Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Introduction, Michael Paulus

SPU Works

Artificial intelligence is rapidly and radically changing our lives and world. This book is a multidisciplinary engagement with the present and future impacts of AI from the standpoint of Christian faith. It provides technological, philosophical, and theological foundations for thinking about AI, as well as a series of reflections on the impact of AI on relationships, behavior, education, work, and moral action. The book serves as an accessible introduction to AI as well as a guide to wise consideration, design, and use of AI by examining foundational understandings and beliefs from a Christian perspective.

College Of Natural Sciences Newsletter, May & June 2022, College Of Natural Sciences

College of Natural Sciences Newsletters and Reports

Volume 3, Issue 4

Page 1 Dean's Message
Page 2 Awards and Recognition
Page 3-4 The path to a Doctorate Degree
Page 4 American Indian Student Center Native Graduate Honoring Ceremony
Page 5 Celebrating the lives of those who touched the College
Page 6 Media coverage of CNS
Page 7 Open PRAIRIE
Page 8-10 CNS Graduation Festivities
Page 11-14 Spring 2022 Dean's List
Page 16 Richard and Janice Vetter Endowed Professorship in Biotechnology.position

Legislative Language For Success, Sanjana Gundala

Master's Theses

Legislative committee meetings are an integral part of the lawmaking process for local and state bills. The testimony presented during these meetings is a large factor in the outcome of the proposed bill. This research uses Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning techniques to analyze testimonies from California Legislative committee meetings from 2015-2016 in order to identify what aspects of a testimony makes it successful. A testimony is considered successful if the alignment of the testimony matches the bill outcome (alignment is "For" and the bill passes or alignment is "Against" and the bill fails). The process of finding what …

Exploring The Effectiveness Of Multiple-Exemplar Training For Visual Analysis Of Ab-Design Graphs, Verena S. Bethke

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In behavior analysis, data are usually analyzed using visual analysis of the graphed data. There are a wide range of methods used to visually analyze data, from a basic ‘textbook’ style approach to the use of visual aids, decision-rubrics, and computer-based approaches. In the literature, there have been some comparisons of the efficacy of different approaches. Visual analysis as a behavior can be taught using a variety of methods, independent of how the skill itself is to be performed. Teaching methods include lecture, online instruction, and equivalence-based instruction. There is not much research on the teaching of visual analysis specifically, …

Why, New York City? Gauging The Quality Of Life Through The Thoughts Of Tweeters, Sheryl Williams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As a resource for social data, Twitter’s platform has been used to measure the quality of life through sentiment analysis. This capstone project explores another methodological technique—querying Twitter data around specific keyword terms to determine dominant topics, word patterns, and sentiment leanings in a geographical area. Focusing on New York City and Los Angeles for comparative analysis, the keyword term “why” will be used to build a Python analysis around topic modeling and sentiment analysis. Using this approach, the analysis reveals social and cultural differences, the overall sentiment of tweets, and subjects of interest to tweeters.

GitHub Repository for all …

Gauging The Acceptance Of Contact Tracing Technology: An Empirical Study Of Singapore Residents’ Concerns With Sharing Their Information And Willingness To Trust, Ee-Ing Ong, Wee Ling Loo

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments began implementing various forms of contact tracing technology. Singapore’s implementation of its contact tracing technology, TraceTogether, however, was met with significant concern by its population, with regard to privacy and data security. This concern did not fit with the general perception that Singaporeans have a high level of trust in its government. We explore this disconnect, using responses to our survey (conducted pre-COVID-19) in which we asked participants about their level of concern with the government and business collecting certain categories of personal data. The results show that respondents had less concern with …

Investigating The Mechanisms Driving Mercury Reduction And Emissions In Soil, Hamil Patel

Student Theses

The water-induced emission of mercury from soil has been studied, but a complete understanding of the mechanisms driving mercury reduction and emission in soil has not been reached. The current understanding is an immediate expulsion of soil gaseous mercury upon water treatment and an upward transport of dissolved soil ionic mercury as the water evaporates. We analyzed emissions from several types of samples using various methods to further our understanding on the mechanisms involved. Light-induced emissions from aqueous samples of humic acid (HA) spiked with mercury (II) chloride (HgCl₂) showed that at higher concentrations of HA, less mercury …

