ASU Scholarship Showcase

This study dealt with emotional responses elicited by certain products, which helped to understand the attributes of the product leading to emotional responses. Emotional Design is a way of design that is using emotions generated by people as reference and measurement. Making good use of emotional design could let the user discover resonance in the interaction between user and product, which could help the product to be more attractive to users. This research proposes to apply qualitative research method to uncover the secrets of emotional bonds between users and products This study also offered an useful tool to examine the strength and weakness of a certain product from perspective of emotion, and the insights could help designers to refine the product to become emotional attractive, thus create better user experience and bigger opportunity for the product on the market in the future.

Zeolitic Imidazolate Frameworks (ZIFs) are one of the potential candidates as highly conducting networks with surface area with a possibility to be used as catalyst support. In the present study, highly active state-of-the-art Pt-NCNTFs catalyst was synthesized by pyrolyzing ZIF-67 along with Pt precursor under flowing Ar-H₂ (90-10 %) gas at 700 °C. XRD analysis indicated the formation of Pt-Co alloy on the surface of the nanostructured catalyst support. The high resolution TEM examination showed the particle size range of 7 to 10 nm. Proton exchange membrane fuel cell performance was evaluated by fabricating membrane electrode assemblies using Nafion-212 electrolyte using H₂/O₂ gases (100 % RH) at various temperatures. The peak power density of 630 mW.cm² was obtained with Pt-NCNTFs cathode catalyst and commercial Pt/C anode catalyst at 70 °C at ambient pressure.

On-going efforts to understand the dynamics of coupled social-ecological (or more broadly, coupled infrastructure) systems and common pool resources have led to the generation of numerous datasets based on a large number of case studies. This data has facilitated the identification of important factors and fundamental principles which increase our understanding of such complex systems. However, the data at our disposal are often not easily comparable, have limited scope and scale, and are based on disparate underlying frameworks inhibiting synthesis, meta-analysis, and the validation of findings. Research efforts are further hampered when case inclusion criteria, variable definitions, coding schema, and inter-coder reliability testing are not made explicit in the presentation of research and shared among the research community. This paper first outlines challenges experienced by researchers engaged in a large-scale coding project; then highlights valuable lessons learned; and finally discusses opportunities for further research on comparative case study analysis focusing on social-ecological systems and common pool resources. Includes supplemental materials and appendices published in the International Journal of the Commons 2016 Special Issue. Volume 10 - Issue 2 - 2016.

The image of “Shostakovich” and the relationships surrounding it in the West during the Cold War can be viewed from several angles. Selected Cold War encounters between the United States and the Soviet Union involving Shostakovich’s music—especially the 1959 New York Philharmonic tour to the USSR—offer insight into three perspectives on Shostakovich symphonies in the Cold War: (1) the direct, (2) the implicit, and (3) the micro/intimate. This heuristic hones our understanding of the various types of relationships cultivated with music during the Cold War, while also widening the discussion of Shostakovich’s symbolic presentation during the conflict.

An urban forest assessment is essential for developing a baseline from which to measure changes and trends. The most precise way to assess urban forests is to measure and record every tree on a site, but although this may work well for relatively small populations (e.g., street trees, small parks), it is prohibitively expensive for large tree populations. Thus, random sampling offers a cost-effective way to assess urban forest structure and the associated ecosystem services for large-scale assessments. The methodology applied to assess ecosystem services in this study can also be used to assess the ecosystem services provided by vacant land in other urban contexts and improve urban forest policies, planning, and the management of vacant land. The study’s findings support the inclusion of trees on vacant land and contribute to a new vision of vacant land as a valuable ecological resource by demonstrating how green infrastructure can be used to enhance ecosystem health and promote a better quality of life for city residents.

At the end of the dark ages, anatomy was taught as though everything that could be known was known. Scholars learned about what had been discovered rather than how to make discoveries. This was true even though the body (and the rest of biology) was very poorly understood. The renaissance eventually brought a revolution in how scholars (and graduate students) were trained and worked. This revolution never occurred in K-12 or university education such that we now teach young students in much the way that scholars were taught in the dark ages, we teach them what is already known rather than the process of knowing. Citizen science offers a way to change K-12 and university education and, in doing so, complete the renaissance. Here we offer an example of such an approach and call for change in the way students are taught science, change that is more possible than it has ever been and is, nonetheless, five hundred years delayed.

