Digital Commons Network^™

Gig Worker Social Referrals On An On-Demand Food Delivery Platform, Hai Wang, Hao Sun, Peter Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Social referral programs are commonly used by online labor platforms to incentivize labor supply by rewarding existing workers for successful referrals. This study investigates the impact of such programs on gig workers' labor supply in online labor platforms using data from an on-demand food delivery platform in Singapore. In particular, we analyze how gig workers' past labor supply and referral behavior influence the generation and value of social referrals. This research offers insights into the mechanisms that drive labor supply dynamics in the gig economy and highlights the effectiveness of social referral programs for shaping worker behavior and enhancing platform …

Compendia: Automated Visual Storytelling Generation From Online Article Collection, Manusha Imesh Karunathilaka Gamage Vidana, Litian Lei, Yiming Gao, Yong Wang, Jiannan Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In the digital age, readers value quantitative journalism that is clear, concise, analytical, and humancentred. To understand complex topics, they often piece together scattered facts from multiple articles. Visual storytelling can transform fragmented information into clear, engaging narratives, yet its use with unstructured online articles remains largely unexplored. To fill this gap, we present Compendia, an automated system that analyzes online articles in response to a user’s query and generates a coherent data story tailored to the user’s informational needs. Compendia addresses key challenges of storytelling from unstructured text through two modules covering: Online Article Retrieval, which gathers relevant articles; …

Harnessing Coherent-Wave Control For Sensing Applications In Scattering Media, Pablo Xavier Jara Palacios

Doctoral Dissertations

"Diffuse electromagnetic waves are widely used for non-invasive sensing and imaging in complex scattering media such as biological tissues. A fundamental limitation of such techniques is the scarcity of detected photons: as the source-detector separation increases to access deeper regions of the medium, the signal strength decays rapidly, leading to poor signal-to-noise ratio and limited sensitivity. This dissertation addresses this challenge through a combination of theory and computation.

We show that coherent control of the incident optical wavefront can compensate for the scarcity of detected photons that limits conventional diffuse optical imaging, typically performed in the near-infrared spectral region. By …

Reflections On Linear B (Part 13): Sign 21 May Derive From The Ancient Egyptian 'Wedjat Eye’ (‘Eye Of Horus’ But Also Associated With Ra), Gerald Leonard Cohen

Arts, Languages and Philosophy Faculty Research & Creative Works

This article suggests that Linear B sign 21 (of unknown origin)

may derive ultimately from the Ancient Egyptian ‘wedjat eye’

(Eye of Horus). A point of special interest here is the possibility

that the pronunciation of Linear B sign 21 (designated as ‘qi’)

derives in abbreviated form from the Proto-Indo-European dual

of ‘eye’ and would therefore be the oldest Greek attestation of

that reconstructed PIE form.

The Impact Of Value Homophily, Rational And Emotional Persuasion On Information Passing Of Social Media Advertisements: A Model Comparison Approach, Gloria Hui Wen Liu, Cecil Eng Huang Chua, Neil Chueh An Lee, Jenny Hua Jen Wu

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

Increasingly, businesses collaborate with influencers and content creators (the source) to advertise on social media, with social media users being exposed to an environment saturated with unsolicited advertisements. With social contacts remaining the most trusted advertisement sources, users' passing of such advertisements helps their dissemination and creates a specific kind of electronic word of mouth called information passing. Information passing involves users forwarding advertisements about products/services to someone else. Prior studies have found at least three factors influence information passing, including value homophily (similarity with the source as perceived by users), rational appeal (information about how a product can meet …

Hardware Without Humanware: Robot Adoption, Talent Structure Degradation, And Firm Innovation, Wenhao Sun, Zhenyu Wu, Chevy-Hanqing Fang

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

Contrary to the prevailing view that automation complements skilled labor in advanced economies, this study examines the unintended consequences of robot adoption in emerging markets. Drawing on strategic human capital theory, we exploit China's manufacturing sector as a natural experiment to identify the causal impact of industrial intelligence on firm-level innovation. Using a unique dataset of more than 90,000 public and private firms from the National Enterprise Innovation Database (2008–2014), we uncover a counterintuitive result: robot adoption significantly reduces firm innovation, which is notably more pronounced for private-owned firms and those with weaker innovation capabilities. Mediation analyses further show that …

