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Predicting Whether Inflation Will Remain in the U.S. after the Covid-19 Pandemic | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/3025 | Alex Lee | 05-31-2022 | This paper focuses on the possibility of inflation occurring in the United States in the foreseeable future. Inflation, the progressive increase in the price of goods and services over time in an economy, is affected by demand and supply. If the demand for goods and services exceeds the supply of those goods and services, prices naturally increase and rise in inflation. While many have attempted to predict inflation through various methods, no one has been able to guarantee a result as demand and supply are unstable variables. However, using the vulnerable, weak covid environment, the relationship between the CPI (Consumer Price Index) and unemployment rates was used to assemble Philips Curves. |
Mutations In Influenza Viruses and Prevention Against These Viruses | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2568 | Rohit Rao; Rajagopal Appavu Appavu, Jothsna Kethar | 05-31-2022 | The flu originated in 1918 and started a pandemic that spread around the world, killing millions. Other than the current COVID-19 pandemic, the Flu Pandemic of the late 1910s and early 1920s has killed and infected more people than any other virus in modern world history. Since then, the flu has become a seasonal virus that has predictable times of infections. Due to modern medicine, most people are able to survive such infections, and continue on with their lives with little impact. However, as you might come to wonder either eventually or even right now, a person may be curious behind why such an “outdated virus” still continues to live on every winter season. This paper will research the mechanisms of such processes that allow these viruses to stay “alive” (because they technically are not a living thing) and prevent themselves from being eradicated by today’s medical technology. We also look into common and new preventions/ treatments that is/ can be used to eventually eradicate the flu. |
The Willingness of Humans to Settle on Mars and the Factors that Affect It | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2623 | Savyan Aggarwal; Himani Rathore | 05-31-2022 | The willingness of humans to go to Mars is one of the most important facets of a successful human colony on Martian soil and is also arguably the most neglected since even if all the technological and logistical issues of the mission were to be perfected, it would be meaningless if no one were willing to go to Mars. The aim of this study is to study people’s willingness to go to Mars, and the factors that affect it most, both positively and negatively. A pre-post study design with a survey was used for the primary data collection and analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively to derive conclusions from a total sample of 93 respondents. The results showed that the factors that most affected humans’ willingness to settle on Mars were the advancement of research and innovation and the impacts on their body as a result of radiation and microgravity, closely followed by quality of life. The findings of this research study can be utilised by firms or even states in the future to determine how to promote their Mars missions, even if they do not involve settlements. |
A Meta-Analysis Evaluating the Performance of Machine Learning Models on Probability of Loan Default | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2726 | Ely Hahami; Mr. Piper | 05-31-2022 | There has been a recent increase in the implementation of machine learning algorithms to predict the credit risk of prospective loan applicants. This meta-analysis aims to contribute to the small but growing research on the effects of algorithmic lending. Specifically, we compare the performance of the Logistic Regression (LR) model and Random Forest (RF) model in predicting loan default (PD). Using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve as a measure of aggregate machine learning model performance, we ultimately find convincing evidence that the RF model is more accurate than the logit model in PD (p-value=0.029, α = 0.01). These results have major implications for banks and financial firms as mortgage lending transitions into the FinTech era. |
Examining the Connections between Personality and Group-Based Learning | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2517 | Jonathan Huang; Hannah Dunn | 05-31-2022 | The most common interpretation of personality is a tripartite model: introversion, extroversion, and ambiversion. Personality styles can have an impact not only on how people develop relationships and pursue interests, but also how students operate in the classroom. Given that schools and teachers frequently require students to collaborate in group-based learning activities, it is crucial to consider how personality styles affect this process. In this cross-sectional research study, 14 high school participants responded to a questionnaire about personality type and group learning experiences. The questionnaire was designed with the goal of gathering experiences from high school students about group work and group-based learning in the classroom and personality styles. The results of the questionnaire showed that there was no statistically significant difference between the three personality styles. The results were also analyzed for themes to compare commonalities and differences in responses across personality styles. There was a relatively small sample size in the current study of 14 participants out of the 60 who were sent the questionnaire meaning this study might not have been able to fully capture the most accurate answer to the question of whether introverts work well while working in groups. Nonetheless, this study paves the way for further research on the topic of group-based learning and personality styles. |
Navigating Desi American Cultural Identity | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2594 | Chandha Dhinaker; Jim Haisler | 05-31-2022 | The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 began a major shift in US immigration patterns, with Indian immigration seeing a notable uptick in the late 1900s. As Indian immigrant populations began increasing in the United States, the predominantly Christian America began to increase tolerance towards religions previously viewed as “heathenistic” (i.e., Hinduism). Understanding the impact Asian-Indian immigrants have had on the cultural and religious landscape of the Western world is essential in order to conceptualize and navigate the true depth of South Asian cultural identities. Thus, it becomes crucial to acknowledge these cultural placements not as a haphazard assemblage of identities, but rather as a product of relationships with religion and the adoption of both ethnic and racial identifying terms. A more assiduous exploration of the comprehensive history of Hinduism in America and the discourse of social identity development as a Desi-American illuminates the dichotomous relationship between religion and socialization in the formation of cultural identity. For South Asian Americans especially, the contiguity of learned cultures, in addition to the cultural environment an individual is raised in plays a significant role in the construction of one’s identity. Consequently, the differences in identity development and perspectives between two Indian sub-groups in the US (first-generation/Indian-born; second-generation/American-born) can be understood by canvassing several socio-cultural factors of influence such as the level of interplay within culture and religion in the social landscape, availability and access to temples, nomenclature used for personal identification, and conformity to the “Model Minority” myth. |
Based on the Different History of Feminism Movement, Different Gender Achieving the Workplace Equality is Easier in Huawei or Apple? | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2874 | Yutong Yang; Maya Herzog | 05-31-2022 | In this paper, I try to compare which of Huawei and apple can achieve gender equality in the workplace in the future. First of all, I will briefly summarize the history of feminism in these two countries; Second, I will introduce why I want to compare the two companies and their current situation; Finally, based on these, I will draw a predictive conclusion. |
Trends and Effects of Privatization on Universities in Canada | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/3217 | Marshal Wang; Helen Goldenz | 05-31-2022 | With the rise of privatization of universities across Canada in the last decade, it has become increasingly important to understand its impact on students both financially and on the universities themselves. While many previous papers analyze trends or the benefits/disadvantages of privatization of public education, this paper focuses on trends of funding sources in universities, in particular, government spending, student tuition, increased private donations, and student loans. Specifically, this paper will delve into the trends over time, particularly focusing on the recent last two decades. The main conclusion to be reached by this paper is a look at privatization through the lens of a decrease in government spending and increased presence of corporate sponsorship, changes in tuition, and changes in overall student debt. Using data from public sources as well as past papers and analyzing these have led to several conclusions. Public spending has decreased through reduced government spending as a percentage of operating revenue. This in turn has led universities to increase the need for other sources of funding, more notably, through tuition and private donations from individuals or corporations. Both these sources have increased as a source of funding overtime. Moreso, while domestically tuition has grown at a more or less normal rate, international student tuition has skyrocketed. Next, it has been shown that increased tuition has direct effects on student debt which has also been shown to increase overtime. Lastly, private donations and non-governmental grants from both individuals and corporations have increased significantly. |
Other-serving vs Self-serving Instructions in US College Commencement Speeches: A Quantitative Study | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2613 | Isabel Trzeciak; Stephen Trzeciak | 05-31-2022 | INTRODUCTION: Research supports that serving others and practicing altruism is beneficial for one’s health, wellbeing, and success compared to solely serving oneself. However, it is unclear if this mindset is effectively communicated to young people, particularly college students. My objective was to perform a quantitative analysis of other-serving versus self-serving instructions in commencement speeches at graduation ceremonies of top-ranked U.S. colleges. METHODS: I analyzed transcripts of commencement speeches at the 20 “Best Colleges” according to U.S. News and World Report rankings. Two trained independent raters coded each sentence of the speeches as either containing instruction (i.e., imperative/command sentence) versus no instruction. Next, the two raters classified each instruction as either (1) other-serving, (2) self-serving, or (3) neutral (serving neither). I tested inter-rater agreement using Cohen’s kappa coefficient (κ), and resolved any disagreement by consensus with a third rater. I pooled the data and performed descriptive statistics with sensitivity analyses to ensure that a small proportion of speeches were not skewing results. RESULTS: Inter-rater agreement was very good (κ >0.85). Of 305 total instructions (mean 15/speech, range 2-44/speech), 148 were neutral. Of the 157 non-neutral instructions, 71 (45%) were other-serving and 86 (55%) were self-serving. Within individual speeches, there was wide variation in the proportion of other-serving versus self-serving instructions (range 0-100%); however, sensitivity analyses did not substantially affect results. CONCLUSION: I found that other-serving and self-serving instructions were balanced in commencement speeches at top-ranked U.S. colleges. Additional research is needed to test the impact of these different messages on students. |
The Prevalance of Female Genital Mutilation in India | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/3285 | Anjani Nanda; Vandanee Ramani | 05-31-2022 | Female Genital Mutilation is a deep-rooted cultural practice in several cultures in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Although in the modern ages, through the impacts of migration and increasing social awareness, this practice is being abandoned by several, it is still a custom being practiced in secrecy by small groups of individuals across the world. This study aims to evaluate the Delhi NCR public’s understanding of the practice and whether increased awareness amongst them would encourage individuals to work towards eradicating the practice. In order to measure this, a survey was carried out on 103 participants from the Delhi NCR Region containing an informative video on the basics of Female genital mutilation and participants were asked mirroring questions before and after viewing the video on their emotions towards the topic, their level of awareness and their likelihood of intervention. The results were analyzed using a paired t-test and descriptive statistics. These results were then presented in the forms of tables and charts, and the alternative hypothesis was retained stating that participants felt better informed, viewed the issue with higher importance and felt more emotionally motivated by the practice after viewing the video. The study implies that an increased level of information and awareness of the topic can lead to increased participation in eradicating the practice and showed how useful even general and basic knowledge on the practice of Female Genital Mutilation created a large impact on the participants. Keywords: Female Genital Mutilation, Delhi NCR, Bohra, Khatna |
The Inequitable Distribution of Government Funds: The Case of COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loans | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/3654 | Jayden Ko; Jong Kim, Jane JaKyung Han | 05-31-2022 | The COVID-19 pandemic brought a wave of challenges to the U.S. economy, from skyrocketing unemployment to state-wide lockdowns which hampered many small businesses. GDP dropped by 8.9% in the second quarter of 2020, and susceptible industries such as Restaurants, Hotels, and Airlines faced the brute of these hardships. In response, the U.S. government initiated enormous Keynesian spending programs to inject liquidity into the economy and support businesses, establishing low interest rates and offering generous loan forgiveness. From March 2020 to June 2022, the government distributed nearly $4.5 trillion in total budgetary resources to mitigate the struggles faced by Americans. Specifically, the Small Business Administration (SBA) leveraged the Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) Program to aid small businesses. This study sought to determine whether government funding was equitably distributed on the county level, and whether they resulted in higher employment. The findings reveal inequitable distribution of government funds based on the size of the county (funding per capita or funding per laborer) that may be explained by inequitable COVID-19 impacts (more targeted spending in more urban areas with greater concentration of businesses). Moreover, negative correlations exist between the number of direct payments and the unemployment rate, and the total funding amount and unemployment rate. |
VR Workspace in the New Normal Evaluation of Factors Influencing Indian Working Population’s Perception Towards use of VR Workspace in Work from Home Arrangements | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2584 | Lakshya Goenka; Dr. Mritunjay Sharma | 05-31-2022 | For the past one year, we all have experienced life changing situations. Due to the lockdown because of Covid-19 virus, overnight, our lives shifted from the physical world to the online world. From offices, to schools, everything was operating virtually through a laptop screen. Instead of working with a group of people like in normal times, people were now isolated in their own bedrooms. To make the ‘new normal’ more productive, people started looking at the problem differently and came up with the idea of VR Workspace. It gave a more realistic feel to the whole WFH Arrangement. This research study is aimed to examine the viability of promoting VR Workspace and evaluate the factors that influenced the Indian Working Population perception towards the use of VR Workspace in online collaboration for improved Work From Home Arrangements. An online survey was conducted which included two short videos. The respondents had to rate the usage of VR before and after watching the video. The responses were divided into several social groups based on age, gender and job position. From the responses we can clearly see a difference before and after watching the video in the ratings for use of VR. From all the factors, the most influential factor was the headset being portable and wireless. |
