All Faculty Deposits

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https://hdl.handle.net/10919/70873

The "All Faculty Deposits" collection contains works deposited by faculty and appointed delegates from the Elements (EFARs) system. For help with Elements, see Frequently Asked Questions on the Provost's website. In general, items can only be deposited if the item is a scholarly article that is covered by Virginia Tech's open access policy, or the item is openly licensed or in the public domain, or the item is permitted to be posted online under the journal/publisher policy, or the depositor owns the copyright. See Right to Deposit on the VTechWorks Help page. If you have questions email us at vtechworks@vt.edu.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 7673

How to review an opinion
Reid, J. Leighton; Amaral, Valter; Miles, Rachel A.; Yin, Mengyu; Murphy, Stephen (Wiley, 2026-08)
Peer-reviewed journals publish opinions (e.g., editorials, perspectives) as well as research articles. Opinion articles can be both influential and highly cited. In 2009-2024, Restoration Ecology published 268 opinions (11% of articles), more than four out of five other ecology and conservation journals assessed, and these opinions punched above their weight, garnering 14% of all citations. The most-cited opinions include calls to action, questions about basic tenets, and proposed conceptual syntheses. Such papers raise unique challenges for editors and reviewers, who must evaluate manuscript quality without the typical standard of weighing evidence against conclusions. We posit six questions for reviewers of opinions to consider: (1) Are there unreported conflicts of interest? (2) Is the literature review complete or does it cherry pick citations to support the author’s narrative? (3) Can the reviewer build a compelling counterargument that is not sincerely represented? (4) Are citations appropriate for the statements they are purported to support? (5) Does the opinion cite empirical literature, or just other opinions? (6) Is the author misrepresenting dissenting opinion in order to build themselves up? We hope these questions help reviewers, editors, and other readers weigh support for opinion articles and opinionated statements.
Engineering next-generation nanovaccines for maternal immunization and piglet protection against porcine epidemic diarrhea virus
Ci, Qiaoqiao; Bian, Yuanzhi; Meng, Xiang-Jin; Zhang, Chenming (Elsevier, 2026-08-10)
Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) remains a major threat to the global swine industry, causing severe disease with high morbidity and mortality in neonatal piglets. Current vaccine strategies are challenged by the need for rapid, local protection at the intestinal mucosa in newborn piglets, and emerging PEDV variants can partially evade vaccine immunity. Nanoplatforms can help address these challenges. Across recent PEDV nanovaccine studies, a consistent theme emerges in that vaccine platform architecture and immunization route are not only delivery parameters but also the primary determinants of neutralizing activity, mucosal IgA induction, and lactogenic immunity transfer. Here in this critical review, we synthesize important design perspectives from the PEDV nanoparticle vaccine literature spanning self-assembling protein scaffolds such as ferritin and mi3, bacteriophage and virus-like particles including AP205 and HBcAg, polymeric carriers such as PLGA, chitosan, and alginate–chitosan microcapsules, and inorganic particles including silica and layered double hydroxide. All PEDV vaccine design considerations are organized into three interlocking layers including antigen choice and display, adjuvant–carrier integration, and maternal–mucosal vaccination strategy. Concurrently, mechanistic patterns are observed across models. For instance, multivalent display strengthens protective breadth, and mucoadhesive or M-cell-targeted approaches improve antigen retention and epithelial transport. Practical vaccine design principles are derived throughout this review to support translation of PEDV nanoparticle vaccines into maternal immunization strategies focused on protecting piglets against PEDV variants.
Microsoft Office Security and Possible Bypasses
Zahadat, Nima (2022-05-10)
This presentation investigates the internal security architecture of modern Microsoft Office documents and evaluates practical methods for bypassing protection controls. Because modern Office documents are XML-based compressed archives, security implementations fall broadly into two categories: content-level locking and full-file encryption. The author demonstrates that content-level locks provide minimal security and can be circumvented manually by unpacking the underlying ZIP archive and deleting restriction tags (such as removing "settings.xml" in Word or the "" line within Excel worksheet XMLs), or by opening Word documents in WordPad to strip edit permissions. In contrast, true file encryption requires cryptographic hash extraction followed by offline or cloud-based cracking using dictionary and brute-force attacks. Through comparative testing with utilities like Hashcat, commercial software like Passware, and web-based services such as OnlineHashCrack, the study examines real-world cracking efficiency, recovery timelines, and software limitations across modern Office iterations. Finally, the presentation underscores crucial operational security considerations, emphasizing software version compatibility, the unreliability of older free GUI crackers, and the privacy and data security risks inherent in uploading proprietary encrypted files to third-party online cracking platforms.
