The Moderating Effect Of Dietary Fiber And Protein On The Relationship Between Symptoms Of Depression And Anxiety And Cognitive Decline, Samantha L. Gardener, Hilal Salim Said Al Shamsi, Stephanie R. Rainey-Smith, Hamid R. Sohrabi, Kevin Taddei, Colin L. Masters, Ralph N. Martins, W. M.A.D. Binosha Fernando

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Introduction: Depression and anxiety often co-occur with Alzheimer's disease, exacerbating the associated cognitive impairment. This study examined moderating effects of dietary protein and fiber intake on relationships between depressive and anxiety symptoms, and cognitive decline.

Methods: Cognitively unimpaired (n = 553; 39.4% male, 70.6 ± 9.6 years) provided baseline fiber and protein intake, and had repeated cognitive testing and symptoms of depression/anxiety measured (baseline and up to eight follow-ups over 144 months). Moderation and simple slope analyses were employed in the cohort as a whole and following stratification by sex.

Results: Fiber intake moderated the relationship between change in depressive …

Effect Of Anisotropic Hydraulic Conductivity On Groundwater Seepage Into A Rectangular Tunnel In Submerged Sand, Deki Yangzom Ghaley, Sanjay Kumar Shukla

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Managing groundwater seepage around tunnels is critical to tunnel design, particularly when the tunnel is constructed below the water table. Accurate seepage flow patterns and water inflow prediction under ordinary and critical conditions are imperative to mitigate potential tunnel construction and service disasters. In the past, an in-depth study on the anisotropic hydraulic conductivity of the soil mass that may affect the seepage condition has not been carried out. In this work, this aspect has been investigated numerically for a rectangular tunnel submerged within a homogeneous sand mass, considering the anisotropic hydraulic conductivity ratio (kz / kx, kz = vertical …

A U.S. Scientific Community Review Of Carbon Cycle Science Gaps And Opportunities To Better Support Earth System Science And Carbon Management, N. C. Parazoo, D. Carroll, J. B. Abshire, Y. M. Bar-On, R. A. Birdsey, A. A. Bloom, K. W. Bowman, R. K. Braghiere, L. M. Bruhwiler, B. Byrne, A. Chatterjee, D. Crisp, L. Duncanson, A. F. Feldman, A. M. Fox, C. Frankenberg, B. A. Gay, F. Hopkins, F. M. Hoffman

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue to grow, while natural carbon reservoirs are becoming increasingly vulnerable to anthropogenic pressures, climate extremes, and disturbance. These changes are impacting humans, ecosystems, and natural resources worldwide. Tracking and mitigating GHG emissions require a pivot to operational monitoring of regional carbon flux and stock changes. The current GHG observing system is addressing needs at two distinct scales: 1) Local scale (< 1 km), related to anthropogenic point source emissions, and 2) global scales (> 1000 km), related to land and ocean carbon sinks. More focus on intermediate (10–1000 km) scales is needed to more effectively monitor progress in reducing carbon emissions, enhancing removals, and maintaining sinks.Representatives from carbon …

Physical Inactivity In Preclinical Alzheimer's Disease: Risk Factor, Early Symptom, Or Both, Jiawei Zhao, Xin Li, Mengxuan Wu, Zhanjun Zhang

Communication Sciences & Disorders Faculty Publications

Physical inactivity is a key modifiable risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, emerging evidence suggests a bidirectional relationship where inactivity also serves as an early manifestation of AD pathology. This perspective synthesizes recent findings from long-term epidemiological cohorts, brainstem neuropathology, and digital phenotyping to reconceptualize the role of inactivity in preclinical AD. Early tau accumulation in catecholaminergic nuclei (locus coeruleus and ventral tegmental area) disrupts circuits essential for reward valuation and effort calculation. We hypothesize that this neurobiological failure may manifest as prodromal apathy and declining physical activity years before cognitive impairment. Standard metrics like step counts fail to …

Dimpled Surfaces For Thermal Performance Enhancement In Solar Collectors, Furqan Jamil, Baig, Amna Adil, Aasia Farrukh

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

With escalating environmental concerns, solar energy is a feasible approach to support a sustainable environment, considering the pressing need to move away from fossil fuels. Optimizing solar collector’s efficiency improves energy capture and lowers carbon emissions. One innovative technique is to the surface of solar collectors. The heat transfer is greatly increased by adding such tiny indentations, encouraging turbulence in the incoming working fluid. The article reviews the effect of dimples on the efficiency of various collector applications, including flat plate collector, solar water heaters, solar air collectors, parabolic trough solar collectors, photovoltaic thermal systems, desalination, and many others. The …

