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.
Wounds are a routine, daily reality. It is a testament of the ingenuity of our ancestors to have survived minor or major wounds without the benefit of 21st century techniques or knowledge. They had to design innovative methods for treating injuries through deadly trial and error as well as observation with which modern people must no longer concern themselves. Human beings have long survived without the help of modern, Western medicine through the use ancient remedies. Some of these methods included the use of honey, silver, and leeches. However, these ancient remedies were held in high esteem for good reasons, and in fact, some of these methods are still being used today due to their effectiveness. This thesis serves to inspect the historical background and current uses of these ancient remedies while also inspecting the biochemical properties that preserved their place in modern, Western medicine. Lastly, student experiments were designed based on this research to educate students on biochemical reactions that occur between these ancient remedies and the human body.
The COVID 19 pandemic has highlighted the necessity of accurately and simply relying scientific discovery and information to the public. Among scientists, the practice is to reduce jargon, engage the audience through storytelling, and include enough detail to give a broad understanding of a narrow topic. Conflict between journalists and scientists leads to a creation of a different narrative for the general public. The news site CNN.com was searched with the google archive function by year for articles that included the keyword vaccine. Articles were sorted into categories of main focus such as political, cultural and scientific or mixed. Results were analyzed and conclusions made about the amount of content in each category for the kind of narrative being written about vaccines, with most years having most articles in the political category. Possible effectiveness of mixed categories were discussed and areas future research identified.