Unrestricted Factor Analysis: A Powerful Alternative To Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp, Alberto Maydeu-Olivares

Faculty Publications

The gold standard for modeling multiple indicator measurement data is confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), which has many statistical advantages over traditional exploratory factor analysis (EFA). In most CFA applications, items are assumed to be pure indicators of the construct they intend to measure. However, despite our best efforts, this is often not the case. Cross-loadings incorrectly set to zero can only be expressed through the correlations between the factors, leading to biased factor correlations and to biased structural (regression) parameter estimates. This article introduces a third approach, which has emerged in the psychometric literature, viz., unrestricted factor analysis (UFA). UFA …

Imagining New Futures Beyond Predictive Systems In Child Welfare: A Qualitative Study With Impacted Stakeholders, Logan Stapleton, Min Hun Lee, Diana Qing, Marya Wright, Alexandra Chouldechova, Ken Holstein, Zhiwei Steven Wu, Haiyi Zhu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Child welfare agencies across the United States are turning to datadriven predictive technologies (commonly called predictive analytics) which use government administrative data to assist workers’ decision-making. While some prior work has explored impacted stakeholders’ concerns with current uses of data-driven predictive risk models (PRMs), less work has asked stakeholders whether such tools ought to be used in the first place. In this work, we conducted a set of seven design workshops with 35 stakeholders who have been impacted by the child welfare system or who work in it to understand their beliefs and concerns around PRMs, and to engage them …

Learnings From A Pilot Hybrid Question Answering System: Cqas: Case Study Based On A Singapore Government Agency's Customer Service Centre, Hui Shan Lee, Shankararaman, Venky, Eng Lieh Ouh

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The Singapore Government first released their digital government blueprint in 2018 with the key message for all their agencies to be "digital to the core and served with heart". With this push, agencies are moving towards human-centric digital services, especially for individual citizens. During COVID-19, Singapore government agencies introduced many COVID-19 digital initiatives resulting in more incoming inquiries from citizens to respective agencies. This surge in inquiries created the challenge on the agencies' end to meet service level agreements. One widely adopted solution is the use of chatbot technology that directly interfaces with the customer. However, several organisations have faced …

Transportation-Enabled Urban Services: A Brief Discussion, Hai Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Nearly 55% of the world's population lives in urban areas or cities, and is expected to rise above 70% over the coming decades. Rapid urbanization brings steadily more residents and a growing freelancing workforce into cities. The developments of city infrastructure and technologies—for instance, mobile location tracking and computing, autonomous and connected vehicles, wearable devices, robotics and robots, smart appliances, biometric authentication, various internet-of-things devices, and smart monitoring systems—are creating numerous opportunities and inspiring innovative and emerging urban services. Among these innovations, complex systems of urban transportation and logistics have embraced advances in technologies and, consequently, been significantly reshaped (Agatz …

Flavor-Videos: Enhancing The Flavor Perception Of Food While Eating With Videos, Meetha Nesam James, Nimesha Ranasinghe, Anthony Tang, Lora Oehlberg

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

People are typically involved in different activities while eating, particularly when eating alone, such as watching television or playing games on their phones. Previous research in Human-Food Interaction (HFI) has primarily focused on studying people’s motivation and analyzing of the media content watched while eating. However, their impact on human behavioral and cognitive processes, particularly flavor perception and its attributes, remains underexplored. We present a user study to investigate the influence of six types of videos, including mukbang – a new food video genre, on flavor perceptions (taste sensations, liking, and emotions) while eating plain white rice. Our findings revealed …

Effect Of Monetary Policy Rate On Market Interest Rates In Nigeria: A Threshold And Nardl Approach, Oluwafemi E. Awopegba, Joseph O. Afolabi, Lydia T. Adeoye, Godwin O. Akpokodje