A Novel and Low-Cost Visual Aid for Retinitis Pigmentosa Patients to Improve Peripheral Vision Loss | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2546 | Ganesh Venu; Susanne Stafford | 05-31-2022 | Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is a genetic eye disorder that affects 1 in 3000-8000 people worldwide and causes the deterioration of the light-sensitive pigmented layer of the eye. Typical symptoms include night blindness and subsequently decreasing visual fields. Unfortunately, the specific cause of RP is not known and there is no cure. The disease is currently managed by expensive visual aids ranging from $3000 to $6000. This creates a need to develop affordable glasses for the common individual. In this study, 3D printed glasses were developed that enhanced the peripheral vision of the mocking RP patient (student researcher) utilizing external smartphone wide-angle lenses. To test different levels of tunnel vision, 3D printed circular discs with hole sizes of 1 mm, 3 mm, 5 mm, 7 mm, and 9 mm were created representing the varying severity of vision loss in RP patients. These discs were inserted in the frames of 3D printed glasses with and without wide-angle lenses. The student researcher validated these glasses on a bullseye model and observed a doubling in the visual field. Three replication data was collected comparing normal vision and different levels of RP (using tunnel vision discs) with and without the wide-angle lens glasses. Regression analysis of data generated from a Monte Carlo Simulation and T-Test procedure further confirmed a statistically significant increase in the visual field utilizing wide-angle lens glasses. Thus, a cost-effective visual aid ($20) was developed by the student researcher to improve peripheral vision and break socio-economic barriers for RP patients. |
Exploring What Determines Value For The Ocean | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2610 | Sabhyata Joshi; Srishti Kapoor | 05-31-2022 | Housing 15% of the world's species, regulating climate, and providing half of human oxygen, the ocean is quite literally mankind’s lifeline. Unfortunately, this lifeline is dying. It is predicted that by 2050, over 1 million of the ocean’s species will be lost to plastic, which makes up a greater percent of the ocean than fish. Hong Kong’s flourishing marine trade and abundant use of plastic makes it especially susceptible to this threat. The problem, of course, is not limited to this. Brain biases prevent humans from assessing the dangers of the long term threat, and along with echo chambers they serve to spread these limiting views. To address the issue, this study aims to assess what factors generate value (internalized care) for the ocean and consequently lead to action in a largely young adult population. In the study, 81 participants were presented with a 15 question survey about their experience with the ocean and results were analyzed using qualitative analysis. It was found that the two major value generation factors were proximity to the ocean and experiencing life below water. The findings pose implications in supporting the increase of workplace and school efforts to augment proximity to the ocean as well as of advocacy missions which bring the ocean and its threats to the individual, allowing them to experience the underworld without restriction. |
An Estimation of Hailstone Radii using the Collatz Conjecture | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/3638 | Rhea Gupta; Morena Porzio | 05-31-2022 | There is an alleged connection between a much researched, yet unsolved math problem, the Collatz conjecture, and a quite common, damaging meteorological phenomenon: hailstorm. The relationship would be that, in sequences generated by Collatz algorithm, the way in which numbers rise and fall resembles hailstones going up and down inside a cloud, whence the name “Hailstone sequences”. The aim of this paper is two-fold: first, to use JavaScript to research on the Collatz conjecture with the perspective of a high-school student. Our algorithm tested a generalized form of the conjecture for multiple primes (3, 5, 7) and signs (+,). The Pearson correlation coefficient found between the initial value and, respectively, the total stopping time or the maximum value reached excluded any linear correlation. The second (and main) goal was to assess the hypothesis whether hailstones could indeed follow a Collatz-like function trajectory, studying the implication on the radii of them. Introducing the concept of conversion formula, we estimated the final radii for different functions (straight line, square-root, square, logarithmic, exponential), unit of measures (from Km to mm), and starting heights ranging from 4000m to 10000m, should the motion of hailstones behave like a Collatz function. In all but one case, we did not get radii believable in size, and reasonably randomly distributed. For the linear formula (in cm), the -test values between our estimated values and Nelson’s model values are above the critical values. Hence, we should reject the initial hypothesis. |
The Government's Role in U.S. Health Care | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2502 | Grace Martin; Keenan Reader | 05-31-2022 | This paper will discuss the different aspects of the government’s role in the United States health care system. It will look into private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare which will point out how politics have become involved in the discussion of people’s health and their lives. It will also discuss the health care system of the Canadian government, to compare and contrast the differences between the two systems. The purpose of this study is to understand how the United States government is involved in the health care system and how it can be changed for betterment of Americans. It will become clear after reviewing the United States and Canada, that if the US were to switch to a universal coverage system Americans would be better off because everyone would be covered. The information in this paper is a reflection of how one change can make the health care system of America beneficial to everyone. |
Impact of Globalization on the Manufacturing Sector of India and China | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2575 | Mahek Gupta; Emma Campbell-Mohn | 05-31-2022 | This research paper explores the impact of globalization on the manufacturing sector of India and China. It compares the manufacturing sectors of India across four factors: demand and supply of labour, labour cost, literacy rate, and productivity. Through this comparison, the paper concludes that while the trends in both India and China’s economies remained similar before globalisation, China’s manufacturing sector eventually grew much faster due to its access to better technology and skilled labour. The impact of globalization in the manufacturing sector is seen through capital as the economies shifted into the secondary sector with the increase in technological advancement. But how do these shifts unfold in developing economies? This paper analyses the labour market of India before and after globalization and the findings are compared to the labour market of China during the same period. |
Sustained Anxiety-Like Behavior in Crayfish Exposed to Thermal Burn | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2641 | Jacob Greisberg; Prakash Gorroochurn, Justin K. Greisberg | 05-31-2022 | null |
Applicability to the Polak Model as a Factor Affecting the Outcome of Austerity Policies | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2979 | Pranav Marneni, Aadarsh Battula; Joel Miller | 05-31-2022 | Many of the IMF’s loans to struggling countries require the borrowing country to implement austerity. A set of policies meant to restore a country’s economy and ensure that the IMF’s loans are effective. Though the policies work in some countries, in others they lead to economic decline. As the IMF continues to place austerity it is important to understand factors that could be affecting the outcome of these policies to prevent economic disaster. We theorize that the Polak Model, an economic model underlying the justification behind austerity, doesn’t apply to all countries, leading to poor economic policy due to an incorrect understanding of a country’s economy. To test if applicability to the relations outlined by the Polak Model is a key variable leading to the mixed outcomes of austerity we examined countries where austerity was detrimental (Greece and Argentina) and countries that were better off after austerity (Estonia and Croatia) by reviewing existing research on the countries’ economies’ application to the Polak Model and outcomes of austerity measures in those countries. We hypothesize that if austerity measures were detrimental to a country’s economy, then it would fail to fit the Polak model while a country that improved following austerity would fit the model. We find that our hypothesis is supported, indicating that the IMF must evaluate to which countries the Polak Model applies before pushing austerity instead of assuming that the model holds true for all countries and implementing ineffective policy based on flawed economic reasoning. |
Challenges Faced by Patients while Undertaking Treatment for Tuberculosis | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2534 | Suveera Batra; Dr. Pallavi Parwar | 05-31-2022 | Despite the immunisation of 92% of the Indian population against tuberculosis with the bacille Calmette-Guerin vaccine (Statistica, 2019), India recorded 79,000 deaths due to this bacterial infection (The Times of India, 2020). Professionals in the field have tried to find the reason behind the high mortality and high infection rate in the country with the aim of eliminating tuberculosis in India by 2025 as part of the TB National Strategic Plan. A significant reason identified for this phenomenon is non-adherence to treatment due to challenges faced by the patients while undertaking treatment. The aim of the present research study is to identify the challenges faced by Indian tuberculosis patients visiting a dispensary in South Delhi undertaking treatment for tuberculosis and evaluating their relative importance in influencing their treatment experience through a mixed-method approach. The study was carried out by conducting a survey via phone with 35 Tuberculosis patients. Financial difficulties/loss of job/ school was found to have the highest mean rating which mirrors the trend in other developing countries such as Bangladesh. The study has implications for the government at different levels and private hospitals can be convinced that providing free-of-cost treatment is not enough and more budget should be allocated to tuberculosis treatment to ensure that patients receive a wholesome diet during and post-treatment. These changes combined would be a great step to improving public health crises such as the transmission of infectious diseases in developing countries like India. |
The Molecular Mechanism of Vitamin D3 in Mitigating Pathological Formation of Parkinson’s Disease | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2601 | Brianna Kwan; Dr. Wei Zhu | 05-31-2022 | Parkinson’s Disease (PD) has been in the spotlight of research for decades, but despite efforts aiming to discover treatments, there is still no effective therapy that targets PD pathology. Vitamin D3, however, has been identified as a promising chemical in mitigating the effects of alpha synuclein (⍺-syn), a hallmark protein in diagnosing PD. Mitochondrial complex I is a protein complex that produces oxidative stress, an effect that can lead to symptoms of PD. Rotenone, a chemical which induces PD-like effects was used to set a PD model. This study focused on the anti-PD effects of vitamin D3 in attenuating rotenone through mitochondrial complex I. Treatments were tested by measuring cell proliferation, rotenone induced necrosis, and rotenone induced apoptosis. Varying concentrations of vitamin D3 proved to reduce cytotoxicity substantially. Caspase activity in apoptosis decreased with vitamin D3 presence, suggesting that cell death was mitigated. In addition to using in vitro rotenone PD models, molecular docking was used to depict vitamin D3, rotenone, and mitochondrial complex I interactions. To our knowledge, this was the first study to use vitamin D3 and mitochondrial complex I in a molecular docking analysis in addition to utilizing rotenone to study PD. Docking established a connection between mitochondrial complex I, rotenone, and vitamin D3 by displaying a strong bond between molecules. This ultimately suggested that vitamin D3 can indirectly mitigate oxidative stress by attenuating rotenone and ⍺-syn through mitochondrial complex I, thus limiting the presence of ⍺-syn, which is seen in elevated amounts in PD. |
Securing a Safe City Labor Conditions of the Residential Security Guards in Hong Kong | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2897 | Janice Shen; Fernando Montero | 05-31-2022 | While contemporary ethnographies on “security” focus on abstract notions of safety or the active implementation of security measures, this paper dives into the passive, subconscious structures shaping the labor conditions of residential security guards in Hong Kong. Private security forces have been around since ancient civilization and are so familiar that they have become vastly overlooked in modern society, camouflaging within the social landscape. However, private security forces are everywhere in Hong Kong, crucial to the high levels of safety and convenience of the city’s residents. Security companies display consistent employment practices showing the intrinsic nature of how companies manage their labor in a capitalist economy. This paper depicts how divides between socio-economic groups and security perceptions channel middle-aged or elderly sectors towards residential security guard employment. Additionally, labor management strategies and relationships between residents and security guards further reinforce the structure of dominance, maintaining the status quo while preventing the security guards from unionizing and creating change. |
An Analysis of Gender Gap in Computer Science in High School | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2572 | Kashika Mahajan; Gayathri Thirumalai | 05-31-2022 | Computer Science has been a male-dominated field even at its beginning, and it continues to be so. A distinct gap has developed between the number of women and men studying and working in Computer Science, commonly termed as the Gender Gap. Previous studies have uncovered this gap at its worst during college education, where women occupy a small fraction of the STEM-related classes. Surveys and data were taken from a high school to be analyzed. These provide insight into why female students are not as encouraged as their male counterparts regarding the subject. The results show that even at a stage as early as high school, differences in confidence, upbringing and exposure have often deterred female students from pursuing Computer Science. Contrary to the belief that due to the rising dependency on technology more women are pursuing Computer Science, a four-year plot shows that in high schools there is rather a widening gender gap. |
Epigenetics and Genetics of Schizophrenia | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2629 | Dyuti Ganesh | 05-31-2022 | Millions of people around the world suffer from schizophrenia and the resulting delusions, social withdrawal and other symptoms. All of these symptoms have treatments available such as anti-psychotics and therapy. However, these treatments are merely symptomatic and do not address the root of the disorder. The treatments can dull the impact of the symptoms of schizophrenia but cannot treat the disorder itself, therefore more effective treatments must be offered. Schizophrenia is an extremely heritable disorder, so genetics, as well as epigenetics, plays a crucial role in the prevalence and severity of the disorder. Studying the epigenetics and genetics of schizophrenia can help to gain a more thorough understanding of the disorder to help develop and test treatments that aren’t just symptomatic. There have been various studies searching for parts of the genome that could play a role in an individual’s likelihood to develop schizophrenia and gene therapy could be used to edit these parts of the genome. Epigenetics refers to the alteration in how one’s body reads the genome using histone modification. Although there is minimal research in the area and as a result, there are also no treatments currently being researched or tested, epigenetic treatments have the potential to become a revolutionary treatment for schizophrenia. However, considering the lack of knowledge and research surrounding epigenetics, currently, genetic treatment has more likelihood of being a useful treatment in the near future. Nonetheless, increased research about epigenetics and genetics can help create more treatments to help those suffering from this disorder. |
Putting the Jury System on Trial | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/3138 | Nathan Chan; John Yates | 05-31-2022 | The Sixth Amendment guarantees all United States citizens the “right to an impartial jury.” Yet, this is not the case. In this paper, I will focus on examining the racial bias and the prejudice against under-resourced defendants that plague the criminal justice system. However, I will argue that these flaws stem from the execution, not the theoretical basis, of jury trials. Rather, trials by jury are uniquely suited to encourage civic participation while preventing tyranny, which are key pillars of American democracy. Nonetheless, without action, the prejudice that has rendered jury trials unconstitutional will stop real justice from ever being reached. Thus, should a response be prompted against trials by jury, it should be one that reforms its bias and prejudice, instead of abolishment. In this paper, I will first discuss the failings of jury trials, before justifying why they should not be abolished and thereafter providing suggestions for their improvement. |
