ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
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- All Subjects: Biology
- Creators: Maienschein, Jane
- Creators: Fenichel, Eli
Description
Once perceived as an unimportant occurrence in living organisms, cell degeneration was reconfigured as an important biological phenomenon in development, aging, health, and diseases in the twentieth century. This dissertation tells a twentieth-century history of scientific investigations on cell degeneration, including cell death and aging. By describing four central developments in cell degeneration research with the four major chapters, I trace the emergence of the degenerating cell as a scientific object, describe the generations of a variety of concepts, interpretations and usages associated with cell death and aging, and analyze the transforming influences of the rising cell degeneration research. Particularly, the four chapters show how the changing scientific practices about cellular life in embryology, cell culture, aging research, and molecular biology of Caenorhabditis elegans shaped the interpretations about cell degeneration in the twentieth-century as life-shaping, limit-setting, complex, yet regulated. These events created and consolidated important concepts in life sciences such as programmed cell death, the Hayflick limit, apoptosis, and death genes. These cases also transformed the material and epistemic practices about the end of cellular life subsequently and led to the formations of new research communities. The four cases together show the ways cell degeneration became a shared subject between molecular cell biology, developmental biology, gerontology, oncology, and pathology of degenerative diseases. These practices and perspectives created a special kind of interconnectivity between different fields and led to a level of interdisciplinarity within cell degeneration research by the early 1990s.
ContributorsJiang, Lijing (Author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis advisor) / Laubichler, Manfred (Thesis advisor) / Hurlbut, James (Committee member) / Creath, Richard (Committee member) / White, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Consideration of both biological and human-use dynamics in coupled social-ecological systems is essential for the success of interventions such as marine reserves. As purely human institutions, marine reserves have no direct effects on ecological systems. Consequently, the success of a marine reserve depends on managers` ability to alter human behavior in the direction and magnitude that supports reserve objectives. Further, a marine reserve is just one component in a larger coupled social-ecological system. The social, economic, political, and biological landscape all determine the social acceptability of a reserve, conflicts that arise, how the reserve interacts with existing fisheries management, accuracy of reserve monitoring, and whether the reserve is ultimately able to meet conservation and fishery enhancement goals. Just as the social-ecological landscape is critical at all stages for marine reserve, from initial establishment to maintenance, the reserve in turn interacts with biological and human use dynamics beyond its borders. Those interactions can lead to the failure of a reserve to meet management goals, or compromise management goals outside the reserve. I use a bio-economic model of a fishery in a spatially patchy environment to demonstrate how the pre-reserve fisheries management strategy determines the pattern of fishing effort displacement once the reserve is established, and discuss the social, political, and biological consequences of different patterns for the reserve and the fishery. Using a stochastic bio-economic model, I demonstrate how biological and human use connectivity can confound the accurate detection of reserve effects by violating assumptions in the quasi-experimental framework. Finally, I examine data on recreational fishing site selection to investigate changes in response to the announcement of enforcement of a marine reserve in the Gulf of California, Mexico. I generate a scale of fines that would fully or partially protect the reserve, providing a data-driven way for managers to balance biological and socio-economic goals. I suggest that natural resource managers consider human use dynamics with the same frequency, rigor, and tools as they do biological stocks.
