascular intensive care (CVICU) nurses. Developing interventions to reduce burnout and CF bear the potential to reduce costs and improve quality care; one particularly promising approach in this regard is the practice of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). Purpose: This quality improvement project aimed to determine the impact of an abbreviated MBSR …

Archeota, Fall/Winter 2022, Heather Reinold, Sarah Lewis, Lawrence Mullen, Emma Ruff, Amanda Galvez, Kit Katz, Rachael Sevilla

Archeota

Archeota is a platform for SJSU iSchool students to contribute to the archival conversation. It is written BY students, FOR students. It provides substantive content on archival concerns and issues and promotes professional development in the field of archival studies. Archeota upholds the core values of the archival profession.

Contents:

The Forward Club: Archival Outreach and Community Connections By Sarah Lewis

Putting the Spotlight on Women’s History: The Significance of Reevaluating Historic Site Narratives By Lawrence Mullen

Meet the 2022-2023 Archeota Team

Farm to Folder: Found Ephemera Joins the Dziekanowski Farm Papers Collection By Emma Ruff

An Archivists’ Evolving …

Autonomous Network Defence Using Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning And Self-Play, Roberto G. Campbell

Master's Theses

Early threat detection is an increasing part of the cybersecurity landscape, given the growing scale and scope of cyberattacks in the recent years. Increasing exploitation of software vulnerabilities, especially in the manufacturing sector, demonstrates the ongoing need for autonomous network defence. In this work, we model the problem as a zero-sum Markov game between an attacker and defender reinforcement learning agents. Previous methods test their approach on a single topology or limit the agents to a subset of the network. However, real world networks are rarely fixed and often add or remove hosts based on demand, link failures, outages, or …

Industry And Malady: Entanglements Of Power, Culture, And Disease Afflicting Breast Cancer Patients In The Bay Area, Brieann N. Deornellas

Master's Theses

Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States and, apart from some forms of skin cancer, is the most common cancer diagnosis for women. In 2021, the U.S Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results reported that approximately 281,550 women were diagnosed with, and 43,600 died of the breast cancer. Despite advancements in testing and treatments, about one in eight women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime, and breast cancer has the highest cancer death rate for women, excluding lung cancer.Studies have also shown that breast cancer prognosis and mortality is not uniform, and is statistically …

The Relationship Between Goal Types And Job Performance: Exploring The Moderating Effect Of Self-Efficacy, Stefani Ewell

Master's Theses

Motivation to improve performance within the workplace has long been an area of interest for leaders in organizations. While goal setting is often used as a motivational theory to improve performance, further guidelines are needed to ensure the full positive effects of goal setting are realized. The purpose of this study was to understand the effect of four goal types (outcome, performance, process, and personal-best goals) on performance in the workplace. Another purpose of this study was to examine whether the effectiveness of goal types may change as a function of self-efficacy. Performance was measured in two ways: completeness and …

The Effect Of Submarine Volcanism On Foraminifera At Axial Seamount Of Juan De Fuca Ridge, Gabriela Marie Diaz Santana

Master's Theses

Submarine volcanoes contribute more than 75% of global volcanic eruptions annually and have the potential to change the surrounding submarine ecosystems. The species richness, abundance of foraminifera assemblages and the average test size of samples recovered from marine sediment cores are a proxy for past environmental changes on the seafloor and in the water column. This study evaluates the ecosystem impact of multiple eruptions that formed a massive caldera at Axial Seamount between 1300 and 800 years before present (BP). An examination of the diversity, abundance, and size of planktic and benthic foraminifera assemblages recorded in volcanic and hemipelagic sediments …

Use Of A Utility-Scale Solar Energy Facility By Avian Populations In Central California, Quratulain Ahmed

Master's Theses

With an ever-increasing demand for renewable energy in response to climate change, utility-scale solar energy (USSE) is on the rise, particularly in California. Although solar energy is viewed as an essential resource for transitioning from a fossil fuel economy, USSE installations can cover thousands of acres of habitat used by avian species. Little is known about the effects of USSE on avian populations, although some evidence suggests that USSE facilities may be leading to bird mortality. The lake-effect hypothesis suggests that birds may mistake solar arrays for large bodies of water resulting in injury or mortality. Though several studies describe …

Motivational And Participatory Experiences Of Female Service Members In Crossfit, Nicole M. Levine

Master's Theses

CrossFit is a high-intensity exercise program that has expanded globally over the last several years. Its minimalistic approach targeted at multiple aerobic and muscular strength domains make it accessible and applicable to populations with limited space and equipment, such as overseas military installations. Despite several studies examining the motivational factors of individuals engaging in CrossFit, research is scant on the motivational factors of military professionals participating in CrossFit outside of their formalized operational training. Additionally, there is no specific literature on female military participation in CrossFit. This study qualitatively explored the participatory motivations of 15 female U.S. military service members …

The Effects Of Disability Status And Employment Level In Shaping Employee Perceptions: A Vignette Study Of Employees Who Are Blind, Raymond Bennett

