Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Technological Interventions For Reducing Climate Change Impacts On Health: An Overview Of Future Possibilities, Sujatha Alla, Vijay Kumar Chattu, Bawa Singh

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Globally, over five million deaths annually are attributed to extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change, such as heatwaves, hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, and floods, which create health crises and economic losses. The 2015 Paris Declaration emphasized climate technology mechanisms, including research and development, to enhance resilience and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Biotechnological advancements have mitigated about 20% of economic losses since the 1960s, highlighting technology’s potential to address climate-induced health risks.

Seeing The Invisible Load: Xr+ Multimodal Sensing For Cognitive Ergonomics In Industrial Training, Jessica M. Johnson, Andwele Grant

Virginia Digital Maritime Center (VDMC) Faculty Publications

Extended reality (XR) technologies are increasingly positioned as disruptive Industry 5.0 tools for human-centric industrial training and intelligent human–system integration. Coupled with multimodal sensing (eye tracking, EEG, HRV, GSR, and other physiological signals), XR environments promise to make otherwise invisible cognitive demands observable, especially for novice trainees entering complex industrial settings. Yet the evidence base is fragmented: (1) there is no quantitative synthesis of the cognitive ergonomics benefits of XR plus sensing; (2) little is known about which XR–sensor configurations yield the strongest effects; (3) prior reviews rarely focus on industrial and manufacturing tasks; (4) multimodal signals are used predominantly …

Identifying Mobility Hub Suitability In The Mid-Sized United States Urban Area Using Weighted Overlay And Percentile Based Local Peak Analysis, Eric Asplund

Theses and Dissertations

IDENTIFYING MOBILITY HUB SUITABILITY IN THE MID-SIZED UNITED STATES URBAN AREA USING WEIGHTED OVERLAY AND PERCENTILE‑BASED LOCAL PEAK ANALYSIS

By Eric Asplund

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Urban and Regional Planning at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Virginia Commonwealth University, 2026.

Major Director: Dr. Ivan Suen, Ph. D., Associate Professor, Faculty of Urban and Regional Studies and Planning

Shared mobility hubs are increasingly posited in transportation planning as interventions supporting multimodality, sustainability, and equitable access, but guidance on evaluation of potential hub locations remains uneven, particularly in mid-sized United States cities where …

Artificial Elections: How Artificial Intelligence Can Affect Elections And Decide Our Future, Ryan D. Granger

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis examines the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in democratic elections, highlighting both its transformative potential and its associated risks. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of existing literature, the study explores how AI is increasingly integrated into political campaigns, election administration, and voter engagement. Key benefits include enhanced data analysis, personalized political messaging, and improved efficiency in campaign operations. AI also supports real-time fact-checking and more accurate vote tabulation, which can strengthen transparency and trust in electoral processes. However, the thesis emphasizes that these advantages are accompanied by significant challenges. AI technologies enable the rapid creation and dissemination …

Generative Ai Peer Tutoring To Support Peer-Reviewed Source Identification And Evaluation, Rae Mair, Michelle Kelley, Taylar Wenzel, Andrea C. Borowczak, Yuqing Li, Mike Borowczak

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This chapter explores the design and evaluation of a generative artificial intelligence peer tutor prompt to support college students in identifying and evaluating peer-reviewed sources for academic research. Grounded in literature on peer tutoring, Socratic dialogue, and AI-supported learning, the authors describe an iterative prompt engineering process designed to transform large language models (LLMs) into Socratic-style peer tutors capable of scaffolding student reasoning without completing tasks for them. Five guiding criteria for an effective peer tutor shaped development and evaluation: cognitive congruence, step-by-step guidance, avoiding giving answers, adaptability to student level, metacognitive transparency, and following assignment directions. Across multiple human-centered …

A Comparison Of Conversational Chatbots And The Internet For Consumer Information Search, Wondwesen Tafesse, Yoseph Mamo

STEMPS Faculty Publications

This study compares consumer perceptions of conversational chatbots and the internet for information search. While the internet is a mature platform, conversational chatbots represent an emerging technology, and insight into how consumers view them in relation to the internet for information search is lacking. Drawing on the information source utility perspective, the study builds a comparative model based on four key dimensions: information currency, information customisation, information trustworthiness, and media richness. Additionally, the study investigates consumers’ prior experience with conversational chatbots as a moderating factor. Data was collected from 191 respondents recruited through MTurk. Paired sample t-tests assessed mean differences …