ContributorsFujitani, Marie (Author) / Abbott, Joshua (Thesis advisor) / Fenichel, Eli (Thesis advisor) / Gerber, Leah (Committee member) / Anderies, John (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Corporations in biomedicine hold significant power and influence, in both political and personal spheres. The decisions these companies make about ethics are critically important, as they help determine what products are developed, how they are developed, how they are promoted, and potentially even how they are regulated. In the last fifteen years, for-profit private companies have been assembling bioethics committees to help resolve dilemmas that require informed deliberation about ethical, legal, scientific, and economic considerations. Private sector bioethics committees represent an important innovation in the governance of emerging technologies, with corporations taking a lead role in deciding what is ethically appropriate or problematic. And yet, we know very little about these committees, including their structures, memberships, mandates, authority, and impact. Drawing on an extensive literature review and qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with executives, scientists and board members, this dissertation provides an in-depth analysis of the Ethics and Public Policy Board at SmithKline Beecham, the Ethics Advisory Board at Advanced Cell Technology, and the Bioethics Committee at Eli Lilly and offers insights about how ideas of bioethics and governance are currently imagined and enacted within corporations. The SmithKline Beecham board was the first private sector bioethics committee; its mandate was to explore, in a comprehensive and balanced analysis, the ethics of macro trends in science and technology. The Advanced Cell Technology board was created to be like a watchdog for the company, to prevent them from making major errors. The Eli Lilly board is different than the others in that it is made up mostly of internal employees and does research ethics consultations within the company. These private sector bioethics committees evaluate and construct new boundaries between their private interests and the public values they claim to promote. Findings from this dissertation show that criticisms of private sector bioethics that focus narrowly on financial conflicts of interest and a lack of transparency obscure analysis of the ideas about governance (about expertise, credibility and authority) that emerge from these structures and hamper serious debate about the possible impacts of moving ethical deliberation from the public to the private sector.
ContributorsBrian, Jennifer (Author) / Robert, Jason S (Thesis advisor) / Maienschein, Jane (Committee member) / Hurlbut, James B (Committee member) / Sarewitz, Daniel (Committee member) / Brown, Mark B. (Committee member) / Moreno, Jonathan D. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Many studies over the past two decades examined the link between climate patterns and discharge, but few have attempted to study the effects of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on localized and watershed specific processes such as nutrient loading in the Southwestern United States. The Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) is used to describe the state of the ENSO, with positive (negative) values referring to an El Niño condition (La Niña condition). This study examined the connection between the MEI and precipitation, discharge, and total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) concentrations in the Upper Salt River Watershed in Arizona. Unrestricted regression models (UMs) and restricted regression models (RMs) were used to investigate the relationship between the discharges in Tonto Creek and the Salt River as functions of the magnitude of the MEI, precipitation, and season (winter/summer). The results suggest that in addition to precipitation, the MEI/season relationship is an important factor for predicting discharge. Additionally, high discharge events were associated with high magnitude ENSO events, both El Niño and La Niña. An UM including discharge and season, and a RM (restricting the seasonal factor to zero), were applied to TN and TP concentrations in the Salt River. Discharge and seasonality were significant factors describing the variability in TN in the Salt River while discharge alone was the significant factor describing TP. TN and TP in Roosevelt Lake were evaluated as functions of both discharge and MEI. Some significant correlations were found but internal nutrient cycling as well as seasonal stratification of the water column of the lake likely masks the true relationships. Based on these results, the MEI is a useful predictor of discharge, as well as nutrient loading in the Salt River Watershed through the Salt River and Tonto Creek. A predictive model investigating the effect of ENSO on nutrient loading through discharge can illustrate the effects of large scale climate patterns on smaller systems.
ContributorsSversvold, Darren (Author) / Neuer, Susanne (Thesis advisor) / Elser, James (Committee member) / Fenichel, Eli (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The southwestern willow flycatcher (Empidonax traillii extimus) is listed as an endangered species throughout its range in the southwestern United States. Little is known about its sub-population spatial structure and how this impacts its population viability. In conjunction with being listed as endangered, a recovery plan was produced by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, with recovery units (sub-populations) roughly based on major river drainages. In the interest of examining this configuration of sub-populations and their impact on the measured population viability, I applied a multivariate auto-regressive state-space model to a spatially extensive time series of abundance data for the southwestern willow flycatcher over the period spanning 1995-2010 estimating critical growth parameters, correlation in environmental stochasticity or "synchronicity" between sub-populations (recovery units) and extinction risk of the sub-populations and the whole. The model estimates two parameters, the mean and variance of annual growth rate. Of the models I tested, I found the strongest support for a population model in which three of the recovery units were grouped (the Lower Colorado, Gila Basin, and Rio Grande recovery units) while keeping all others separate. This configuration has 6.6 times more support for the observed data than a configuration assigning each recovery unit to a separate sub-population, which is how they are circumscribed in the recovery plan. Given the best model, the mean growth rate is -0.0234 (CI95 -0.0939, 0.0412) with a variance of 0.0597 (CI95 0.0115, 0.1134). This growth rate is not significantly different from zero and this is reflected in the low potential for quasi-extinction. The cumulative probability of the population experiencing at least an 80% decline from current levels within 15 years for some sub-populations were much higher (range: 0.129-0.396 for an 80% decline). These results suggest that the rangewide population has a low risk of extinction in the next 15 years and that the formal recovery units specified by the original recovery plan do not correspond to proper sub-population units as defined by population synchrony.
