The title “Regents’ Professor” is the highest faculty honor awarded at Arizona State University. It is conferred on ASU faculty who have made pioneering contributions in their areas of expertise, who have achieved a sustained level of distinction, and who enjoy national and international recognition for these accomplishments. This collection contains primarily open access works by ASU Regents' Professors.

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Women with breast cancer often experience weight gain during and after treatment, significantly increasing risk for recurrence as well as all-cause mortality. Based on a growing body of evidence, meditative movement practices may be effective for weight management. First, we describe the effects of stress on factors associated with weight

Women with breast cancer often experience weight gain during and after treatment, significantly increasing risk for recurrence as well as all-cause mortality. Based on a growing body of evidence, meditative movement practices may be effective for weight management. First, we describe the effects of stress on factors associated with weight gain for breast cancer survivors. Then, a model is proposed that utilizes existing evidence to suggest how meditative movement supports behavioral, psychological, and neurohormonal changes that may explain weight loss. Application of the model suggests how a novel “mindful-body-wisdom” approach may work to help reduce weight for this at-risk group.

Created2014-12-24
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Description
For many species, migration evolves to allow organisms to access better resources. However, the proximate factors that trigger these developmental changes, and how and why these vary across species, remain poorly understood. One prominent hypothesis is that poor-quality food promotes development of migratory phenotypes and this has been clearly shown

For many species, migration evolves to allow organisms to access better resources. However, the proximate factors that trigger these developmental changes, and how and why these vary across species, remain poorly understood. One prominent hypothesis is that poor-quality food promotes development of migratory phenotypes and this has been clearly shown for some polyphenic insects. In other animals, particularly long-distance bird migrants, it is clear that high-quality food is required to prepare animals for a successful migration. We tested the effect of diet quality on the flight behaviour and morphology of the Mongolian locust, Oedaleus asiaticus. Locusts reared at high population density and fed low-N grass (performance-enhancing for this species) had enhanced migratory morphology relative to locusts fed high-N grass. Furthermore, locusts fed synthetic diets with an optimal 1 : 2 protein : carbohydrate ratio flew for longer times than locusts fed diets with lower or higher protein : carbohydrate ratios. In contrast to the hypothesis that performance-degrading food should enhance migration, our results support the more nuanced hypothesis that high-quality diets promote development of migratory characteristics when migration is physiologically challenging.
ContributorsCease, Arianne (Author) / Harrison, Jon (Author) / Hao, Shuguang (Author) / Niren, Danielle (Author) / Zhang, Guangming (Author) / Kang, Le (Author) / Elser, James (Author) / Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2017-06-07
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Description
Fire is one of the earliest and most common tools used by humans to modify the earth surface. Landscapes in the Yucatán Peninsula are composed of a mosaic of old growth subtropical forest, secondary vegetation, grasslands, and agricultural land that represent a well-documented example of anthropogenic intervention, much of which

Fire is one of the earliest and most common tools used by humans to modify the earth surface. Landscapes in the Yucatán Peninsula are composed of a mosaic of old growth subtropical forest, secondary vegetation, grasslands, and agricultural land that represent a well-documented example of anthropogenic intervention, much of which involves the use of fire. This research characterizes land use systems and land cover changes in the Yucatán during the 2000–2010 time period. We used an active fire remotely sensed data time series from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), in combination with forest loss, and anthrome map sources to (1) establish the association between fire and land use change in the region; and (2) explore links between the spatial and temporal patterns of fire and specific types of land use practices, including within- and between-anthromes variability. A spatial multinomial logit model was constructed using fire, landscape configuration, and a set of commonly used control variables to estimate forest persistence, non-forest persistence, and change. Cross-tabulations and descriptive statistics were used to explore the relationships between fire occurrence, location, and timing with respect to the geography of land use. We also compared fire frequencies within and between anthrome groups using a negative binomial model and Tukey pairwise comparisons. Results show that fire data broadly reproduce the geography and timing of anthropogenic land change. Findings indicate that fire and landscape configuration is useful in explaining forest change and non-forest persistence, especially in fragmented (mosaicked) landscapes. Absence of fire occurrence is related usefully to the persistence of spatially continuous core areas of older growth forest. Fire has a positive relationship with forest to non-forest change and a negative relationship with forest persistence. Fire is also a good indicator to distinguish between anthrome groups (e.g., croplands and villages). Our study suggests that active fire data series are a reasonable proxy for anthropogenic land persistence/change in the context of the Yucatán and are useful to differentiate quantitatively and qualitatively between and within anthromes.
Created2017-09-12
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Description
Objective
Limited research has examined how aspects of religion and spirituality can be incorporated into community-based physical activity programs delivered outside of religious institutions. The purpose of this study was to qualitatively explore how spirituality and religion can be leveraged in the design of community-based physical activity programs for African American