Pfas Quantification Using Solid Phase Extraction And Low Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (Spe-Nmr), Nicholas N.A. Ling, Ghasemi, Ella Shilliday, Masoumeh Zargar, Einar Fridjonsson, Michael L. Johns

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are synthetic chemicals that are highly resistant to biodegradation. Due to their bioaccumulation, long-term persistence, and adverse human health effects, they have been classified as organic pollutants. The leaching of PFAS into water sources has resulted in their detection in global drinking water supplies. To mitigate adverse health effects and minimise environmental damage, regulations regarding maximum allowable PFAS concentrations in water have been imposed. Traditional PFAS in water quantification methods, such as liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS), gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS), and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), have intrinsic limitations that pose challenges in such PFAS analysis. …

Operational Agency: A Permeable Legal Fiction For Tracing Culpability In Ai Systems, Anirban Mukherjee, Hannah H. Chang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Modern artificial intelligence (AI) systems act with a high degree of independence yet lack legal personhood—a paradox that fractures doctrines grounded in human-centric notions of mens rea and actus reus. This Article introduces Operational Agency (OA)—a permeable legal fiction structured as an ex post evidentiary framework—and Operational Agency Graph (OAG)—a tool for mapping causal interactions among human actors, organizations, and AI systems. OA evaluates an AI’s observable operational characteristics: its goal-directedness (as a proxy for intent), predictive processing (as a proxy for foresight), and safety architecture (as a proxy for standard of care). OAG operationalizes that analysis by embedding these …

Alumni Voices. Beyond Graduation: The Lifelong Global Impact Of A Uk Education, Sladana Krstic, Alexander Towne

Higher education research

The third round of the British Council Alumni Voices survey provides robust and timely evidence of the enduring value of a UK higher education experience. Drawing on three years of longitudinal survey data, supplemented by a number of interviews, the findings highlight how UK education continues to deliver skills, support professional progression, and foster long lasting international networks that extend well beyond graduation and national borders. Nearly three quarters of respondents report that in the last 12 months they have maintained contact with people they first met during their UK studies, and almost 84 percent have recommended a UK study …

Navigating Unemployment Without Unemployment Insurance: Evidence From Singapore, Kim, Lanjie Wang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This study investigates the short-term impacts of unemployment among older workers (aged 50–62) in Singapore, a setting with-out public unemployment insurance. Using monthly panel data from the Singapore Life Panel, we analyse dynamic effects onmajor life outcomes such as income, spending, health, and subjective wellbeing over 2 years post-unemployment. Our findingsreveal substantial initial earnings losses with incomplete recovery: income remains 50.7% below pre-unemployment levels after24 months. Despite this persistent income gap, total household expenditure declines by 9.8% on average over 2 years (rangingfrom 7% to 16% across months). The implied two-year marginal propensity to consume is about 0.182, smaller than …

The Effect Of Vaccine Mandates On Disease Spread: Evidence From College Covid-19 Mandates, Riley K. Acton, Wenjia Cao, Emily E. Cook, Scott A. Imberman, Michael F. Lovenheim

Research Collection School Of Economics

Nearly 700 4-year U.S. colleges mandated students receive COVID-19 vaccinations in fall 2021. Using data on college policies and county health, we estimate how mandates affect surrounding communities. Event studies from August to November 2021 show that mandates covering all colleges in a county reduced COVID-19 deaths by 5.6 per 100,000 persons, a 4.6% reduction in the U.S. total during this period. Mandates reduced COVID cases by 504 and ICU admissions by 16.2 per 100,000, though we see no statistically significant impact on hospitalizations. Impacts are larger in counties with larger college populations and low estimated ex-ante student vaccination rates.