Gubernatorial Re-Election Incentives, Local Investment Bias, And Pension Fund Performance, Hongxian Zhang, Liang Guo, Jun Hao, Yu Liu

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

We investigate the impact of gubernatorial re-election incentive and political factors on US public pension funds from 1990 to 2022. Our empirical analysis finds no significant overall relationship between gubernatorial re-election incentives and local bias in the full sample. However, the effect of gubernatorial re-election incentives on local bias is influenced by a state's level of corruption. Specifically, in states within the lowest corruption quantile, governors eligible for re-election tend to prioritize local investments to gain consistent support. In contrast, in states within the highest corruption quantile, heightened scrutiny may encourage re-election-eligible governors to adopt conservative investment policies that do …

Counterfactual Indeterminacy Bias In Family Firm Research, Chevy-Hanqing Fang, James J. Chrisman, Alfredo De Massis

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

Ever since scholars recognized that family firms are heterogeneous, many studies have attempted to compare different types of family firms without ensuring that the source of heterogeneity is unique to family firms. When the source of heterogeneity among family firms resembles the source of heterogeneity among nonfamily firms, the problem of counterfactual indeterminacy bias can lead to misleading or irrelevant findings that fail to distinguish the effects of family influence from factors that affect all firms. We delineate common forms of this bias and offer recommendations to prevent it in research on family firm behavior and performance.

Scalable Transfer Of Dna Origami–Directed Nanoparticle Arrays Onto Functional Surfaces Using Thermal Release Tape, Yuwei Zhang, Chikadibia Genevieve Edward, Ethan Keuhn, Shelley D. Minteer, Risheng Wang

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

Precise integration of DNA origami nanostructures onto functional substrates is essential for advancing electronics, photonics, and biosensing. However, most surface-assembly methods are highly sensitive to substrate type, limiting their broader applications. Here, we introduce a thermal release tape (TRT)-assisted transfer method that enables efficient, large-area printing of DNA origami-guided gold nanoparticle (AuNP-DNA origami) arrays from mica onto diverse surfaces. The method relies on differential adhesion: AuNP-DNA origami arrays form strong electrostatic and hydrogen-bonding interactions with 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES)-functionalized receiver substrates, while the TRT adhesive weakens upon heating to 120°C, allowing release from the tape. Using this approach, well-ordered AuNP-DNA origami arrays …

Closing The Nitrogen Loop In Groundwater With Biohybrid Technologies, Linjie Zhou, Biao Li, Jianhua Guo, Shelley D. Minteer, Yifeng Zhang

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

Nitrate in groundwater should be treated as a nitrogen source rather than a contaminant. Biohybrid technologies coupling microbial selectivity with renewable electro(photo)chemical energy offer opportunities to convert nitrate to value-added ammonium, although challenges remain in scalability, microbial stability, material–microbe integration, process engineering, regulatory compliance, and economic feasibility.

Editorial: Special Section On Challenges And Opportunities In Retrieval-Augmented Generation For Llms: Techniques, Trends, And Applications, Philip S. Yu, Haofen Wang, Feida Zhu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) represents a transformative advancement for Large Language Models (LLMs) by integrating external knowledge to substantially improve accuracy and mitigate hallucinations. As a pivotal technology in the contemporary generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) landscape, RAG addresses fundamental challenges in knowledge-intensive tasks. This special issue serves as a dedicated platform to showcase these cutting-edge advancements. It features six rigorously peer-reviewed papers that present state-of-the-art research and applications in the rapidly evolving field of RAG.

