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.

Background: The shift from solitary to social behavior is one of the major evolutionary transitions. Primitively eusocial bumblebees are uniquely placed to illuminate the evolution of highly eusocial insect societies. Bumblebees are also invaluable natural and agricultural pollinators, and there is widespread concern over recent population declines in some species. High-quality genomic data will inform key aspects of bumblebee biology, including susceptibility to implicated population viability threats.

Results: We report the high quality draft genome sequences of Bombus terrestris and Bombus impatiens, two ecologically dominant bumblebees and widely utilized study species. Comparing these new genomes to those of the highly eusocial honeybee Apis mellifera and other Hymenoptera, we identify deeply conserved similarities, as well as novelties key to the biology of these organisms. Some honeybee genome features thought to underpin advanced eusociality are also present in bumblebees, indicating an earlier evolution in the bee lineage. Xenobiotic detoxification and immune genes are similarly depauperate in bumblebees and honeybees, and multiple categories of genes linked to social organization, including development and behavior, show high conservation. Key differences identified include a bias in bumblebee chemoreception towards gustation from olfaction, and striking differences in microRNAs, potentially responsible for gene regulation underlying social and other traits.

Conclusions: These two bumblebee genomes provide a foundation for post-genomic research on these key pollinators and insect societies. Overall, gene repertoires suggest that the route to advanced eusociality in bees was mediated by many small changes in many genes and processes, and not by notable expansion or depauperation.

We present a phylogeographic study of at least six reproductively isolated lineages of new world harvester ants within the Pogonomyrmex barbatus and P. rugosus species group. The genetic and geographic relationships within this clade are complex: Four of the identified lineages show genetic caste determination (GCD) and are divided into two pairs. Each pair has evolved under a mutualistic system that necessitates sympatry. These paired lineages are dependent upon one another because their GCD requires interlineage matings for the production of F1 hybrid workers, and intralineage matings are required to produce queens. This GCD system maintains genetic isolation among these interdependent lineages, while simultaneously requiring co-expansion and emigration as their distributions have changed over time. It has also been demonstrated that three of these four GCD lineages have undergone historical hybridization, but the narrower sampling range of previous studies has left questions on the hybrid parentage, breadth, and age of these groups. Thus, reconstructing the phylogenetic and geographic history of this group allows us to evaluate past insights and hypotheses and to plan future inquiries in a more complete historical biogeographic context. Using mitochondrial DNA sequences sampled across most of the morphospecies’ ranges in the U.S.A. and Mexico, we conducted a detailed phylogeographic study. Remarkably, our results indicate that one of the GCD lineage pairs has experienced a dramatic range expansion, despite the genetic load and fitness costs of the GCD system. Our analyses also reveal a complex pattern of vicariance and dispersal in Pogonomyrmex harvester ants that is largely concordant with models of late Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene range shifts among various arid-adapted taxa in North America.

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.

Communicating climate risks is crucial when engaging the public to support climate action planning and addressing climate justice. How does evidence-based communication influence local residents’ risk perception and potential behavior change in support of climate planning? Built upon our previous study of Climate Justice maps illustrating high scores of both social and ecological vulnerability in Michigan’s Huron River watershed, USA, a quasi-experiment was conducted to examine the effects of Climate Justice mapping intervention on residents’ perceptions and preparedness for climate change associated hazards in Michigan. Two groups were compared: residents in Climate Justice areas with high social and ecological vulnerability scores in the watershed (n=76) and residents in comparison areas in Michigan (n=69). Measurements for risk perception include perceived exposure, sensitivity, and adaptability to hazards. Results indicate that risk information has a significant effect on perceived sensitivity and level of preparedness for future climate extremes among participants living in Climate Justice areas. Findings highlight the value of integrating scientific risk assessment information in risk communication to align calculated and perceived risks. This study suggests effective risk communication can influence local support of climate action plans and implementation of strategies that address climate justice and achieve social sustainability in local communities.