The Ways of preservation of Indian music for Generation X and Generation Z | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2520 | Simra Faisal; Dr. Mritunjay Sharma | 05-31-2022 | Overtime, there has been a loss of appreciation for music, as many people choose to listen to different types of songs and stay in their comfort zones. Due to this, many important pieces of art are being lost and remain unexplored. The present study focuses on identifying ways to preserve Indian music in order to conserve the feeling of home and familiarity which they instill. Thus, it also aims to bring people closer, explore uncharted genres, find ways to bridge their differences and form bonds. The research consisted of six Hindi songs out of which three were from generation X (40-50) and the rest from generation Z (15-20) living in Delhi NCR (Gurgaon). The main focus was to gather participants’ views on each song and use their opinions to identify methods of preservation. It was observed that many of the participants of both generations had similar viewpoints on each song. Through this, the study was able to shed light on the main factors which can affect a person’s thought process on how music stirs different emotions for everybody. The findings were different from the assumption that there was a large gap between generations' music tastes. Music for people is about comfort, happiness and emotional support, over just being a means of superficial entertainment. It is a very subjective and immersive experience for people from both the generations and it shouldn't be simply confined to any one era or relatability factor, as it transcends thresholds. |
Exploring Gender Inequality in Shonen Manga: A Cross-Sectional Study of Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2595 | David Mun | 05-31-2022 | The Naruto series is one of the most popular manga series in history, continuing with creator Masashi Kishimoto’s sequel story Boruto. Because it is a product of both the Shonen genre and Japanese patriarchy, the series funnels problematic sexist components in its female characterizations, all targeting a young male audience. As one of the most-read manga of all time, this issue poses a great threat of cementing obsolete sexist values in the younger generation and inspiring other literature to follow suit. Thus far, significant research on the connection between Japanese culture and gender themes in the manga is lacking. Therefore, this paper aims to address this gap in research and provide for future research in identifying and quantifying sexism through character strength and roles in stories. The paper synthesizes previous literature on Japanese culture, the Shonen genre, and Kishimoto’s influences, in addition to qualitative research comparing power rankings of female and male characters in Naruto and the identification of gender roles assigned to its female characters. The paper concludes by establishing the presence of sexism in the series and calling for a more dignified characterization of its female characters in the series Boruto. |
How a Soviet Past Influences the Present: Vaccine Hesitancy in the Russian-speaking Population Today | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2880 | Jonathan Tyshler; Nathan Manning | 05-31-2022 | The Russian-speaking population in the United States has shown a notoriously high prevalence of vaccine hesitancy. The same trends are present in the former Soviet republics. This was illuminated during the COVID-19 pandemic as World Health Organization cited this demographic as among the lowest vaccinated. This study aims at discovering key factors behind vaccine hesitancy in the Russian-speaking population in former Soviet republics and the USA. From August to November of 2021, twenty five 30-minute interviews with subjects ranging between ages 16-81 were conducted in Russian. Through these 25 interviews, 15 with immigrants in the Russian-speaking community in Washington State and 10 with residents of Russia and Ukraine, coupled with reviews of published literature and online sources, a strong relationship between vaccine hesitancy and a multitude of factors was established. The key factors behind vaccine hesitancy documented in this study were tied to subjects’ experiences and culture in the former Soviet Union. Among these was a strong distrust of government, doubts towards the healthcare system, mistrust of medical professionals, a Soviet medical culture that questions prophylactic treatment options, the eruption of a consumer-dominated society in the post-soviet era, and misinformation in the media. For immigrants in the U.S., a general confusion with the American healthcare system was also a contributing factor. These findings reveal key drivers of vaccine hesitancy in one of the lowest vaccinated demographics overall, highlighting the persisting importance of Soviet background. Shining light on these factors is essential for combating vaccine hesitancy in this population. |
Exploring Indian Views on the underrepresentation of female teenagers in STEM | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2566 | Abhishek Mukherjee; Aamina Rahim | 05-31-2022 | Only 15% to 20% of tenured faculty at Indian universities are women, while 14% of employed researchers in STEM fields are women. To investigate reasons for this problem, the present research study was conducted to gather data for Indian respondents’ perceptions of the reasons for understanding of the women underrepresentation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields, focusing on female teenagers. The study asked respondents to rate the overall underrepresentation and the importance of different factors on a scale of 1 to 7, along with their own explanations and suggestions. The study found that the most important factor to explain the underrepresentation was Poverty, followed by Parent’s Traditional values. In contrast, the least important factors were Feminine Attributes and the idea that female teenagers wanted to avoid the male field, while Absorb Stereotypes (the idea that female teenagers subconsciously take in stereotypes of STEM being a male field), Teacher’s Discouragement and Less Confidence were given ratings closer to the middle. Additional factors suggested by respondents included females having to take care of family responsibilities and lack of role models in STEM fields. This suggests Indians have increased awareness of the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields. |
The Ways of preservation of Indian music for Generation X and Generation Z | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2520 | Simra Faisal; Dr. Mritunjay Sharma | 05-31-2022 | Overtime, there has been a loss of appreciation for music, as many people choose to listen to different types of songs and stay in their comfort zones. Due to this, many important pieces of art are being lost and remain unexplored. The present study focuses on identifying ways to preserve Indian music in order to conserve the feeling of home and familiarity which they instill. Thus, it also aims to bring people closer, explore uncharted genres, find ways to bridge their differences and form bonds. The research consisted of six Hindi songs out of which three were from generation X (40-50) and the rest from generation Z (15-20) living in Delhi NCR (Gurgaon). The main focus was to gather participants’ views on each song and use their opinions to identify methods of preservation. It was observed that many of the participants of both generations had similar viewpoints on each song. Through this, the study was able to shed light on the main factors which can affect a person’s thought process on how music stirs different emotions for everybody. The findings were different from the assumption that there was a large gap between generations' music tastes. Music for people is about comfort, happiness and emotional support, over just being a means of superficial entertainment. It is a very subjective and immersive experience for people from both the generations and it shouldn't be simply confined to any one era or relatability factor, as it transcends thresholds. |
Exploring Gender Inequality in Shonen Manga: A Cross-Sectional Study of Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2595 | David Mun | 05-31-2022 | The Naruto series is one of the most popular manga series in history, continuing with creator Masashi Kishimoto’s sequel story Boruto. Because it is a product of both the Shonen genre and Japanese patriarchy, the series funnels problematic sexist components in its female characterizations, all targeting a young male audience. As one of the most-read manga of all time, this issue poses a great threat of cementing obsolete sexist values in the younger generation and inspiring other literature to follow suit. Thus far, significant research on the connection between Japanese culture and gender themes in the manga is lacking. Therefore, this paper aims to address this gap in research and provide for future research in identifying and quantifying sexism through character strength and roles in stories. The paper synthesizes previous literature on Japanese culture, the Shonen genre, and Kishimoto’s influences, in addition to qualitative research comparing power rankings of female and male characters in Naruto and the identification of gender roles assigned to its female characters. The paper concludes by establishing the presence of sexism in the series and calling for a more dignified characterization of its female characters in the series Boruto. |
How a Soviet Past Influences the Present: Vaccine Hesitancy in the Russian-speaking Population Today | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2880 | Jonathan Tyshler; Nathan Manning | 05-31-2022 | The Russian-speaking population in the United States has shown a notoriously high prevalence of vaccine hesitancy. The same trends are present in the former Soviet republics. This was illuminated during the COVID-19 pandemic as World Health Organization cited this demographic as among the lowest vaccinated. This study aims at discovering key factors behind vaccine hesitancy in the Russian-speaking population in former Soviet republics and the USA. From August to November of 2021, twenty five 30-minute interviews with subjects ranging between ages 16-81 were conducted in Russian. Through these 25 interviews, 15 with immigrants in the Russian-speaking community in Washington State and 10 with residents of Russia and Ukraine, coupled with reviews of published literature and online sources, a strong relationship between vaccine hesitancy and a multitude of factors was established. The key factors behind vaccine hesitancy documented in this study were tied to subjects’ experiences and culture in the former Soviet Union. Among these was a strong distrust of government, doubts towards the healthcare system, mistrust of medical professionals, a Soviet medical culture that questions prophylactic treatment options, the eruption of a consumer-dominated society in the post-soviet era, and misinformation in the media. For immigrants in the U.S., a general confusion with the American healthcare system was also a contributing factor. These findings reveal key drivers of vaccine hesitancy in one of the lowest vaccinated demographics overall, highlighting the persisting importance of Soviet background. Shining light on these factors is essential for combating vaccine hesitancy in this population. |
Exploring Indian Views on the underrepresentation of female teenagers in STEM | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2566 | Abhishek Mukherjee; Aamina Rahim | 05-31-2022 | Only 15% to 20% of tenured faculty at Indian universities are women, while 14% of employed researchers in STEM fields are women. To investigate reasons for this problem, the present research study was conducted to gather data for Indian respondents’ perceptions of the reasons for understanding of the women underrepresentation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields, focusing on female teenagers. The study asked respondents to rate the overall underrepresentation and the importance of different factors on a scale of 1 to 7, along with their own explanations and suggestions. The study found that the most important factor to explain the underrepresentation was Poverty, followed by Parent’s Traditional values. In contrast, the least important factors were Feminine Attributes and the idea that female teenagers wanted to avoid the male field, while Absorb Stereotypes (the idea that female teenagers subconsciously take in stereotypes of STEM being a male field), Teacher’s Discouragement and Less Confidence were given ratings closer to the middle. Additional factors suggested by respondents included females having to take care of family responsibilities and lack of role models in STEM fields. This suggests Indians have increased awareness of the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields. |
Dopamine Agonists and their Optimality in Treating Parkinson's Disease Compared to Other Treatments | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2622 | Samarth Keerthivasan; Jotsna Kethar, Rajagopal Appavu | 05-31-2022 | Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that has been plaguing tens of thousands of people each year, and as a result, there has been lots of research to find a drug or compound which, if used correctly, will allow for a decrease in the symptoms of the disorder. One idea that is of question is whether dopamine agonists might be able to help reduce the effects that the disease has upon a person. As a result, the question of how useful dopamine agonists are in the treatment of or minimization of the effects of Parkinson’s Disease rises. This paper focuses heavily on the topic of the optimality of dopamine agonists in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and relies upon past research on the subject of PD treatments/therapies. Although an agonist, in scientific terms, is known as a chemical substance capable of combining with a specific receptor on a cell and initiating the same reaction or activity typically produced by the original substance itself, these dopamine agonists have not proven to be as effective as can be assumed. These agonists, even with the ability to imitate the reaction of dopamine agonists, are not as useful as other treatments to PD, such as Levodopa. In this paper, comparisons were conducted between the two largest categories of PD therapy to derive a conclusion. The findings indicate some rather surprising results, and prove that dopamine agonists might not be as useful in the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease as one might assume. |
Analyzing Receptivity of Indian Respondents for Introduction of a Regulated Cryptocurrency Market | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2315 | Kashvi Jindal; Akanksha Chhetri | 05-31-2022 | There have been increasing concerns regarding the cryptocurrency market for several reasons, regarding its decentralized system, and impact on the current financial market. Thus, the introduction of a regulated cryptocurrency market has sparked the public’s interest. This research study aimed to evaluate Indian respondents’ knowledge of cryptocurrencies and their receptivity (on the basis of several factors) towards the introduction of a regulated cryptocurrency market in India by conducting an online survey using a mixed-method research approach. Among the eight different factors examined, the study found the level of liquidity to be the highest-rated factor amongst respondents in influencing their receptivity. This finding suggests that the Indian public prefers a fast-flowing and smooth trading market, like the cryptocurrency market. Another top-rated factor was the level of security, possibly due to the increasing concern of cyberattacks in the financial markets. Conversely, anonymous usage, inflation risk, and operation cost were the least influential, highlighting the Indian public’s unique characteristics. Data revealed that respondents who were finance professionals and had IT experience were generally more receptive to the idea of a regulated cryptocurrency market in India. As a result, additional nuanced marketing strategies targeted at different sectors, especially the finance and IT sectors, as identified through the results include: introducing a regulated cryptocurrency market to the Indian public by highlighting their concern for the level of security and attracting them by highlighting how its regulation by authorities would keep in check the threats it poses. |
The Psychopath's Brain: Is it Structurally Different From the Normal Brain? | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2515 | Shiwon Chang; Kimberly Pyland | 05-31-2022 | Antisocial personality disorder, also called psychopathy, is caused by an individual’s brain structure. This paper analyzes the methods, limitations, and findings of the research that supports this claim. Case studies and correlational studies show a connection between gray matter volume in brain regions and psychopathic emotionlessness. Experiments show the inner workings of a psychopath’s brain as they display dishonesty and lack of empathy. Furthermore, this paper will also explain the relevance of this research to the field of psychology, and the practical applications of the research in society as a whole outside, including in the fields of law and medicine. |
COVID-19 Uncertainty and Its Impact on Stock Prices | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2592 | Steven Yao; Jenny Hu | 05-31-2022 | This paper develops a stock-pricing model to investigate how the COVID-19 induced uncertainty affects stock prices. Through utilizing a series of mathematical techniques and conducting a comparative static analysis, we find that when economic uncertainty intensifies, the future payouts of firms, such as dividend payments to stockholders, tend to diminish, indicating a deterioration of firms’ stability and prospect. As a result, investors expect a reduction in the future payoffs of the stocks issued by firms. Given that the price of a stock reflects the present values of its expected future payoffs, the rising level of COVID-19 uncertainty, which undermines the future payoffs of the stocks that investors expect to receive, decreases stock prices. |