ContributorsDockens, Patrick E. T. (Author) / Sabo, John (Thesis advisor) / Stromberg, Juliet (Committee member) / Fenichel, Eli (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Despite the minor differences in the inclusiveness of the word, there is a general assumption among the scientific community that the 'pursuit of knowledge' is the most fundamental element in defining the word 'science'. However, a closer examination of how science is being conducted in modern-day South Korea reveals a value system starkly different from the value of knowledge. By analyzing the political discourse of the South Korean policymakers, mass media, and government documents, this study examines the definition of science in South Korea. The analysis revealed that the Korean science, informed by the cultural, historical, and societal contexts, is largely focused on the values of national economic prosperity, international competitiveness, and international reputation of the country, overshadowing other values like the pursuit of knowledge or even individual rights. The identification of the new value system in South Korean science deviating from the traditional definition of science implies that there must be other definitions of science that also deviates, and that even in the Western world, the definition of science may yield similar deviations upon closer examination. The compatibility of the South Korean brand of science to the international scientific community also implies that a categorical quality is encompassing these different contextual definitions of science.
ContributorsHyun, Byunghun (Author) / Hurlbut, Ben (Thesis advisor) / Maienschein, Jane (Committee member) / Ellison, Karin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Researchers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries identify the study of the intrinsic and external factors that influence human aging as senescence. A commonly held belief in the year 2015 is that at least some kinds of cells can replicate over long periods or even indefinitely, thereby meaning the cell does not undergo senescence (also known as replicative senescence) and is considered immortal. This study aims to provide information to answer the following question: While some scientists claim they can indefinitely culture a stem cell line in vitro, what are the consequences of those culturing practices? An analysis of a cluster of articles from the Embryo Project Encyclopedia provides information to suggest possible solutions to some potential problems in cell culturing, recognition of benefits for existing or historical culturing practices, and identification of gaps in scientific knowledge that warrant further research. Recent research suggests that hESCs, and immortalized cell lines in general, do not escape the effects of senescence. While there exists a constant change in the practices of cell culturing, a large portion of scientists still rely on practices established before modern senescence research: research that seems to suggest that cultured hESCs, among other immortal cell lines, are not truly immortal.
ContributorsBartlett, Zane (Author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis advisor) / Ellison, Karin (Committee member) / Hurlbut, James (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Evolution is the foundation of biology, yet it remains controversial even among college biology students. Acceptance of evolution is important for students if we want them to incorporate evolution into their scientific thinking. However, students’ religious beliefs are a consistent barrier to their acceptance of evolution due to a perceived conflict between religion and evolution. Using pre-post instructional surveys of students in introductory college biology, Study 1 establishes instructional strategies that can be effective for reducing students' perceived conflict between religion and evolution. Through interviews and qualitative analyses, Study 2 documents how instructors teaching evolution at public universities may be resistant towards implementing strategies that can reduce students' perceived conflict, perhaps because of their own lack of religious beliefs and lack of training and awareness about students' conflict with evolution. Interviews with religious students in Study 3 reveals that religious college biology students can perceive their instructors as unfriendly towards religion which can negatively impact these students' perceived conflict between religion and evolution. Study 4 explores how instructors at Christian universities, who share the same Christian backgrounds as their students, do not struggle with implementing strategies that reduce students' perceived conflict between religion and evolution. Cumulatively, these studies reveal a need for a new instructional framework for evolution education that takes into account the religious cultural difference between instructors who are teaching evolution and students who are learning evolution. As such, a new instructional framework is then described, Religious Cultural Competence in Evolution Education (ReCCEE), that can help instructors teach evolution in a way that can reduce students' perceived conflict between religion and evolution, increase student acceptance of evolution, and create more inclusive college biology classrooms for religious students.
