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Unveiling the Role of Oxytocin in Affiliation for Human-AI dyads
No full textThis work is embargoed by the author and will not be publicly available until May 2026.This dissertation examined the role of oxytocin (OXT) in enhancing human-Artificial Intelligence (AI) affiliations, particularly through interactions with AI robotic agents like AIBO—an acronym for Artificial Intelligence roBOt, against the backdrop of relationships with living dogs. Drawing on ethorobotics, the research utilized the model of human-dog interactions to inform the development of socially intelligent robots, exploring the neurochemical and psychological underpinnings of these relationships. Despite the known effects of intranasal OXT on human social behavior, its specific impact on the dynamics of human-AI relationships remains underexplored, presenting a significant knowledge gap in the literature. The first study presented herein employed intranasal OXT to assess its effects on affiliative behaviors toward AIBO in male participants, integrating questionnaires, biological sample collection, and behavioral analysis. The second study conducted a longitudinal comparison between humans interacting with AIBOs and living dogs, measuring endogenous OXT levels, self-reported attachment, and evaluations of social companionship. Results indicated that intranasal OXT enhances affiliative behaviors in specific social contexts with AIBO. However, technical instruction attenuates these effects. Longitudinal comparisons revealed nuanced distinctions in bonding processes between humans and AIBOs versus living dogs, underscoring the complexity of these affiliative relationships. These findings highlighted the context-dependent nature of OXT's effects on human-AI interaction and the intricate dynamics of affiliation with AI agents versus living companions. The studies collectively advanced the understanding of the neurobiological and psychological mechanisms underlying human-AI affiliations. By elucidating the nuanced effects of OXT and comparing human affiliations with AIBOs and dogs, this research contributed significantly to the discourse on social AI. It underscored the potential of leveraging neurobiological insights to foster more meaningful human-AI relationships, paving the way for future explorations in social AI.2026-05-1
Project 4a: Exploring Variations in Gut Microbiome Networks among Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD)
Get PDFThis project included one student researcher who wishes to remain anonymous.Objective: The project investigated how gut microbiome networks varied among two groups of patients: patients with only chronic kidney disease and patients with both chronic kidney disease and diabetes
A Translation and Study of the Influence of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and Mulla Sadra on Nusrat Amin’s Commentary of the Light Verse (Qur’an 24:35) in Makhzan al-Irfan
Get PDFNusrat Amin was a 20th-century Shi'a mujtahida (religious legal authority), Qur'an commentator, and educator. She rose to prominence at a time when women had limited educational opportunities in the male-dominated fields of the religious sciences. Women who had access to religious training tended to be from known families of Shi’i religious scholars, but none of the men in Amin’s family were religious scholars.
Nevertheless, Amin came to be regarded as a pre-eminent scholar, even rising to the highest level of religious legal authority in the Shi’i tradition. Despite her pathbreaking accomplishments as a female scholar, Amin was a religiously and socially conservative woman living in a time in Iran dominated by modernist and secularist ideologies. While she typically expressed conservative views regarding traditional gender norms, her own personal status as an advanced and authoritative religious scholar challenged perceptions of women as religious authorities. Amin would go on to found a network of religious schools for women and girls, which served to facilitate other women’s access to religious learning in a traditionally male-dominated domain. In addition to her Qur’an commentary, Makhzan-i ‘Irfan, which is the focus of my study here, Amin was also the author of eight other scholarly works on ethics, hadith, and the spiritual path.
Makhzan al-Irfan has not yet been extensively studied, but the influence of the 17th-century Shi’i philosopher Mulla Sadra (Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi, d. 1636) on her metaphysical thought has been noted by early studies of her work by Travis Zadeh (2015) and Maria Dakake (2022). Through a translation and textual analysis of Amin's commentary on the well-known Qur’anic passage known as the “Light Verse” (Qur’an 24:35), this thesis will further demonstrate the influence of Mulla Sadra on her exegetical writing and also show the influence Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111), a major Sunni theologian and mystic, on her commentary here. Both Mulla Sadra and al-Ghazali authored extensive works on the Light Verse. This study will examine the influence of these two works – Mulla Sadra's Tafsir Ayat al-Nur (Mulla Sadra 2004) and al-Ghazali's Mishkat al-Anwar (al-Ghazali 1998) – on Amin’s own commentary on this verse
A Reassessment of the Process-Based Model of Policing: Filling Three Major Gaps
