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Spartan Daily, October 21, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 25

Algorithmic Collusion Among Ev Charging Stations With Independent Reinforcement Learning Agents, Yulin Zeng, Yiheng Zhao, Yuanliang Li, Yefeng Yuan, Jie Gao, Hepeng Li, Xiao'ou Yang, Hohyun Lee, Yuhong Liu, Jun Yan

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Recent advancements in reinforcement learning (RL) have significantly enhanced the autonomous decision-making capabilities of energy systems. In the realm of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, operators aim to autonomously learn optimal pricing strategies based on local observations and user behavior. Traditional multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) approaches often assume cooperative settings with reward sharing or communication, real-world EV charging infrastructures are typically decentralized and competitive. This paper investigates the potential for tacit collusion in such realistic, non-cooperative environments. By leveraging decentralized MARL, we show that independently trained agents can still exhibit emergent collusive behaviors. Our findings highlight a critical need for …

The Symbiotic Harm Of A Criminal Record, Ericka B. Adams, Elsa Y. Chen, Sarah E. Lageson

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Having a criminal record significantly alters a person’s life chances, decreasing their opportunities for employment, housing, student loans, voting, public benefits, and more. The collateral consequences of criminal convictions, or the civil restrictions that follow criminal convictions, are well documented. However, because individuals are connected to families and communities, it is impossible to isolate the effects of punishment to only the persons holding criminal records. Instead, the effects of criminal records might be best understood as a set of symbiotic harms, marked by relational and interdependent effects. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 59 expungement-eligible persons and 69 community representatives, this …

Phase Transitions In An Ising Model Of Agent Expectations In Financial Markets: Analytics And Numerical Results In One And Two-Dimensional Network Topologies, Marko Raseta, Steven D. Silver, Alina Bazarova

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

We cite correspondences between dynamics in competitive markets and information theory in the objective of recovering signal from noisy information sequences. In financial markets, this objective has been examined as recovering signal on phase transitions between ordered and disordered states of agents in the market. These transitions have been indicated to denote critical points in time series of market price. Although there is a noteworthy background in information theory in the study of the dynamics of the Ising model in this manuscript, we pursue a different modeling approach. Whereas phase transitions in a multicomponent model of market states have previously …

On The Road To A Better Life? Rural Road And Economic Development In Albania, Santosh Gautam, Ermal Llirjani, Patralekha Ukil

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This study evaluates the impact of investment in rural roads on household welfare in Albania using a difference-in-differences method. We find that treated households experienced a 35-percentage point increase in the road quality and reduced travel times to the nearest motorable roads. Land and housing values rose significantly, and household heads were less likely to be unemployed, with a shift toward self-employment. While household income did not change significantly, consumption—particularly on non-food items—increased. These findings highlight the welfare-enhancing effects of improved connectivity and suggest that rural infrastructure investments can promote local economic activity. Policymakers should consider pairing road upgrades with …

Spartan Daily, October 16, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 24

Spartan Daily, October 15, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 23

Transgender And Nonbinary People's Perceptions Of Their State Context, Gender Minority Stress, And Mental Health: A Mixed Methods Study, Devon Kimball, Jae A. Puckett, Mihael Macbeth, Debra A. Hope, Richard Mocarski, L. Zachary Dubois

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Transgender and nonbinary (TNB) people experience gender minority stressors that adversely affect their mental health and wellbeing, all of which are shaped by sociopolitical contexts. We explored TNB participants' (N = 150) perceptions of how affirming their state was and associations with minority stress and mental health variables. Qualitative themes included: (1) Degrees of stigma depend on who you are; (2) Stigma persists even with small positive advancements; (3) Cis people take an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach to TNB people; and (4) It's in the air we breathe: Cissexism is an individual, cultural, and structural issue. Across …

Spartan Daily, October 14, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 22

Integration Of Uav And Remote Sensing Data For Early Diagnosis And Severity Mapping Of Diseases In Maize Crop Through Deep Learning And Reinforcement Learning, Jerry Gao, Krinal Gujarati, Meghana Hegde, Padmini Arra, Sejal Gupta, Neeraja Buch

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Highlights: What are the main findings? A framework combining UAV, satellite, and weather data to detect crop diseases. Ensemble deep learning and reinforcement learning improve classification and severity mapping. What is the implication of the main finding? Enables near real-time, scalable crop disease management to reduce yield losses. Early detection and hotspot mapping optimize water and pesticide use for sustainability. Accurate and timely prediction of diseases in water-intensive crops is critical for sustainable agriculture and food security. AI-based crop disease management tools are essential for an optimized approach, as they offer significant potential for enhancing yield and sustainability. This study …