ContributorsBarnes, Maryann Elizabeth (Author) / Brownell, Sara (Thesis advisor) / Nesse, Randolph (Committee member) / Collins, James (Committee member) / Husman, Jenefer (Committee member) / Maienschein, Jane (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Systems biology studies complex biological systems. It is an interdisciplinary field, with biologists working with non-biologists such as computer scientists, engineers, chemists, and mathematicians to address research problems applying systems’ perspectives. How these different researchers and their disciplines differently contributed to the advancement of this field over time is a question worth examining. Did systems biology become a systems-oriented science or a biology-oriented science from 1992 to 2013?
This project utilized computational tools to analyze large data sets and interpreted the results from historical and philosophical perspectives. Tools deployed were derived from scientometrics, corpus linguistics, text-based analysis, network analysis, and GIS analysis to analyze more than 9000 articles (metadata and text) on systems biology. The application of these tools to a HPS project represents a novel approach.
The dissertation shows that systems biology has transitioned from a more mathematical, computational, and engineering-oriented discipline focusing on modeling to a more biology-oriented discipline that uses modeling as a means to address real biological problems. Also, the results show that bioengineering and medical research has increased within systems biology. This is reflected in the increase of the centrality of biology-related concepts such as cancer, over time. The dissertation also compares the development of systems biology in China with some other parts of the world, and reveals regional differences, such as a unique trajectory of systems biology in China related to a focus on traditional Chinese medicine.
This dissertation adds to the historiography of modern biology where few studies have focused on systems biology compared with the history of molecular biology and evolutionary biology.
This project utilized computational tools to analyze large data sets and interpreted the results from historical and philosophical perspectives. Tools deployed were derived from scientometrics, corpus linguistics, text-based analysis, network analysis, and GIS analysis to analyze more than 9000 articles (metadata and text) on systems biology. The application of these tools to a HPS project represents a novel approach.
The dissertation shows that systems biology has transitioned from a more mathematical, computational, and engineering-oriented discipline focusing on modeling to a more biology-oriented discipline that uses modeling as a means to address real biological problems. Also, the results show that bioengineering and medical research has increased within systems biology. This is reflected in the increase of the centrality of biology-related concepts such as cancer, over time. The dissertation also compares the development of systems biology in China with some other parts of the world, and reveals regional differences, such as a unique trajectory of systems biology in China related to a focus on traditional Chinese medicine.
This dissertation adds to the historiography of modern biology where few studies have focused on systems biology compared with the history of molecular biology and evolutionary biology.
ContributorsZou, Yawen (Author) / Laubichler, Manfred (Thesis advisor) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis advisor) / Creath, Richard (Committee member) / Ellison, Karin (Committee member) / Newfeld, Stuart (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
The closer integration of the world economy has yielded many positive benefits including the worldwide diffusion of innovative technologies and efficiency gains following the widening of international markets. However, closer integration also has negative consequences. Specifically, I focus on the ecology and economics of the spread of species and pathogens. I approach the problem using theoretical and applied models in ecology and economics. First, I use a multi-species theoretical network model to evaluate the ability of dispersal to maintain system-level biodiversity and productivity. I then extend this analysis to consider the effects of dispersal in a coupled social-ecological system where people derive benefits from species. Finally, I estimate an empirical model of the foot and mouth disease risks of trade. By combining outbreak and trade data I estimate the disease risks associated with the international trade in live animals while controlling for the biosecurity measures in place in importing countries and the presence of wild reservoirs. I find that the risks associated with the spread and dispersal of species may be positive or negative, but that this relationship depends on the ecological and economic components of the system and the interactions between them.
ContributorsShanafelt, David William (Author) / Perrings, Charles (Thesis advisor) / Fenichel, Eli (Committee member) / Richards, Timorthy (Committee member) / Janssen, Marco (Committee member) / Collins, James (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016