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Research Nexus : Volume 33 - 2026, Office Of Research And Graduate Studies

Office of Research and Graduate Studies

• Researcher Spotlight
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Potent But Stealthy: Rethink Profile Pollution Against Sequential Recommendation Via Bi-Level Constrained Reinforcement Paradigm, Jiajie Su, Zihan Nan, Yunshan Ma, Xiaobo Xia, Xiaohua Feng, Weiming Liu, Xiang Chen, Xiaolin Zheng, Chaochao Chen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Sequential Recommenders, which exploit dynamic user intents through interaction sequences, are vulnerable to adversarial attacks. While existing attacks primarily rely on data poisoning, they require large-scale user access or fake profiles, thus lacking practicality. In this paper, we focus on the Profile Pollution Attack that subtly contaminates partial user interactions to induce targeted mispredictions. Previous PPA methods suffer from two limitations, i.e., i) overreliance on sequence horizon impact restricts fine-grained perturbations on item transitions, and ii) holistic modifications cause detectable distribution shifts. To address these challenges, we propose a constrained reinforcement driven attack CREAT that synergizes a bi-level optimization framework …

Arkansas Corn And Grain Sorghum Performance Tests 2025, J. F. Carlin, J. P. Kelley, T. N. Spurlock, T. D. Swanson, R. D. Bond, J. C. Mccoy, C. J. Bulloch

Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station Research Series

Report Statement This Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station (AAES) publication summarizes variety trial research conducted by the Arkansas Crop Variety Improvement Program. Variety trial information presented here furthers the AAES mission of conducting research that benefits the citizens of Arkansas by expanding agricultural profitability and strengthening local and state economies. This information is not a recommendation or an endorsement of any product by the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture or AAES. Recommendations interpreted from this information are made and presented by the Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service.

Corn and grain sorghum performance tests are conducted each year in Arkansas by …

Crimes Of The Powerful And The Looting Of Contemporary Nigeria: An Integrated Theoretical Perspective, Charles Ubah

African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies

Crime of the powerful is a humongous social problem with the potential to ravage development and threaten the corporate existence of nation states. The case of contemporary Nigeria is the focal point of analysis in this paper. The objective of the paper, therefore, is to investigate the menace in Nigeria from an integrated theoretical perspective. The methodology was exploratory survey and review of literature which were content analyzed. The theoretical framework is a kind of Modified Multiple Reinforcing Social Forces Theory. Findings indicate that, beside its high prevalence rate, elite criminality in the various forms of corruption, property and environmental …

Understanding The Flow: Deconstructing The Link Between Immigrants And Fentanyl, Madeline F. Nesbitt

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explains how a false link between undocumented immigration and fentanyl becomes widely accepted in the United States. Empirical data show that most fentanyl enters through legal ports of entry and that U.S. citizens account for the majority of those caught transporting it. Why, then, do 41% of Americans attribute overdose deaths to migrants trafficking fentanyl? This project examines how this myth is built, repeated, and sustained, and what policy consequences follow from it.

When complex social problems lack clear culprits, political actors often manufacture them through scapegoating. Current literature documents how political actors link immigrants to drug crimes, …

Adolescent Binge-Like Feeding And Neuroinflammation: Effects Of Intermittent Palatable Diet Access On Microglial Activation In The Brain In Adolescents, Jaimie T. Yu

CMC Senior Theses

Binge eating disorder (BED), one of the most common eating disorders in the United States (Definition & Facts for Binge Eating Disorder - NIDDK, n.d.), is characterized by recurrent episodes of consuming large quantities of food in a short period of time accompanied by a sense of loss of control. The intermittent access (INT) model reliably produces binge-like eating in adult rodents, with animals showing episodic hyperphagia upon time-limited access to a high-fat, high-sugar (HFHS) diet. In adult female rats, INT access produces elevated meal size and reduced satiety ratio relative to controls (Maske et al., 2020), and promotes microglial …