The Unintended Consequences Of International Student Shortage: Evidence From South Korea, Chung-Yoon Choi, Syngjoo Choi, Seonghoon Kim, Jongkwan Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study the role of international students in the higher education sector and the local economy by exploiting a policy reform in South Korea that restricted the admission of foreign students to local universities. By comparing the pre- and post-reform differences across universities with different pre-reform shares of international student enrollment, we show that an international student shortage resulting from this policy reform significantly worsened the financial outcomes of universities and consequently led to reduced investment in their students. We also document that a reduction in the number of international students in local areas decreased native employment, mainly in low-skilled …

Integrated Optimization Of Farmland Cultivation And Fertilizer Application: Implications For Farm Management And Crop Production, Onur Boyabatli, Lusheng Shao, Yangfang (Helen) Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Motivated by the fresh produce industry, this paper studies a farmer’s joint cultivation and fertilizer (a representative farm input) application decisions facing uncertainties in yield, crop price, and harvesting cost where the latter two are yield dependent and yield is stochastically increasing in the fertilizer application rate. We develop a two-stage stochastic model of a farmer growing a commodity crop in a single season to maximize the expected profit. We then use the model to evaluate the optimal expected harvest volume (a measure of crop production). Our analytical analysis is complemented with numerical experiments calibrated to data. We characterize how …

Veribrief: A Multi-Agent Retrieval-Augmented Generation System For Policy Decision Support, Imane Bahji

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

VeriBrief is a multi-agent retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) system for evidence-grounded economic policy analysis. The system orchestrates a five-stage LangGraph pipeline, retrieval, research, analysis, synthesis, and critique, to produce cited, structured responses while detecting out-of-scope queries. An empirical evaluation on eight questions drawn from official U.S. macroeconomic releases compared VeriBrief against a single-pass RAG baseline. The multi-agent system achieved 100% refusal precision on unanswerable analytical queries versus 0% for the baseline. Unsupported claims fell substantially on answerable factual questions. A context-propagation defect discovered during evaluation was diagnosed and corrected. Limitations include failure of the evidence gate on policy-counterfactual queries and a …

Exploring The Relationship Between Energy Use And Sectoral Output At The Useful Stage, Daniel Chester, Ritika Susarla, Paul Brockway, Emmanuel Aramendia, Matthew Magness, Matthew Kuperus Heun

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

1.Develop a publicly-available dataset of sectoral useful energy/exergy intensities

• And final, where not already existing

• How do global sector-level trends change when viewed from the useful stage?
• Are similar convergence patterns observed compared to previous analysis?
• How do sectoral differences explain aggregate convergence/divergence?

Smart-Twin: Systematic Modeling And Real-Time Transportation With Digital Twins, Hovannes Kulhandjian

Mineta Transportation Institute

Urban transportation networks are increasingly affected by everyday congestion, non-recurring disruptions, and limited real-time visibility into what is happening on the road. Transportation agencies require advanced tools that support faster, proactive management and data-driven infrastructure decisions rather than passive monitoring. This report presents SMART-TWIN, an Artificial Intelligence (AI)–driven Digital Twin framework designed for real-time traffic operations, disruption detection, and performance-based decision-making support. The SMART-TWIN architecture integrates microscopic traffic simulation (detailed traffic modeling), long-horizon synthetic demand generation simulating real travel patterns, supervised machine learning, and performance analysis within a unified and reproducible workflow. A corridor-scale Digital Twin was developed for the …

Securing A Calibrated Marketing Budget, Junqiu Jiang, Kapil R. Tuli, Nirmalya Kumar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study investigates the sociopolitical processes underlying the development and approval of marketing budgets in large multinational corporations. While prior research has focused extensively on optimizing the level and allocation of marketing budgets, little attention has been paid to the internal organizational dynamics that shape the marketing budgeting process. Drawing on the theories-in-use of both CMOs and CEOs, this study examines how these executives codevelop a calibrated marketing budget (CMKB)—a budget that aligns expected performance with allocated resources through an iterative, participative process. Field data show that CMOs deploy a set of signals to assuage CEO concerns related to goal …

The Power And Peril Of Awe In Leadership: Transforming Follower Identity And Behavior, Jack Mcguire, Daniel Mcallister, Jochen Menges, David De Cremer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Awe is a profound emotion that has captured significant attention within psychological research. While the potential for leaders to inspire awe in followers has received some recognition, systematic research on the nature and effects of awe in leadership—and within organizational contexts more broadly—remains limited. In this article, we offer a conceptual framework that explains the multifaceted and transformative nature of leadership through the power of awe. Specifically, we identify four leader behaviors—charismatic leadership tactics, exceptional performance, problem reframing, and self-sacrificial behavior—that elicit awe among followers. We further propose three variants of awe-inspiring leaders, describing how variation in a leader’s self-construal …

