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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- Creators: LaBelle, Jeffrey
Description
Sickle cell disease is a genetic disorder that can cause substantial helath problems. It is the result of a mutation in the DNA coding for hemoglobin. As a result of changes in two important amino acids, a person suffering from sickle cell disease will have erythrocytes that do not maintain the typical biconcave shape and instead for a crescent shape. Individuals with sickle cell disease may have many health problems tied to their irregular hemoglobin. The unusual shape of the erythrocytes leads to a much shorter cell life, which means that even though bone marrow remains active long past childhood to try to keep up with the loss of erythrocytes, the body is still unable to accommodate the rapid death of erythrocytes. The malformed erythrocytes can also cause vascular occlusion, blocking blood vessels and slowing blood flow. While sickle cell disease has the potential to spread worldwide, it is particularly common in Africa. This may be because people with the sickle cell trait have a high resistance to malaria, making them more likely to survive that ubiquitous disease and pass on their traits to their offspring. However, the mortality rate in young children with sickle cell disease is very high, in part because the spleen, already stressed by filtering out dead erythrocytes, has difficulties filtering out bacteria. One of the keys to stopping the spread of the disease is neonatal screening, but this requires specialized equipment that is fairly uncommon in rural areas, as can be seen in Kenya. Therefore, it would be highly beneficial to develop a more cost-effective and widely available method for testing for sickle cell disease.
ContributorsWold, John (Author) / Caplan, Michael (Thesis director) / LaBelle, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Snyder, Jan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2012-05
Description
This report provides information concerning qualities of methylcellulose and how those properties affect further experimentation within the biomedical world. Utilizing the compound’s biocompatibility many issues, ranging from surgical to cosmetic, can be solved. As of recent, studies indicate, methylcellulose has been used as a physically cross-linked gel, which cannot sustain a solid form within the body. Therefore, this report will ultimately explore the means of creating a non-degradable, injectable, chemically cross-linking methylcellulose- based hydrogel. Methylcellulose will be evaluated and altered in experiments conducted within this report and a chemical cross-linker, developed from Jeffamine ED 2003 (O,O′-Bis(2-aminopropyl) polypropylene glycol-block-polyethylene glycol-block-polypropylene glycol), will be created. Experimentation with these elements is outlined here, and will ultimately prompt future revisions and analysis.
ContributorsBundalo, Zoran Luka (Author) / Vernon, Brent (Thesis director) / LaBelle, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Overstreet, Derek (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Bangladesh is facing one of the largest mass poisonings in human history with over 77 million people affected by contaminated water each and every day. Over the last few years, the 33 Buckets team has come together to help fulfill this clean water need through filtration, education, and an innovative distribution system to inspire and empower people in Bangladesh and across the world. To start this process, we are working with the Rahima Hoque Girls' school in the rural area of Raipura, Bangladesh to give girls access to clean water where they spend the most time. Through our assessment trip in May 2012, we were able to acquire technical data, community input, and partnerships necessary to move our project forward. Additionally, we realized that in many cases, including the Rahima Hoque school, water problems are not caused by a lack of technology, but rather a lack of utilization and maintenance long-term. To remedy this, 33 Buckets has identified a local filter to have installed at the school, and has designed a small-scale business focused on selling clean water in bulk to the surrounding community. Our price point and association with the Rahima Hoque Girls' school makes our solution sustainable. Plus, with the success of our first site, we see the potential to scale. We already have five nearby schools interested in working to implement similar water projects, and with over 100,000 schools in Bangladesh, many of which lack access to the right water systems, we have a huge opportunity to impact millions of lives. This thesis project describes our journey through this process. First, an introduction to our work prior to the assessment trip and through the ASU EPICS program is given. Second, we include quantitative and qualitative details regarding our May 2012 assessment trip to the Rahima Hoque school and Dhaka. Third, we recount some of the experiences we were able to participate in following the trip to Bangladesh, including the Dell Social Innovation Challenge. Fourth, we examine the technical filtration methods, business model development, and educational materials that will be used to implement our solution this summer. Finally, we include an Appendix with a variety of social venture competitions and applications that we have submitted over the past two years, in addition to other supplementary materials. These are excellent examples of our diligence and provide unique insight into the growth of our project.