A central goal of biology is to uncover the genetic basis for the origin of new phenotypes. A particularly effective approach is to examine the genomic architecture of species that have secondarily lost a phenotype with respect to their close relatives. In the eusocial Hymenoptera, queens and workers have divergent phenotypes that may be produced via either expression of alternative sets of caste-specific genes and pathways or differences in expression patterns of a shared set of multifunctional genes. To distinguish between these two hypotheses, we investigated how secondary loss of the worker phenotype in workerless ant social parasites impacted genome evolution across two independent origins of social parasitism in the ant genera Pogonomyrmex and Vollenhovia. We sequenced the genomes of three social parasites and their most-closely related eusocial host species and compared gene losses in social parasites with gene expression differences between host queens and workers. Virtually all annotated genes were expressed to some degree in both castes of the host, with most shifting in queen-worker bias across developmental stages. As a result, despite >1 My of divergence from the last common ancestor that had workers, the social parasites showed strikingly little evidence of gene loss, damaging mutations, or shifts in selection regime resulting from loss of the worker caste. This suggests that regulatory changes within a multifunctional genome, rather than sequence differences, have played a predominant role in the evolution of social parasitism, and perhaps also in the many gains and losses of phenotypes in the social insects.

Land-use mapping is critical for global change research. In Central Arizona, U.S.A., the spatial distribution of land use is important for sustainable land management decisions. The objective of this study was to create a land-use map that serves as a model for the city of Maricopa, an expanding urban region in the Sun Corridor of Arizona. We use object-based image analysis to map six land-use types from ASTER imagery, and then compare this with two per-pixel classifications. Our results show that a single segmentation, combined with intermediary classifications and merging, morphing, and growing image-objects, can lead to an accurate land-use map that is capable of utilizing both spatial and spectral information. We also employ a moving-window diversity assessment to help with analysis and improve post-classification modifications.

Background: Although principles based in motor learning, rehabilitation, and human-computer interfaces can guide the design of effective interactive systems for rehabilitation, a unified approach that connects these key principles into an integrated design, and can form a methodology that can be generalized to interactive stroke rehabilitation, is presently unavailable.

Results: This paper integrates phenomenological approaches to interaction and embodied knowledge with rehabilitation practices and theories to achieve the basis for a methodology that can support effective adaptive, interactive rehabilitation. Our resulting methodology provides guidelines for the development of an action representation, quantification of action, and the design of interactive feedback. As Part I of a two-part series, this paper presents key principles of the unified approach. Part II then describes the application of this approach within the implementation of the Adaptive Mixed Reality Rehabilitation (AMRR) system for stroke rehabilitation.

Conclusions: The accompanying principles for composing novel mixed reality environments for stroke rehabilitation can advance the design and implementation of effective mixed reality systems for the clinical setting, and ultimately be adapted for home-based application. They furthermore can be applied to other rehabilitation needs beyond stroke.

Background: Few existing interactive rehabilitation systems can effectively communicate multiple aspects of movement performance simultaneously, in a manner that appropriately adapts across various training scenarios. In order to address the need for such systems within stroke rehabilitation training, a unified approach for designing interactive systems for upper limb rehabilitation of stroke survivors has been developed and applied for the implementation of an Adaptive Mixed Reality Rehabilitation (AMRR) System.

Results: The AMRR system provides computational evaluation and multimedia feedback for the upper limb rehabilitation of stroke survivors. A participant's movements are tracked by motion capture technology and evaluated by computational means. The resulting data are used to generate interactive media-based feedback that communicates to the participant detailed, intuitive evaluations of his performance. This article describes how the AMRR system's interactive feedback is designed to address specific movement challenges faced by stroke survivors. Multimedia examples are provided to illustrate each feedback component. Supportive data are provided for three participants of varying impairment levels to demonstrate the system's ability to train both targeted and integrated aspects of movement.

Conclusions: The AMRR system supports training of multiple movement aspects together or in isolation, within adaptable sequences, through cohesive feedback that is based on formalized compositional design principles. From preliminary analysis of the data, we infer that the system's ability to train multiple foci together or in isolation in adaptable sequences, utilizing appropriately designed feedback, can lead to functional improvement. The evaluation and feedback frameworks established within the AMRR system will be applied to the development of a novel home-based system to provide an engaging yet low-cost extension of training for longer periods of time.