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.
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Description
Bexarotene is a commercially produced drug commonly known as Targetin presecribed to treat cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL). Bex mimics the actions of natural 9-cis retinoic acid in the body, which are derived from Vitamin A in the diet and boost the immune system. Bex has been shown to be effective in the treatment of multiple types of cancer, including lung cancer. However, the disadvantages of using Bex include increased instances of hypothyroidism and excessive concentrations of blood triglycerides. If an analog of Bex can be developed which retains high affinity RXR binding similar to the 9-cis retinoic acid while exhibiting less interference for heterodimerization pathways, it would be of great clinical significance in improving the quality of life for patients with CTCL. This thesis will detail the biological profiling of additional novel (Generation Two) analogs, which are currently in submission for publication, as well as that of Generation Three analogs. The results from these studies reveal that specific alterations in the core structure of the Bex "parent" compound structure can have dramatic effects in modifying the biological activity of RXR agonists.
ContributorsYang, Joanna (Author) / Jurutka, Peter (Thesis director) / Wagner, Carl (Committee member) / Hibler, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2012-05
Description
This paper comes from a consulting project that the consulting firm, New Venture Group (NVG), did for a hospital in the southwest United States. The name of the hospital as well as the names of the hospitalists and units for the hospital will be withheld for confidentiality reasons. The hospital will be referred to as the ‘client’ throughout this paper. New Venture Group is a management consulting firm associated with Arizona State University (ASU), W.P. Carey School of Business and The Barrett Honors College. NVG recruits their consultants directly from the upper-class student body. NVG takes on projects from a wide variety of clients to provide real-world solutions comparable to that of other management consulting firms in the industry.
The client wanted to look into ways to improve patient satisfaction. To improve patient satisfaction the consulting team performed research and held a data collection. The team researched literature for possible improvements in technology, management procedures, and hospital operations protocols. The team then provided the findings and possible implementations to the client. Another item the team looked into was communication between night shift hospitalists and nurses, and possible ways to improve their communication. In the winter of 2010 a data collection was held at the client hospital that measured several different metrics of hospitalist
urse communication. In early 2011 a NVG team provided a descriptive statistics analysis of the results to the client. After the team’s first presentation I joined NVG and the team with this client. The client wanted to dig deeper into the data to find any patterns that were inherent in the data that were not immediately obvious from descriptive statistics. To do this I built over a 150 different regressions to dig from the data as many different patterns that could be found. Most of these regressions found many non-interesting results and a few did find significant interesting results. A report was sent to the client with all the results found. This paper is structured differently than the one delivered to the client in that only the significant interesting results are included and terminology will used for an audience who is familiar with statistics and mathematics. The work in this paper is the combined result of the whole team. My most specific input in this project is the quantitative analysis section. The other parts of this paper are also included so that the reader can see the full results of this consulting project.
The client wanted to look into ways to improve patient satisfaction. To improve patient satisfaction the consulting team performed research and held a data collection. The team researched literature for possible improvements in technology, management procedures, and hospital operations protocols. The team then provided the findings and possible implementations to the client. Another item the team looked into was communication between night shift hospitalists and nurses, and possible ways to improve their communication. In the winter of 2010 a data collection was held at the client hospital that measured several different metrics of hospitalist
urse communication. In early 2011 a NVG team provided a descriptive statistics analysis of the results to the client. After the team’s first presentation I joined NVG and the team with this client. The client wanted to dig deeper into the data to find any patterns that were inherent in the data that were not immediately obvious from descriptive statistics. To do this I built over a 150 different regressions to dig from the data as many different patterns that could be found. Most of these regressions found many non-interesting results and a few did find significant interesting results. A report was sent to the client with all the results found. This paper is structured differently than the one delivered to the client in that only the significant interesting results are included and terminology will used for an audience who is familiar with statistics and mathematics. The work in this paper is the combined result of the whole team. My most specific input in this project is the quantitative analysis section. The other parts of this paper are also included so that the reader can see the full results of this consulting project.
ContributorsGuggisberg, Michael (Author) / Ahn, Seung (Thesis director) / Brooks, Daniel (Committee member) / Werner, Kathleen (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2012-05