Clique Annealing: Semi-Supervised Community Detection Under Crystallization Kinetics, Ling Cheng, Jiashu Pu, Ruicheng Liang, Qian Shao, Hezhe Qiao, Feida Zhu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Semi-supervised community detection seeks to find a specified community type when only few communities are labeled. Existing "select-then-refine" pipelines often start from mis-aligned cores and rely on Reinforcement-Learning or Generative Adversarial Network, increasing computational cost and limiting scalability. We address these issues with a unified energy framework under crystallization kinetics that jointly models energy, structure, and growth. Based on this perspective, we propose CLique ANNealing (CLANN), which first employs Nucleus Proposer to select candidate clique as community core under four physics-inspired criteria. A learning-free Transitive Annealer then iteratively merges neighboring cliques and repositions the nucleus, enabling spontaneous, scalable community growth. …

Llamoco: Instruction Tuning Of Large Language Models For Optimization Code Generation, Zeyuan Ma, Yue-Jiao Gong, Hongshu Guo, Jiacheng Chen, Yining Ma, Zhiguang Cao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Recently, combining the strength of large language models (LLMs) and Evolutionary Computation (EC) has shown promising results for addressing optimization problems. It typically involves either iterative next-step solution seeking or directly prompting LLMs to generate critical optimization codes. However, these methods often suffer from low computational efficiency, high sensitivity to prompt design, and a lack of domain-specific knowledge. We introduce LLaMoCo, the first instruction-tuning framework designed to adapt LLMs for solving optimization problems in a code-to-code manner. LLaMoCo features a comprehensive instruction set that includes code-style problem descriptions as input prompts and robust optimization codes from expert EC optimizers as …

Listening To The Cemí: An Exploration Of Taíno Spirituality Culture Through Artifact Analysis And Digital Archives, Jordan G. Richardson

Honors Undergraduate Theses

My research explores the evolution and continuity of Taíno spirituality culture across five centuries through artifact analysis and digital archives. While Spanish imperialism in the 15th century devastated Taíno populations and traditional craft production, I find that Taíno spirituality was not eradicated but rather adapted its mode of expression. The shift in medium from primarily pre- and peri- physical cemí artifacts (carved from wood and stone) to contemporary digital representations (online archives, blog posts, YouTube videos) illustrates two things: a) strategic integration of Taíno technological use to preserve spiritual practices while reestablishing cultural connectivity through education, community, and resistance movements, …

Cross-Cultural Communication Challenges In Multicultural Hospitality Teams: A Case Study Of The Arlington Hotel, Dublin, Lorrana Rosendo Da Silva

Business ETD Collections

This study investigates intercultural communication challenges within multicultural teams in the hospitality sector in Dublin, focusing on how linguistic barriers, cultural expectations and the dynamics of subgroups influence staff collaboration and day-to-day coordination. The research employs a qualitative case study at the Arlington Hotel, utilizing four semi-structured interviews—two with managers and two with employees—analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings indicate that, particularly during periods of high operational pressure, differences in English proficiency and understanding of accents can affect the clarity of instructions and the confidence to seek clarification. Furthermore, subgroups based on language or nationalities were described as useful in …

Analysis Of Employee Retention In The Irish Hospitality Sector, Ali Okan Yazicioglu

Business ETD Collections

This study investigates the organisational and external labour market factors influencing employee retention in the Irish hospitality sector. The sector faces persistently high turnover rates, yet existing literature has largely focused on internal factors such as leadership and working conditions, overlooking broader labour market dynamics. To address this gap, a qualitative research design was adopted, involving semi-structured interviews with six participants (three managers and three kitchen staff) working in hospitality establishments in Dublin’s Temple Bar area. Thematic analysis was applied to identify key themes related to working conditions, management practices, job satisfaction, employee retention, and labour market factors. The findings …

Key Factors Influencing Consumer Booking Decisions On Booking.Com, And The Role Of Trust In Online Reviews, Deisiane Soares

Business ETD Collections

This study examines the factors influencing accommodation booking decisions on Booking.com, with a particular focus on the role of trust in online reviews. Using a quantitative survey, the research analyses how consumers evaluate key factors such as price, location, ratings, and user-generated reviews. The findings show that while online reviews help reduce uncertainty and build trust, they are not the main driver of booking decisions. Instead, price and location are the most influential factors, with trust in reviews acting as a supporting element. Trust is also found to be conditional, depending on review consistency, detail, and recency. Hence, the study …

Exploring The Challenges Faced By Home Care Workers In Dublin, Camila Melo Dos Santos

Business ETD Collections

This study explores the challenges faced by home care workers employed by private healthcare providers in Dublin, and how the workers perceive the training and organisational support available to manage job demands. Using a mixed methods approach, quantitative data was collected through a survey that received 24 responses, and qualitative data from four in depth interviews. The findings identify time pressure as the most significant challenge, and discovered that formal training is available but it is not considered relevant by the workers, who rely on their experience to deliver the service. Organisational support was perceived as inconsistent, with lack of …

