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.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 34
Description
Space microbiology, or the study of microorganisms in space, has significant applications for both human spaceflight and Earth-based medicine. This thesis traces the evolution of the field of space microbiology since its creation in 1935. Beginning with simple studies to determine if terrestrial life could survive spaceflight, the field of space microbiology has grown to encompass a substantial body of work that is now recognized as an essential component of NASA' research endeavors. Part one provides an overview of the early period of space microbiology, from high-altitude balloon and rocket studies to work conducted during the Apollo program. Part two summarizes the current state of the field, with a specific focus on the revolutionary contributions made by the Nickerson lab at the Biodesign Institute at ASU using the NASA-designed Rotating Wall Vessel (RWV) Bioreactor. Finally, part three highlights the research I've conducted in the Nickerson lab, as well as continuing studies within the field of space microbiology.
ContributorsMcCarthy, Breanne E. (Author) / Lynch, John (Thesis director) / Foy, Joseph (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This project's goal was to design a Central Processing Unit (CPU) incorporating a fairly large instruction set and a multistage pipeline design with the potential to be used in a multi-core system. The CPU was coded and synthesized with Verilog. This was accomplished by building on the CPU design from fundamentals learned in CSE320 and increasing the instruction set to resemble a proper Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) CPU system. A multistage pipeline was incorporated to the CPU to increase instruction throughput, or instructions per second. A major area of focus was on creating a multi-core design. The design used is master-slave in nature. The master core instructs the sub-cores where they should begin execution, the idea being that the operating system or kernel will be executing on the master core and the "user space" programs will be run on the sub-cores. The rationale behind this is that the system would specialize in running several small functions on all of its many supported cores. The system supports around 45 instructions, which include several types of jumps and branches (for changing the program counter based on conditions), arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, or, and, etc.), and system calls (for controlling the core execution). The system has a very low Clocks per Instruction ratio (CPI), but to achieve this the second stage contains several modules and would most likely be a bottleneck for performance if implemented. The CPU is not perfect and contains a few errors and oversights, but the system as a whole functions as intended.
ContributorsKolden, Brian Andrew (Author) / Burger, Kevin (Thesis director) / Meuth, Ryan (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
The purpose of this project was to construct and write code for a vehicle to take advantage of the benefits of combining stepper motors with mecanum wheels. This process involved building the physical vehicle, designing a custom PCB for the vehicle, writing code for the onboard microprocessor, and implementing motor control algorithms.
ContributorsDavis, Severin Jan (Author) / Burger, Kevin (Thesis director) / Vannoni, Greg (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
This project was centered around designing a processor model (using the C programming language) based on the Coldfire computer architecture that will run on third party software known as Open Virtual Platforms. The end goal is to have a fully functional processor that can run Coldfire instructions and utilize peripheral devices in the same way as the hardware used in the embedded systems lab at ASU. This project would cut down the substantial amount of time students spend commuting to the lab. Having the processor directly at their disposal would also encourage them to spend more time outside of class learning the hardware and familiarizing themselves with development on an embedded micro-controller. The model will be accurate, fast and reliable. These aspects will be achieved through rigorous unit testing and use of the OVP platform which provides instruction accurate simulations at hundreds of MIPS (million instructions per second) for the specified model. The end product was able to accurately simulate a subset of the Coldfire instructions at very high rates.
ContributorsDunning, David Connor (Author) / Burger, Kevin (Thesis director) / Meuth, Ryan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
Breast cancer affects hundreds of thousands of women a year in the United States, and kills tens of thousands. African-American women experience a lower incidence of breast cancer, yet they die at twice the rate of Caucasian women. This disparity demonstrates the ineffectiveness of mammography at decreasing mortality in women at higher risk of late stage diagnosis. In this paper I argue that the continued support of the predominating idea that the benefits of mammograms strictly outweigh their negative effects may be a factor in the continued racial disparity in breast cancer mortality between African-American and Caucasian women. In addition, I will argue that mammograms are less effective for African American women because they are predisposed to later stage diagnosis and the accompanying poorer mortality prognosis due to higher-risk environments caused by varied socio-political status. My claims are supported by studies of incidence rates, survivorship versus mortality rates, screening usage rates, late stage and early stage diagnosis rate, tumor type, and the effects of socioeconomic status on stage of diagnosis. In particular, mortality rates have not decreased parallel with increased mammogram usage, especially in African-American women. Although early stage diagnosis has drastically increased, late stage-diagnosis remains unchanged and higher in African-American women. Tumor types vary by race, and African American women tend to have tumors that are highly prolific and more likely to be metastatic. Socioeconomic factors are more of a marker for breast cancer disparities than race, however race and socio-political structures that embody racism are often intersected.
ContributorsHuper-Holmes, Chloe Lynn (Author) / Lynch, John (Thesis director) / Brian, Jennifer (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The purpose of this project was to program a Raspberry Pi to be able to play music from both local storage on the Pi and from internet radio stations such as Pandora. The Pi also needs to be able to play various types of file formats, such as mp3 and FLAC. Finally, the project is also to be driven by a mobile app running on a smartphone or tablet. To achieve this, a client server design was employed where the Raspberry Pi acts as the server and the mobile app is the client. The server functionality was achieved using a Python script that listens on a socket and calls various executables that handle the different formats of music being played. The client functionality was achieved by programming an Android app in Java that sends encoded commands to the server, which the server decodes and begins playing the music that command dictates. The designs for both the client and server are easily extensible and allow for any future modifications to the project to be easily made.