A Two-Stage Changepoint-Copula Framework For Non-Stationary Count Time Series: Application To Tropical Cyclones, Md Iqbal Hossain, Norou Diawara

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

Cross-basin tropical cyclone variability may exhibit complex, non-linear dependence structures influenced by large-scale climate modes and potential regime shifts. Reliance on traditional linear correlation measures without accounting for structural changes can therefore lead to misleading interpretations of global storm relationships. This study investigates the regional dependence structures of tropical cyclone counts across six major ocean basins (NA, ENP, WNP, NI, SI, and SP) from 1980 to 2024. We adopt a two-stage analytical framework integrating changepoint detection and copula modeling to address non-stationarity in both marginal distributions and dependence structures. First, we identify a significant structural break in the year 2000 …

Assessing Climate Change Impacts On Wildfire Risk In Central Appalachian Forests Of The Eastern United States, Imiya Mudiyanselage Chathuranika, Dalya Ismael

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Wildfire risk is increasing in the eastern U.S., yet spatial and climate-driven assessments remain limited. This study evaluates climate change impacts on wildfire risk in the Upper James Watershed (UJW) using baseline (2000–2019), near-future (2021–2040), and far-future (2061–2080) projections from a 12-model CMIP6 global climate model (GCM) ensemble under SSP2–4.5 and SSP5–8.5. A wildfire risk model was developed in ArcGIS Pro using nine key factors and validated with MODIS hotspot data, showing good agreement between modeled risk patterns and observed fire occurrences (NOF = 0.21, RMSE = 4.20, MAE = 3.37). Baseline risk was primarily driven by land cover, fire-lookout …

Algorithmic Trading In Idiosyncratic-Payoff Markets: A Multi-Agent System For On-Chain Prediction Contracts, Saif Aldeen A.K. Agha

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis documents the design, deployment, and forward-test evaluation of an evolutionary multi-agent algorithmic trading system on Polymarket, the largest decentralized prediction market. The system pairs a locally-hosted 72-billion-parameter language model with a gradient-boosted statistical filter and an evolutionary selection mechanism that maintains a population of approximately 500 autonomous trading agents. Each agent generates a probability estimate for an event, compares it to the prevailing market price, and trades the resulting disagreement.

The central empirical exercise estimates a panel regression of trade-level profit on the absolute disagreement between the agent's probability estimate and the market price, controlling for agent identity, …

Volatility Modeling With An Application To Risk Parity Portfolios, Kenneth Hou

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis studies volatility modeling in the context of risk parity portfolio construction. I compare three risk parity portfolios that differ only in their underlying volatility model: a historical covariance baseline, a Bayesian stochastic volatility model, and a GRU–GARCH hybrid neural network. Using daily returns on Kenneth French’s five industry portfolios from January 2016 through December 2025, I construct monthly rebalanced portfolios under each model, with the SV and GRU forecasts embedded in hybrid covariance matrices that combine forecasted volatilities with rolling historical correlations. The results document a divergence between forecast accuracy and portfolio performance: the SV model is the …

Rank Rebalancing In Commodity And Foreign Exchange Markets, Prateek D. Vyas

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis empirically tests the rank-rebalancing mechanism of Stochastic Portfolio Theory (SPT) across commodity futures, foreign exchange futures, and equity ETFs. The Reverse Price-Weighted strategy (RPW) assigns, to each asset, the market weight of the asset at the opposite price rank, and generates an annualized excess return of 2.90% over the price-weighted (MKT) commodity benchmark, during the period of November 1977 to October 2025 (HAC t = 2.058, p = 0.040). The differential Sharpe ratio (dSharpe) of 0.245 is confirmed by a stationary block bootstrap, with a 𝑝-value of 0.015, and factor regressions controlling for carry, momentum, and value yield …

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’ …

All Games Have Equilibria, M. Ali Khan, Arthur Paul Pedersen, Maxwell B. Stinchcombe

Publications and Research

Research on Nash equilibrium existence for infinite games has grown into a patchwork of technical preconditions and counterexamples. This paper presents a unified program in equilibrium theory by revising the predominant model of mixed strategies based on countable additivity. A game is specified by a nonempty set of players and, for each player, a nonempty action set and a bounded von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function. Every such game is shown to admit a Nash equilibrium in finitely additive mixed strategies. In addition, the equilibrium correspondence for any such game is shown to be nonempty, compact-valued, and upper hemicontinuous, and the same …