Effect of BYOD On Today’s Enterprise Security Systems
Zahadat, Nima (INCOSE, 2013-10-29)
This research presentation investigates the operational benefits, architectural vulnerabilities, and governance challenges associated with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) adoption across modern enterprise environments. Motivated by the academic neglect of mobile security and informed by expert interviews at NIST and George Washington University, the study explores the organizational incentives driving BYOD—such as heightened employee productivity, cost reductions in hardware and training, work-from-anywhere flexibility, and service expansion in critical domains like healthcare and telemedicine. However, these advantages introduce severe technical and policy complications stemming from operating system fragmentation, differing OS versions, diverse device manufacturers, and friction with legacy architectures. The analysis reveals significant security shortcomings, notably inconsistent enforcement between desktop and mobile endpoints, data leakage across shared media and cloud sync backups, improper endpoint disposal, and minimal overall management. Evaluating commercial Mobile Device Management (MDM) platforms, the authors identify a critical control gap: across 69 standard security control objectives, only 12 are universally supported across major MDM solutions, demonstrating that software platforms alone cannot fully secure personal devices. To bridge these gaps, the presentation proposes a comprehensive security framework tailored for non-classified yet confidentiality-dependent enterprise environments. This framework balances technical controls with organizational governance, emphasizing continuous user education, rigorous compliance testing, strategic incentive structures, and sustained partnership between IT departments and end users.
A Step-to-the-Doctorate Institute: Profile of a Bridge Program
Waller, Tremayne O.; Wright, Mandy J.; Talukdar, Shahidur Rashid; Jan, Faika T.; Anshebo, Surafel; Chan, Travis; Endlaw, Shriya; Santos, Niko (CEED, College of Engineering, Virginia Tech, 2026-09)
The transition from an undergraduate degree to a graduate program represents a critical juncture in the academic pathway, particularly for students pursuing advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This transition is often characterized by systemic barriers for underrepresented groups, who face challenges such as limited access to resources, a lack of mentorship, and financial constraints. To bridge this gap, A Step to the Doctorate Institute (S2D) was founded in 2020 by Dr. Tremayne Waller and Dr. Karis Cotton. A Step-to-the-Doctorate (S2D)—an undergraduate-to-graduate bridge program—is a transdisciplinary initiative hosted by the Center for Engineering Excellence and Discovery (CEED) within the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech. S2D is an engineering-focused program designed to encourage, motivate, support, guide, and accelerate the progression of talented STEAM undergraduate students into master’s and doctoral programs. This report provides a detailed, evidence-based performance review of S2D from 2020 through 2026, examining cohort growth patterns, undergraduate pipeline diversity, and the graduate school transition successes of its alumni. Key Programmatic Achievements: S2D has achieved exceptional outcomes since its inception, establishing itself as a vital conduit for engineering graduate education. The program’s accomplishments are summarized in five core areas: ▪ Enrollment and Growth (2020–2026): The program’s annual enrollment scaled dramatically from 11 participants in 2020 to a peak of 61 participants in 2025, with a total of 223 scholars. ▪ Expanding the Scope: Initially, S2D started with only engineering major students. However, the program now has evolved into a multidisciplinary initiative with over 12% of participants from non-engineering fields such as life sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. ▪ Institutional Pipeline: S2D has recruited undergrads from 41 institutions. While Virginia Tech remains the primary pipeline (with 148 participants), the program maintains deep partnerships with historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), minority serving institutions (MSI), and national student organizations, making the graduate pipeline more representative. ▪ Graduate School Conversion (2020–2025 Cohorts): Among the 167 participants who have completed the program, 78 (47%) have matriculated into graduate school. Of these, 54 (32%) are pursuing, or have already completed, Master’s degrees, and 24 (14%) have transitioned into PhD programs. Out of these 78 students, 41 (or 53%) have joined Virginia Tech graduate school. Notably, First-Generation participants achieved a 40% graduate school transition rate, outperforming non-first-generation peers (35%). ▪ Publications, Conferences, Research Grants: Systematic collection and analysis of data on the S2D participants and their achievements have resulted in four publications, several conference presentations, and award of five research grants to the S2D team.