Member Engagement And Retention Challenges In The Latin Cycling Club Dublin, Sarideth Ailin Solis Lopez

Business ETD Collections

This study investigates participant engagement and retention challenges at Latin Cycling Club Dublin, a volunteer-run, non-profit community cycling group based in Dublin, Ireland. The group brings together Spanish-speaking people and others interested in Latin culture who ride together for hobby, social connection, and health improvement. Despite having 259 Instagram followers, 125 Strava participants, and 112 WhatsApp group members, only 8 to 12 people join rides on a regular basis, representing a drop-off of approximately 90 to 93%. The same small core group attends most rides, while the majority of followers remain inactive. Female participation is below 10%, and non-Spanish speakers …

The Impact Of Multicultural Staff On Service Performance And Customer Loyalty: Evidence From A Dublin Beauty Spa, Paulina Veronica Flores Lopez

Business ETD Collections

The present research explores the relationship between multicultural staff service performance and loyalty within the context of a beauty spa in Dublin. The investigation focuses to understanding how employee cultural diversity affects customer experience and service delivery in a highly interactive service scenario.

A quantitative research methodology was adopted, based on survey information collected by 50 clients and 25 employees. Key variables, including employee performance, intercultural communication, Human Resources practices, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty, were analysed using descriptive statistics. Additionally, the interpretation of the results was supported by the analysis of qualitative insights from open-ended responses.

The findings show …

Adapting International Marketing Strategies To Local Markets: A Case Study Of Zambrero In Ireland, Júlia Megale Freitas Pimenta

Business ETD Collections

As companies expand into increasingly globalised markets, they face the strategic challenge of balancing global standardisation with responsiveness to local market needs. This study examines how the balance between standardisation and local adaptation influences customer perception in the international fast-casual food sector. While standardisation can provide economies of scale, operational efficiency, and consistency in global brand identity, adaptation allows companies to respond to differences in consumer preferences, cultural expectations, and competitive conditions. Drawing on international marketing and branding literature, the study considers how these strategies influence perceptions of brand identity, authenticity, value, and customer loyalty across different national markets. Particular …

Country-Of-Origin Cues And Indian Consumers’ Skincare Purchase Intention: A Research Proposal For Reliance Retail’S Tira Beauty, Mohammed Ismail Shareef

Business ETD Collections

This study investigated how Indian consumers perceive the "country-of-origin" (COO) cue when evaluating skincare products from Tira Beauty. Specifically, this study focused on COO for both Indian-origin and foreign-origin skincare to determine if there is a link between origin, consumer trust in brands, attitudes toward brands, and intentions to make purchases. Using a qualitative methodology and three semi-structured online zoom interviews with Indian consumers who are familiar with Tira Beauty, the study identified themes within the interview responses and analysed them using manual thematic analysis in Microsoft Excel. Results indicate that COO influences initial perceptions of products; however, it does …

Health Communication Challenges In The Digital Era: Two Empirical Investigations, Neeraj Gautam Patel

Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library

Background: The quality and availability of health information consumed by the general public have undergone dramatic changes in the 21st century with the rise of digitization and the internet. These include the growth of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs on television and online media, changes in health content on traditional news media platforms, and the propagation of health misinformation and disinformation on social media and other websites. Understanding the nature and sources of these changes can inform efforts and interventions aimed at improving the general public’s understanding of health information. One area of interest within regulated health communication is …

Index To Peacock, Bonnie Petry

Peacock – John M. Pfau Library Newsletter

When Using This Index:

Until the Spring 2017 issue, there were no page numbers in the newsletter.  Also, digitization adds a cover page.  Therefore, Adobe Acrobat-supplied page numbers were used in this index for the years 1997-2017.

From the Spring 2017 issue to the present, Peacock’s own page numbers have been used.

This index first compiled by Bonnie Petry in 2026.