Comparison and Review of DAT Scan, PET Scan, and α-synuclein In Relation to Parkinson’s Disease | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2549 | Pranav Vijay Kumar; Rajagopal Appavu | 05-31-2022 | In this article, the role of the Dopamine Active Transporter (DAT) scan, and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan along with the role of α-synuclein with regards to Parkinson’s disease will be discussed. Furthermore, their applications and dependence as diagnostic techniques, as well as biomarkers, are also reviewed. In short, DAT-SPECT and PET scans can be used well to differentiate between Parkinson’s and other Parkinsonian syndromes, but it takes experts with many years of experience to help with diagnosis. Ɑ-synuclein on the other hand may not serve as a good biomarker but it does have potential in therapeutic treatments. Furthermore, a few common diseases that are most often misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s are also discussed. They include Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. MS deals with the degeneration of the myelin sheath which PSP deals with the build-up of a certain protein in the brain called tau. In both cases, neuronal degeneration occurs, similar to what happens with respect to Parkinson’s. Unfortunately, there is no current cure for Parkinson’s, PSP, or MS. Lastly, this paper also reviews the author's future plans with regard to Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases in general. There is a dire need for biomarkers and/or a concrete diagnostic technique that can detect Parkinson’s earlier such that progression is either delayed or treatment is developed based on this. |
The Relationship Between the Type of Government and Support for War: Research on Major Wars Fought Since 1965 | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2611 | Joon Sung Kim | 05-31-2022 | Throughout the history of wars, especially during the 20th century, as wars became a national effort not only limited to the military, public support for wars has been an important factor in a government’s decision to start, continue and end a war. This paper observes major wars that were fought during the second half of the 20th century, up to contemporary times, and examines the relationships between the warring nations’ political systems, and how much support they have received from their people. The paper uses its own scale to measure both variables at play. The paper initially hypothesized that authoritarian states gain more support from their people during times of war, but eventually concluded that there is no significant correlation between the two variables. |
Enter The Darkness To Bring Others Into The Light Human Trafficking: The Modern-Day Version of Slavery | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2504 | Mike Zoi; Kaley Ciluffo | 05-31-2022 | This research primarily examines how human trafficking systems in the Balkan region of Europe compare and contrast to the ones in the United States. Trafficking in these specific areas can be analyzed and summarized using the perspectives of shame in trafficking, lack of social support, and the need for reform in schooling and the general public’s understanding of human trafficking. Using comparative analysis with cultural patterns and ethnographic data, I discuss various genres of human trafficking, the patterns and methods of trafficking in the areas specified, the effects on the victims, and how trafficking culture had shifted. I provide case-specific examples of scenarios the various victims of human trafficking face, primarily focusing on women. These findings indicate a need for further analysis on the differences between trafficking systems around the world and prevention methods. |
Robots - Inanimate or Living: To evaluate the receptivity of Xenobots by Indian Respondents | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2577 | Aarav Agrawal; Saurav Debnath | 05-31-2022 | As industrialization continues, the world is introduced to many challenges, such as Global Warming and Pollution. Even with adverse effects on the environment, synthetic materials continue to be commonly used. To tackle this, scientists from the University of Vermont combined the fields of AI and bio-technology to develop a robot capable of performing specific functions e.g, locomoting and manipulating objects, using cells. Other than reducing the use of synthetic materials, this robot can directly help in collecting microplastics from the ocean, while being biodegradable. With time, as manufacturing gets automated, the capability of these robots will be widened. Though it’s not an immediate concern, the idea of a living robot can be seen to come with many ethical concerns. To understand the reservations it can create, this research paper intends to evaluate the receptivity of Xenobots by high-school students and teachers. A total of 30 respondents from various urban and suburban locations of the country were surveyed on their knowledge and interest of Xenobots, before and after watching an informational video, and their thoughts on its ethical concerns and effectiveness were collected from open-ended questions. Qualitative and Quantitative tools such as t-tests, mean, SD tests and thematic analysis were used to study the accumulated data. The video positively impacted their rating of knowledge, however interest remained equally high. Further thematic analysis revealed that respondents were doubtful about its usefulness as well as its drawbacks, which notifies aspiring companies and governments that it might be too soon for such technology. |
A Microfluidic Chip Designed for Stimulating Drug Diffusion | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2644 | Chenchen Zheng; Xin Xie | 05-31-2022 | Two-dimensional, three-dimensional or microfluidic chip-based cell cultures have been extensively used to identify effective compounds for drug development in the past few decades. Nevertheless, these traditional strategies of cell cultures are unable to capture the in vivo process of drug administration and diffusion. Here, we exploited the techniques of microfluidic chips and developed a new platform to dynamically simulate drug delivery and diffusion. Using this platform, we designed two experiments to quantify the diffusivity from source channel to target channel: (1) the pH value in target channel regulated by the diffusion of input solution from source channel; (2) the oxygen concentration in target channel regulated by the diffusion of oxygen produced by oxygen-enriched water in source channel. The input channel and the target channel were separated by nanoporous membranes mimicking biological tissue walls. These two experiments as proof-of-concept demonstrated that our platform can simulate the in vivo process of drug diffusion and be applied to study drug diffusivity. |
Preparation for the Next Pandemic: A Study on Past Techniques Used During Pandemics | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2985 | Tara Flynn, Mr. Mark Crowder; Dr. Reto Asmis | 05-31-2022 | When citizens of Wuhan, China starting contracting Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), it was inevitable that the diease was going to spread to the rest of the world, therefore resulting in a pandemic. This disease is caused by SARS-CoV-2 and was discovered for the first time in December of 2019. COVID-19 affects the lungs and has symptoms that are similar to the common cold, pneumonia, or the flu. Over 6 million people have died from COVID-19 and number continue to rise. When there was first talk of the pandemic in the United States, it was said that the United States of America was the most prepared country in the world to tackle a pandemic. The United States ended up having one of the worst outcomes when COVID-19 struck and this was because of faulty planning. It is crucial to know information about COVID-19 before looking into what the United States did wrong. The research provided in the following study shows the lack of testing, bad mask mandates, poor public health funding, etc. Along with this, a plan is created on what to do if a pandemic were to hit the United States once again in the future and how to stop it before it wrecks havoc on the nation. |
Effects of Adding Noise to Circuit Model and Numerical Model of Spontaneous Otoacoustic Emissions | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2458 | Lucy Feng; Carey Witkov | 02-28-2022 | Spontaneous otoacoustic emissions have long been modeled using self-excited, nonlinear oscillators. The van der Pol oscillator is a common choice, as many of its properties reflect those of SOAEs: both can begin oscillation in the absence of a direct stimulus, both have narrow frequency bands, and both become stable over time, to name a few. Yet such an idealized equation cannot have a one-to-one correspondence with SOAEs in all factors. Many previously used mathematical and circuit models lack the addition of noise to more accurately show how real world SOAEs operate in an organism’s ear, where noise from the environment is almost entirely unavoidable. The inclusion of uniformly distributed noise in both numerical and circuit models of the van der Pol oscillator was studied to determine whether these models can still accurately explicate SOAEs when modified to be more realistic. In both cases, both models retained the attributes of real world SOAEs despite the addition of noise, allowing them to serve as more useful and accurate models of the phenomenon. |
Bioethanol and Gel Production using Organic Fruit Waste | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2529 | Sofia Vasquez; Haydde Gomez | 02-28-2022 | null |
What are the Risks and Benefits of Alternative Assets? | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2669 | Kirill Vorobyev; Niklas Schmitz | 02-28-2022 | This paper explores the risks and benefits of alternative assets (private equity, hedge funds and cryptocurrency), and assesses whether they are worth investing in. The evaluation of the safety of the investments was done with the use of different measures of risk, such as maximum drawdown and standard deviation. I also calculated Sharpe ratio to compare different kinds of assets and correlation between them to understand how they would fit in a portfolio. The analysis shows that though cryptocurrencies (especially bitcoin) show very high returns, the risk of fall is too large to consider them as safe investments. Broadly speaking, the safest type of investment in alternative assets are hedge funds as their main goal is “to hedge risks”. Private equity is much riskier than hedge funds, but its returns are more likely to be higher. Even with the safer investments, picking the right funds becomes crucial as performance of top-quartile funds and the others tend to differ significantly. Correlation is high between hedge funds, private equity and stocks, and low between bitcoin and other types of assets. In general, the market of alternative assets is very prospective and investors should consider them as possible diversifiers in their portfolios. |
Understanding Alzheimer’s Risk Factors Associated with the Prevalence of US Populations and Women | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2269 | Krrishika Saxena; Sabin Nettles | 02-28-2022 | Alzheimer's disease (AD), a fatal neurological disease, is the 6th leading cause of death in the United States 43, affecting millions of people. This is a great concern as, by 2060, the number could grow to 13.8 million if no cure is discovered0. Despite sophisticated research and technology, finding a solution in the near future appears unattainable due to financing and the brain's complexity. Due to Alzheimer's disease affecting millions of people, the goal of this research is to inform and educate people about the risk factors, prevalence in individuals, and therapeutic treatments available early on for this disease so that one can minimize their risk of developing it. People are unaware of genetic, behavioral, and environmental vulnerabilities that raise their chances of acquiring the disease chronically, which is why this disease has affected millions and is one of the leading causes of mortality. People would avoid these risks if they were aware of them early on. Methods to reduce the chance of developing Alzheimer's disease are discovered through examining the risks and existing therapeutic treatments, as well as analyzing the prevalence of the disease in different ethnic groups and women in the United States through a variety of sources. The findings identified the major causes of Alzheimer's disease, why particular ethnic groups are more susceptible to the disease, and why women are disproportionately impacted by the disease compared to males. Knowing all of this, plus the therapies, can help reduce the number of AD cases in the US. |
What Does Western White Prose Fiction Teach the Woke Generation About Othering and Belonging? | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2391 | Coco Cresswell; Mrs. T. Anslow | 02-28-2022 | This research explores the portrayal of otherness and non-conformity in Western literature and proves that modern phenomena such as “cancel culture” are giving contemporary authors a new relevance. Using William Faulkner’s Light in August and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as my foundation, I intend to demonstrate that the lessons they provide on race, gender, and extremism are often ignored by Generation Z, yet applicable to modern discourse. By referencing earlier works including Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, as well as George Orwell’s dystopian Nineteen Eighty-Four, I want to prove that the warnings given about the consequences of trying to eradicate otherness are multi-dimensional and deeply entrenched. Ultimately, my research illustrates that despite the societal tendency to make distinctions between normative and “other”, the line between the two is non-existent: in attempts to eliminate otherness, we become violent "others" ourselves, possessing characteristics to the “bestial” individual that we originally sought to oppress. |
Brain Computer Interfaces: Wireless Recording of Brain Signals with Electro-Plasmonic Nanoantenna | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2421 | Alexa Lowe, Safaa Hussain, Grace Xia; Ahsan Habib, Ali Yanik | 02-28-2022 | Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) recording brain signals via implantable sensors aims to substitute, restore, improve, add, or enhance human functions. However, wiring requirements for power transfer and signal transmission, acute immune response to implanted electrodes, and the limited scalability of the ever-popular microelectrode arrays prevent wide adaptation of BCIs. Here, we show that electro-plasmonic nanoparticles, plasmonic nanoparticles loaded with an electrochromic polymer, can overcome the limitations of the conventional implantable microelectrode arrays as BCI probes. Much like radio frequency identification (RFIDs) tags that use backscattering for remote readout, electro-plasmonic nanoparticles report the spiking activity of neurons by modulating the input light and the re-radiated light spectrum. Our electro-plasmonic nanoantennas are non-invasive, wire-free, highly sensitive (field sensitivity up to 15.5%) and require no surgical implantation. We believe that electro-plasmonic neural probes can help usher in a new era of BCIs. |
Predicting the 2022 Australian Federal Election with Actuarial Methodologies | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2556 | Sumedh Kundu; Stuart Madgwick | 02-28-2022 | Election forecasting has, for a long time, been considered a major tool used by voters and politicians alike to understand the electoral mood. In Australia, tools such as opinion polling even drive many policy decisions made by governments. Yet, these same tools have been misleading and/or wrong in recent elections. The consequences of this have meant large fiscal loss for bookmakers, rash policy decisions, inappropriate leadership changes, and, recently, erosion of trust in the democratic process. Hence, we must look at new ways to analyse elections, and use a more appropriate system to mimic the actual voting system in the country where the election is being held. For example, in representative democracies with strong minor party representation like Australia, any forecasting method used must not use two-party preferred on a national basis, and, instead, analyse preference flows, and first preferences, for each seat. This study uses actuarial techniques to analyse probabilities of parties winning each of the 151 seats in the 2022 Election, and then calculates final party totals based on these probabilities. This study aims to accurately predict the 2022 Election using a methodology which will enable a final forecast which is not misleading and is, in fact, appropriate for a representative democracy. Data used includes first preferences and Preference Flow data from the 2019 Election, Demographic data from the 2016 Census, Economic Data across 2019-22, and Opinion Polls from The Australian and Roy Morgan. Further, political insight will be used to discuss these results and the potential variances. |
A Comparative analysis of War Propaganda Words Stronger than Guns | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2408 | Alex Han; Gregory Slosek | 02-28-2022 | This paper analyzes propaganda leaflets in different wars. The importance of propaganda and its use and creation in different wars indicates its significance in terms of success. Every war has used certain different tactics and strategies in wars to win and influence the people through their war strategies and different types of leaflets. Following wars are discussed with their powerful propaganda during the war. For instance, the Korean war propaganda leaflets, German propaganda leaflets, Franco-Prussian War 1870 propaganda leaflets, Vietnam war 1954-75 propaganda, World War I Propaganda, and Spanish American War Propaganda. Propaganda has been used in these wars through different method either through leaflets, posters, music, through women, or yellow journalism etc. diverse impact of different propagandas were witnessed on the civilians and soldiers in these wars. That means that propaganda has remain an important element of war and has its strong crucial role in the winning war. |