ContributorsStorto, Michael Olson (Author) / Burger, Kevin (Thesis director) / Meuth, Ryan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Since the 1960's, the sport of American football has maintained its stranglehold as the most popular sport in the United States. Both in viewership and participation, football has a massive lead on all other sports, but as of late many factors have led some to believe that trouble could be on the horizon. With various issues including head injuries, player protests, and television viewership decline plaguing football and its professional league, the NFL, the door could be open for another collision sport from across the pond to surge in popularity: rugby. Played in 119 countries by millions of people, rugby is currently one of the most popular sports in the world, but because of American football's dominance in the U.S. it has yet to really find its footing here; however, despite its popularity paling in comparison to football, rugby is actually the single fastest-growing sport in the U.S. Both sports share some strong similarities, and with football facing a myriad of issues, there is real reason to believe that rugby could be on the rise while football could continue to falter. By reading through articles and statistics on the subject, this thesis was divided into four main analysis topics to compare and contrast the two sports: injury problems and how they affect viewership and participation, international following for each respective sport, culture around the games themselves and how it could appeal to American viewers, and potential for growth domestically. By examining these factors within both sports, I was able to come to the conclusion that rugby's potential to take hold in the U.S. is growing, and in the coming years as American football's safety and importance continue to be called into question, rugby could one day even supplant football as the most popular collision sport in the country.
ContributorsMartin, Drew Nicolas (Author) / Lynch, John (Thesis director) / Reed, Sada (Committee member) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
There are many parallels between human and equine sports medicine, including the roots of athletics, the development of specialized medicine, and injuries to the athletes. The most remarkable similarities are seen in tendinopathies. Because of the similarities between human and equine tendons, equine athletes serve as one of the best animal models to study tendon physiology and tendon injuries for application to human medicine. Because of this, many therapies have already successfully crossed from one realm of sports medicine to the other, the most notable of which are stem cell therapy, Interleukin-1 Receptor Antagonist (IRAP), and platelet rich plasma (PRP) therapies. There are also several therapies on the horizon that are very promising to potentially be successful in both human and equine athletes. However, some of these novel therapies are raising ethical questions. There are many regulations in place to protect against or address potential ethical conflicts in human medicine. The same trend is not seen in equine medicine. While there are rules enforced by many equestrian federations regarding ethical concerns and veterinary medicine, the information is not nearly as complete as it should be. Because they lack the autonomy that typical human patient possesses, equine athletes require significantly more advocacy from their veterinarians than human athletes do from their physicians. Additionally, there is a lack of large animal model studies secondary to cost and overall value of equine athletes to their owners, riders, and trainers. Ultimately it becomes an issue of veterinary ethics whether to pursue a novel or conventional treatment for an equine athlete. With biotechnology advancing as quickly as it is, new studies must be done and new regulations must be written in order to keep all fields of sports medicine operating safely and ethically for all athletes involved, regardless of species.
ContributorsWaslewski, Samantha Paige (Author) / Lynch, John (Thesis director) / Foley, James (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Image stabilization is a highly desired feature for many systems involving cameras. A camera stabilizer effectively prevents or compensates for unwanted camera movement to provide this stabilization. The use of stabilized camera technology on board aerial vehicles is one such application where the stabilization can greatly improve the overall capability of the system. The requirements for such a system include a continuous control algorithm and hardware to determine and adjust the camera orientation. The topic of developing an aerial camera control and electronic stabilization system is thus explored in the contents of this paper.
ContributorsJauregui, Joseph (Co-author) / Brown, Steven (Co-author) / Burger, Kevin (Thesis director) / Hansen, Mark (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
Ten percent of the global population believed that the world would end on December 21, 2012. But people have believed that the world was going to end before. What causes these apocalyptic crazes and what allows them to spread beyond the fringes of society? What role does popular religion play in creating or spreading apocalyptic hysteria? How do these prophets of doom react when the world still exists past its predicted date of expiration? What about the people who believed them? This paper examines historical instances of apocalyptic predictions, how these predictions were formed out of or shaped by popular religion, as well as the reactions \u2014 both internal and external \u2014 of those who either predicted or believed that the end was near. After building this historical context, I turn my focus to the pop culture phenomenon that is the end of the Mayan Calendar. I attempt to understand and explain what aspects of the current social, religious, and psychological climate have contributed to the cultural ubiquity of and fascination with the December 21, 2012 apocalypse, and what the date actually meant to the Classical Maya. Finally, I examine the existential, religious, and cultural factors that make Americans in particular so ready and willing to believe that the end of the earth is imminent.
ContributorsSnarr, Cassandra Rose (Author) / Lynch, John (Thesis director) / Hunter, Joel (Committee member) / Bruhn, Karen (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2013-05