Out-Group And In-Group Relational Trust In Group Coaching With First-Grade Teachers: A Single Case Study, Jentry S. Barrett, Rachel E. Schachter, Jungwon Eum, Gwen Nugent, Kathleen M. Rudasill

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Coaching has become a prominent professional learning tool for helping early childhood teachers (birth–8) implement curriculum and research-based practices in their classrooms. One coaching strategy that supports positive changes in teacher practice and child outcomes is building trust between the coach and teacher(s). However, there is limited understanding of the nature of trust-building in coaching, particularly in group coaching configurations. There are two types of trust to consider in the context of group coaching: out-group trust between an outside coach and the teachers, and in-group trust between the teachers experiencing coaching who already have a relationship. This case study aimed …

Towards Developing A Career Technology Fit Framework And Analyzing Its Influence On Work-Related Outcomes Among It Professionals, Gunjan Tomer

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

With growing attrition rate and significant demand for skilled IT professionals, the importance of studying their behaviour has become important for both academia and industry. Despite ample amount of research, there is still a gap between theory and practice. Based on our qualitative study conducted on Indian IT professionals we propose that technology allocation might contribute in understanding the behaviour of IT professionals. We found that IT professionals evaluate the technology allocated to them based on their individual career motives. This evaluation, either positive or negative, influences their job outcomes. Further, we explored the factors that make a technology preferable …

High Technology And The Developing State: The Arrival Of Supercomputers In India, Ramesh Subramanian

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

While India has made vast strides in information technology in the last few decades, its success is mainly attributed to its software, rather than its hardware sector. In fact, India’s attempts at developing computer hardware that can match international standards have largely been unsuccessful. A notable exception is its development of a series of supercomputers that match and exceed many international standards. This paper looks at an interesting period in India’s computing history – namely the 1980s and 1990s – focusing on its development of an indigenous supercomputer. During that period, supercomputers were thought to be the sole privy of …

Responsible People Analytics For Remote-Work Decisions: A Machine-Learning Benchmark For Classifying Perceived Productivity, Ruth Menjivar, Nima Molavi, Narges Mashhadi Nejad

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This study examines whether employee-perception survey data can support responsible people-analytics decisions about remote-work productivity. Using the public New South Wales (NSW) Remote Working Survey 2021 (N=1,512), the study benchmarks statistical and machine-learning classifiers for self-reported perceived productivity classes (same, less, or more productive when working remotely relative to onsite work), not objective output, under default, class-weighted, and resampling protocols. Main evidence comes from 5×5 repeated stratified cross-validation using macro F1 and balanced accuracy with fixed model specifications. Class-balanced separability is modest. Random Forest, CatBoost, and LightGBM form a leading cluster with overlapping confidence intervals (macro F1 ≈0.51–0.52). Affective/well-being items, …

The Value Of Personal Data Ecosystems: A Flemish Media Sector Case Study, Maarten De Mildt, Melanie Verstraete, Sofie Verbrugge, Didier Colle

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Personal Data Stores (PDSs) have been proposed as a privacy-preserving approach to data sharing that increases individual control over personal data while enabling new forms of cross-organizational collaboration. This collaboration leads to the emergence of Personal Data Ecosystems (PDEs). Despite growing interest in PDEs, limited research has examined how the organizational and economic barriers identified in prior studies manifest in practice. This paper investigates these challenges through a case study of the Flemish media sector within the Solid4Media project, which explores the use of PDSs to support data sharing and personalization across media organizations. Using a qualitative research design, data …

Slm With Swarm Intelligence For Efficient Representation Of Medical Claims, Mohamed Ahmed Abo El-Enen, Ravi S. Sharma, Mustafa Abdulrazek, Amril Nazir, Reem Muhammad, Ahmed Talat Sahlol

All Works

Healthcare industry faces significant challenges due to fraudulent medical insurance claims, which result in substantial financial losses. We propose an automated system using domain-specific Small Language Models (SLMs) with a narrower scope and smaller parameter count than general-purpose Large Language Models (LLMs), combined with optimization algorithms to improve fraud detection. Our approach integrates numerical features, such as age and claim amount, with textual descriptions, including diagnoses and procedures, into a unified textual representation for each medical activity. This representation captures complex patterns, enhancing the model’s predictive ability. SLMs fine-tuned on medical corpora transform these textual inputs into fixed-dimensional numerical embeddings, …