Urban Air Mobility Vertiports: A Bibliometric Analysis Of Applications, Challenges, And Emerging Directions, Yannan Lu, Weili Zeng, Wenbin Wei, Weiwei Wu, Hao Jiang

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Vertiports, as the foundational ground infrastructure for Urban Air Mobility (UAM), have garnered increasing scholarly attention in recent years. To examine how the existing literature has reviewed and summarized vertiport-related knowledge, this study conducts a bibliometric analysis of publications (2000–2024) from four major databases, including Web of Science and Scopus, using VOSviewer and CiteSpace. By analyzing co-citation and keyword co-occurrence patterns, the results suggest that vertiport research frontiers are shifting toward facility location, network planning, airspace and scheduling management, scalable infrastructure, and integration with ground transport systems. Scholars and institutions in the United States, China, Europe, and South Korea have …

Study On Stage Characteristics And Multi-Factor Optimization Regulation Of Performance Of Ice Thawing Agent In Low Temperature Environment, Junming Mo, Ke Wu, Lei Qu, Wenbin Wei, Jinfu Zhu

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

De-icing agents play a crucial role in winter road maintenance, yet their excessive application can result in pavement deterioration and environmental issues. Existing dosage guidelines lack comprehensive data on the dynamic response of de-icing agents under low-temperature conditions, particularly regarding stage-specific characteristics and multi-factor interactions. This research systematically evaluated the effectiveness of four de-icing agents (NaCl, CaCl2, MgCl2, CH3COOK) within a temperature range of −5 °C to −25 °C, elucidating the two-phase ice-melting process (solid-phase followed by salt solution de-icing) with distinct kinetic mechanisms—a previously underexplored temporal pattern. The study quantified the differential impacts of particle size (small-particle CaCl2 exhibiting …

Sensing The Pulse Of A Data Stream In Real Time, Vishnu S. Pendyala

Open Educational Resources

In an era where data never sleeps, streaming algorithms offer a powerful toolkit for extracting meaningful insights from high-velocity data flows. This talk explores some foundational techniques that enable efficient, real-time analytics with minimal memory requirements. The algorithms covered include a clever bit-based strategy for approximating the count of 1s in a sliding window, ideal for binary streams where space efficiency is paramount. Another algorithm helps estimate statistical moments (mean, variance, skewness) using compact sketches, enabling a deeper understanding of stream distributions without storing the entire dataset. One other algorithm identifies trending items with exponential decay, giving more weight to …

Acceleration Metrics Predict Propulsive Power At Within-Dive Temporal Scales In California Sea Lions, Mason R. Cole, Elizabeth A. Mchuron, Dan P. Costa, Paul J. Ponganis, Birgitte I. Mcdonald

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Background: Locomotion can drive variation in an animal’s energy expenditure, but the energetic cost of movement is difficult to measure at fine time scales in free-living animals. The 3 axis acceleration metrics Dynamic Body Acceleration (DBA) and Minimum Specific Acceleration (MSA) are commonly used in biologging studies as a proxy for activity or energy expenditure. These metrics hold potential for relatively simple and affordable estimates of movement-based energy expenditure, but have not been validated for use at fine temporal scales (e.g., within dives) due to logistical limitations of metabolic measurement techniques. Here, we use rates of propulsive power (W kg …

Cosmopolitan Spirits: Islam And The Experimental Cosmologies Of Egypt's Spiritualist Movement, 1947–1960, Arthur Shiwa Zárate

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This article considers the history of Egypt’s mid-twentieth-century Spiritualist movement through an examination of its periodical, a monthly Arabic magazine called Alam al-Ruh (The World of the Spirit) (1947–1960). As it shows, Egyptian Spiritualists defended and promoted their project by crafting an experimental cosmology, one that blended claims about empirical verification with elements of Islamic and Spiritualist cosmologies. It further shows how this combination of scientism and cosmology reflects a core dynamic within the history of scientific exploration in the Islamic world. Like spiritual seekers and occult practitioners in Muslim societies elsewhere, Egyptian Spiritualists positioned their project as one of …

Trajectory Of Tinnitus Distress Across The Covid-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Analysis Of Self-Reported Symptoms, Anusha Yellamsetty, Mika Shin

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate retrospectively self-reported changes in tinnitus severity and distress associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccination using validated self-report instruments. It further explored patient-reported onset of tinnitus following vaccination, gender differences in symptom severity, and associations with psychological distress. Method: A cross-sectional online survey was completed by 189 adults between December 2023 and April 2024. Participants retrospectively self-reported tinnitus onset and severity before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic using the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) and the Tinnitus Reaction Questionnaire (TRQ). Additional items assessed COVID-19 vaccination history, infection status, and adverse vaccine reactions. Repeated measures …