Objective
Limited research has examined how aspects of religion and spirituality can be incorporated into community-based physical activity programs delivered outside of religious institutions. The purpose of this study was to qualitatively explore how spirituality and religion can be leveraged in the design of community-based physical activity programs for African American women delivered outside of faith-based or faith-placed settings.
Results
Three focus groups were conducted were conducted with 23 African American women (M age = 37.8 years, M BMI = 39.6 kg m[superscript 2]). Results showed that incorporating aspects of spirituality (i.e., words encouraging connectedness to a higher power, meditation, mind–body activities) into a physical activity program was universally accepted among participants, regardless of religious affiliation. In contrast, including concepts of religion (i.e., bible verses and/or quotes from religious leaders) was controversial and not recommended among women who did not identify with a religious faith. Findings indicate that when developing community-based physical activity interventions that will not be delivered through faith-based or faith-placed settings, researchers should avoid references to specific religious beliefs. Instead, interventions should focus on spirituality and emphasize the mind–body relationship between physical activity and an African American women’s inner-being and her connectedness with a higher power.
Created2017-10-23
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Description
Nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) are important limiting nutrients for plant production and consumer performance in a variety of ecosystems. As a result, the N:P stoichiometry of herbivores has received increased attention in ecology. However, the mechanisms by which herbivores maintain N:P stoichiometric homeostasis are poorly understood. Here, using a

Nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) are important limiting nutrients for plant production and consumer performance in a variety of ecosystems. As a result, the N:P stoichiometry of herbivores has received increased attention in ecology. However, the mechanisms by which herbivores maintain N:P stoichiometric homeostasis are poorly understood. Here, using a field manipulation experiment we show that the grasshopper Oedaleus asiaticus maintains strong N:P stoichiometric homeostasis regardless of whether grasshoppers were reared at low or high density. Grasshoppers maintained homeostasis by increasing P excretion when eating plants with higher P contents. However, while grasshoppers also maintained constant body N contents, we found no changes in N excretion in response to changing plant N content over the range measured. These results suggest that O. asiaticus maintains P homeostasis primarily by changing P absorption and excretion rates, but that other mechanisms may be more important for regulating N homeostasis. Our findings improve our understanding of consumer-driven P recycling and may help in understanding the factors affecting plant-herbivore interactions and ecosystem processes in grasslands.
ContributorsZhang, Zijia (Author) / Elser, James (Author) / Cease, Arianne (Author) / Zhang, Ximei (Author) / Yu, Qiang (Author) / Han, Xingguo (Author) / Zhang, Guangming (Author) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor)
Created2014-08-04
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Description
The growth rate hypothesis (GRH) proposes that higher growth rate (the rate of change in biomass per unit biomass, μ) is associated with higher P concentration and lower C∶P and N∶P ratios. However, the applicability of the GRH to vascular plants is not well-studied and few studies have been done

The growth rate hypothesis (GRH) proposes that higher growth rate (the rate of change in biomass per unit biomass, μ) is associated with higher P concentration and lower C∶P and N∶P ratios. However, the applicability of the GRH to vascular plants is not well-studied and few studies have been done on belowground biomass. Here we showed that, for aboveground, belowground and total biomass of three study species, μ was positively correlated with N∶C under N limitation and positively correlated with P∶C under P limitation. However, the N∶P ratio was a unimodal function of μ, increasing for small values of μ, reaching a maximum, and then decreasing. The range of variations in μ was positively correlated with variation in C∶N∶P stoichiometry. Furthermore, μ and C∶N∶P ranges for aboveground biomass were negatively correlated with those for belowground. Our results confirm the well-known association of growth rate with tissue concentration of the limiting nutrient and provide empirical support for recent theoretical formulations.
ContributorsYu, Qiang (Author) / Wu, Honghui (Author) / He, Nianpeng (Author) / Lu, Xiaotao (Author) / Wang, Zhiping (Author) / Elser, James (Author) / Wu, Jianguo (Author) / Han, Xingguo (Author) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor)
Created2012-03-13
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Description
Despite their low cost and high nutrient density, the contribution of eggs to nutrient intake and dietary quality among Mexican-American postpartum women has not been evaluated. Nutrient intake and dietary quality, as assessed by the Healthy Eating Index 2010 (HEI-2010), were measured in habitually sedentary overweight/obese (body mass index (BMI)

Despite their low cost and high nutrient density, the contribution of eggs to nutrient intake and dietary quality among Mexican-American postpartum women has not been evaluated. Nutrient intake and dietary quality, as assessed by the Healthy Eating Index 2010 (HEI-2010), were measured in habitually sedentary overweight/obese (body mass index (BMI) = 29.7 ± 3.5 kg/m[superscript 2]) Mexican-American postpartum women (28 ± 6 years) and compared between egg consumers (n = 82; any egg intake reported in at least one of three 24-h dietary recalls) and non-consumers (n = 57). Egg consumers had greater intake of energy (+808 kJ (193 kcal) or 14%; p = 0.033), protein (+9 g or 17%; p = 0.031), total fat (+9 g or 19%; p = 0.039), monounsaturated fat (+4 g or 24%; p = 0.020), and several micronutrients than non-consumers. Regarding HEI-2010 scores, egg consumers had a greater total protein foods score than non-consumers (4.7 ± 0.7 vs. 4.3 ± 1.0; p = 0.004), and trends for greater total fruit (2.4 ± 1.8 vs. 1.9 ± 1.7; p = 0.070) and the total composite HEI-2010 score (56.4 ± 12.6 vs. 52.3 ± 14.4; p = 0.082). Findings suggest that egg intake could contribute to greater nutrient intake and improved dietary quality among postpartum Mexican-American women. Because of greater energy intake among egg consumers, recommendations for overweight/obese individuals should include avoiding excessive energy intake and incorporating eggs to a nutrient-dense, fiber-rich dietary pattern.
Created2015-10-02
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Description
Evolving Earth observation and change detection techniques enable the automatic identification of Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULCC) over a large extent from massive amounts of remote sensing data. It at the same time poses a major challenge in effective organization, representation and modeling of such information. This study