The Anatomy Of Earnings Conference Calls: An Integrative Framework For Management Research, Matthew P. Mount, Gokhan Ertug, Wei Shi, Tengjian Zou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Over the last decade, there has been an explosion in the use of diverse data sources by management scholars to observe and capture managerial and organizational constructs that have historically been difficult to access. This surge has been driven by the growing availability of rich, multi-modal data—textual, image, and audio (Luo, Jia, Ouyang, & Fang, 2024)—together with advances in analytical techniques to process and analyze data, such as computer-aided text analysis (Harrison, Thurgood, Boivie, & Pfarrer, 2019), machine learning (Choudhury, Wang, Carlson, & Khanna, 2019; Harrison, Josefy, Kalm, & Krause, 2023), and deep learning (Gouvard, Goldberg, & Srivastava, 2023). These …

Keeping Up With The Times? Rethinking Social Evaluations Research Under Contemporary Technological And Sociopolitical Forces, Marco Clemente, Michael Etter, Yuliya Snihur, Gokhan Ertug, Graffin Scott, Anastasiya Zavyalova

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The context within which social evaluations form has been fundamentally altered by contemporary forces, such as digital technologies, polarization, activism, politicization of business, and geopolitical tensions. While research on social evaluations has generated rich insights into the formation and development of constructs, such as legitimacy, status, reputation, stigma, trust, and celebrity, much of this work has been developed under the assumptions of relative stability, coherent audiences, and well-defined intermediary roles. These assumptions are increasingly challenged in this changing context, requiring us to rethink the formation and management of social evaluations. The articles in this special issue focus on these changes. …

Investigating The Factors Impacting Consumer Intentions To Purchase Energy-Efficient Appliances, Yusra Memon, Raheela Haque

Business Review

Energy-efficient appliances protect the environment through reduced energy usage, lowering pollution, and preserving natural resources. Hence, this research is aimed to examine the factors influencing Pakistani consumers' intentions to purchase energy-efficient appliances. This research adopts a quantitative approach and purposive sampling technique, and the data was collected from 350 respondents belonging to major metropolitan cities of Pakistan i.e. Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore, Islamabad, while SPSS and AMOS were used for data analysis. The study supports a number of important relations suggested by the Value–Belief–Norm (VBN) theory in the framework of buying energy-efficient appliances (EEAs) in Pakistan. Biospheric values (BV) significantly forecast …

Routes To Sustainable Goods Movement: How Local And Regional Governmental Agencies Can Plan For The Sustainable Freight System Of The Future, Serena E. Alexander, Avante Grady

Mineta Transportation Institute

Freight transportation plays a critical role in supporting economic activity and everyday consumption across metropolitan regions, but growing freight demand continues to increase congestion, infrastructure strain, greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, and safety risks. These impacts often disproportionately affect low-income and environmentally burdened communities. This report examines how metropolitan regions across the United States are planning for sustainable freight transportation through content analysis of freight and goods movement plans and interviews with freight planning professionals. The study analyzes plans from eight major metropolitan regions to identify common freight planning strategies, implementation approaches, opportunities, and barriers related to sustainability, resilience, and …

Preparing Today’S Workforce For Tomorrow’S Autonomous Transportation: Bridging Electrical And Civil Engineering Disciplines, Masoud Ghodrat Abadi, Rohollah Moghadam

Mineta Transportation Institute

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are expected to transform transportation systems and reshape workforce needs across engineering and related fields. Although existing AV workforce development efforts often emphasize electrical engineering, computer science, and mechanical engineering, transportation engineering remains underrepresented despite its importance to infrastructure, traffic operations, safety, and mobility integration. This study addresses that gap through the development, implementation, and evaluation of an interdisciplinary certificate program, Workforce for Autonomous Vehicle Engineering (WAVE), at California State University, Sacramento. The program was designed to bridge transportation engineering and electrical engineering through a two-step curriculum model consisting of theoretical educational modules and hands-on laboratory activities. …

Mitigating Negative Consequences Of New Urban Growth In Disadvantaged Communities, Shishir Mathur, Christopher E. Ferrell, Cindy Adrian