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This study examines the effect of monetary policy rate (MPR) on market interest rates in Nigeria. For parsimony, we develop two indexes called the short-term interest rate (SINT) and Lending interest rate (LINT) to represent deposit and lending rates respectively. The nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) and threshold regression models are adopted. The study uses monthly data from 2002:M1 to 2019:M12. The results of the threshold regression model indicate that the degree of the effect of MPR on SINT and LINT above the estimated threshold of 11 and 13 percent respectively is greater and significant than if MPR were to …

Social Dimension Of Inclusive Growth In Ecowas: Implication For Poverty Reduction, Toriola K. Anu, Goerge O. Emmanuel, Ajayi O. Felix

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This study investigates the implication of the social dimension of inclusive growth on poverty reduction in Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) countries. It specifically examines how social indices of inclusive growth comprising of income inequality, education, and health outcomes affect poverty reduction. The study uses a panel dataset of the six (6) lower-middle income countries in ECOWAS which was analysed via panel Difference Generalised Method of Moment (D-GMM). The results show that GDP per capita exerts significant negative effect on poverty while inequality, education and health outcomes do not show significant effect on poverty. Although, the estimates of …

Effect Of Fdi Inflows On Employment Generation In Selected Ecowas Countries: Heterogeneous Panel Analysis, Timothy A. Aderemi, Olawunmi Omitogun, Bukonla G. Osisanwo

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of FDI on employment in ECOWAS sub region between 1990 and 2019. The study utilizes a panel autoregressive distributed lag model to analyse the short run and long run relationship between FDI and employment across ECOWAS sub region. In the short run, the impact of FDI on employment is negative and statistically not significant. Meanwhile, in the long run FDI has a positive and statistically significant impact on employment rate. This implies that FDI has the capacity to generate employment in countries in ECOWAS sub region. Therefore, this study recommends …

Impact Of Covid-19 Pandemic On The Nigeria Stock Market: A Sectoral Stock Prices Analysis, Peter A. Adekunle, Yakubu A. Bello, Udochukwu G. Nwachukwu

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sectoral stock prices in Nigeria stock market using daily data covering from February 28, 2020 to June 26, 2020. Applying the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test, the study finds that COVID-19 pandemic had adverse impact on the stock market indices in the short run. Furthermore, the study documents negative response of sectoral stock prices to the pandemic while the stock prices of the banking sub-sector are the worst hit. Compared to the consumer goods, and industrial subsector indices, the speed of adjustment to long run equilibrium is faster for …

Communicative Strategies For Building Public Confidence In Data Governance: Analyzing Singapore's Covid-19 Contact-Tracing Initiatives, Gordon Kuo Siong Tan, Sun Sun Lim

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Effective social data governance rests on a bedrock of social support. Without securing trust from the populace whose information is being collected, analyzed, and deployed, policies on which such data are based will be undermined by a lack of public confidence. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digitalization and datafication by governments for the purposes of contact tracing and epidemiological investigation. However, concerns about surveillance and data privacy have stunted the adoption of such contact-tracing initiatives. This commentary analyzes Singapore's contact-tracing initiative to uncover the reasons for public resistance and efforts by the state to address them. The government's contact-tracing program …

Information Sources, Perceived Personal Experience, And Climate Change Beliefs, Sonny Rosenthal

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This study proposes and tests a model of serial mediation based on the norm activation model and value-belief-norm theory. It argues that beliefs about climate change are related to perceived personal experience, which is related to the use of different information sources. Structural equation modeling of survey data from 1084 adult residents of Singapore found mixed support for three hypotheses. Results showed that perceived personal experience of climate change was related to the use of traditional media (β = 0.20), social media (β = 0.16), and interpersonal sources (β = 0.13), but not institutional sources. Perceived personal experience of climate …

A Labeled Dataset For Investigating Cyberbullying Content Patterns In Instagram, Mara Hamlett, Grace Powell, Yasin N. Silva, Deborah Hall