Evolving Earth observation and change detection techniques enable the automatic identification of Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULCC) over a large extent from massive amounts of remote sensing data. It at the same time poses a major challenge in effective organization, representation and modeling of such information. This study proposes and implements an integrated computational framework to support the modeling, semantic and spatial reasoning of change information with regard to space, time and topology. We first proposed a conceptual model to formally represent the spatiotemporal variation of change data, which is essential knowledge to support various environmental and social studies, such as deforestation and urbanization studies. Then, a spatial ontology was created to encode these semantic spatiotemporal data in a machine-understandable format. Based on the knowledge defined in the ontology and related reasoning rules, a semantic platform was developed to support the semantic query and change trajectory reasoning of areas with LULCC. This semantic platform is innovative, as it integrates semantic and spatial reasoning into a coherent computational and operational software framework to support automated semantic analysis of time series data that can go beyond LULC datasets. In addition, this system scales well as the amount of data increases, validated by a number of experimental results. This work contributes significantly to both the geospatial Semantic Web and GIScience communities in terms of the establishment of the (web-based) semantic platform for collaborative question answering and decision-making.
Created2016-10-25
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Description
Background
Obese Latino adolescents are disproportionately impacted by insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Prediabetes is an intermediate stage in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes and represents a critical opportunity for intervention. However, to date, no diabetes prevention studies have been conducted in obese Latino youth with prediabetes, a highly

Background
Obese Latino adolescents are disproportionately impacted by insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Prediabetes is an intermediate stage in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes and represents a critical opportunity for intervention. However, to date, no diabetes prevention studies have been conducted in obese Latino youth with prediabetes, a highly vulnerable and underserved group. Therefore, we propose a randomized-controlled trial to test the short-term (6-month) and long-term (12-month) efficacy of a culturally-grounded, lifestyle intervention, as compared to usual care, for improving glucose tolerance and reducing diabetes risk in 120 obese Latino adolescents with prediabetes.
Methods
Participants will be randomized to a lifestyle intervention or usual care group. Participants in the intervention group will attend weekly nutrition and wellness sessions and physical activity sessions twice a week for six months, followed by three months of booster sessions. The overall approach of the intervention is framed within a multilevel Ecodevelopmental model that leverages community, family, peer, and individual factors during the critical transition period of adolescence. The intervention is also guided by Social Cognitive Theory and employs key behavioral modification strategies to enhance self-efficacy and foster social support for making and sustaining healthy behavior changes. We will test intervention effects on quality of life, explore the potential mediating effects of changes in body composition, total, regional, and organ fat on improving glucose tolerance and increasing insulin sensitivity, and estimate the initial incremental cost effectiveness of the intervention as compared with usual care for improving glucose tolerance.
Discussion
The proposed trial builds upon extant collaborations of a transdisciplinary team of investigators working in concert with local community agencies to address critical gaps in how diabetes prevention interventions for obese Latino youth are developed, implemented and evaluated. This innovative approach is an essential step in the development of scalable, cost-effective, solution oriented programs to prevent type 2 diabetes in this and other populations of high-risk youth.
Created2017-03-16
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Description
Background
Weight gain during the childbearing years and failure to lose pregnancy weight after birth contribute to the development of obesity in postpartum Latinas.
Methods
Madres para la Salud [Mothers for Health] was a 12-month, randomized controlled trial exploring a social support intervention with moderate-intensity physical activity (PA) seeking to effect changes in

Background
Weight gain during the childbearing years and failure to lose pregnancy weight after birth contribute to the development of obesity in postpartum Latinas.
Methods
Madres para la Salud [Mothers for Health] was a 12-month, randomized controlled trial exploring a social support intervention with moderate-intensity physical activity (PA) seeking to effect changes in body fat, fat tissue inflammation, and depression symptoms in sedentary postpartum Latinas. This report describes the efficacy of the Madres intervention.
Results
The results show that while social support increased during the active intervention delivery, it declined to pre-intervention levels by the end of the intervention. There were significant achievements in aerobic and total steps across the 12 months of the intervention, and declines in body adiposity assessed with bioelectric impedance.
Conclusions
Social support from family and friends mediated increases in aerobic PA resulting in decrease in percent body fat.
Created2014-09-19