Poetry, Preservation, and Custodial Clarification: Stabilizing Governance in The New River Journal
Kinnaman, Alex; Patel, Soham (2026-03-16)
Virginia Tech is home to The New River Journal, one of the oldest electronic journals dedicated to digital art and literature. Over 30 years, the journal has undergone multiple transformations in design, management, technology, and partnerships. Although the journal collaborates with external organizations for technical support, restoration, and access hosting, its website only recently migrated to infrastructure managed by the University Libraries, prompting a desire for locally-controlled preservation. Versions of the journal’s submissions are hosted by multiple parties, including knowledge bases, creator-hosted sites, and restoration environments. As a result of this distribution, knowledge base entries are incomplete, and changeover documentation is fragmented. At the same time, significant restoration of legacy works by The NEXT has reestablished access, shifting the preservation focus towards establishing a canonical inventory of the submissions and defining sustainable governance structures for long-term stewardship. This paper examines the transitional space between restoration-focused access initiatives and repository-based preservation stewardship. It proposes a stabilization model for legacy, scholar-led e-literature journals that emphasizes custodial clarification, documentation, and governance continuity within a distributed access and preservation environment. This paper aligns with the conference theme “community” and outlines how a multidisciplinary partnership can collaboratively reshape the community that supports a 30-year-old electronic literary journal through digital preservation practices grounded in risk management.
TrueCrypt vs. VeraCrypt
Zahadat, Nima (2023-06-06)
This presentation examines the technical features, operational differences, and historical context of two prominent open-source disk encryption tools: TrueCrypt and its fork, VeraCrypt. Following TrueCrypt’s abrupt discontinuation in May 2014 - spurred by developers citing security concerns and prompting widespread speculation regarding National Security Letters (NSLs) or insurmountable vulnerabilities - VeraCrypt emerged as an actively maintained community alternative. While both platforms employ robust encryption algorithms (including AES, Twofish, and Serpent) and support system partitions, external drives, and plausible deniability via hidden volumes, VeraCrypt introduces expanded hashing algorithms, an updated user interface, ongoing cross-platform compatibility, and backward compatibility with TrueCrypt volumes. Conversely, TrueCrypt faces growing obsolescence, installation issues on newer operating systems like modern macOS, and a lack of official support, despite retaining trust among legacy users who highlight its extensive audit history. Practical testing demonstrates that VeraCrypt matches TrueCrypt’s comprehensive functionality - including hiding an entire Windows operating system inside another - though it exhibits slower performance and requires supplementary software to run on macOS. Ultimately, VeraCrypt serves as the viable, actively supported successor for secure volume encryption.
Password Complexity Requirements
Zahadat, Nima (2021-06-07)
This presentation, delivered at the Techno Security and Digital Forensics Conference 2021, examines common misconceptions surrounding authentication and evaluates the real-world mechanics of password complexity versus length. The authors challenge entrenched security dogmas—such as the beliefs that arbitrary special characters inherently guarantee security, frequent password expirations enhance posture, browser-based credential storage is safe, or biometrics and two-factor authentication are impervious to compromise. By analyzing keyspace dimensions across MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-256 alongside supercomputing computational thresholds (benchmarked against Japan’s Fugaku), the study illustrates the mathematical infeasibility of brute-forcing full cryptographic hash spaces from scratch while highlighting where actual vulnerabilities lie. Rather than short, artificially complex strings, password length (aiming for 12 to 16 or more characters) is identified as the decisive defense against rainbow tables and dictionary-based offline cracking when password databases are compromised. Furthermore, the presentation outlines practical operational realities: online brute-force attempts are typically mitigated by account lockout controls, biometrics face bypass risks under unconscious or coerced conditions, and dedicated password managers remain strongly preferable to native browser credential storage. Ultimately, the study advocates for pragmatic, human-centric security policies centered on passphrases, length over arbitrary complexity, and robust physical safeguards.
Review: "Ginseng Roots: a Memoir"
Stanley, Sarah (Art Libraries Society of North America, 2026-09-04)
A book review of Ginseng Roots: A Memoir, by Craig Thompson.