Diplomatic Gaps And Global Finance: How U.S. Ambassadorial Vacancies Affect Bilateral Portfolio Investment Positions, Tianning Qin

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines how the absence of U.S. ambassadors impacts bilateral portfolio investment positions held by investors in the United States and counterpart countries. The panel dataset spans 2001 to 2019, covering 56 counterpart countries in terms of portfolio investment positions held by foreign investors in U.S. securities and 102 counterpart countries in terms of portfolio investment positions held by U.S. investors in foreign countries. Using the instrumental variable approach, the results show that a prolonged vacancy lasting at least three months in a year causes sizable and significant reductions in portfolio investments held by foreign investors in U.S. securities. …

Hidden Fragility: Leveraged Loan Risk And Tail Exposure In The Clo 2.0 Era, Francis P. Gehring Iv

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines whether post-crisis changes in leveraged loan characteristics have increased the underlying credit risk embedded in collateralized loan obligation (CLO) portfolios and whether that risk is fully reflected in market pricing. Since the Global Financial Crisis, the leveraged loan market has expanded significantly alongside the growth of CLOs, while underwriting standards have weakened through higher borrower leverage, covenant-lite lending, and greater private equity sponsorship. Although post-crisis CLOs are often viewed as more resilient because of stronger structural protections, the quality of the underlying collateral remains central to overall risk. Using loan-level data from the Refinitiv DealScan database from …

Converging, But Not Together: Regional Growth After Eu Enlargement, Armine Kardashyan

CMC Senior Theses

This paper studies whether poorer regions in Central and Eastern Europe have caught up to richer ones since EU enlargement, and whether any observed catch-up reflects absolute convergence or convergence conditional on regional fundamentals. Using annual NUTS-3 data for eleven Central and Eastern European member states from 2000 to 2023, I estimate rolling ten-year convergence regressions within a steady-state framework in which regional GDP per capita depends on investment, human capital, and within-window exposure to EU membership.

The results show strong evidence of conditional convergence during the early and middle phases of enlargement. Regions that begin a window above their …

Morals Without Movement: Veganism, Contentious Politics, And The Lifestyle Politics Constraint, Luke M. Carfaro

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines whether veganism constitutes a social movement through Social Movement Theory frameworks, emphasizing Sidney Tarrow's Power in Movement. Through analysis of veganism's empirical properties (collective challenge, common purpose, collective identity, and sustained interaction) and key procedural mechanisms (framing, mobilizing structures, and repertoires of contention), this thesis determines that veganism fails to meet the empirical criteria of a social movement and is more accurately classified as a lifestyle movement—a movement in which political participation is expressed through private consumption rather than sustained collective contention. Using the Make America Healthy Again movement as a counterexample, this thesis comparatively illustrates …

A New Playbook: The Procedural Resilience Of Oregon’S Rooney Rule In The Wake Of Students For Fair Admissions V. Harvard, Jada I. Cook

CMC Senior Theses

This article evaluates the constitutionality of Oregon’s codified Rooney Rule considering the Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard. Passed in 2009, the Oregon mandate requires public universities to include at least one minority applicant in the interview process for all head coaching vacancies. By analyzing the architectural origins of the Rooney Rule within the National Football League (NFL) and the systemic racial exclusion it sought to dismantle, this research explores whether interview-stage mandates, that are applied at the state level, can survive the rigorous application of the strict scrutiny standard. …

Microbial Community Structure In Global Soils, Matthew Jabro

CMC Senior Theses

Soil harbors the most diverse microbial communities on Earth, yet whether predictable community types exist across biomes and whether taxonomic composition encodes habitat of origin remain open questions at global scale. This thesis addresses both questions by applying unsupervised clustering and supervised classification to transformed 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) amplicon profiles from two independent datasets: the global topsoil survey of Bahram et al. (193 samples) and the Earth Microbiome Project (EMP) soil subset of Thompson et al. (2,209 samples). Application of a sample clustering method based on a mixture of Gaussian Graphical Models (MixGGM) identified 19 clusters in the topsoil …