Machine Learning as a Tool to the Diagnosis of Diabetes | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2513 | Mr. Yosef Granillo; Guillermo H. Goldsztein | 02-28-2022 | Machine learning is the field of computer science that uses data to make predictions and decisions. The problem we consider in this article belongs to the class known as supervised learning and the technique we use is logistic regression. After explaining supervised learning and logistic regression, we use a data set to develop a computational model able to give a diabetes diagnosis to patients. We discuss the accuracy of the model developed. |
AOS: Anti-Obesity System With Deep Learning-based Classification Model Using a Novel Data Augmentation Technique | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2349 | Sungmin Kim; Kyoung-Hyoun Kim | 02-28-2022 | Obesity has been a worldwide leading cause of associated health risks for decades, yet not much is being done to solve this issue. Previously, minimal efforts have been made to address this issue in regards to mandating nutrition labels on the back of packaged foods. However, the mundane and growingly elusive packing labels have diminished the proper effects of this constitution as people rarely ever take the time nor effort to thoroughly read through the labels. Moreover, most dishes served from restaurants do not serve with any nutritional information, which places many of the people dining out in complete darkness of what they are truly consuming. To solve this problem, we propose the deep learning-based AOS (Anti-Obesity System), which analyzes images of common junk foods and unhealthy meals to classify the category of food. The proposed system consists of a deep learning-based classifier and a post-processing module that outputs relevant nutritional information regarding each category of food. In addition, we propose a novel data augmentation technique in order to make the trained model produce better results. We also conduct the ablation study to experimentally prove that the proposed method enforces the model to work better in real-world situations. We achieve an AP of 59.30% on the proposed food dataset. Code will be available at https://github.com/smkim0508/ObesityNutritionClassifier.git. |
The Persistence of Human Capital over Time: Evidence from a Positive Immigration Shock | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2392 | Anoushka Khatri | 02-28-2022 | In this paper, I study the long-run effects of a positive shock to the labor force in Sao Paulo. Using a dataset based on Brazil and an estimation strategy based on regression analysis, I show both a positive direct and indirect effect of settlement on human capital. Being a recipient of highly skilled immigrants in 1872 is found to be positively associated with a rise in literacy rates, as well as higher per capita income and access to running water. |
The Effects of Closed-door Baseball Games | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2426 | Nathan Hong; Danilo Tadeo | 02-28-2022 | With the ongoing trend of closed-door baseball games, we researched to discover the actual effect of the crowd during this isolated season. Taking advantage of the current data provided by three reliable sports-related websites, we obtained significant results comparing previous years’ home team winning percentage data to this year’s. Initially, we found that the overall home team winning percentage of 2020 (the crowd-less season) was lower than that of the previous year (with crowds). From this finding, additional analyses were conducted, each controlling for another different factor of home winning percentage. Analysis 1 found that holding for skill difference amongst teams, the matchup of teams with a similar skill level showed a positive effect of crowds, aiding the home team wins. Analysis 2 found that home-field advantage of home teams in 2020 had decreased compared to 2019, proving once again that crowd does have a positive effect on home winning percentage. Thus, it was ultimately determined through the multiple qualifications and subsequent tests that there was evidence of a positive correlation between crowds and increased home winning. |
Correlating Anxiety and Risk Perceptions of Future Academic Prospects Among High-Achieving Students | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2418 | Joanne Ji; Mark Porto, Stacy Gil | 02-28-2022 | The twenty-first century is redefining the boundaries of adolescent mental health with its “epidemic of anxiety.” As a psychologically vulnerable demographic, academically intensive high school students are as unrivaled in their anxiety levels as they are in their ambition, which inflates their fear factors and undermines their personal values as well. In this paper, I expand on this subject by specifically exploring high-achieving students’ risk perceptions of their future academic prospects and how they correlate with symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). This study dives into the inquiry by utilizing quantitative survey research followed by a mixed cross-examination analysis. A total of 47 Advanced Placement high schoolers responded to the survey, and, based on the final numerical values assigned to their anxiety and risk perception levels, I calculated several correlation coefficients to interpret the results. My findings demonstrated that there was a strong positive correlation between anxiety and risk perceptions of academic prospects among high-achieving students. Despite their superlative academic statistics, results showed that many of the participants not only had high anxiety levels but also perceived a substantial amount of risk for their future success. This target population comprises only a fraction of teenagers who experience such symptoms, but this study presents how they uphold negative trends in anxiety-related disorders that require more attention and research in the field of psychology as a whole. |
To Transition to a Green Economy: Understanding World CO2 Greenhouse Gas Solutions to Climate Change | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2657 | Neil Tamhankar; Smile Dube | 02-28-2022 | The importance of shifting to a green economy is clearly established within the UN Social Development Goal (SDG) 13. SDG 13 focuses on combating climate change and its impacts; the UN reports that over 197 parties have signed the UN document. However, the green economy definition is so broad that it encompasses all 17 SDGs. A feasible approach in this paper is to limit our discussion to CO2, which accounts for almost 75% of greenhouse gases. Methane, nitrous oxide (NOx), and fluorinated gases account for 14%, 8%, and 1% respectively. Thus, we use world data from the World Development Indicators to examine the main sources of CO2 from 1960 to 2014. We find the persistence of CO2 over the years, which indicates that most countries have failed to limit the output of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. The conclusions drawn are stronger within an econometric model relating CO2 to GDP by employing an Environmental Kuznets (EKC) model for each region of the world. NOx emissions are also discussed later in the paper as another application of the EKC model. |
Nanophotonics: An Emerging and Promising Approach for COVID-19 Diagnostic Technology | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2475 | Annmaria Antony, Eileen Chen, Shreya Kakhandiki; Ahsan Habib | 02-28-2022 | The public health crisis initiated by the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic emphasizes the need for rapid and accurate diagnostic tests to monitor large populations through community mass testing. Many testing techniques have been implemented to prevent disease spread, critical to pandemic control. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests for detecting viral RNA and immunoassay tests for detecting SARS-CoV-2 antibodies are currently used to diagnose COVID-19. PCR tests are time-consuming, with a 24–48 hours turnaround time. Samples undergoing PCR detection must also be sent to a laboratory to be processed by highly specialized workers, preventing a point-of-care diagnosis from being provided. Popular immunoassay tests have drawbacks as well. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) are extremely labor-intensive and expensive, whereas lateral flow assays (LFAs) are primarily used for antigen detection. In this work, we propose a photonic SARS-CoV-2 detection method based on a ring resonator. We calculate the sensor performance using the finite-difference eigenmode (FDE) method. The sensor sensitivity in ring resonator resonance frequency is 29 nm/RIU, with an intrinsic detection level (iLOD) of 6.89 × 10-5 RIU. We envision ring resonator-based lab-on-chip devices being widely used for applications such as early diagnosis, with the added benefit of being ultra-compact and easily handled by non-specialists. |
Cross-Cultural and Gender Comparison of Emotional Connotation of Words | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2009 | Yaxuan Liang; Xiaohong Xu | 01-04-2022 | So far, scientists have researched to explore the emotional connotation of words in different native languages and genders. This study investigates how connotations of words differ by cultures and genders by inspecting valence values, which indicates how happy people feel about specific words in datasets obtained from USA, Spain, and Portuguese. To fulfill the objective, we categorized people’s feelings evoked by the words based on a criterion created by adding or subtracting standard deviation to or from valence means for the upper and lower bound. Then, words with valence values outside of the upper and lower bounds were categorized as emotional words (positive or negative) and were analyzed. The results show that people of different cultures are more connected regarding the perception of negative connotation of words than positive connotation. Moreover, Portuguese and Spanish are more connected than either of them with the US as they have more emotion words in common. On the gender aspect, we notice that females tend to give more extreme ratings for words than males. Furthermore, the analysis shows that males have a more positive feeling towards sex-related words than females. Overall, this study outlines a way for people interested in anthropology to understand the differences in the emotional connotation of words between males and females and across cultures. |
The Likely Impact of COVID-19 on US Employment in the Medium Term | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2257 | Lily Fu; Dr. Schonger | 12-27-2021 | COVID-19 caused an abrupt increase in unemployment rates for people across various fields of work. This paper compares the COVID-19 crisis with the Great Recession and the Spanish Influenza. After careful data collection and analysis, it is clear that COVID-19 caused a steep, immediate decline in the economy although it did not last long. By comparison, the Global Financial Crisis was a persistent recession though less severe. Comparison of the health effects for COVID-19 and the Spanish flu reveals that the influenza was much more contagious as it infected 29.3% of the US population in three years. In contrast, this percent is 2.4% for COVID-19 as of August, 2021. The flu outbreak also coincided with WWI which caused further spread of the virus, and an effective vaccine was never developed. Therefore, the current economic decline should not be worse than that of the influenza. Moreover, the government is more actively participating in the economy now than it was during the flu pandemic. The Spanish flu had a V-shaped economic trend despite having minimal government involvement. Because the flu and coronavirus are both pandemic-induced crises, we would expect COVID-19 to be V-shaped as well, which is seen through the graphs below. U.S. data from the Federal Reserve is analyzed graphically in this paper, and it shows that the COVID-19 crisis exhibits a distinct V-shape pattern. This suggests that economic recovery will be faster than the less severe Global Financial Crisis, and that countercyclical government policies may not be as necessary. |
Mothers’ Behaviors and Children’s Social Confidence and Ability: Correlations from the NLSY | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2228 | Kitty To; Ryan Lange | 12-26-2021 | The understanding of shyness and social withdrawal has been built over the past half century with research looking into factors that cause this in children. However, not many mention the natural phenomenon of if children mimic social confidence from their adult figure. This study used correlation analyses to investigate the relations between parents’ behaviors and attitudes and their children’s social confidence and ability. Data were from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1986 Child and Young Adult Survey Mother Supplement. Results showed weak correlation between social confidence and outings frequency, either with family and friends or not. However, children who were spanked more frequently positively correlated with their mothers rating them to be more high strung. Furthermore, all hypotheses showed results that follow the direction of the prediction, so further investigation into the topic may show more significant correlation or a causation relationship of the variables. |
Daily Cryptocurrency Returns Forecasting and Trading via Machine Learning | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2217 | Andrew Falcon; Tianshu Lyu | 12-23-2021 | We execute a comparative analysis of machine learning models for the time-series forecasting of the sign of next-day cryptocurrency returns. We begin by compiling a proprietary dataset that encompasses a wide array of potential cryptocurrency valuation factors (price trends, liquidity, volatility, network, production, investor attention), subsequently identifying and evaluating the most significant factors. We apply eight machine learning models to the dataset, utilizing them as classifiers to predict the sign of next day price returns for the three largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization: bitcoin, ethereum, and ripple. We show that the most significant valuation factors for cryptocurrency returns are price trend variables, seven and thirty-day reversal, to be specific. We conclude that support vector machines result in the most accurate classifications for all three cryptocurrencies. Additionally, we find that boosted models like AdaBoost and XGBoost have the poorest classification accuracy. At length, we construct a probability-based trading strategy that secures either a daily long or short position on one of the three examined cryptocurrencies. Ultimately, the strategy yields a Sharpe of 2.8 and a cumulative log return of 3.72. On average, the strategy’s log returns outperformed standalone investments in all three cryptocurrencies by a factor of 5.64, and Sharpe ratios more than threefold. |
Analysis of Pre-existing Investment Behavior and Influence of Trading Apps | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2212 | Anish Guddati; Dhruva Bhat | 12-22-2021 | The last few years have seen a rise in trading apps, and Robinhood is one trading app that has attracted millennials. This paper explores trading apps such as Robinhood and their role in providing financial inclusion and safe trading opportunities. This paper discusses investment behavior in the status quo, explaining overconfidence, sociability, and the disposition effect. Investment behavior can include the behavioral biases and common notions investors utilize for trading. Furthermore, this paper assesses the design and business model of Robinhood. Five expert investors were interviewed (such as a professor and other MBA graduates from Wharton School of Business, financial experts from private equity firms in the US and Mexico, and a JP Morgan investment banking professional), and five casual investors were interviewed to understand their opinions on investment behavior, certain trading apps, common criticisms of stock trading, and solutions to these concerns. The findings led to the conclusion that investment behavior is harmful in the status quo. Results did indicate that Robinhood does promote at least some dangerous behavior through excessive active trading and is one example of a problematic trading app through the 4th Industrial Revolution, but trading apps can only amplify behavioral biases most retail investors already display. |