Mineta Transportation Institute

New housing and development in California are often planned in communities that already face economic hardship, environmental burdens, and limited access to reliable transportation. Recent research finds specifically that in the San Francisco (S.F.) Bay Area and Southern California (SoCal) metropolitan regions, there is a high propensity to plan new urban development in socially, economically, and environmentally disadvantaged communities (DACs) with poor transit accessibility and limited personal mobility. This project first reviews the literature to identify potential unintended negative impacts of high concentrations of new urban growth in DACs across social, economic, educational, environmental, and transportation dimensions. It then identifies …

The Effectiveness Of Writing Professional Development For Instructional Leaders On Student Academic Outcomes, Kourtney Y. Lavergne

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore how elementary instructional leaders in a Southeast Texas school district perceived and utilized the R.A.C.E. (Restate, Answer, Cite, Explain) professional development training as an instructional tool to improve student writing performance. The study was guided by two research questions: (a) How do elementary instructional leaders perceive the R.A.C.E. professional development training as an effective English writing curriculum tool to improve student performance? and (b) How do instructional leaders utilize the R.A.C.E. professional development training to improve student writing performance in their classrooms? The study was grounded in adult learning theory …

Professional Dispositions In Coaching Education: Icf-Credentialed Coaches’ Perspectives On Development And Assessment, Michelle Renee Thompson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative phenomenological study examined how professional dispositions were defined, experienced, and assessed in coaching education within the rapidly expanding field of professional coaching. The problem addressed was the lack of a clear understanding of professional dispositions in coaching and the absence of a systematic dispositional assessment comparable to that in counselor education. The researcher’s purpose was to explore how credentialed professional-level coaches defined and identified professional dispositions for effective coaching engagements and how these dispositions aligned with constructs in other helping professions. The researcher collected data through semistructured videoconference interviews. Purposeful and snowball sampling yielded 16 U.S.-based coaches who …

A Perspective As Observed By Public Middle School Teachers On A Lack Of Empathy Demonstrated By Public Middle School Students, Gail P. Hall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore a perspective as observed by public middle school teachers on a lack of empathy demonstrated by public middle school students. The research analyzed how public middle school teachers in the southern region of Texas described their perception of how a lack of empathy demonstrated by public middle school students impacted students during the school day. The study involved 10 selected participants who participated in a semistructured open-ended interview on the Google Meet platform. The participants consisted of 90% female and 10% male, with a combined total of 91 years of …

Attendance And Academic Performance: A Comparison Of 4-Day And 5-Day School Week Schedules In Texas High Schools, Cynthia Miles

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This quantitative cross-sectional comparable study examined the differences in academic performance and attendance in Texas public high school campuses between those operating on a 4-day instructional week and those operating on a 5-day instructional week. The study used a quantitative, cross-sectional comparable design. The analysis included campus-level data from the Texas Education Agency’s Texas Academic Performance Reports. The independent variable was instructional schedule—either a 4-day or a 5-day instructional week. The dependent variables included campus attendance rates and student performance on the English I and Algebra I End-of-Course (EOC) STAAR (State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness) assessments of ninth-grade …

Knowledge-State Generative Agents For Pre-Assessment Question Evaluation, Ping Fan Ke, Yi Meng Lau, Siaw Ling Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper introduces a Knowledge‑State Generative Agent framework for evaluating the quality of pre‑assessment questions. The framework employs large language model (LLM)–based agents prompted to adopt a teacher persona to simulate the responses of students with and without mastery of targeted knowledge components. A preliminary empirical study using archival data from 424 students enrolled in an Information Systems Management course indicates that the proposed approach yields interpretable metrics under Classical Test Theory. Results further show that agents instantiated with the relevant mastered knowledge components exhibit systematically higher performance than agents lacking such mastery. In addition, the study suggests that teacher-persona …

Public, Private, Acquired, Alexander I. Platt, Matthew T. Wansley

Articles

For the last quarter-century, IPOs have been declining. SEC officials usually attribute the decline to startups’ choices to stay private. But that explanation is incomplete. As startups grow, they face a three-way choice between going public, staying private, and being acquired, and they have increasingly chosen the third option. In this Essay, we show how securities regulation pushes startups towards acquisitions by increasing the cost of raising capital and accessing liquidity in both public and private markets. We consider how the trend towards acquisitions could reduce competition, innovation, opportunities for diversification, and transparency. And we offer suggestions for how the …

2026 July, Morehead State University. Office Of Communications & Marketing.

Morehead State Press Release Archive, 1961 to the Present

Press releases for July of 2026.