Why Dining Out Stayed Cheap In Japan, Taketo Hayashi

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines why food-away-from-home inflation in Japan was persistently lower than in the United States from 1995 to 2021 and why this dynamic changed after 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two structural buffers sustained the divergence: wage stagnation in Japan, which kept restaurant labor costs flat for nearly three decades, and a strong yen, which absorbed global commodity price shocks before they could reach restaurant menus. In 2008, the financial crisis sent food and energy prices skyrocketing. However, even though Japan imports most of its food and energy, the effects from global price increases were due to a strong …

Rethinking Reentry In The United States: A Comparative Analysis Of Incarceration Strategies In Norway, Singapore, And Austria, Amelia Ulmer

CMC Senior Theses

The prison reentry system in the United States remains a pressing social, economic, and political issue, as hundreds of thousands of prisoners are released each year with few resources to assist them with their transition. In fact, these previously incarcerated people are arguably set up to fail, which leads to over half of them reoffending within two years. This thesis analyzes how the United States should reform its current prison system based on lessons learned from three international case studies. These three case studies, Norway, Singapore, and Austria were chosen as countries that have globally low recidivism rates and unique …

Procedural Rhetoric And Prosociality: How Game Mechanics Shape Altruistic Decision-Making, Elijah Emory-Muhammad

CMC Senior Theses

This study investigates how different prosocial video game designs influence subsequent altruistic behavior, specifically comparing interactive narratives with procedural rhetoric. While prior research demonstrates that prosocial games can prime helpful behaviors, less is known about the underlying mechanical structures driving these effects. Fifteen participants engaged with either an Interactive Narrative Game (ING) or a Procedural Rhetoric Game (PRG) before completing a resource allocation task (Dictator Game). Results revealed no statistically significant differences between the two conditions in promoting sacrificial altruism or satisfying basic psychological needs. Instead, participants across both groups demonstrated a strong adherence to an equality-seeking norm, consistently choosing …

Moving The Goalposts: Saudi Arabia, Football, And The Changing Rules Of Global Legitimacy, Sanskriti S. Kumar

CMC Senior Theses

Most commentary on Gulf state sports investment concludes that sportswashing fails: Saudi Arabia's favorability ratings remain low, its human rights situation has deteriorated, and Western public opinion shows no measurable improvement. This thesis argues that this conclusion applies the wrong standard. Asking whether Saudi Arabia has become more admired misses the more consequential question of whether it has become more accepted, and treating those two outcomes as equivalent produces misleading results. This thesis develops an original Normalization-Attraction Framework to evaluate whether the Saudi Public Investment Fund's October 2021 acquisition of Newcastle United Football Club has generated measurable political returns. The …

From Collective Punishment To Collective Action, Samuel N. Johnson-Saeger

CMC Senior Theses

Regime change may be sought in two primary ways, absent a turn to internal or external violence: through nonviolent resistance, from within, and sanctions, from abroad. This paper is about how those two pathways are intertwined. I challenge two different strands of the existing literature. First, I show that Liou et al. (2022)'s finding that sanctions increase the predicted probability of nonviolent resistance movement progress is subject to substantial upward bias from country heterogeneity. Incorporating country fixed effects, I show that sanctions, on average, have no statistically significant effect on resistance outcomes. Second, I challenge Chenoweth and Stephan (2008)'s argument …

The Aporia Of Divinity: Hegel's Metaphysics In Conversation With Spinoza And Schelling, Abhinav Ganesh

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores the intersections between the metaphysics of Spinoza, Hegel, and Schelling, as seen through their engagement with the concept of immediacy. I aim to show that this perspective offers a fruitful way of understanding the arguments of these three figures, while also complicating our understanding of the nature of immediacy and its importance to metaphysical systems.