Get PDFThe process-based model of policing, emphasizing procedural justice and police legitimacy, has emerged as a key theoretical framework for understanding police-community relations. Much research supports the model, finding that procedurally fair interactions between police and citizens improve police legitimacy, thereby enhancing people’s willingness to cooperate with the police. However, an increasing number of studies have identified measurement issues surrounding procedural justice and police legitimacy. Furthermore, much of the research relies on cross-sectional data, limiting the ability to examine their relationships over time. Lastly, research has rarely examined how these perceptions affect people’s actual cooperation, as opposed to their willingness. In Study 1, employing a systematic review approach for survey items and results of factor analysis across 148 eligible studies, I first found that the literature employs highly varied measures for the same constructs. Importantly, a large percentage of survey items for procedural justice (30%) and trust in the police (37%) used in the literature are those originally used to operationalize other constructs. This study also found that over 30% of prior studies have discriminant validity issues, demonstrating that the measurement issues are not uncommon in the literature. In Study 2, to examine the reciprocal relationship between procedural justice and police legitimacy over time, I used a cross-lagged panel analysis with three waves of surveys largely drawn from crime hot spots in Baltimore City, Maryland. Study 2 found little evidence of the effect of previous perceptions of procedural justice on future perceptions of police legitimacy, while finding some evidence of the reverse effect of prior police legitimacy on future procedural justice. Study 3 examined longitudinal impacts of procedural justice and police legitimacy on community members’ reporting a community problem to the police, applying mixed-effects logistic regression models to the same survey data. While Study 3 found that police legitimacy judgments significantly increased people’s reporting behavior, there was no evidence of either a direct or indirect impact of perceptions of procedural justice on such reporting behavior. Overall, the findings from this dissertation call for a reconsideration of the process-based model, highlighting the need for substantive improvements in measurements and methodological advancements in testing the model. This dissertation suggests that police practitioners and policy makers need to recognize that integrating procedural justice principles into police practices may not be a panacea for enhancing public perceptions of police legitimacy and their actual cooperation with the police in the long run
Ground-based Light Curve Follow-up Validation observations of TESS object of interest TOI 3521.01
No full text“This investigation aims to further confirm, characterize, and classify the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) Object of Interest (TOI) 3521.01 as a false positive or a valid exoplanet. Verifying the candidate is necessary due to sources of false positives, such as eclipsing binaries, sometimes posing as exoplanet candidates. To achieve this, we created a light curve by analyzing ground-based observations from George Mason University (GMU) in AstroImageJ (AIJ). The consistency of the light curve with the predicted ingress time, egress time, and depth suggests that the detection of TOI-3521.01 by the TESS mission is accurate. If it is a genuine exoplanet, it appears to be a hot Jupiter orbiting a star similar to our Sun. However, because we could not rule out the possibility that the detection was an eclipsing binary acting as a false positive, the results of this validation were ultimately inconclusive. After we confirm that TOI-3521.01 is an exoplanet, we should obtain the planet’s mass through Doppler spectroscopy to confirm its status as a hot Jupiter.
CREDIT CONSTRAINTS AND FIRM GROWTH IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD: THREE ESSAYS FOR THE BRAZILIAN ECONOMY
No full textCredit constraints jeopardize the capacity of entrepreneurs to push forward investment projects that would generate social benefits. Consequently, this market failure affects the entire economy by reducing investment and competitiveness levels, which leads to low growth rates and welfare. Especially in the developing world, where credit constraints are pervasive, there is room for *pareto improvement*. However, designing efficient policies requires expanding our understanding of the problem, its causes, and consequences. Through three different essays on the Brazilian economy, the research agenda proposed here seeks to contribute towards that end. The first essay delves deeper into the efficiency of subsidized earmarked policies as a tool to fight credit constraints. The second essay investigates if classical firm-level financial-constraint measures can be used to improve credit policies’ capacity to target the right population of firms. Finally, the third essay studies how the lack of competitiveness in the banking sector might strengthen credit constraints and amplify its adverse impacts on entrepreneurial activities
Cellphone using during school time in K-12 school in Virginia is too high
Get PDFIn 2023, Pew Research Center reported a survey of 2,531 U.S. public K-12 teachers. 72% of high school teachers say students being distracted by their cellphones in the classroom is a major problem. The cellphone caused students to show little to no interest in learning (47%). As of 2021, 8th and 10th graders now spend an average of 3.5 hours per day on social media; 25% spend 5+ hours per day (U.S. Surgeon General, 2023). U.S. Surgeon General (2023) also shows that adolescents who spend more than three hours per day on social media are at double the risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes. Social media also causes cyberbullying to happen in 46 percent of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 (Vogels, 2022).