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

As online communication continues to become more prevalent, instances of cyberbullying have also become more common, particularly on social media sites. Previous research in this area has studied cyberbullying outcomes, predictors of cyberbullying victimization/perpetration, and computational detection models that rely on labeled datasets to identify the underlying patterns. However, there is a dearth of work examining the content of what is said when cyberbullying occurs and most of the available datasets include only basic labels (cyberbullying or not). This paper presents an annotated Instagram dataset with detailed labels about key cyberbullying properties, such as the content type, purpose, directionality, and …

Phishing For Fun, Madeline Moran, Anna Hart, Loretta Stalans, Eric Chan-Tin, Shelia Kennison

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Perform a phishing experiment to see how many people fall victim. This study was approved by the Loyola IRB

Evaluation Of Sustainability Determinants To Develop A Sustainability Rating System For California Infrastructure Construction Projects, Joseph Kim, Patricia Mccarthy

Mineta Transportation Institute

This study evaluates the important sustainability determinants that affect factors’ success in meeting their sustainability goals when conducting infrastructure construction projects in California. The study implemented the online survey method to evaluate the sustainability characteristics that infrastructure industry professionals currently are aware of under the current situation in California. A data set of 25 validated survey responses is used for statistical data analysis using analysis of variables, Kruskal-Wallis tests, and two sample t-tests. The analysis results showed that the median response values for the six major sustainability categories do not show any significant difference. The results also showed that no …

Understanding The Voluntary Moderation Practices In Live Streaming Communities, Jie Cai

Dissertations

Harmful content, such as hate speech, online abuses, harassment, and cyberbullying, proliferates across various online communities. Live streaming as a novel online community provides ways for thousands of users (viewers) to entertain and engage with a broadcaster (streamer) in real-time in the chatroom. While the streamer has the camera on and the screen shared, tens of thousands of viewers are watching and messaging in real-time, resulting in concerns about harassment and cyberbullying. To regulate harmful content—toxic messages in the chatroom, streamers rely on a combination of automated tools and volunteer human moderators (mods) to block users or remove content, which …

Towards Practicalization Of Blockchain-Based Decentralized Applications, Songlin He

Dissertations

Blockchain can be defined as an immutable ledger for recording transactions, maintained in a distributed network of mutually untrusting peers. Blockchain technology has been widely applied to various fields beyond its initial usage of cryptocurrency. However, blockchain itself is insufficient to meet all the desired security or efficiency requirements for diversified application scenarios. This dissertation focuses on two core functionalities that blockchain provides, i.e., robust storage and reliable computation. Three concrete application scenarios including Internet of Things (IoT), cybersecurity management (CSM), and peer-to-peer (P2P) content delivery network (CDN) are utilized to elaborate the general design principles for these two main …

Representation Learning In Finance, Ajim Uddin

Dissertations

Finance studies often employ heterogeneous datasets from different sources with different structures and frequencies. Some data are noisy, sparse, and unbalanced with missing values; some are unstructured, containing text or networks. Traditional techniques often struggle to combine and effectively extract information from these datasets. This work explores representation learning as a proven machine learning technique in learning informative embedding from complex, noisy, and dynamic financial data. This dissertation proposes novel factorization algorithms and network modeling techniques to learn the local and global representation of data in two specific financial applications: analysts’ earnings forecasts and asset pricing.

Financial analysts’ earnings forecast …

Knowledge, Attitudes, And Covid-19 Prevention Practices Of Healthcare Workers In Indonesia: A Mobile-Based Cross-Sectional Survey, Besral Besral, Zulvi Wiyanti, Dion Zein Nurizin, Milla Herdayati, R Sutiawan, Martya Rahmaniati, Popy Yuniar

Kesmas

Knowledge of disease can affect attitudes and prevention practices, and wrong attitudes and practices can directly increase the risk of disease infection. This study aimed to describe the knowledge, attitudes, and COVID-19 prevention practice of healthcare workers in Indonesia and factors associated with prevention practices. A mobile-based cross-sectional survey was conducted in August 2020 with 254 healthcare workers in Indonesia. The self-administered questionnaire consisted of four parts: 1) sociodemographic information, 2) knowledge of COVID-19, 3) attitudes and anxiety toward COVID-19, and 4) COVID-19 prevention practices. The results indicated that healthcare workers in Indonesia had excellent knowledge and positive attitudes about …