2026 GAP Report: Restarting Growth: The Role of Regenerative Agriculture in Productivity Growth and Profitability
Maples, Chellie (Virginia Tech. College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, 2026-09-29)
Global agricultural total factor productivity (TFP), the ratio of all agricultural outputs to all agricultural inputs, grew an average of 0.63 percent annually during 2015–2024. That rate is roughly 30 percent of the 2001–2010 peak and the lowest recorded since the 1970s, raising the average annual TFP growth required through 2050 to 2.10 percent. Input intensification once again accounts for roughly half of global output growth, leaving producers more exposed to volatile input costs, supply chain disruption, and climate stress. The 2026 GAP Report™ develops a framework, built from the existing scientific literature, that connects regenerative agriculture (RA) practices to TFP growth and producer profitability through three channels: input reduction, natural capital accumulation that improves output over time, and output stabilization under climate stress. Applied across crop, livestock, and aquaculture systems, the framework shows input reduction carries the strongest near-term evidence, while natural capital and stabilization gains accrue over longer horizons than standard farm financial models capture. Outcomes vary by practice, soil, climate, tenure, and market access, and no study yet directly measures TFP growth attributable to RA adoption. A regional spotlight on the European Union, where TFP growth is now the only remaining source of output growth, examines three decades of farm accounts across 213 regions and finds no consistent relationship between agri-environment payment intensity and TFP growth. The report identifies three sequential bottlenecks to scaling RA: the evidence and data base, usable decision tools, and enabling policy and market environments. It sets out five priorities to drive a restart in productivity growth using regenerative practices and tools: harmonized monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) infrastructure; long-run, whole-system trials; localized decision tools delivered with extension; transition finance matched to risk; and target-based frameworks that include TFP growth as an outcome indicator.
Letter From the Co-Editor: Yes, “Shit’s Got to Change.” But How? A Call for a Deep Scholarship Social Movement
McGehee, Nancy G. (SAGE Publications, 2025-04-01)
This letter from the editor is in response to Benjamin et al.'s (2024) call to action surrounding the structures and systems of the tourism academy. It recommends a social movements approach as a possible framework for taking next steps. This Deep Scholarship Movement suggests (1) identifying and assembling key leadership change agents with diverse viewpoints, (2) enhancing self-efficacy, increasing consciousness-raising, and maximizing resource mobilization, the three primary components of successful social movements, and using them to work toward (3) community consensus building. These are challenging and daunting recommendations. This letter argues, however, that this or some other systemic, organized approach is necessary for those of us in varying aspects of leadership to clear the way and establish deeper, richer, more inclusive and less oppressive environments for our early-and mid-career colleagues.
Strategies and Challenges to Teaching for Conceptual Learning
Johnson, Marcus L.; Herrick, Imogen Rose; Vaughn, Ashley R.; Jones, Suzanne H.; Schoepf, Sydnie; Taasoobshirazi, Gita (Information Age Publishing Inc., 2022-04-30)
Given the complexity of learning, an increasingly diverse student population, and growing demands on today’s teachers, educational psychology has never been more relevant for informing instructional practice. Notably, an understanding of learning, both what it is and how it occurs, is essential for teachers to design and implement effective instruction that is responsive to the needs of their learners. As part of the six-part series Theory to Practice: Educational Psychology for Teachers and Teaching, this volume highlights what and how teacher educators should teach about learning so that developing teachers will be more effective in their instructional practice. Preservice teachers represent a group of unique learners; in that they are learning about learning in order to support others’ learning. Similarly, teacher educators represent a unique group of educators in that they are guiding others in not just content knowledge but also in how to teach content across a variety of domains. As a means to highlight the ideas and constructs most essential for preservice teachers to learn, this volume was crafted for teacher educators, whether teaching educational psychology content incorporated into domain-specific courses or in a dedicated educational psychology course. Each chapter offers insight into what teachers need to know about learning as well as practical applications for how to teach the content. Chapters draw from a variety of theoretical perspectives about learning and identify common misconceptions that educational psychology instructors and teacher educators need to address in their work with preservice teachers.
Strategies for Supporting Graduate and Professional Students’ Teaching Readiness
Johnson, Marcus L. (Faculty Focus, 2026-05-25)
This article provides practical strategies for supporting graduate and professional students’ teaching readiness, particularly when traditional teaching assistant opportunities are limited. It describes developmental pathways including teaching assistantships, guest lectures, teaching-center micro-credentials, departmental teaching groups and material redesign, and online or hybrid teaching experiences. The article also discusses ways students can document these experiences through teaching artifacts, feedback, reflection, and teaching statements, and offers recommendations for faculty mentors, departments, and teaching centers to make teaching preparation a more systematic and equitable component of graduate and professional education.
External Letters Done Right: Practical Tips for P&T Candidates, Committees and Reviewers
Johnson, Marcus L. (Inside Higher Ed, 2026-09-16)
This article provides practical guidance for candidates, promotion and tenure committees and administrators, and external reviewers on the use of external review letters in promotion and tenure processes. It addresses the identification and selection of appropriate reviewers, reviewer independence and conflicts of interest, preparation of reviewer materials, communication with prospective reviewers, and the development and evaluation of evidence-based external review letters. The article emphasizes the importance of disciplinary norms, consistent procedures, and clear communication in making external review processes more transparent, informative, and fair.