Do Blockchain Stocks Exhibit More Herding Behaviour than Traditional Stocks? | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2172 | Prakhar Goel; Abhishek Dev | 12-21-2021 | While the volatile behaviour of cryptocurrency is extensively studied, the stock market’s blockchain sector, which has not been given much attention in the academic world, operates very differently from traditional stock industries. The paper hypothesizes that blockchain stocks exhibit more herding behaviour than traditional stocks and uses quantitative data analysis techniques to study it. The automotive industry is taken as a representative of traditional stocks. Cross-Sectional Absolute Deviation, the academic standard for herding behaviour, is used as the primary comparative measure between blockchain and automotive stocks. It reveals that blockchain industry has significant herding, while rational pricing mechanisms prevail in the automotive industry. Supporting this conclusion, a correlation matrix of stock prices of small market capitalisation firms in each industry is constructed, analysing how closely stock price movements in an industry are related. The correlation coefficient for blockchain stocks is 20% higher than the coefficient for automotive stocks. This indicates that blockchain stocks likely exhibit higher levels of herding. The impact of social media on stock price movements in the two industries is analysed by conducting a correlation study between Google Trends data for industry-related keywords and individual stock returns. The blockchain industry saw a significantly higher correlation, likely suggesting that social media has a stronger influence on blockchain stock price movements. Finally, the paper provides possible explanations for why herding behaviour is more prominent in the blockchain stocks compared to traditional stocks. These include absence of traditional stock valuation metrics, lack of financial knowledge and role of social media. |
Dienogest Derivatives Show Increased Selectivity to the Progesterone Receptor | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/1979 | Jiya Bhatia; Jessica Jimenez | 11-30-2021 | Progestin, the synthetic progesterone in the combination birth control pill, functions to prevent pregnancy. Unfortunately, it also results in a wide range of side effects associated with the pill, including nausea, headaches, abdominal cramping, breakthrough bleeding, and mood changes. These side effects are due to the interactions that take place when the progestin binds not only to its desired target, the progesterone receptor, but also to other steroid receptors, namely the androgen receptor, estrogen receptor, glucocorticoid receptor, and mineralocorticoid receptor. In hopes of diminishing these side effects, in this study, one progestin, dienogest, was computationally altered to improve binding to the progesterone receptor while minimizing the binding to other receptors. The most successful derivative created involved the addition of a methyl and a methylene group, which significantly decreased binding to the five other receptors while maintaining a similar affinity for the progesterone receptor. Importantly, in an assessment of the social aspect of the birth control pill via an online survey released in the San Francisco Bay Area (n=73), the side effects of the birth control pill, which could be improved by minimizing off target interactions, are a major concern among women who consider this form of contraception. |
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Using Cross-Modal Transformers and Variational AutoEncoders to Generate Images from Text | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2106 | Satyajit Kumar; Ehsan Adeli | 11-30-2021 | Text-to-image generation is one of the most complex problems in deep learning, where the application of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) and Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) has seen significant success. However, GANs prioritize the sharpness of the image rather than covering all the nuances of the text. Given that Transformers have recently outperformed RNNs and other neural network models in both the text and image spaces, we explored whether Transformer models can perform better in multi-modal tasks such as text-to-image synthesis. Our conclusion based on evaluating five Transformer based models on the MS-COCO dataset showed that Transformers perform better but would need a significant amount of memory and compute resources. |
The Effects of Social Media Attention and Sentiment on Initial Public Offering Returns | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2272 | Aiwen Li; Cierra Beck | 11-30-2021 | Going public is a monumental step for many companies. Not only does it increase a company's legitimacy in the business community, but it also gives opportunities for them to harness significant amounts of investment capital. However, entrepreneurs and investors often face uncertainty due to the unpredictable nature of initial public offerings (IPOs). This study evaluated the impact of the amount and sentiment of Twitter activity on stock returns using data from domestic companies who went public from June 1, 2020 - May 31, 2021. Overall market behavior, company size, and community population demographics and social economic status of the companies' headquarters locations were controlled. The analyses showed that Twitter activity is associated with higher returns during relatively long-term time frames. The results are relevant for companies and potential IPO investors to predict and maximize their profits in the market. They also open opportunities for future research to investigate more in-depth regarding social factors in relation to IPOs. |
Understanding the Role of Leverage in the Outcome of A Nuclear Weapons Program | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/1870 | Pranav Marneni; Samuel Leiter | 11-30-2021 | Why were some countries able to succeed in acquiring nuclear weapons while others didn’t when facing international pressure to stop the development of their nuclear program? I hypothesized that the level of leverage placed over the country trying to acquire nuclear weapons by its main ally and adversary is a key variable affecting the outcome of that country’s nuclear program. To test my hypothesis, I first described the different categories of leverage and I then compared the nuclear programs of North Korea and Taiwan using existing historical research and case studies. I compared the two countries to see if the categories of leverage were in fact different for the two countries. The two countries were chosen since they had different results (Taiwan failed, while the DPRK succeeded) and both had an ally and adversary that had some leverage over it. If leverage was different for the two countries it would be highly likely that leverage had a role in causing the different outcome, thus supporting my hypothesis. If leverage was the same for the two countries, it would mean that leverage was not a factor causing the different outcome and my hypothesis would be incorrect. After comparing the nuclear programs of the two countries it was found that leverage was in fact different for the two countries, thus supporting my hypothesis. |
GuideDogNet: A Deep Learning Model for Guiding the Blind in Walking Environments | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2064 | Yunseo Hwang; Taeseon Yoon, Kyuyong Park | 11-30-2021 | A guide dog is a critical companion for the blind, which enables independent travel of the blind. However, due to the costly and time-consuming training process, only 1.7% of the blind who wish to adopt a guide dog can take it. In order to alleviate this social problem, previous studies have suggested several blind guiding systems heavily based on hardware devices, such as GPS(Global Positioning System), RFID(Radio-Frequency Identification), and ultrasonic devices. However, those techniques lack administrative feasibility to use in real-world environments. Moreover, those techniques are deficient in warning of obstacles, which makes the system non-user-friendly. To guide the blind universally and provide accurate information about the obstacles without cumbersome devices, we propose a novel deep learning-based blind guiding system, GuideDogNet. The proposed system consists of an object detection network, depth prediction network, and post-processing module. To provide user-friendly outputs for the blind, we propose a rule-based post-processing module that outputs the label, direction, and distance of the obstacles by combining the results of the object detection network and the depth prediction network. We achieved an mAP of 67.8 on the AI Hub Sidewalks dataset which is publicly available. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt at a deep learning-based blind guiding system. The code will be available on https://github.com/Yunseo-Hwang/AI-GuideDog |
The Potala Palace in Tibet Interweaving of Architecture, Spirituality, and Culture | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2340 | Dorinda Xiao; Dr. Michael Shanks | 11-30-2021 | The Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet is seen as a symbolic center of Buddhism. The specific architecture of the palace, such as the color palette and the rooms, is designed around Tibet's culture and religion, Buddhism. The architecture of the Potala Palace and the culture are interconnected as the color chosen for the palace relates with the history of Tibetan culture and the room designs relate closely to Buddhist practices. While culture has influenced the foundations of the Potala Palace’s architecture, the palace itself also affects Tibetan society since Tibetans center around the economy it created, which they can profit from while also celebrating their traditions. This paper researches the interweaving of the Potala Palace’s architecture, Buddhist spirituality, and Tibetan culture to gain a deeper understanding of the significance of the history and religion rooted in a traditional Tibetan building and how that building acts as a microcosm for Tibetan society today. |
Is Science Effectively Conveyed to the Public? A Case Study of Genetically Modified Mosquito Release | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/1972 | Kailash Vemuri; N. Murti Vemuri, Ph.D, Sita Munukutla | 11-30-2021 | Science is the driving force behind the advancement of society making public engagement with science vital. With the rapid pace of scientific discoveries, the availability of well-balanced scientific information is possibly the most important it has ever been. This study aims to determine the effectiveness with which scientific information is disseminated to the public. This was done by conducting a survey in which people were given three articles to read about the release of genetically modified mosquitoes. These three articles were adapted from local news coverage, government authorities, and peer-reviewed scientific literature. Survey participants were queried on their relative preferences for these articles. Additionally, the top 100 hits on Google for the search item “Florida mosquito release” were analyzed to assess the availability of the scientific information preferred by survey respondents. The results of this study showed that the public seeks quality, balanced scientific literature but that these types of articles aren’t easily accessible. Articles that prioritize getting clicks are more prevalent than those that present balanced scientific research. |
Religion as Mental Short-Circuit | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2086 | Keyue Li; Nanjing Foreign Language School Faculty | 11-30-2021 | By identifying religion as schema and attribution process, the first two following sections of the essay argues that religions and cults short-circuit normal cognitive process, bypassing the objective evidence and logical argument inconsistent with the belief system. In the last two sections, the essay demonstrates that recognizing religious thinking mode as a mental short-circuit can be extended to the broader application in human cognition. What’s more, the essay examines the perspective of believers who prioritize the fulfillment of their psychological needs over the righteousness of the logic and calls on building new healthy connections with previous victims in cults instead of spending major effort convincing them of the logic flaw in their previous belief. |
A Behavioural Perspective on Vietnam's Corporate Safety Measures and Nudges in Covid-19 | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2382 | Bui Gia Han Pham; Philip Liang | 11-30-2021 | Robust enforcement of safety procedures is of critical importance for businesses in Vietnam in their efforts to prepare employees for a return to physical workplaces, especially in a country with only 38.8% of its population fully vaccinated as of late November 2021 (Ritchie et al., 2020). In academic literature, nudges are traditionally believed to enhance compliance to protective measures (Debnath and Bardhan, 2020). The aim of this paper is to test the strength of such theoretical analysis of nudges’ effectiveness by applying it to the context of companies in Vietnam. We performed a survey of 41 companies in various sectors and used regression models to interpret our data. One study found a positive significant relationship between automatic registration, monetary rewards, and percentage of employees vaccinated. In the same study, we found an average increase in vaccine uptake of 27.7% to 45.6% due to vaccination nudges. In our second study, we found no evidence that sanitising nudges encourage employees’ usage of sanitary utensils provided to them. Although our small sample size was a major limitation of this study, our findings put the functionality of nudges into a developing country’s context and analysed socio-economic factors that might have caused our results to differ from prior research. With this study being the first to examine the use of nudges to promote pro-health behaviour in large corporations during COVID-19, future research could delve deeper into the effect of other non-mandatory safety measures on overall workplace health. |
Simulated Study of SARS-CoV-2: Contact Tracing and Potential Transmission Networks | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2479 | Anjali Iyer; Anupama Shankar | 11-30-2021 | During a disease outbreak, contact tracing and epidemiological analysis are of critical importance to analyze disease sources and transmission. To perform this epidemiological analysis, effective data visualization is necessary. In this study, the outbreak of COVID-19 was simulated within three metro Atlanta counties. Data was generated using contact tracing forms and used to create node and edge lists. Each node in the network contained a unique ID representing either a location or individual, as well as any contact tracing information related to each node. Data visualization was performed using MicrobeTrace, an online program developed by the CDC. Visualization of the contact tracing network enabled us to effectively analyze the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV2. In the simulated network, a singular person node appeared to be linked to the most positive COVID-19 cases in the network. Similarly, a restaurant was identified as the place node with the greatest number of direct connections to positive persons, highlighting it as a potentially major source of exposure to SARS-CoV-2. This study illustrates the benefits of data visualization and demographic analysis using MicrobeTrace, which helps to target mitigation and prevention efforts, while also emphasizing the importance of contact tracing to reduce the transmission of disease. |
Solutions to Some Real-Life Problems Based on Mathematical Modeling and Functional Minimization | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2082 | Oleksii Babaskin; Mr. Tadeo | 11-30-2021 | Building mathematical models that can describe, predict, and explain real-life phenomena is useful. This paper features the functional dependency model and the square of this functional dependency which hold significant information. A mathematical model that relates these functional dependencies with the average value of the function was developed to show that for an arbitrary well-behaved function, the definite integral of the square of the function over a finite interval is minimal when the function is constant over the interval. Finally, the model’s validity and accuracy in representing real-world problems for different situations in physics like mechanics, quantum mechanics, and electricity in economics were evaluated. |
Punctuation Restoration for Speech Transcripts using seq2seq Transformers | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2249 | Aviv Melamud; Alina Duran | 11-30-2021 | When creating text transcripts from spoken audio, Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems need to infer appropriate punctuation in order to make the transcription more readable. This task, known as punctuation restoration, is challenging since punctuation is not explicitly stated in speech. Most recent works framed punctuation restoration as a classification task and used pre-trained encoder-based transformers, such as BERT, to perform it. In this work, we present an alternative approach, framing punctuation restoration as a sequence-to-sequence task and using T5, a pretrained encoder-decoder transformer model, as the basis of our implementation. Training our model on IWSLT 2012, a common punctuation restoration benchmark, we find its performance is comparable to state of the art classification-based systems with an F1 score of 80.7 on the test set. Furthermore, we argue that our approach might be more flexible in its ability to adapt to more complex types of outputs, such as predicting more than one punctuation mark in a row. |
A User Study of E-commerce during the Covid-19 Pandemic | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2359 | Anika Krishnan; Kavana Ramesh | 11-30-2021 | Covid-19 has forced most people around us with access to the internet to begin shopping online. For some, it is the efficiency, and for others, it is the fear of the virus. Items that were rarely bought online, are now becoming a commodity for viewing online. Groceries and thrifted items are some examples. Most websites have increased traffic because of how prevalent shopping at online sites has become in the past year and a half. For this experimental study, I interviewed multiple people and deduced some central ideas about online shopping during and following the pandemic. I interviewed each person about their day to day lives and how online shopping has played a role in it during the pandemic. I recorded these responses and found surprising similarities between each person. Everyone that I interviewed said that they would continue online shopping after the pandemic. Most people found that the pandemic had been an “eye-opener”, in that, online shopping saved an astounding amount of time. Overall, buying things online has become somewhat of a habit for people during the pandemic. |