ContributorsStrong, Paul Andrew (Co-author) / Shah, Pankti (Co-author) / Huerta, Mark (Co-author) / Henderson, Mark (Thesis director) / El Asmar, Mounir (Committee member) / LaBelle, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
The action/adventure game Grad School: HGH is the final, extended version of a BME Prototyping class project in which the goal was to produce a zombie-themed game that teaches biomedical engineering concepts. The gameplay provides fast paced, exciting, and mildly addicting rooms that the player must battle and survive through, followed by an engineering puzzle that must be solved in order to advance to the next room. The objective of this project was to introduce the core concepts of BME to prospective students, rather than attempt to teach an entire BME curriculum. Based on user testing at various phases in the project, we concluded that the gameplay was engaging enough to keep most users' interest through the educational puzzles, and the potential for expanding this project to reach an even greater audience is vast.
ContributorsNitescu, George (Co-author) / Medawar, Alexandre (Co-author) / Spano, Mark (Thesis director) / LaBelle, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Guiang, Kristoffer (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
The growth of the medical diagnostic industry in the past several decades has largely been due to the creation and iterative optimization of bio sensors. Recent pushes towards value added as well as preventative health care has made point of care devices more attractive to health care providers. Rapid detection for diseases and cancers is done with a bio sensor, which a broad term used to describe an instrument which uses a bio chemical reaction to detect a chemical compound with the use of a bio recognition event in addition to a signal detection event. The bio sensors which are presented in this work are known as ion-sensitive field effects transistors (ISFETs) and are similar in function to a metal oxide field effect transistor (MOSFET). These ISFETs can be used to sense pH or the concentration of protons on the surface of the gate channel. These ISFETs can be used for certain bio recognition events and this work presents the application of these transistors for the quantification of tumor cell proliferation. This includes the development of a signal processing and acquisition system for the long term assessment of cellular metabolism and optimizing the system for use in an incubator. This thesis presents work done towards the optimization and implementation of complementary metal\u2014oxide\u2014semiconductor (CMOS) ISFETs as well as remote gate ISFETs for the continuous assessment of tumor cell extracellular pH. The work addresses the challenges faced with the fabrication and optimization of these sensors, which includes the mitigation of current drift with the use of pulse width modulation in addition to issues encountered with fabrication of electrodes on a quartz substrate. This work culminates in the testing of an autonomous system with mammary tumor cells as well as the assessment of cell viability in an incubator over extended periods. Future applications of this work include the creation of a remote gate ISFET array for multiplexed detection as well as the implementation of ISFETs for bio marker detection via an immunoassay.
ContributorsArafa, Hany Mohamed (Author) / Blain Christen, Jennifer (Thesis director) / LaBelle, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Concussions and traumatic brain injuries are mechanical events which can derive from no specific activity or event. However, these injuries occur often during athletic and sporting events but many athletes experiencing these symptoms go undiagnosed and continue playing without proper medical attention. The current gold standard for diagnosing athletes with concussions is to have medical professionals on the sidelines of events to perform qualitative standardized assessments which may not be performed frequently enough and are not specialized for each athlete. The purpose of this report is to discuss a study sanctioned by Arizona State University's Project HoneyBee and additional affiliations to validate a third-party mouth guard device product to recognize and detect force impacts blown to an athlete's head during athletic activity. Current technology in health monitoring medical devices can allow users to apply this device as an additional safety mechanism for early concussion awareness and diagnosis. This report includes the materials and methods used for experimentation, the discussion of its results, and the complications which occurred and areas for improvement during the preliminary efforts of this project. Participants in the study were five non-varsity ASU Wrestling athletes who volunteered to wear a third-party mouth guard device during sparring contact at practice. Following a needed calibration period for the devices, results were recorded both through visual observation and with the mouth guard devices using an accelerometer and gyroscope. This study provided a sound understanding for the operation and functionality of the mouth guard devices. The mouth guard devices have the capability to provide fundamental avenues of research for future investigations.