Constitutional Rights, Human Dignity, And The American Dream: A Historical Analysis Of U.S. Immigration Policy After 9/11, Shelby Mcilroy

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines how United States immigration policy transformed after September 11, 2001 and asks whether modern immigration enforcement remains consistent with constitutional principles, human rights protections, and the broader ideals associated with the American Dream. The project investigates how immigration shifted from a primarily civil administrative system into one increasingly defined by surveillance, detention, and punishment. The central question guiding this research is whether the securitization of immigration has reshaped not only enforcement practices, but also the meaning of constitutional protections and human dignity for both citizens and noncitizens.

To answer this question, this thesis conducts a historical policy …

Family, Stability, Mentors & Money: Student Definitions Of Success, Arturo Caldera

CMC Senior Theses

This research takes a deep dive into the factors shaping marginalized communities’ educational experiences, particularly for low-income Latino students from migrant backgrounds navigating public schooling spaces. Across sixteen qualitative interviews, participant narratives reveal how a systemic lack of resources at the institutional, interpersonal, and structural levels undermines the quality of support students receive and shapes their academic trajectories. Grounded in student-centered practices and informed by scholarship in multicultural education, Chicanx/Latinx studies, feminism, and psychology, this study contributes to ongoing efforts to move beyond deficit-based frameworks and instead recognize the cultural wealth, knowledge, and resilience students bring from their homes and …

The Original Joe Rogan: Evidence From Walter Winchell And American Political Outcomes, Quinten E. Carney

CMC Senior Theses

I study the impact of the first entertainment-news figures in American history. Walter Winchell seamlessly mixed celebrity gossip, political news, and personal attacks to create one of the most popular radio programs in the 1930s and 1940s. As a propagandist for Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), he supported the New Deal, American involvement in World War II, and anti-fascism. Replicating early Irregular Terrain Model (ITM) work, I find that exposure to Winchell had no effect on voting outcomes or support for WWII through war-bond sales.  I explore potential channels of influence in a consolidated media ecosystem that existed during Winchell’s time.

Wiener-Granger Causality To Model Banking Sector Contagion, Riya Bhasin

CMC Senior Theses

In this thesis, we explore the main drivers behind the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and how the interconnectivity of banking sectors contributed to the worldwide spread of its effects. To understand how this became a global phenomenon, we apply linear Wiener-Granger Causality as a form of network analysis, building on pre-existing methodology in order to study continent banking indices. We find connections across locales on the continent and country level, but ones that are weak. Our modelling was insufficient to completely capture existing and well-known relationships accurately. This occurs due to limitations of the data and of the linear models’ …

From Imbalance To Phenotype: Neurodevelopmental Alterations In Trisomy 21, Andrew Yuan

CMC Senior Theses

Down syndrome (DS), caused by Trisomy 21, is the most common genetic cause of intellectual disability. Individuals with DS consistently show reduced brain volume, decreased cortical thickness, and lasting impairments in learning, memory, and executive functioning. These neuroanatomical changes emerge during fetal development and are accompanied by chronic immune dysregulation due to the triplication of four interferon receptor genes on chromosome 21. Although decreased neuron progenitor proliferation has been known to contribute to these phenotypes, the precise timing and cellular mechanisms underlying disruptions in neurogenesis remain not fully understood. This study used immunohistochemistry to examine human fetal cortical tissue from …

Demographics, Macroeconomy, Or Monetary Policy: What Drives Japan’S Short Run Economic Movements Since 1991?, James Ac Raymond Ii

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines how Japan’s post-1991 macroeconomy behaves by analyzing quarterly inflation, money growth, and equity returns, with a focus on whether demographic change, macroeconomic indicators, or monetary policy better explains short run movements. Using Newey West regressions, the results show that demographics exert almost no influence at short horizons, while major Bank of Japan policy regimes such as QQE, NIRP, and YCC strongly shape liquidity conditions and dominate both money growth and equity performance. The findings suggest that demographic change matters primarily as a long run force that creates a low-rate environment, while short run dynamics are driven almost …