Coastal Water Information Orders: Reverse-Engineering New York City’S Data Dashboards, James A. Hodges, Rachel Paprocki

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This article examines the information systems governing individual relationships to urban coastal waterways, drawing from two data publication initiatives in New York City. In these two cases, data structure and web design features cultivate specific forms of knowledge about water quality, pollution, and the health risks represented by recreational activities such as swimming and fishing. Analysis of the data structure and web source code shows the forms of knowledge concerning water quality each project facilitates or obscures. Findings are considered within the framework of an ‘information order’, which refers to the prevailing conditions for knowledge that are facilitated by communication …

Spartan Daily, October 9, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 21

Book Review: Starry Field: A Memoir Of Lost History By Margaret Juhae Lee, Brook Mcclurg

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Salmon Rushdie’S Frontier Pedagogy: Notes On Two Episodes In “Step Across This Line", Narayana Chandran Kizhakkethil

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

In the Indian multilingual classrooms teachers often discover certain details about the political semantics of the English texts they teach. When that happens, the language means much more to non-English readers who happily realize that English grants them a little more freedom to convey meanings to them than it does a monolingual readership. My example here is Salman Rushdie’s Tanner Lectures in Human Values called “Step Across This Line.” While his immediate context is the 9/11 tragedy and the politically prudent ways the US might cope with its aftermath, he returns time and again to those who brave borders, face …

Without Them, There Is No You: The Role Of Personal Choice And History In Resisting Political Control, Heidi Turner

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

In 2011, Korean-American journalist Suki Kim went undercover as an English teacher at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, working to teach her students while simultaneously recording everything she could about the workings of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). In 2014, her book Without You, There is No Us was published as a memoir, in part due to the inclusion of personal details considered less relevant to the story, thereby undercutting her journalistic credentials.

Here, using C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man as a theoretical framework for understanding oppressive regimes and the ways that they control …

Transpacific Rhizomatic Migration In Kyoung H. Park’S Mina: Settler Desire And Identity Formation In Korean-Latin American Literature In The U.S., Chase Kim

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

The Korean diaspora to the United States is a phenomenon that has long been analyzed for its sociocultural, political, and economic implications. However, generally ignored by scholarship of frameworks such as the transpacific is Korean-Latin American remigration to the United States. Korean migration to Latin America and this group’s subsequent migration to the US was motivated largely by economic factors such as the availability of Latin American agricultural labor in the mid-1960s and the growth of Korean-American professional communities during the 1980s. Situating this migration in a transpacific framework improves our understanding of settler colonial desire and identity formation. I …

Full Circle, Full Century: An Interview With Mitsuye Yamada, Noelle Brada-Williams, Elizabeth J. Asborno

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Volume Thirteen: Teaching In Dangerous Times, Noelle Brada-Williams

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Aaldp Cover Volume 13, Derick Truong

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Spartan Daily, October 8, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 20

Spartan Daily, October 7, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 19

Discriminative Regions And Adversarial Sensitivity In Cnn-Based Malware Image Classification, Anish Roy, Fabio Di Troia

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

The escalating prevalence of malware poses a significant threat to digital infrastructure, demanding robust yet efficient detection methods. In this study, we evaluate multiple Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architectures, including basic CNN, LeNet, AlexNet, GoogLeNet, and DenseNet, on a dataset of 11,000 malware images spanning 452 families. Our experiments demonstrate that CNN models can achieve reliable classification performance across both multiclass and binary tasks. However, we also uncover a critical weakness in that even minimal image perturbations, such as pixel modification lower than 1% of the total image pixels, drastically degrade accuracy and reveal CNNs’ fragility in adversarial settings. A …

Spartan Daily, October 2, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 18

Relationship Between Dietary Probiotic Consumption And Cognitive Functioning In Older Adults: A 2011-2014 Nhanes Study, Lauren Weber, J. Gieng, Ashwini Wagle

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Background

Consumption of probiotics has recently been associated with a reduced risk of cognitive decline due to its anti-inflammatory effect on the brain, via the gut-brain-axis. Current studies with probiotic supplementation indicate that probiotics may play an important role in slowing the rate of cognitive decline and protecting memory. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a potential relationship between cognitive decline and dietary intake of probiotics.

Methods

This study utilized data from NHANES, both 2011-2012 and 2013-2014 cycles. Categorical variables were analyzed using chi-square tests, and continuous variables were analyzed using General Linear Models. Participants (n = 2,689) …