George Mason University

Risk Adjustment in the Medicare Advantage Population Using Encounter Data

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC) risk model using Medicare Advantage (MA) encounter data, as an initial step toward recalibrating risk-adjusted MA payments. DATA SOURCES AND STUDY SETTING: A 20% samp...

From Grassroots to Ginsburg: How a Feminist Network Absorbed Lessons from Southern Black Women’s Experiences, Fought Involuntary Sterilization, and Won a Late-1970s “Magna Carta” for the ACLU

Abstract In 1973, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Women’s Rights Project filed a lawsuit on behalf of Nial Ruth Cox, a Black woman who had been sterilized as a teenager by the state of North Carolina. The lawsuit initiated an ACLU campaign against involuntary sterilizat...

Population-level impacts of reducing artificial light at night across an entire migratory corridor

Artificial light at night (ALAN) is a widespread anthropogenic pollution that poses challenges for wildlife in nearly every ecosystem on planet Earth. Although there has been substantial progress on understanding the effects of ALAN on animal physiology and behaviour, few studies...

ConvSNN: an energy-efficient hybrid convolutional-spiking neural network for wrist-worn stress and affective state recognition

Abstract Continuous stress monitoring on wrist-worn devices matters for real-time affective computing, digital health, and personalized well-being, yet it remains difficult because a wearable model must operate with few sensors, little compute, and a tight energy budget. Chest-mo...

Viewport-based Neural 360° Image Compression

Given the popularity of 360° images on social media platforms, 360° image compression becomes a critical technology for media storage and transmission. Conventional 360° image compression pipeline projects the spherical image into a single 2D plane, leading to issues of oversampl...

The Integrative Learning Design Framework Revisited: AI Affordances, Risks, and Guardrails for Learning Experience Design Research and Practice

The Integrative Learning Design (ILD) Framework (Bannan-Ritland, 2003) has informed and supported a quarter-century of design research methodology in education. This paper is authored by the framework's original architect, drawing on more than thirty years in the instructional de...

Intersectional Barriers to Protection: Service Providers’ Perspectives on Supporting Black, Latino, and Immigrant Male Victims of Female-perpetrated Intimate Partner Violence

Abstract Aim This study examined service providers’ perspectives on how race, ethnicity, and immigration status shape help-seeking experiences and institutional responses for Black, Latino, and immigrant male victims of female-perpetrated intimate partner violence (IPV). Method S...

Current and Future Directions for Responsible Quantum Technologies: A ResQT Community Perspective

Abstract Quantum technologies (QT) are advancing rapidly, promising advancements across a wide spectrum of applications but also raising significant ethical, societal, and geopolitical impacts, including dual-use capabilities, varying levels of access, and impending quantum divid...

Differentiated LUHMES Cells as a Model to Investigate Neurotropic Arboviruses and Evaluate Host-Directed Therapeutics

Arthropod-borne viruses such as Alphaviruses and Flaviviruses are the causative agents of severe human disease, highlighted by fatal encephalitis and neurological sequelae in survivors. The lack of FDA-approved vaccines and therapeutics that can prevent or treat these infections...

In vitro study and in silico reveal Teucrium Polium L. methanolic extract as an apoptosis inducer and a potential Bcl-2 inhibitor for breast cancer

Therapy of breast cancer (BC) overexpressing the pro-survival protein Bcl-2 remains a major clinical challenge. The discovery of natural anticancer drugs with potential as Bcl-2 inhibitors has generated increasing interest. The medicinal plant Teucrium polium L. (TPL) exhibits ph...

Associations of momentary food availability and appetitive drive with adolescents' food intake and dysregulated eating in a community sample of adolescents: The moderating role of trait hedonic hunger

Abstract Using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), we tested whether momentary palatable food availability and appetitive drive predict adolescents' palatable food/drink intake and dysregulated eating and whether trait hedonic hunger moderates these momentary links. Adolescent...

Adapting for solitude: Stress-coping, substitution behaviors, and intentions to return in wilderness recreation

Increasing visitation to Wilderness Areas is intensifying pressure on ecological conditions and visitor experience quality, highlighting gaps in current monitoring systems that rely heavily on biophysical indicators while overlooking visitor-based psychological and experiential d...

Explainable Optimized Machine Learning for Predicting Student Self-Regulated Learning

This study examined the utility of an optimized, explainable machine learning (ML) model for predicting students’ self-regulated learning (SRL). Participants were 823 middle school students (52.6% girls) from randomly selected public schools who completed in-person measures of re...

Field research and the ‘special sauce’ for institutionalizing evidence-based policing

Abstract Evidence-based policing (EBP) is widely recognized as essential in modern democracies, yet it often remains an aspiration rather than a daily operational reality. Although research on policing interventions has grown significantly, institutionalizing these findings into...

The Akunin project: the mysteries and histories of Russia’s bestselling author

The Akunin Project is the first scholarly attempt in English at evaluating the complex and engaging phenomenon of the bestselling contemporary Russian author Grigorii Chkhartishvili, better known u...

Law enforcement with rent dissipation

Abstract We consider a framework which brings together losses arising from rent-dissipation and the workhorse model of law enforcement. Governmental actors engage in a contest to share the proceeds from the enforcement of the law through monetary fines, which leads to rent-dissip...

Modular Artifact Tool V2: Core Method and Archive-Repository Application

Modular Artifact Tool V2: Core Method and Archive-Repository Application is a two-paper research set proposing a lightweight, evidence-centered approach to preserving how archaeological knowledge develops and changes over time. Part I defines the core method. Rather than treating...

Economic and Environmental Implications of Ride-Hailing and Vehicle Age Limits for Car Sales Markets

Problem definition: Ride-hailing poses significant challenges to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) as it offers an affordable mobility option, and thus may lead to lower new car ownership. Yet, its more intense competition with the sales of used cars in secondary markets (a...

Multi-SALLM: a multilingual security assessment of generated code

Abstract As Large Language Models (LLMs) become increasingly integrated into software engineers' daily workflows, it is critical to ensure the code they generate is not just functionally correct but also secure. While LLMs can boost developer productivity, prior empirical studies...

Benchmarking Input-Sanitization Frameworks Against Indirect Prompt Injection in Autonomous LLM Agents

Autonomous Large Language Model (LLM) agents are rapidly moving into production systems,handling tasks through Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and direct API interactions. However,granting models execution capabilities opens up a major vulnerability: Indirect Prompt Injectio...