Comparing Different Data Types for Predicting the Apple Stock | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/1832 | Amanda Guan; Dr. Ellsworth | 11-30-2021 | Stock markets are at the heart of market economies, and stock market prediction is a hot topic in research. There are many methods of prediction, and they often use different types of data. The two main types are technical and fundamental data. This paper explores company-specific prediction through predicting the direction of the Apple stock. Three neural networks that use different input data are compared. The Tech model uses technical data, the Comp model uses numerical fundamental data with an emphasis on company data, and the Text model uses textual news data. Several metrics, including ones useful for preventing bias when dealing with imbalanced data, were used to compare the models. The Comp and Text models showed prediction bias, and two more models, W-Comp and W-Text, were trained to attempt to mitigate that bias. The Comp model performed the best out of the original models, and W-Comp also showed good performance. W-Text performed the best out of all the models. This suggests that numerical fundamental data is useful in predicting the market, and textual data also has potential. Future research could be used to improve the performance of all the models and more thoroughly compare the types of data used. |
The Potential for Liberation Feminism in Hindu Practices and its Patriarchal Origins Does original knowledge facilitate the perception of liberation feminism in Hindu practices? | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2216 | Naisha Didwania; Maya Novak-Herzog | 11-30-2021 | Hinduism is accused of suppressing its women devotees, despite a history suggesting a matriarchal approach. Over the years, original knowledge surrounding religious practices have been lost due to misinterpretation, misinformation and autonomy over said knowledge by certain groups. The purpose of this essay is to explore the various practices that accuse Hinduism of being anti-feminist, and to identify their origins to understand the role that both culture and religious doctrine played in promoting women's inferiority, as well as which had greater influence. Previous research relies heavily on scriptural understanding and secondary data analysis, despite the fact that overreliance on scriptures is one of the major contributors to the spread of false information regarding the divorce between the intentions of the religious doctrine and subsequent traditions and customs. I interviewed practitioners of the religion coming from various backgrounds and used the primary data to theorise the origination of women's oppression and means to reduce its continuation. The understanding behind religious practices such as Sati, Pativrata and taboos surrounding female priesthood and menstruation yield results that attribute the patriarchy to factors that were not intrinsic to Hinduism. Hence, my findings conclude that women’s original knowledge of the fundamental tenets of Hinduism understood as anti-feminist facilitate their empowerment. Therefore, furthering original knowledge of ‘sexist ideals’ can increase the potential for liberation feminism for Hindu women by reducing the prevalence of conservative practices. |
Application of Artificial Intelligence for the Prediction of Solvation Free Energies for Covid-19 Drug Discovery | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/1891 | Sampreeth Immidisetty; Deepak Agrawal | 11-30-2021 | Solvation free energy is a key indicator of the effectiveness of a drug molecule. There are several applications of predicting the solvation free energies of chemical compounds using quantum mechanical methods. However, these methods take a long time and are costly. For that reason, the application of recently developed artificial intelligence techniques for the prediction of solvation free energies is becoming increasingly valuable in drug discovery to address time and the high-cost issues with traditional quantum mechanical approaches. In this paper, we present application of two different artificial intelligence models for predicting solute-solvent free solvation energy for Covid-19 drug design. The research involves building, training, evaluating and comparing the performances of the two models on a large dataset, then predicting solvation free energies for 138 known APIs and 28 organic solvents that could potentially be used as a Covid-19 medicine. The potential repurposing of 138 drugs for Covid-19 from solubility perspective is novel. We demonstrate the application of the AI models and derive several conclusions regarding suitability of the APIs and their efficacy. We conclude our research by providing insights on how our work can be put to future use towards drug development. |
Warburg Effect and Cancer Survival | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2348 | William Panosyan, Daniel Panosyan; Eduard Panosyan | 11-30-2021 | Warburg effect is a major metabolic shift of glycolysis in cancer cells towards anaerobic fermentation. Key reaction here overproduces lactate from pyruvate catalyzed by lactate dehydrogenase-A (LDHA). Augmented Warburg effect and oncometabolism may contribute to cancer progression worsening patients’ survival. Expressions of various key enzymes were used as surrogates to validate the clinical influence of metabolic alterations in cancers. Expression and Kaplan-Meier survival data were extracted from the R2 Genomics Analysis and Visualization Platform (R2) and Human Protein Atlas (HPA). Expression of LDHA gene was 2-4 times higher than normal tissues in certain cancers including breast, colon, genitourinary and B-cell lymphomas. No cancer specificity or strong associations were observed between RNA and protein expressions of LDHA. However, higher LDHA gene expression correlated with poorer survival in renal, liver, lung, pancreatic, cervical and breast cancers. These cancers moderately or strongly stained for LDHA protein. Per HPA, gliomas had low LDHA without survival correlation. Nevertheless, this correlation was observed in the largest glioblastoma database (R2). Furthermore, 3 of 4 medulloblastoma subtypes showed poor survival with higher LDHA. Contrarily, in B-cell lymphomas and colon cancer high LDHA was a favorable prognostic marker. Poor survival correlated with high expression of other enzymes for glycolysis and amino acid metabolism (PFK-isoenzymes, GFPT2 and BCAT1). Warburg effect may not be universally dominant for all cancers, but most cancers have high LDHA and/or associated poor survival, confirming importance of this metabolic derangement in cancers. Heterogeneity of metabolic alterations can serve to diversify anti-metabolic strategies for targeted anti-cancer therapies. |
Pretibial Lacerations in Young Athletes: Evaluating Who is at Risk, and Methods in Reducing Infection | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/1871 | Meghan Dougherty; Kim Bauer | 11-30-2021 | This study begins research in identifying risks factors youth athletes face when it comes to their probability of getting a pretibial laceration; which is seen more often in elderly populations. The data of shin skin thickness in athletes and non-athletes were compared in this research, as well as methods to decrease rates of infection in pretibial lacerations. The hypothesis of this research is to test if youth athletes are the most susceptible to pretibial lacerations compared to youth non-athletes. Data showed that athletes have “thicker” skin than non-athletes, which meant that they had more muscle mass surrounding their tibia bone which meant they have less skin to protect their tibia which leads to an increased risk of pretibial lacerations compared to other youth populations. |
Artificially Intelligent Food Assistant for the Visually Impaired | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2341 | Sarthak Jain; Evan Brociner | 11-30-2021 | Vision disability is a prevalent condition that affects the lives of many adults and children. Previous research has established that it is harder for the visually impaired to evaluate the nutritional value of food. Therefore, by applying concepts used in agriculture and optical character recognition, we engineered a system that can make these perceptual evaluations on a variety of fresh and packaged foods and linguistically relay that info to a visually impaired user. We utilized some of the most memory-cheap and accurate object detection models to evaluate and then detect lesions in peaches, apples, tomatoes, and strawberries. Table 3 shows that our models performed with high accuracy as EffecientDet d0, SSD Lite Mobilenet, and Faster RCNN MobileNet all had higher than 40% mAP and 50% mAR. Figure 2 portrays how our interface was able to detect, determine, and relay surface spoilage percentage(s) to a user. Figure 3 shows that our OCR integration successfully was able to gather nutritional data on packaged goods and relay nutritional information to a user. Our system provides the brain for future applications that plan to deploy our code to devices like smart glasses or other hardware. We have made our source code available on GitHub through this link: https://github.com/SarthakJaingit/Artificially-Intelligent-Food-Assistant-for-the-Visually-Impaired. Our repository provides instructions about running our system through the command line and also a notebook demo that a less technical person can run to see how one of our models performs on a computer webcam with no video optimization. |
The Gender Disparity of Refugee Earnings in the United States | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/1977 | Subhadra Vadlamannati; Holly Dykstra | 11-30-2021 | The refugee crisis impacts both low and high-income countries alike, and the question of refugee assimilation receives much attention worldwide. While all refugees face various challenges in assimilating to their host countries, female refugees face additional challenges. This paper focuses on the earnings of refugees upon arrival to their host countries. The 2018 Annual Survey of Refugees was used to study the earnings trajectory of male and female refugees who arrive in the United States. Results reveal a significant earnings gap of approximately $1.70 an hour, which is equivalent in pay to male refugees receiving almost eight more years of schooling. To examine the underlying mechanism behind this result, this paper studies how the predicted earnings trajectory varies when including the UNDP Human Development Index and the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap variable, using refugees’ country of birth. Findings indicate robust results that female refugees do not benefit from increases in human development, while both male and female refugees benefit from increases in gender equality. These results have important implications for refugee policy in the form of cash assistance or vocational training. |
High Throughput in Silico Identification of α-Syn Aggregation Inhibitors for Parkinson's Disease | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2096 | Amrutha Srivatsav; Palos Verdes Peninsula High School Faculty | 11-30-2021 | Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is caused by the depletion of dopamine as a result of aggregates formed by a protein called alpha-synuclein (a-syn), which are toxic and kill dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta brain region. PD currently only has some symptomatic treatments that lose effectiveness over time. The purpose of this study was to identify drugs that bind to the fibril forming segment of the non-amyloid beta component (NAC) domain of neuronal membrane bound a-syn. These drugs will inhibit other a-syn monomers from binding and prevent further a-syn aggregation, slowing the progression of PD. Molecular docking was used to run a high throughput screening of 646 FDA approved drugs. The interactions between each drug and a-syn were analyzed and compared to those of Baicalein and SynuClean-D, two drugs that can inhibit a-syn aggregation by binding with the NAC domain but are not FDA approved. 13 drugs were identified that can potentially be used to inhibit membrane bound a-syn aggregation and were almost 6 times more potent than Baicalein and 10 times more potent than SynuClean-D at binding with a-syn’s NAC domain. The Blood Brain Barrier (BBB) penetrability of these top 13 drugs was assessed, indicating the drugs with a higher likelihood of penetrating the BBB. The results of this study appoint Telmisartan and Ibrutinib as FDA approved, BBB penetrable drugs that could inhibit membrane bound a-syn aggregation, slowing the progression of PD. Verifying these results through in vitro experiments can result in identifying a promising treatment for PD. |
Applications of Feature Engineering and Logistic Regression to Analyze Microchip Performance Using key features of machine learning to calculate, generate, and enhance a nonlinear decision boundary | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2331 | Agranya Ketha; Dr. Guillermo Goldsztein | 11-30-2021 | Machine learning is an adaptive concept that has applications in several other industries. Businesses can use it to create real-time and predictive analyses of corporate data to identify consumer trends, calculate product success rates, visualizing short- and long-term business models, and more. This paper takes machine learning algorithms to analyze microchip performance. Beginning with an introduction of fundamental concepts of machine learning — including feature, labels, and classification vs regression models — the paper’s example is introduced with a scatterplot visualization, a definition of the loss function binary cross entropy, and the parameters of the dataset. The third and fourth sections explain the critical function of feature engineering and its utility in refining the decision boundary to best separate the data classes with minimal error. The final section reiterates the main idea that machine learning is ubiquitously applicable and, like the example in this paper, has many cross-industrial functions. |
The Response of 3D Printed Breast Cancer Cells to Chemotherapy Drugs | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/1957 | Saanvi Garg; M. Hunt | 11-30-2021 | 3D culture of breast cancer cells gives researchers a better understanding of how cells behave in the human body and a better representation of their response to cancer therapy compared to 2D. Breast cancer cells also interact with other cell types in the body, including endothelial cells in the blood vessels. While endothelial cells have been co-cultured with breast cells to study tissue growth/development, cancer metastasis, and angiogenesis, 3D breast structures have not been used to study cancer metabolism- accomplished with this project. The purpose is to determine how cell metabolism changes in A) 2D vs. 3D culture; B) monoculture vs. co-culture; and C) no treatment vs. Paclitaxel treatment. I hypothesize that Paclitaxel will have a greater effect on cell metabolism when breast cells are co-cultured with endothelial cells. Data was collected with three varying techniques, 2D Monolayer Printing, Manual 3D Hydrogel, and 3D Printing. The 3D Printed data displayed increased efficiency between trials of the same cell type and could be used to develop new drugs in a low-cost and efficient manner. The most important finding is with both 3D techniques, the absorbance had a further decrease for the Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells (HUVEC) co-culture with cancerous cells than the 2D data. The metabolism of cancer cells is approximately eight times greater than normal cells, so decreasing the absorbance in cancer cells over noncancerous cells has a greater impact. 3D cell structures are essential to create co-cultures to study and develop drugs with cell interactions using endothelial cells. |
Health Habits and Attitudes of Adolescents during the COVID-19 Pandemic | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2084 | Eugene Reicher; Dr. Jessica Ricci | 11-30-2021 | The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted adolescent health and lifestyle. This study aims to evaluate adolescent physical and mental health, and behaviors and attitudes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. We surveyed 7-12th grade students in one Los Angeles independent suburban school (Sierra Canyon School) and statistically analyzed their anonymous responses. Two surveys were administered: Survey 1 in March 2021, when the school had been closed to in-person learning for approximately one year, and Survey 2 in May 2021, about six weeks after the school had opened for voluntary in-person learning. Survey 2 included additional demographic questions about gender, political affiliation, and race/ethnicity to evaluate the correlation between these factors and COVID-related issues. We used linear regression to analyze correlations between parameters characterizing various aspects of health habits, attitudes, and behaviors and evaluated the statistical significance of the differences using Student’s t-test. We were most interested in analyzing the impact of school reopening by comparing the data in Survey 1 to Survey 2. The main result is that the return to in-school learning had a pronounced positive effect not only on the education quality but also on a number of various aspects of adolescent health and behavior. In addition, the survey showed interesting, sometimes surprising, correlations between distinct parameters, for example, the effects of gender on physical and mental health; or political affiliation on COVID-related attitudes and behavior. |