Master's Theses

This study sought to understand the impact of disability status and level of employment (i.e., supervisor or employee) on ratings of performance outcomes and legitimately earning one’s role. It was hypothesized that leaders with disability (LWD) would be rated as poorer performers compared to non-disabled leaders and that co-workers with disability (CWD) would be rated more favorably than LWD. It was also hypothesized that the perceived legitimacy of disability status would moderate the impact of disability status and employment level on performance outcomes. 102 participants read one of four vignettes describing an organization member they regularly interacted with and responded …

Exploration Of Novel Nickel Metal Organic Decomposition Inks, Ivy Tran

Master's Theses

In the growing and ever-evolving world of technology, the prospect of printable and flexible electronics has become prominent. Printable metal inks are of significant interest as they can be used to fabricate metal films efficiently, with greener materials, at lower-cost, and with low-waste as compared to conventional metal film deposition techniques. They also allow the utilization of a wider range of materials, giving way to flexible technologies in the future. Here, we introduce the formulation of novel nickel-precursor based liquid organometallic decomposing (MOD) inks that sinter at relatively low temperatures and thermally decompose into a conductive layer. In this work, …

Impacts Of Transit-Oriented Development Through The Eyes & Lives Of Low-Income Latinx Residents: A Case Study In Fruitvale, Oakland, Diana Saavedra

Master's Theses

Transit-oriented development (TOD) is often showcased as a solution for private vehicle dependency and growing climate issues. Although TOD seems promising, it usually has harsh, unforgiving effects such as ecological gentrification. Ecological gentrification occurs when lower-income communities, especially of color, are pushed out of their neighborhoods due to the implementation of an environmental amenity, benefit, or service. However, research suggests that TODs that apply Transportation Justice principles seem to produce more equitable results. This study explores the Fruitvale Village TOD, located in Fruitvale, Oakland, California. This TOD was selected because it is unique in its conception and implementation, as it …

The Relationship Between Transformational Leadership And Affective Commitment And Intent To Leave The Organization: The Mediating Role Of Psychological Empowerment, Neiry Lara

Master's Theses

The leadership style of organizational leaders has important implications for organizations and their employees. Transformational leadership has been studied extensively due to the numerous positive outcomes. Unfortunately, not much research has focused on the mediating mechanism between transformational leadership and outcomes. Therefore, the present study explored the mediating role of psychological empowerment on the relationship between transformational leadership and the outcomes of affective organizational commitment and turnover intentions. It was hypothesized that psychological empowerment would act as a mediator between transformational leadership and affective organizational commitment and turnover intentions. Results of an online survey from 111 employed individuals showed that …

An Initial Study Of Properties Of Monolithic Silicon Dioxide Parts Produced By The Ceramic On-Demand Extrusion Process, Sam Sujit Choppala

Master's Theses

The ceramic on-demand extrusion (CODE) process is an additive manufacturing process for technical ceramics, which features an oil bath and partial drying to print stronger green bodies due to better preservation of the printed specimen structure and reduction of uneven part evaporation. A 3D printer capable of performing the CODE process is built with subsystems including motion, extrusion, and heating, and is controlled through LinuxCNC. The CODE printer and process is tested with silicon dioxide as the technical ceramic. High strength silicon dioxide parts are essential in various present-day industries such as dental, medical, and semiconductor. A 55vol% solids loading …

Ice And Supercooled Liquid Distributions Based On In Situ Observations And Climate Model Simulations, Ching An Yang

Master's Theses

Three climate models are evaluated using in situ airborne observations from the SouthernOcean Clouds, Radiation, Aerosol Transport Experimental Study (SOCRATES) campaign. The evaluation targets cloud phases, microphysical properties, thermodynamic conditions, and aerosol indirect effects from -40°C to 0°C. Compared with 580-s averaged observations (i.e., 100 km horizontal scale), the Community Atmosphere Model version 6 (CAM6) shows the most similar result for cloud phase frequency distribution and allows more liquidcontaining clouds below -10°C compared with its predecessor—CAM5. The Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) underestimates (overestimates) ice phase frequencies below (above) -20°C. CAM6 and E3SM show liquid and ice water contents …

Attitudes Toward Social Activism By Professional Athletes, Aaron M. Flores

Master's Theses

Many professional athletes have raised awareness about and publicly protested social injustices. Athlete activism research has generally supported that such activism results in harsh backlash against the athletes, stemming from beliefs that politics and social justice protests do not belong in sports; patriotic/nationalistic values leading individuals to view such protests as un-American; and racial beliefs and attitudes, especially towards African American athletes. While robust, much of this research is theoretical or qualitative in nature and mainly examined reactions towards Black football players, with less focus on White athletes or those in different sports. To address these gaps, the current research …

Evaluation Of The Offline-Coupled Gfs-Cmaq In Recent Wildfires In Northern California, Joyce Leung

Master's Theses

As wildfires become more frequent and severe under climate change, there is a growing need to simulate the impact of fires on air quality and human health using numerical models. The National Air Quality Forecast Capability is an operational air quality forecasting system that provides nationwide ozone and particulate matter (PM2.5) prediction. It is made up of a chemical transport model – the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model – driven by a meteorological model. Recently, the Global Forecast System (GFS) replaced the North American Mesoscale Forecast System (NAM) to drive CMAQ. In addition to these two modeling systems, the …