ContributorsTielke, Austin Wyatt (Author) / Ross, Heather (Thesis director) / LaBelle, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
Intracranial aneurysms, which form in the blood vessels of the brain, are particularly dangerous because of the importance and fragility of the human brain. When an intracranial aneurysm gets large it poses a significant risk of bursting and causing subarachnoid hemorrhaging (SAH), a possibly fatal condition. One possible treatment involves placing a stent in the vessel to act as a flow diverter. In this study we look at the hemodynamics of two geometries of idealized basilar tip aneurysms, at 2,3, and 4 ml/s pulsatile flow, at three different points in the cardiac cycle. The smaller model had neck and dome diameters of 2.67 mm and 4 mm respectively, while the larger aneurysm had neck and dome diameters of 3 mm and 6 mm respectively. Both diameters and the dome to neck ratio increased in the second model, representing growth over time. Flow was analyzed using stereoscopic particle image velocimetry (PIV) for both geometries in untreated models, as well as after treatment with a high porosity Enterprise stent (Codman and Shurtleff Inc.). Flow in the models was characterized by root mean square velocity in the aneurysm and neck plane, cross neck flow, max aneurysm vorticity, and total aneurysm kinetic energy. It was found that in the smaller aneurysm model (model 1), Enterprise stent treatment reduced all flow parameters substantially. The smallest reduction was in max vorticity, at 42.48%, and the largest in total kinetic energy, at 75.69%. In the larger model (model 2) there was a 52.18% reduction in cross neck flow, but a 167.28% increase in aneurysm vorticity. The other three parameters experienced little change. These results, along with observed velocity vector fields, indicate a noticeable diversion of flow away from the aneurysm in the stent treated model 1. Treatment in model 2 had a small flow diversion effect, but also altered flow in unpredictable ways, in some cases having a detrimental effect on aneurysm hemodynamics. The results of this study indicate that Enterprise stent treatment is only effective in small, relatively undeveloped aneurysm geometries, and waiting until an aneurysm has grown too large can eliminate this treatment option altogether.
ContributorsLindsay, James Bryan (Author) / Frakes, David (Thesis director) / LaBelle, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Nair, Priya (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
The purpose of this thesis was to explore how changes in the geometry of a bifurcating cerebral aneurysm will affect the hemodynamics in idealized models after stent treatment. This thesis explores the use of a computationally modeled Enterprise Vascular Reconstruction Device (Cordis, East Bridgewater, NJ), a high porosity and closed cell design. The models represent idealized cases of saccular aneurysms with dome sizes of either 4mm or 6mm and a dome to neck ratio of either 3:2 or 2:1. Two aneurysm contact angles are studied, one at 45 degrees and the other at 90 degrees. The stent was characterized and deployed with the use of Finite Element Analysis into each model. Computational Fluid Dynamic principles were applied in series of simulations on treated and untreated models. Data was gathered in the neck plane for the average velocity magnitude, root mean squared velocity, average flow vector angle of deflection, and the cross neck flow rate. Within the aneurysm, the average velocity magnitude, root mean squared velocity, and average pressure were calculated. Additionally, the mass flow rate at each outlet was recorded. The results of this study indicate that the Enterprise Stent was most effective in the sharper, 90 degree geometry of Model 3. Additionally, the stent had an adverse effect on the Models 1 and 4, which had the smallest neck sizes. Conclusions are that the Enterprise Stent, as a stand-alone treatment method is only reliable in situations that take advantage of its design.
ContributorsThomas, Kyle Andrew (Author) / Frakes, David (Thesis director) / LaBelle, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Babiker, Haithem (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
The use of microelectrode arrays (MEA) to electroporate cells is now a reliable way of transfecting RNA interfering substances with high viability and efficiency. However, as the 50-200 micron electrodes are coated with many cells, there are differences in both viability and efficiency between the outside and inside of the electrode. This is due to the field created by the electrode, which has higher intensities toward the outside and lower intensities toward the middle. In order to get the electric field to spread in a more even manner, an "Anodisc" inorganic membrane seeded with cells was placed on the MEA to act as a buffer to the electric fields. One hundred percent transfection efficiency on live cells was found on one sample, though there were problems encountered along the experimental process that introduced error into the results, some of which included the inability for cells to grow to high levels of confluency on the Anodisc as well as the inverted imaging technique used on the opaque disc.
ContributorsDonnelly, Kyle Robert (Author) / Muthuswamy, Jitendran (Thesis director) / Haynes, Karmella (Committee member) / LaBelle, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-05