Infarct Diameter For Predicting Cognitive Dysfunction In Ischemic Stroke Survivors In West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, Herpan Syafii Harahap, Setyawati Asih Putri, Yanna Indrayana, Hasan Amin, Fransisca Ika Mahardika

Kesmas

Cognitive dysfunction is an important consequence of ischemic stroke, which can progress in the first few years and is primarily determined by clinical factors. This study aimed to investigate the clinical determinants of cognitive dysfunction in stroke survivors in West Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia. This cross-sectional study assessed 255 ischemic stroke survivors with a mean age of 57.1±9.3 years old and 29–79 years old, recruited consecutively in three main hospitals in West Nusa Tenggara Province between March 2019 and October 2021. Categorical data collected included age, sex, education level, clinical determinants of ischemic stroke, and cognitive status of the patients. …

Interprofessional Collaborative Practice And Health Workers Retention At Remote Primary Health Care: Case Study From Nusantara Sehat Team-Based Program, Prastuti Soewondo, Retno Pujisubekti, Ade Widyati Prastyani, Nurul Maretia Rahmayanti

Kesmas

The Nusantara Sehat Team (NST), established in 2015 and consist of multi-professional health workers, implemented to provide comprehensive services at remote primary health cares (PHCs) for two years. This study aimed to explore how the NST leverages the Interprofessional Collaboration (IPC) and its impact on the future career prospects of health workers. Using a qualitative approach, the information was gathered from 48 informants drawn from the current 30 NST recruits and 18 alumni through semi-structured interviews. Of these 48, 20 were clinical practitioners, while the rest were non-clinical health workers. The findings revealed several challenges in promoting collaborative practice, including …

Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (Bph): A Comprehensive Analysis Of The Malaise And Summarizing Possible Management Options Through Phytotherapeutic Agents, Shan Sasidharan, Kumarapillai Parameswaran Srinivasakumar, Sandeep Poddar, Amiya Bhaumik, Sreemoy Kanti Das, Hareendran Nair J

Kesmas

Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is a severe illness affecting middle-aged and geriatric male patients. This disease normally occurs at the age of 40 or above and is also associated with sexual dysfunction. Alpha-blockers and 5α-reductase inhibitors are the preferred drugs practiced to treat BPH. However, invasive surgical therapy remains the gold standard for managing the condition in the case of refractory and intricate BPH conditions. Due to the fear of sexual dysfunction and the detrimental influence on their quality of life, most patients seek to avoid synthetic drugs and surgery. For this reason, several patients turn to phytotherapy and other …

Treatment Adherence And Incidence Of Coronary Heart Disease In Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients, Ahmad Sahlan Baniu, Rani Sauriasari, Woro Riyadina, Pradana Soewondo

Kesmas

Previous studies showed that uncontrolled blood sugar and long-term use of several types of antidiabetic could increase the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). This study aimed to compare the incidence of CHD in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients showing treatment adherence and non-adherence behavior over four years. This was a retrospective cohort study with data sets obtained from the Bogor Cohort Study of Non-Communicable Disease Risk Factors. All study subjects were not diagnosed with CHD at the beginning of the study. The sample was divided into two groups; one had adhered to treatment from health centers and followed …

Local Wisdom Enriching Complementary Feeding Practices During Disaster Situations In Indonesia, Astuti Astuti, Happy Hayati, Fajar Tri Waluyanti, Dessie Wanda

Kesmas

This study aimed to analyze complementary food fulfillment during disaster situations in Indonesia since it frequently experiences natural disasters and young children face unique challenges related to their feeding needs in disaster situations. This qualitative case study based on the Mount Merapi eruption and Sumedang landslide in 2021 collected data using observations, forum group discussions, and in-depth interviews; then, a thematic analysis was conducted. This study involved 17 participants, including Non-governmental Organizations (NGO) activists, health workers, residents involved in making complementary foods, and primary caregivers of children aged 6–24 months. This study found that there were five themes generated from …