Seronegative Spondyloarthropathy
Vempala, Michael; Bankole, Adegbenga A.; Maher, Lewena (Statpearls, 2026-07-20)
Inviting Students to the Table: Negotiating Power in Course Design
Scherer, Hannah H. (College STAR Faculty Development Modules & Case Studies, 2021-07)
Teaching "Truths" Might Not Be Enough: Amplifying Personal Relevance When Teaching About Historical Racial Traumas
Johnson, Marcus L. (American Educational Research Association, 2024-04)
This paper presents a thematic analysis of six essays concerning Historical Racial Trauma (HRT), to identify concepts that could help inform the development of HRT curriculum in a manner that promotes personal relevance for conceptual change learning. Themes/concepts were analyst-constructed typologies that were discovered and grounded in the data, and not predetermined. Five of the six essays addressed pedagogical strategies for teaching HRT, and three of the six essays provided accounts of HRT. The two concepts that emerged from the thematic analysis include: 1) the ubiquity of HRT in American history; and 2) the intergenerationality of trauma. Both the ubiquity and intergenerationality of HRT are concepts that can potentially enhance learners’ personal relevance for HRT conceptual learning.
Buried Histories: Systemic Motivations for Omitting and Distorting Racial Trauma in U.S. History Education
Johnson, Marcus L. (American Educational Research Association, 2026-04)
Why are histories of racial trauma so often omitted or distorted in U.S. history education? This study investigates the systemic motivations behind curricular erasure by drawing from interviews with historians, cultural studies scholars, and educators. Participants reflected on suppressed or distorted accounts of events such as the Sand Creek Massacre, the Tulsa Race Massacre, anti-Asian violence, and the lynching of Italian immigrants. Findings identify converging ideological pressures, such as nationalism, denialism, and efforts to preserve favorable portrayals of the U.S. government, as key drivers of curricular distortion. This research contributes to critical curriculum studies and the teaching of difficult, violent, and intergenerational traumatizing racial histories by examining how racial violence is remembered, reframed, or buried in public education.
Framing Violent Histories for Reconciliation: A Conceptual Change Perspective on Refutational Teaching in Peace Education
Johnson, Marcus L. (American Psychological Association, 2026-05-14)
This brief report examines how educators frame violent, racialized histories and why those choices matter for reconciliation. Interviews with eight U.S. educators (secondary teachers, university faculty, and public history practitioners) identified five flexible framings: somber, positive, neutral or expository, refutational, and student directed. Grounded in peace psychology, these framings map onto reconciliation-relevant mechanisms, including acknowledgment of harm, humanization, reduced defensiveness, and civic trust. The report highlights refutational teaching from conceptual change research: activating a common misconception, refuting it with evidence, and offering a plausible alternative while preserving student agency. Participants described clearer student understanding and lower defensiveness when lessons began with carefully designed refutations, especially where misinformation was common. Practical guidance is offered for matching frames to context. Limitations include a small, purposive sample and interview data; classroom studies should test these framings for conceptual change and reconciliation-relevant outcomes.
Holding the Line: Multi-Stage Jamming Classification in 5G O-RAN
Kim, Hyungmin; Burger, Eric W. (IEEE, 2026-10-13)
Jamming attacks threaten 5G networks, yet most existing detection methods rely on simulated data and lack deployment on standardized O-RAN architectures. We present a multi-stage jamming classification framework deployed on a real 5G O-RAN testbed that classifies seven distinct jamming attack types—including protocol-aware attacks targeting PSS, PDCCH, and DMRS—with 100% detection for six of seven modes (91.9% for PDCCH) and 5.3% false positive rate. Our three-stage cascade combines: (1) a multilayer perceptron (MLP) for fast 5-class KPI-based classification, (2) a sliding-window kernelized support vector machine (KSVM) that extracts 12-dimensional temporal statistics to detect intermittent attacks invisible to per-sample classifiers, and (3) a MobileNetV3 convolutional neural network for I/Q spectrogram-based protocol-aware sub-classification achieving 85% accuracy across four sub-types. We further implement a prototype machine learning operations (MLOps) path with Gaussian mixture model (GMM)-based telemetry labeling, retraining orchestration, and model hot reload. Stage 1/2 results use blocked temporal 5-fold cross-validation on 1,492 real KPI samples with zero train/test overlap; Stage 3 performance is evaluated on 200 real I/Q captures. Experiments on the CCI xG Testbed with three USRP X310 software-defined radios demonstrate a cascade processing latency of ≤23 ms (p95), within the typical Near-RT RIC operating timescale of 10 ms to 1 s.

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