Loving Wisely: Gender, Wisdom, and Ourania in Xenophon's Symposium | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2478 | Elizabeth Casey; Namrata Narula | 11-30-2021 | Xenophon’s Symposium details a dinner party including Socrates in a manner like Plato’s Symposium. Also similar to Plato’s Symposium, Xenophon’s Socrates speaks on the nature of love, and the different types of love; Ourania, heavenly, and Pandemos, common. How are gender and wisdom linked to the idea of Ourania, or heavenly love between souls, as depicted in Xenophon’s Symposium? This paper will discuss whether women are capable of Ourania, which is traditionally reserved for only men. To answer this question, this paper will first show how wisdom is inherently tied to Ourania. This is because the love of souls involves knowledge of the soul, which is wisdom, or sophia. Then, it goes on to argue that virtues, including wisdom, can be taught. Finally, women are reintroduced, and it is argued that women can be taught wisdom. Consequently, this paperconcludes that women are capable of Ourania, for their souls can be wise. |
Solutions to Some Real-Life Problems Based on Mathematical Modeling and Functional Minimization | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2082 | Oleksii Babaskin; Mr. Tadeo | 11-30-2021 | Building mathematical models that can describe, predict, and explain real-life phenomena is useful. This paper features the functional dependency model and the square of this functional dependency which hold significant information. A mathematical model that relates these functional dependencies with the average value of the function was developed to show that for an arbitrary well-behaved function, the definite integral of the square of the function over a finite interval is minimal when the function is constant over the interval. Finally, the model’s validity and accuracy in representing real-world problems for different situations in physics like mechanics, quantum mechanics, and electricity in economics were evaluated. |
Punctuation Restoration for Speech Transcripts using seq2seq Transformers | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2249 | Aviv Melamud; Alina Duran | 11-30-2021 | When creating text transcripts from spoken audio, Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems need to infer appropriate punctuation in order to make the transcription more readable. This task, known as punctuation restoration, is challenging since punctuation is not explicitly stated in speech. Most recent works framed punctuation restoration as a classification task and used pre-trained encoder-based transformers, such as BERT, to perform it. In this work, we present an alternative approach, framing punctuation restoration as a sequence-to-sequence task and using T5, a pretrained encoder-decoder transformer model, as the basis of our implementation. Training our model on IWSLT 2012, a common punctuation restoration benchmark, we find its performance is comparable to state of the art classification-based systems with an F1 score of 80.7 on the test set. Furthermore, we argue that our approach might be more flexible in its ability to adapt to more complex types of outputs, such as predicting more than one punctuation mark in a row. |
A User Study of E-commerce during the Covid-19 Pandemic | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2359 | Anika Krishnan; Kavana Ramesh | 11-30-2021 | Covid-19 has forced most people around us with access to the internet to begin shopping online. For some, it is the efficiency, and for others, it is the fear of the virus. Items that were rarely bought online, are now becoming a commodity for viewing online. Groceries and thrifted items are some examples. Most websites have increased traffic because of how prevalent shopping at online sites has become in the past year and a half. For this experimental study, I interviewed multiple people and deduced some central ideas about online shopping during and following the pandemic. I interviewed each person about their day to day lives and how online shopping has played a role in it during the pandemic. I recorded these responses and found surprising similarities between each person. Everyone that I interviewed said that they would continue online shopping after the pandemic. Most people found that the pandemic had been an “eye-opener”, in that, online shopping saved an astounding amount of time. Overall, buying things online has become somewhat of a habit for people during the pandemic. |
The Potential for Liberation Feminism in Hindu Practices and its Patriarchal Origins Does original knowledge facilitate the perception of liberation feminism in Hindu practices? | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2216 | Naisha Didwania; Maya Novak-Herzog | 11-30-2021 | Hinduism is accused of suppressing its women devotees, despite a history suggesting a matriarchal approach. Over the years, original knowledge surrounding religious practices have been lost due to misinterpretation, misinformation and autonomy over said knowledge by certain groups. The purpose of this essay is to explore the various practices that accuse Hinduism of being anti-feminist, and to identify their origins to understand the role that both culture and religious doctrine played in promoting women's inferiority, as well as which had greater influence. Previous research relies heavily on scriptural understanding and secondary data analysis, despite the fact that overreliance on scriptures is one of the major contributors to the spread of false information regarding the divorce between the intentions of the religious doctrine and subsequent traditions and customs. I interviewed practitioners of the religion coming from various backgrounds and used the primary data to theorise the origination of women's oppression and means to reduce its continuation. The understanding behind religious practices such as Sati, Pativrata and taboos surrounding female priesthood and menstruation yield results that attribute the patriarchy to factors that were not intrinsic to Hinduism. Hence, my findings conclude that women’s original knowledge of the fundamental tenets of Hinduism understood as anti-feminist facilitate their empowerment. Therefore, furthering original knowledge of ‘sexist ideals’ can increase the potential for liberation feminism for Hindu women by reducing the prevalence of conservative practices. |
Comparing Different Data Types for Predicting the Apple Stock | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/1832 | Amanda Guan; Dr. Ellsworth | 11-30-2021 | Stock markets are at the heart of market economies, and stock market prediction is a hot topic in research. There are many methods of prediction, and they often use different types of data. The two main types are technical and fundamental data. This paper explores company-specific prediction through predicting the direction of the Apple stock. Three neural networks that use different input data are compared. The Tech model uses technical data, the Comp model uses numerical fundamental data with an emphasis on company data, and the Text model uses textual news data. Several metrics, including ones useful for preventing bias when dealing with imbalanced data, were used to compare the models. The Comp and Text models showed prediction bias, and two more models, W-Comp and W-Text, were trained to attempt to mitigate that bias. The Comp model performed the best out of the original models, and W-Comp also showed good performance. W-Text performed the best out of all the models. This suggests that numerical fundamental data is useful in predicting the market, and textual data also has potential. Future research could be used to improve the performance of all the models and more thoroughly compare the types of data used. |
Application of Artificial Intelligence for the Prediction of Solvation Free Energies for Covid-19 Drug Discovery | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/1891 | Sampreeth Immidisetty; Deepak Agrawal | 11-30-2021 | Solvation free energy is a key indicator of the effectiveness of a drug molecule. There are several applications of predicting the solvation free energies of chemical compounds using quantum mechanical methods. However, these methods take a long time and are costly. For that reason, the application of recently developed artificial intelligence techniques for the prediction of solvation free energies is becoming increasingly valuable in drug discovery to address time and the high-cost issues with traditional quantum mechanical approaches. In this paper, we present application of two different artificial intelligence models for predicting solute-solvent free solvation energy for Covid-19 drug design. The research involves building, training, evaluating and comparing the performances of the two models on a large dataset, then predicting solvation free energies for 138 known APIs and 28 organic solvents that could potentially be used as a Covid-19 medicine. The potential repurposing of 138 drugs for Covid-19 from solubility perspective is novel. We demonstrate the application of the AI models and derive several conclusions regarding suitability of the APIs and their efficacy. We conclude our research by providing insights on how our work can be put to future use towards drug development. |
Warburg Effect and Cancer Survival | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2348 | William Panosyan, Daniel Panosyan; Eduard Panosyan | 11-30-2021 | Warburg effect is a major metabolic shift of glycolysis in cancer cells towards anaerobic fermentation. Key reaction here overproduces lactate from pyruvate catalyzed by lactate dehydrogenase-A (LDHA). Augmented Warburg effect and oncometabolism may contribute to cancer progression worsening patients’ survival. Expressions of various key enzymes were used as surrogates to validate the clinical influence of metabolic alterations in cancers. Expression and Kaplan-Meier survival data were extracted from the R2 Genomics Analysis and Visualization Platform (R2) and Human Protein Atlas (HPA). Expression of LDHA gene was 2-4 times higher than normal tissues in certain cancers including breast, colon, genitourinary and B-cell lymphomas. No cancer specificity or strong associations were observed between RNA and protein expressions of LDHA. However, higher LDHA gene expression correlated with poorer survival in renal, liver, lung, pancreatic, cervical and breast cancers. These cancers moderately or strongly stained for LDHA protein. Per HPA, gliomas had low LDHA without survival correlation. Nevertheless, this correlation was observed in the largest glioblastoma database (R2). Furthermore, 3 of 4 medulloblastoma subtypes showed poor survival with higher LDHA. Contrarily, in B-cell lymphomas and colon cancer high LDHA was a favorable prognostic marker. Poor survival correlated with high expression of other enzymes for glycolysis and amino acid metabolism (PFK-isoenzymes, GFPT2 and BCAT1). Warburg effect may not be universally dominant for all cancers, but most cancers have high LDHA and/or associated poor survival, confirming importance of this metabolic derangement in cancers. Heterogeneity of metabolic alterations can serve to diversify anti-metabolic strategies for targeted anti-cancer therapies. |
Optimization of a Convolutional Neural Network for the Automated Diagnosis of Melanoma | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2130 | Kemka Ihemelandu; Chukwuemeka Ihemelandu | 11-27-2021 | The incidence of melanoma has been increasing rapidly over the past two decades, making melanoma a current public health crisis. Unfortunately, even as screening efforts continue to expand in an effort to ameliorate the death rate from melanoma, there is a need to improve diagnostic accuracy to decrease misdiagnosis. Artificial intelligence (AI) a new frontier in patient care has the ability to improve the accuracy of melanoma diagnosis. Convolutional neural network (CNN) a form of deep neural network, most commonly applied to analyze visual imagery, has been shown to outperform the human brain in pattern recognition. However, there are noted limitations with the accuracy of the CNN models. Our aim in this study was the optimization of convolutional neural network algorithms for the automated diagnosis of melanoma. We hypothesized that Optimal selection of the momentum and batch hyperparameter increases model accuracy. Our most successful model developed during this study, showed that optimal selection of momentum of 0.25, batch size of 2, led to a superior performance and a faster model training time, with an accuracy of ~ 83% after nine hours of training. We did notice a lack of diversity in the dataset used, with a noted class imbalance favoring lighter vs. darker skin tone. Training set image transformations did not result in a superior model performance in our study. |
The Improvement of Total Rewards and Working Condition for Taekwondo Instructor in the COVID-19 Era A Comparative Study between the U.S. and Korea | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2113 | Hyunjun Ju; Eileen Lee | 11-25-2021 | The purpose of this study is to identify the overall difficulties of the Taekwondo industry due to the COVID-19 situation and to find ways to improve the total rewards and working condition so that Taekwondo instructors can play their roles while maintaining their self-esteem. The method of this study was a comparative study of the U.S. and Korea, which is the home country of Taekwondo. For this study, 12 American and Korean instructors were interviewed and additional surveys were conducted. As a result, both American and Korean Taekwondo instructors were playing their roles with high self-esteem. However, there were differences in job classification, allowances pay, incentives, and self-development opportunities. In U.S., Taekwondo instructors are clearly defined their tasks based on the job classification system and are applied well-designed overtime pay, incentive system and vacation plans. On the other hand, Korean instructors were working overtime and overworking without additional compensation to maintain long-term vision and employment relations. Comparative studies show that both countries have improvements to learn from each other. Taekwondo instructors in the U.S. need to increase their self-esteem in taekwondo while providing instructors with a vision for long-term careers. Taekwondo instructors in Korea need to improve total rewards and develop new skills such as mental training, counseling, and online lessons. The study will contribute to the overall improvement of total rewards, working condition and career development of taekwondo instructors in the U.S. and Korea. |
Identification and Analysis of Plant Growth Promoting Bacteria in LEAF Community Garden Soil | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2151 | Pooja Ramadas, Dhruv Pathak; Prabhjeet Kaur | 11-23-2021 | In today’s largely populated modern world, crop yield is becoming increasingly important. To increase crop yield, new modern technologies for farming are continuously being innovated. The aim of this study is the identification of Plant Growth Promoting Bacteria (PGPBs) and their properties. In order to conduct the experiment, soil samples were collected from the community garden LEAF (Local Ecology and Agriculture Fremont). These samples were grown in Luria Bertani agar plates, and the two bacterial strains that grew from them were analyzed to determine the species of the bacteria. Using a DNA extraction kit, DNA was extracted from the bacteria and then amplified versions were sent to RF Biotech for DNA sequencing. The DNA sequences were then used to determine that the two bacterial species in question are Bacillus cereus and Morganella morganii. Afterwards, multiple assays were used to measure the efficiency of each bacterial species to absorb various substances that would be helpful for plant growth. The aim of this research is to better understand which bacterial strains are beneficial for plants, and which are harmful. Through having greater zones of inhibition, the bacterial species M. morganii proved to be more efficient in the siderophore and phosphate solubilization assays. In contrast, the bacterial species B. cereus proved to be more efficient in the cellulase and amylase production assays. These results will assist LEAF in enriching their soil in order to increase their crop yields by creating an increase in concentration of advantageous bacteria and decrease that of detrimental bacteria. |
Was there any widespread fraud in 2020 presidential election? What does Benford's Law say? | https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/1848 | Deeya Datta; Dr. David Banks | 11-22-2021 | Fair elections free of any interference are integral tenets of any functioning democracy, and widespread election fraud is undoubtedly a serious threat to a free republic. While instances of electoral fraud are much more prevalent in countries with illiberal democracies, the U.S has recently faced such an accusation. Although he was unable to provide any concrete evidence, the former U.S. President Donald Trump accused his opponent, Joe Biden, now president, of electoral fraud after the presidential election. Fortunately, election forensics are often successful in investigating the validity of such fraud allegations. In this paper, I applied Benford’s law, a rule that should stand up to any large set of natural numbers, such as un-tampered electoral data. Using this law and basic statistical analysis of votes of U.S. counties for candidates of the two major parties, I completed a forensic analysis to investigate Mr. Trump’s allegation. My comprehensive investigation does not find any evidence supporting his allegation. |
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