The Impact Of Asu 2023-08 On Reported Profitability Of Cryptocurrency-Exposed Firms, William C. Graff

CMC Senior Theses

This study investigates the performance of corporate cryptocurrency holdings in the context of recent accounting regulation changes. It specifically examines how adopting Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2023-08 has affected firms with material cryptocurrency exposure. Using a panel of U.S. public firms from 2019–2025, I classified 138 companies as having material crypto exposure if cryptocurrency comprised more than 0.01 percent of total assets, which was manually calculated. Of these firms, 67 were exposed to the rule change (under GAAP), 66 were not, and 5 were excluded from final calculations due to a lack of relevant information.

Results showed statistically significant effects …

Attention And Technical Analysis: State‑Dependent Predictability Of Cnn‑Based Stock Return Forecasts, Crystal Y. Ma

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis studies how investor attention around Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announcements affects cross-sectional return predictability measured by a convolutional neural network (CNN) trained on price charts. I replicate Jiang, Kelly, and Xiu’s (2023) image-based CNN using 20-day OHLCV “price images,” train it on U.S. equities from 1993–2000, freeze the model, and apply it out of sample to 2001–2024 CRSP data. The CNN assigns each stock a weekly probability of outperforming which is then sorted into deciles that form high–minus–low (H–L) long–short portfolios at horizons of 1 to 10 trading days. For matched non-FOMC (control) weeks, the equal-weighted CNN …

Investor Reactions To Clinical Trial Outcomes: Interpreting Impacts Using Ai-Based Measures Of Investor Sentiment, Sofia K. Weinstein

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines how investors react to biotechnology firms’ clinical trial announcements and whether artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance our understanding of those market reactions. Using a representative sample of 95 firm-event observations between 2014 and 2025, the study measures cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) surrounding clinical readouts, regulatory decisions, and partnership disclosures. Event-study regressions test for heterogeneity across trial phase, therapeutic area, and textual sentiment derived from company press releases. Consistent with expectations, later-phase trials, particularly Phase II and III, produce stronger short-term abnormal returns. However, categorical variables such as phase or therapeutic area explain little of the total variation …

Policy Recommendations To Reduce False Confessions By Juveniles In Wrongful Conviction Cases, Rohit R. Iyer

CMC Senior Theses

This research focuses on false confessions by juveniles in the United States justice system. False confessions are statements made by suspects during investigations in which individuals provide statements to investigators admitting to a crime in which they had no part. In these cases, individuals often spend years, if not the entirety, of their lives behind bars for crimes they did not commit. False confessions are the result of a number of systemic factors that will be discussed in this paper. While relatively rare, they are one of the largest blemishes in the U.S. justice system. Juveniles – individuals below the …

Determinants Of The U.S. Experience Economy: A Macroeconomic, Demographic, And Technological Analysis, 1984–2023, Chloe Ross

CMC Senior Theses

Pine and Gilmore et al. 1999 examine American consumers’ preferences for experiences over durable goods. Since then, there has been a multitude of research on the psychology behind this shift in consumption preferences, and there has been an abundance of media coverage of the new “experience economy.” This thesis goes beyond psychology and examines the macroeconomic, demographic, and technological determinants of experiential spending in the United States from 1984 to 2023. I use annual data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES) and variables from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), US …

10 Years Of The Hive: Successes, Challenges, And Lessons For Designing Creative Learning Hubs In Higher Education, Celine Bernhardt-Lanier

CMC Senior Theses

College students are often told to be “innovative” and to prepare themselves for a rapidly changing job market. Yet, most institutional learning environments are built for everything but that, focusing on efficiency, mastery, and content delivery. The Hive, formerly known as the Rick and Susan Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity, pushes against this reality in higher ed. Founded ten years ago and nestled in a corner of East 7th Street in Claremont, California, the Hive brings together students, faculty, and staff through workshops, classes, skillshares, and events that are centered around making, reflecting, and collaborating. Drawing on eight semi-structured …