ASU Scholarship Showcase

Cities in the Global South face rapid urbanization challenges and often suffer an acute lack of infrastructure and governance capacities. Smart Cities Mission, in India, launched in 2015, aims to offer a novel approach for urban renewal of 100 cities following an area‐based development approach, where the use of ICT and digital technologies is particularly emphasized. This article presents a critical review of the design and implementation framework of this new urban renewal program across selected case‐study cities. The article examines the claims of the so‐called “smart cities” against actual urban transformation on‐ground and evaluates how “inclusive” and “sustainable” these developments are. We quantify the scale and coverage of the smart city urban renewal projects in the cities to highlight who the program includes and excludes. The article also presents a statistical analysis of the sectoral focus and budgetary allocations of the projects under the Smart Cities Mission to find an inherent bias in these smart city initiatives in terms of which types of development they promote and the ones it ignores. The findings indicate that a predominant emphasis on digital urban renewal of selected precincts and enclaves, branded as “smart cities,” leads to deepening social polarization and gentrification. The article offers crucial urban planning lessons for designing ICT‐driven urban renewal projects, while addressing critical questions around inclusion and sustainability in smart city ventures.`

Attitudes and habits are extremely resistant to change, but a disruption of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to bring long-term, massive societal changes. During the pandemic, people are being compelled to experience new ways of interacting, working, learning, shopping, traveling, and eating meals. Going forward, a critical question is whether these experiences will result in changed behaviors and preferences in the long term. This paper presents initial findings on the likelihood of long-term changes in telework, daily travel, restaurant patronage, and air travel based on survey data collected from adults in the United States in Spring 2020. These data suggest that a sizable fraction of the increase in telework and decreases in both business air travel and restaurant patronage are likely here to stay. As for daily travel modes, public transit may not fully recover its pre-pandemic ridership levels, but many of our respondents are planning to bike and walk more than they used to. These data reflect the responses of a sample that is higher income and more highly educated than the US population. The response of these particular groups to the COVID-19 pandemic is perhaps especially important to understand, however, because their consumption patterns give them a large influence on many sectors of the economy.

Human protein diversity arises as a result of alternative splicing, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and posttranslational modifications. Because of these processes, each protein can exists as multiple variants in vivo. Tailored strategies are needed to study these protein variants and understand their role in health and disease. In this work we utilized quantitative mass spectrometric immunoassays to determine the protein variants concentration of beta-2-microglobulin, cystatin C, retinol binding protein, and transthyretin, in a population of 500 healthy individuals. Additionally, we determined the longitudinal concentration changes for the protein variants from four individuals over a 6 month period. Along with the native forms of the four proteins, 13 posttranslationally modified variants and 7 SNP-derived variants were detected and their concentration determined. Correlations of the variants concentration with geographical origin, gender, and age of the individuals were also examined. This work represents an important step toward building a catalog of protein variants concentrations and examining their longitudinal changes.

What's a profession without a code of ethics? Being a legitimate profession almost requires drafting a code and, at least nominally, making members follow it. Codes of ethics (henceforth “codes”) exist for a number of reasons, many of which can vary widely from profession to profession - but above all they are a form of codified self-regulation. While codes can be beneficial, it argues that when we scratch below the surface, there are many problems at their root. In terms of efficacy, codes can serve as a form of ethical window dressing, rather than effective rules for behavior. But even more that, codes can degrade the meaning behind being a good person who acts ethically for the right reasons.

Microbes in the gastrointestinal tract are under selective pressure to manipulate host eating behavior to increase their fitness, sometimes at the expense of host fitness. Microbes may do this through two potential strategies: (i) generating cravings for foods that they specialize on or foods that suppress their competitors, or (ii) inducing dysphoria until we eat foods that enhance their fitness. We review several potential mechanisms for microbial control over eating behavior including microbial influence on reward and satiety pathways, production of toxins that alter mood, changes to receptors including taste receptors, and hijacking of the vagus nerve, the neural axis between the gut and the brain. We also review the evidence for alternative explanations for cravings and unhealthy eating behavior. Because microbiota are easily manipulatable by prebiotics, probiotics, antibiotics, fecal transplants, and dietary changes, altering our microbiota offers a tractable approach to otherwise intractable problems of obesity and unhealthy eating.

Online communities are becoming increasingly important as platforms for large-scale human cooperation. These communities allow users seeking and sharing professional skills to solve problems collaboratively. To investigate how users cooperate to complete a large number of knowledge-producing tasks, we analyze Stack Exchange, one of the largest question and answer systems in the world. We construct attention networks to model the growth of 110 communities in the Stack Exchange system and quantify individual answering strategies using the linking dynamics on attention networks. We identify two answering strategies. Strategy A aims at performing maintenance by doing simple tasks, whereas strategy B aims at investing time in doing challenging tasks. Both strategies are important: empirical evidence shows that strategy A decreases the median waiting time for answers and strategy B increases the acceptance rate of answers. In investigating the strategic persistence of users, we find that users tends to stick on the same strategy over time in a community, but switch from one strategy to the other across communities. This finding reveals the different sets of knowledge and skills between users. A balance between the population of users taking A and B strategies that approximates 2:1, is found to be optimal to the sustainable growth of communities.