Large Language Model Communication And Data Transfer Across A Simulated Telephone Line, Jared Reyes

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis presents a proof-of-concept communication system in which two local large language model endpoints communicate across a simulated analog telephone line using legacy USB modems. The project combines modem voice mode, modem data mode, local speech processing, and structured machine messaging into a single staged session. During the voice phase, one endpoint places a call, the other answers, speech generated by a locally hosted LLaMA-family model is synthesized with Piper, transmitted through the modem voice path, captured on the remote side, and transcribed with Faster-Whisper to drive the next response. After the voice exchange, the system transitions to a …

Beyond Discrete Indicators: Modeling Intersectional Flood Vulnerability, Sina Razzaghi Asl, Eric Tate, Christopher T. Emrich, Md Asif Rahman, Kaeleb Royster

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

Social vulnerability to flooding is shaped by intersectional social marginalization, yet most quantitative assessments employ indicators of single populations. This study applies spatial machine learning to examine how the intersectional social vulnerability indicators of poverty-race, poverty-housing tenure, and race-housing tenure compare with traditional discrete indicators of single populations in predicting flood exposure in California. Using geographically weighted random forests and partial dependence plots, we model spatial heterogeneity and non-linear relationships between social vulnerability and exposure. We quantified flood exposure using a population-adjusted measure derived from building footprints and modeled 500-year fluvial and pluvial flood hazard. The results reveal distinct explanatory …

All Games Have Equilibria, Arthur Paul Pedersen, M. Ali Khan, Maxwell B. Stinchcombe

Publications and Research

Research on Nash equilibrium existence for infinite games has grown into a patchwork of technical preconditions and counterexamples. This paper presents a unified program in equilibrium theory by revising the predominant model of mixed strategies based on countable additivity. A game is specified by a nonempty set of players and, for each player, a nonempty action set and a bounded von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function. Every such game is shown to admit a Nash equilibrium in finitely additive mixed strategies. In addition, the equilibrium correspondence for any such game is shown to be nonempty, compact-valued, and upper hemicontinuous, and the same …

First-Job Contract Review Cheat Sheet, Johanna Jones-Morris, Ashlee Martellacci

Teaching and Learning Resources

This cheat sheet helps first-time employees understand what to review before signing an employment contract. It highlights job duties, compensation, scheduling, employment terms, benefits, restrictive clauses, worker classification, and common red flags so that individuals can ask informed questions and recognize potentially unfair or unclear terms.

Operationalizing Cyber-Routine Activities Theory For Senior Cybercrime Prevention: An Evaluation Of The Shield Training-The-Trainer Program, Kyung-Shick Choi, Insun Park, Mijin Kim, Ji Yae Bong

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

Older adults face growing risks of cyber-enabled fraud, yet scalable, evidence-based prevention programs remain limited. Guided by Cyber-Routine Activities Theory (Cyber-RAT), this study evaluates the pilot implementation of the Seniors Harnessing Internet Education for Lasting Defense (SHIELD) Training-the-Trainer program, designed to prepare law enforcement officers and community leaders to deliver cybercrime prevention education to older adults. A key innovation of SHIELD is its integration of interactive game-based simulations, which allow participants to practice verification, refusal, and reporting behaviors in realistic cybercrime scenarios. Following the December 2025 pilot session in Boston, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 participants from law enforcement, …

From Authorization To Loss: A Blockchain Forensic Analysis Of Transaction-Level Mechanisms In Cryptocurrency Airdrop Scams, Chanwoo Shin, Kyung-Shick Choi

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

Cryptocurrency airdrop scams have emerged as a rapidly growing form of cyber-enabled financial crime, yet remain underexplored in empirical research. This study examines how transaction-level mechanisms and offender strategies influence variation in monetary loss in airdrop scam incidents. Grounded in Cyber-Routine Activities Theory (Cyber-RAT), the study conceptualizes financial harm as occurring within decentralized environments where users’ online behaviors, particularly transaction authorization, intersect with limited digital capable guardianship. Data were drawn from 112 validated airdrop scam cases reported on Chainabuse.com between January and December 2025. Blockchain forensic analysis using Breadcrumbs was conducted to reconstruct transaction pathways, identify exchange interactions, and detect …