Given these facts, the use of cellphones during school time in K-12 schools in Virginia is too high. The state should consider a policy response to reduce cellphone use during school. This memo will propose and evaluate a policy response, the cellphone-free policy, that the city could undertake
Presidential Approval and the Use of Force: A Mixed Methods Analysis
Get PDFThis paper uses a mixed methods approach to examine the research question “How does presidential approval rating impact a president's decision to employ military ground forces?” Quantitatively, this paper illustrates that a high approval rating is statistically significant in a president’s decision to deploy ground forces from the end of the Vietnam War to the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001. Qualitatively, four case studies over two presidential administrations examine the impact of popularity on a president’s decision making. The case studies failed to show a definitive link between approval rating and the decision to deploy forces, but they bolstered the overall theory that a president’s political confidence, not necessarily defined by presidential approval, impacted the decision to deploy ground forces. From the findings of this analysis, this paper draws conclusions on possible future presidential decisions on the use of military ground forces to pursue national security objectives and what variables increased the likelihood that a president will make what is one of the most difficult policy decisions- to place American lives in harm’s way
Characterization of RIG-I Inducing RNA Species in Small Extracellular Vesicles (sEV) from Cells Infected with the Cytoplasmic RNA Virus Rift Valley Fever Virus (RVFV)
No full textRVFV is a zoonotic pathogenic RNA virus in the family Phenuiviridae genus Phlebovirus. It is a cytoplasmic single-stranded RNA virus, and the genome is made of three segments designated as Large (L), Medium (M), and Small (S) based on their relative sizes. RVFV is the causative agent of Rift Valley Fever (RVF) disease for which there is no approved vaccine or effective therapy. The virus is mainly transmitted by Aedes and Culex mosquitos. According to a recent report from the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), from 2000 to 2016, there have been more than 4,600 cases and 957 deaths due to RVFV infections, with a case fatality rate of more than 20% in non-endemic areas. Symptoms may vary from a mild, flu-like syndrome to ocular, encephalitic, or hemorrhagic syndromes. Considering the high economic and public health impacts of RVFV, NIAID has classified RVFV as a pathogen of highest concern (Category A). Interferon-B response is the primary innate antiviral defense against RVFV, and it is also known that RVFV viral genome activates IFN-B via RIG-I. Previously, we showed that small extracellular vesicles (sEV) derived from RVFV-infected cells - designated as EXi-RVFV - strongly activate interferon beta (IFN-B) in recipient cells via the RIG-I pathway, culminating in induction of autophagy to eliminate the virus should the cell encounter RVFV and the virus gain cell entry. Because the RVFV viral genome has been shown to activate RIG-I selectively, and viral RNA genome segments are packaged within the EXi-RVFV, we hypothesize that EXi-associated RIG-I induction occurs through the function of packaged viral RNA. To address this hypothesis, we first developed a new sEV purification method to significantly scale up sEV recovery. This enables us to obtain sufficient EXi-associated RNA for RNAseq analysis to identify the RIG-I activating species. Our results showed that the new purification method based on a combination of UF, SEC, and DUG increased recovery of functional sEV amounts by 100-fold and allowed obtaining sufficient sEV-associated RNA to perform RNAseq analysis. For the purification of sEV-associated RNA, we used the best-performing kit based on our comparison of several purification methods. Analysis of purified EXi-associated RNA showed that it activates IFN-B via the RIG-I pathway and that enrichment for either large or small RNA does not show any difference in the activation level. We have also demonstrated co-localization of RIG-I and EXi-associated RNA. For this study, following the treatment of cells with fluorescently-labeled EXi-associated RNA, cellular RIG-I was fluorescently labeled using an anti-RIG-I antibody, and immunofluorescence analysis was performed to demonstrate co-localization. As a result of these studies, we also analyzed separately each of the three RVFV RNA genome segments and each of the three anti-genome segments for their ability to induce IFN-B activation. T7 promoter-based vectors expressing separately each of the RVFV RNA genome and anti-genome segments were used for in-vitro transcription of each of the segments. Our results showed that, similar to EXi-associated RNA, all the genome and anti-genome segments activate IFN-B via the RIG-I pathway. Our biochemical characterization demonstrated that RVFV RNA genome sequences and the EXi-associated RNA species that activate RIG-I form double-stranded structures and carry 5’ end phosphate groups. We have also completed RNAseq of purified sEV-associated RNA and future studies will focus on bioinformatic analysis of the RNAseq data as part of our effort to identify the RIG-I activating species. These results provide insights into the immune regulation functions of EXi-associated RNA and RNA genomic segments and provide information that can be utilized to develop novel countermeasures against RVF and other virus infections for which type I IFN response is a critical aspect of host response
“It Comes Down to Communication”: Science Communication Skills are Key for Scientists Supporting Evidence-Based Policymaking Through the Coves Fellowship
Get PDFVirginia’s Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s (VASEM) Commonwealth of Virginia Engineering and Science (COVES) Fellowship program places scientists and engineers with state agencies, General Assembly member offices and committees, and non-profit organizations. As other states look to begin their own similar fellowship programs, assessments of models like COVES may be instructive. Previous research has established that scientists providing evidence to support policymaking face many challenges: motivation to enter the political arena, effective communication of the science, understanding of their role, and avoiding unethical engagement. Through support and training, fellowships such as the COVES program are in a unique position to address these challenges. Is the COVES Fellowship program effectively addressing them and facilitating evidence-based policymaking? If so, how can the success be replicated and if not, how can the program be improved? Through a narrowly focused, three-phase interview study, this paper establishes the program’s background, objectives, capabilities, challenges, and successes. Focused exclusively on former Fellows who were placed in member offices and committees in Virginia’s General Assembly, it explored how Fellows described their experiences in communicating evidence and what they understood their role to be. This study provides insights to support policymaking in Virginia as well as establishment of new fellowship programs elsewhere. In addition, this real-world example of support for evidence-based policymaking explores how science communication is used in the process