Research has shown that construction projects in Saudi Arabia have exhibited poor performance for the past three decades. The traditional risk management practices have been ineffective at helping contractors deliver projects on time and within budget while meeting quality expectations. Studies have identified that client decision making is one of the main causes of risks that occur on projects in Saudi Arabia. This paper proposes a new risk management model that can minimize client decision making, and enable the client to utilize expertise, thereby improving project quality and performance. The model is derived from the Information Measurement Theory (IMT) and Performance Information Procurement System (PIPS), both developed at Arizona State University in the United States (U.S.). The model has been tested over 1800 times in both construction and non-construction projects, showing a decrease in required management by owner by up to 80% and an increase in efficiency up to 40%.

A typical building construction process runs through three main consecutive phases: design, construction and operation. Currently, architects and engineers both engage in the creation of environmental designs that adequately reflect high performance through sustainability and energy efficiency in new buildings. Occupants of buildings have also recently demonstrated a dramatic increase in awareness regarding building operation, energy usage, and indoor air quality. The process of building construction is chronologically located between both the design and the operation phases. However, this phase has not yet been addressed in either understanding contractor behavior or developing innovative sustainable techniques. These two vital aspects have the potential to levy a dramatic impact on enhancing building performance and operational costs.

Repeatedly causing apprehension to the construction industry is a question that posits, “Why is there a gap/delta/inconsistency between the designed EUI, Energy Use Intensity, and the operational EUI”? Building occupants shall not be the only party that bears blame for the delta in energy. It is true, nonetheless, that occupants are part of the reason, but the contractor – as well as the entire construction phase - also remain prime suspects worth investigating. In the present time, research is predominantly focused on occupants (post-occupancy) and designers to educate and control the gap between designed and operational EUI. This research has succeeded in the identification of the construction phase, in conjunction with contractor behavior, as another main factor for initiating this energy gap. Therefore, not only is the coupling of sustainable strategies to the construction drivers crucial to attaining a sustainable project, but also it is integral to analyzing contractor behavior within each of the construction phases that play a vital role in successfully serving sustainability. Various techniques and approaches will assist contractors in amending their method statements to ensure a sustainable project.

This research correlates an existing project to the two proposed sustainable concepts: 1) Identify cost-saving strategies that may have been implemented or avoided during the construction process, and 2) Evaluate the impacts of implementing these strategies on overall performance. The adopted contexts are to partially foster sustainable architecture concepts to the Contractor process, and then proceed to analyze its cost implication on overall project performance. Results of the validation of this approach verify that when contractors embrace a sustainable construction process the overall project will yield various financial savings. A mixed-use project was utilized to validate these concepts, which indicated three outcomes: firstly, a 25% decrease in manpower for tiling while maintaining the same productivity, thus reflecting a saving of $3,500; next, increasing the productivity of concrete activity, which would shorten the duration of the construction by 45 days and reflect a saving of $1.5 million, and last of all, reducing the overhead costs of labor camps by efficiently orienting temporary shelters, which reveals a reduction in cooling and heating that returned a saving of approximately $10,000. This research develops a comprehensive evidence-based study that addresses the above-mentioned gap in the construction phase, which targets to yield a multi-dimensional tool that will allow: 1) integrating critical thinking and decision-making approaches regarding contractor behavior, and 2) adopting innovative sustainable construction methods that reflect reduction in operating costs.

The estimation of energy demand (by power plants) has traditionally relied on historical energy use data for the region(s) that a plant produces for. Regression analysis, artificial neural network and Bayesian theory are the most common approaches for analysing these data. Such data and techniques do not generate reliable results. Consequently, excess energy has to be generated to prevent blackout; causes for energy surge are not easily determined; and potential energy use reduction from energy efficiency solutions is usually not translated into actual energy use reduction. The paper highlights the weaknesses of traditional techniques, and lays out a framework to improve the prediction of energy demand by combining energy use models of equipment, physical systems and buildings, with the proposed data mining algorithms for reverse engineering. The research team first analyses data samples from large complex energy data, and then, presents a set of computationally efficient data mining algorithms for reverse engineering. In order to develop a structural system model for reverse engineering, two focus groups are developed that has direct relation with cause and effect variables. The research findings of this paper includes testing out different sets of reverse engineering algorithms, understand their output patterns and modify algorithms to elevate accuracy of the outputs.