From Physical Correlation To Emotional Connection: The Role Of Passive Haptics On Empathy In Virtual Reality, Jemely Robles

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Virtual reality is increasingly explored as a tool for cultivating empathy, and haptic feedback as a tool for enhancing immersion. This paper investigates the effects of combining the two.  Fifty-two participants experienced a custom-built VR scene in which a character was shown packing up a room. Participants were assigned to either a haptic condition, receiving passive haptic feedback corresponding to the character's actions, or a non-haptic control condition that did not receive any haptic input. Trait empathy was measured beforehand, and state empathy and engagement were measured after the experience. Thematic analysis was conducted on post-study interviews, and headset recordings …

A Sustainable & Universal Redesign Of Hickory Hill Park In Richmond, Virginia, Ren Hollis, Cynthia Lin, Kira Miller, Jackson Nivera, Patrick O’Shea, Corinne Tsou, Hayston Wines

Undergraduate Research Posters

Urban green spaces provide essential environmental, psychological, and physical benefits, yet access to these resources is often inequitable. Cities are increasingly vulnerable to climate change, highlighting the need for adaptive design. This study focuses on the redesign of Hickory Hill Park in Southside Richmond, selected through a combination of site suitability analysis and qualitative survey. The guiding research question is: How can a park in Richmond be designed to optimize environmental resilience, accessibility, and community benefits?

The selection of a research location and scope used a mixed-methods approach integrating spatial analysis, environmental assessment, and community engagement. A site suitability analysis …

Comparative Assessment Of Energy And Emission Costs For Geothermal Heat Pumps And Fossil-Fuel Heating Systems Across U.S. Climatic Zones, Md Shahin Alam, Shima Afshar, Seyed Ali Arefifar, Mohammad Haq

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In response to growing concerns over global warming and energy sustainability, transitioning from fossil-fuel-based heating systems to renewable alternatives is essential. This study evaluates the economic and environmental performance of geothermal heat pumps for building heating and compares it with conventional coal-fired boilers, natural-gas boilers, and diesel furnaces. Using the heating degree-day (HDD) method, heating energy demand was analyzed for four U.S. cities—Anchorage (AK), San Francisco (CA), Salt Lake City (UT), and Las Vegas (NV)—representing diverse climatic zones. The analysis integrates thermodynamic and economic parameters, including the coefficient of performance (COP = 2–5) and annual fuel-utilization efficiency (AFUE = 80–97%), …

Affordable Course Content And Open Education Resources For Undergraduate Courses Teaching Fundamentals Of Wireless Communications And Networking, Dimitrie C. Popescu, Otilia Popescu

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Wireless communication systems and networks along with the services they provide have become an essential component of the modern 21st century society, fueling job growth in the wireless industry and increasing the need for engineers specialized in wireless communication systems. As a consequence, over the past two decades, undergraduate courses teaching fundamentals of wireless communication systems and networks have become common in electrical and computer engineering and technology programs. At the same time, the number of textbooks dedicated to wireless systems and networks published by mainstream publishers has also grown, with availability in various formats and offerings and a significant …

Differential Impact Of Admission Type And Clinical Complexity On Diabetes Hospitalization Costs Among African American And Hispanic Patients In Southeastern Virginia, Ismail El Moudden, Asra Amidi, Reem Sharaf-Alddin, Michael C. Bittner, Qi Zhang

Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology Faculty Publications

Background

Diabetes mellitus (DM) imposes substantial healthcare costs with documented disparities among African Americans and Hispanic patients. To inform care delivery and resource allocation, this study identified hospitalization cost predictors among African American and Hispanic patients with diabetes in Southeastern Virginia.

Methods

We analyzed 6,011 hospital discharges from the Virginia Health Information database (2016-2020) for adults aged 18-85 with diabetes. Discharges were classified by Medicare Severity Diagnosis-Related Groups: DM with complications/comorbidities (DCC, n = 3,328), DM with major complications/comorbidities (DMCC, n = 1,518), and DM without major complications/comorbidities (DWO, n = 1,165). Because cost distributions were right-skewed (skewness 3.5-8.24), we …

Multidimensional Analysis Of Human Outdoor Comfort: Integrating Just-In-Time Adaptive Interventions (Jitais) In Urban Digital Twins, Binyu Lei, Pengyuan Liu, Kunihiko Fujiwara, Mario Frei, Clayton Miller, Xuan Yun Chua, Filip Biljecki