Proteins can exist as multiple proteoforms in vivo, as a result of alternative splicing and single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), as well as posttranslational processing. To address their clinical significance in a context of diagnostic information, proteoforms require a more in-depth analysis. Mass spectrometric immunoassays (MSIA) have been devised for studying structural diversity in human proteins. MSIA enables protein profiling in a simple and high-throughput manner, by combining the selectivity of targeted immunoassays, with the specificity of mass spectrometric detection. MSIA has been used for qualitative and quantitative analysis of single and multiple proteoforms, distinguishing between normal fluctuations and changes related to clinical conditions. This mini review offers an overview of the development and application of mass spectrometric immunoassays for clinical and population proteomics studies. Provided are examples of some recent developments, and also discussed are the trends and challenges in mass spectrometry-based immunoassays for the next-phase of clinical applications.

Introduction: Apolipoprotein C-III (apoC-III) regulates triglyceride (TG) metabolism. In plasma, apoC-III exists in non-sialylated (apoC-III_0a without glycosylation and apoC-III[subscript 0b] with glycosylation), monosialylated (apoC-III₁) or disialylated (apoC-III₂) proteoforms. Our aim was to clarify the relationship between apoC-III sialylation proteoforms with fasting plasma TG concentrations.

Methods: In 204 non-diabetic adolescent participants, the relative abundance of apoC-III plasma proteoforms was measured using mass spectrometric immunoassay.

Results: Compared with the healthy weight subgroup (n = 16), the ratios of apoC-III_0a, apoC-III_0b, and apoC-III₁ to apoC-III₂ were significantly greater in overweight (n = 33) and obese participants (n = 155). These ratios were positively correlated with BMI z-scores and negatively correlated with measures of insulin sensitivity (S[subscript i]). The relationship of apoC-III₁ / apoC-III₂ with S_i persisted after adjusting for BMI (p = 0.02). Fasting TG was correlated with the ratio of apoC-III_0a / apoC-III₂ (r = 0.47, p<0.001), apoC-III_0b / apoC-III₂ (r = 0.41, p<0.001), apoC-III₁ / apoC-III₂ (r = 0.43, p<0.001). By examining apoC-III concentrations, the association of apoC-III proteoforms with TG was driven by apoC-III_0a (r = 0.57, p<0.001), apoC-III_0b (r = 0.56. p<0.001) and apoC-III₁ (r = 0.67, p<0.001), but not apoC-III₂ (r = 0.006, p = 0.9) concentrations, indicating that apoC-III relationship with plasma TG differed in apoC-III₂ compared with the other proteoforms.

Conclusion: We conclude that apoC-III_0a, apoC-III_0b, and apoC-III₁, but not apoC-III₂ appear to be under metabolic control and associate with fasting plasma TG. Measurement of apoC-III proteoforms can offer insights into the biology of TG metabolism in obesity.

Background: Medical and public health scientists are using evolution to devise new strategies to solve major health problems. But based on a 2003 survey, medical curricula may not adequately prepare physicians to evaluate and extend these advances. This study assessed the change in coverage of evolution in North American medical schools since 2003 and identified opportunities for enriching medical education.

Methods: In 2013, curriculum deans for all North American medical schools were invited to rate curricular coverage and perceived importance of 12 core principles, the extent of anticipated controversy from adding evolution, and the usefulness of 13 teaching resources. Differences between schools were assessed by Pearson’s chi-square test, Student’s t-test, and Spearman’s correlation. Open-ended questions sought insight into perceived barriers and benefits.

Results: Despite repeated follow-up, 60 schools (39%) responded to the survey. There was no evidence of sample bias. The three evolutionary principles rated most important were antibiotic resistance, environmental mismatch, and somatic selection in cancer. While importance and coverage of principles were correlated (r = 0.76, P < 0.01), coverage (at least moderate) lagged behind importance (at least moderate) by an average of 21% (SD = 6%). Compared to 2003, a range of evolutionary principles were covered by 4 to 74% more schools. Nearly half (48%) of responders anticipated igniting controversy at their medical school if they added evolution to their curriculum. The teaching resources ranked most useful were model test questions and answers, case studies, and model curricula for existing courses/rotations. Limited resources (faculty expertise) were cited as the major barrier to adding more evolution, but benefits included a deeper understanding and improved patient care.

Conclusion: North American medical schools have increased the evolution content in their curricula over the past decade. However, coverage is not commensurate with importance. At a few medical schools, anticipated controversy impedes teaching more evolution. Efforts to improve evolution education in medical schools should be directed toward boosting faculty expertise and crafting resources that can be easily integrated into existing curricula.