Central Connecticut State University

> With his own ghostly voice he had exhorted me, on the sacred consideration of my filial duty and reverence towards him—who might reasonably regard himself as my official ancestor—to bring his mouldy and moth-eaten lucubrations before the public. > > Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

ABSTRACT The purpose of this empirical study is to examine the preparation and perceived competence of school counselors in addressing instances involving children at risk of or who are victims of child sex trafficking. This national study convenience sampled 158 self-identified school counselors using a quantitative survey inquiring into their knowledge and training pertaining to students at risk for sex trafficking. The results indicate that school counselors do not see themselves as competent nor do they have training in identifying and aiding students at risk for child sex trafficking. Since school counselors are perhaps the most easily accessible mental health professionals for children, charged with caring for and advocating for all students, they should be provided training about child sex trafficking so that they can identify and help these students.

This paper examines the role of internal capital markets in financing primary dealers during the COVID-19 crisis. We show that primary dealers used their access to internal capital markets to increase their reliance on funding provided by affiliates during the crisis. The aggregate size of the internal capital markets of primary dealers increased from $700 billion in 2019 to more than $1 trillion in 2022. We show that sibling subsidiaries remain the largest single counterparty of US primary dealers, and their role as a source of internal funding was heightened during the COVID-19 crisis.

The main objective of this study is to gain insights into the five corporate social responsibility (CSR) factors— environment-related CSR, human rights & labor, product responsibility, community engagement, and corporate governance— and to understand their impact on employee retention among gen X, Y, and Z employees in the workplace during the Covid-19 pandemic. We collected survey data using Amazon Mechanical Turk, with a final sample size of 536 responses. The regression analyses indicated a positive and significant relationship between environment-related CSR and employee retention. The results also suggested that both human rights and labor-related CSR, as well as product responsibility-related CSR, are positively related to higher employee retention. Additionally, generational differences moderated the effect of environment-related CSR on employee retention, with a stronger correlation observed among gen Y and Z employees compared to gen X. These findings help reconcile mixed evidence on CSR–retention links by emphasizing generational differences and offering practical guidance. Managers aiming to retain talent should prioritize environmental stewardship, fair labor practices, and responsible products while tailoring CSR initiatives to the preferences of different employee cohorts.

BackgroundGastric Cancer remains one of the most prevalent cancers worldwide, with its prognosis heavily reliant on early detection. Traditional GC diagnostic methods are invasive and risky, prompting interest in non-invasive alternatives that could enhance outcomes.MethodIn this study, we introduce a non-invasive approach, World Hyper-heuristic Fuzzy Deep Learning, for gastric cancer prediction using metabolomics. Metabolomics profiles of plasma samples from 702 individuals were obtained and used for classification. To apply an efficient feature selection, we employed the World Hyper Heuristic, a metaheuristic to extract the most relevant features from the dataset. Subsequently, the extracted data were classified by implementing a Fuzzy Deep Neural Network.ResultsThe performance of WHFDL was assessed and compared against a comprehensive set of classical and state-of-the-art feature selection and classification algorithms. Our results highlighted six key metabolites as biomarkers associated with gastric cancer: (1-Methyladenosine, C18-Carnitine, Guanidineacetic acid, Hypoxanthine, Nicotinamide mononucleotide, and Succinate). The WHFDL outperformed all other classifiers, achieving an F1-score, recall and precision of 94%, 93% and 94%, respectively, along with an accuracy of 94% and an Area Under the Curve of 0.9384. Interpretability were analyzed using SHAP, LIME, IG calibration analysis, and adversarial testing, demonstrating the model’s transparency. The source code is available on (https://github.com/arman-daliri/WHFDL).

Success Central is a peer mentoring program developed at a mid-size regional university to support the persistence of college students. Success Central peer mentors use college life coaching techniques to help mentees build the skills necessary for college success. This paper will begin with an introduction to issues affecting the persistence of residential versus commuter students. The differential impact that Success Central has on residential versus commuter student success will be examined via statistical analyses. The paper will end with a discussion of the results and case examples illustrating the model.