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

How can bidirectional information exchange be enhanced in urban digital twins, and support human-centric data and processes? Their key characteristic is the nearly real-time exchange of information, allowing adjustments to physical environments based on simulations and analytics within virtual models. Yet, achieving such interaction remains challenging, particularly regarding device deployment and infrastructure development. Embracing the concept of humans as sensors, this work develops a two-way framework based on the emerging concept of just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAIs), exploring how urban digital twins can play a role in understanding and enhancing human comfort outdoors. Human comfort outdoors is inherently spatio-temporal and personalised, …

A New Functional Setting For Term Structure Modeling Using The Health-Jarrow-Morton Framework, Michael Pokojovy, Ebenezer Nkum, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr.

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

The well-known Heath–Jarrow–Morton (HJM) framework provides a universal and efficacious instrument for modeling the stochastic evolution of an entire yield curve by explaining the interest rate dynamics in continuous time under no-arbitrage conditions. Existing implementations involve exponentially weighted function spaces as theoretical settings for the former stochastic evolution. While the choice of weight can have a drastic effect on model calibration and subsequent forecasting, it cannot be estimated from market data and does not allow for any objective interpretation. The proposed approach does not have this shortcoming as it adopts a suitably designed unweighted function space. The HJM equation is …

Artificial Intelligence, Fundamental Motives, And Evolutionary Mismatch, Amy J. Lim, Jose. C. Yong, Edison Sora Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In recent years, the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and psychology has garnered unprecedented attention, particularly following the advent of generative AI tools in 2022. These tools, capable of producing human-like text, images, and even deepening our understanding of cognitive processes, have not only captured the public imagination but also sparked new concerns and debates within the psychological community. While AI has been a subject of research for decades, the emergence of its generative capabilities has truly thrust AI into the spotlight. This article explores how these advancements are reshaping our understanding of human cognition and behavior, as well as …

Visual Cues Of Human-Likeness, Not Salience, Impact Trust-Related Human-Computer Interaction, Jordan Schotz

Graduate Studies Theses and Dissertations 2026

As interactions with digital agents become increasingly integrated into daily life, understanding how visual representations influence social decision-making is critical. Previous research in human-computer interaction has frequently confounded the psychological effects of an agent's perceived human-likeness with the underlying visual salience of the stimuli. To address these persistent gaps, the present study systematically isolated the effects of human-likeness and visual cue trustworthiness on trust behavior while controlling for objective image properties. The present study expanded on and normed the Virtual Avatar Facial Stimuli Set (VAFSS), a comprehensive database comprising hundreds of identity-matched photographs and computer-generated avatars varying across a spectrum …

Performance Assessment And Design Improvements For An Urban Coastal Detention Basin Under Intensifying Rainfall Extremes, Imiya Mudiyanselage Chathuranika, Agyare Asante, Faeghe Borhani, Xixi Wang, Mujde Erten-Unal, Dalya Ismael

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Coastal urban areas are increasingly exposed to flooding driven by more frequent and intense rainfall events, rising sea levels, and expanding impervious surfaces. Norfolk, Virginia, a low-lying coastal city with aging stormwater infrastructure, faces heightened vulnerability to these hydrologic pressures. This study evaluates the hydraulic performance of an existing urban detention basin within the Edgewater–Larchmont catchment under 10-, 50-, and 100-year, 2-h design storms using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). Simulations were conducted for both pre- and post-development conditions to assess changes in peak discharge, storage capacity, and water level dynamics. Results show that urbanization, …

Plant Practices And Community At The Heart Of Hopewell: Paleoethnobotany At The Overly Site And Beyond, Abigail Deewaard

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Paleoethnobotanical analyses of Ohio Hopewell habitation sites in past decades have shed light on the subsistence practices, settlement patterns, and environmental management of Indigenous peoples engaged in what archaeologists describe as the Hopewell phenomenon. However, comparatively less attention has been paid to the social dimensions of plant use, particularly at habitation sites in the Scioto Hopewell region. Hopewell is an archaeological term that refers to the Middle Woodland (ca. 100 BCE–400 CE) network of interregional relationships across eastern North America characterized by long-distance exchange, monumental earthwork construction, and ceremonial practices including the honoring of ancestors. This thesis applies a social …