Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Algae
- All Subjects: community
- Creators: School of Sustainability
Bioluminescent algae has long fascinated humans as a beautiful natural phenomenon. This creative project uses bioluminescent algae to push the limit of biomimicry, using the algae not as a model but as a technology. Through experimentation with algae samples and industrial design, two potential applications of bioluminescent algae as a sustainable lighting technology were generated. One design focuses on indoor, private lighting, while the other focuses on outdoor, public lighting. Both outcomes attempt to solve problems generated by nighttime lighting including light pollution, wasted electricity usage, and negative impacts on human and environmental health while retaining the benefits of safety and convenience.
"Black in Bleu" is a reflection on my life as a young, Black woman in America told through poetry, and music in conjunction with feminist activists' work as well as results from a survey amongst other young, black students. This paper is a window into Blackness reflecting my experiences as well as many others in a way to find love in that reflection. There is a playlist that goes along with the paper meant to be listened to simultaneously with the reading.
Cyanidioschyzon merolae, a unicellular extremophilic red algae, is found in hot, acidic groundwater with high concentrations of heavy metals. The association makes it an ideal species to investigate mechanisms of heavy metal tolerance, which may lead to its use in phyco- remediation wherein photosynthetic algae use biological processes to bind and remove toxic substances. Two strains of C. merolae, MS1 and 10D, are genetically very similar, despite the latter lacking a cell wall. To investigate heavy metal toxicity and the role of the cell wall, the two strains of C. merolae were exposed to various concentrations of cadmium and cultures were evaluated spectrophotometrically to assess the impact on growth over a 7-day period. The IC50 values of MS1 and 10D were estimated to be 15 and 0.5 ppm CdCl2 respectively, indicating that the cell wall provides protection under the presence of heavy metals. Cadmium uptake was also measured using Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES) to investigate metal ion exclusion and acidocalcisome-Cd2+ chelation as potential tolerance mechanisms. ICP-OES data indicated that 10D inoculum pretreated with phosphate depletion and re-supplementation, to induce Cd chelation in acidocalcisomes, then cultured in MA2 had the highest biomass Cd content of all strains and treatments (0.321 ppm; 31.55%). The cell wall clearly promotes survival and resistance to higher concentrations of environmental heavy metals, however, neither MS1 nor 10D seemed to be strains primed for phyco-remediation of heavy metal contamination through cellular uptake and sequestration.