Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
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- Creators: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
- Creators: Glenberg, Arthur
Description
Smartphone-based healthcare. It's becoming more real as technology advances, adding value to healthcare and opening the doors to more personalized medicine. The Medical Pal is a smartphone application that can track symptoms and analyze trends in the severity of those symptoms, alerting healthcare providers when there is a significant increase in the symptom severity. This is especially directed to the palliative patient, whose care is focused on managing symptoms and providing comfort. The HIPAA-compliant server used for the smartphone application was Catalyze.io and 40 Mayo Clinic Arizona palliative patients were surveyed on their smartphone usage to test the acceptance of this app in a clinical setting. A trial involving 9 simulated patients was conducted over a two week period to test the functionality of the app. A majority of surveyed patients (85%) expressed favor for the idea of a mobile ESAS, and the app was functioning, with the capability of displaying patient data on a healthcare provider's account. This project is intentionally a door-opener to an open field of opportunity for mobile health, symptom observation, and improvements in healthcare delivery.
ContributorsDao, Lelan Diep (Author) / Cortese, Denis (Thesis director) / Lipinski, Christopher (Committee member) / Fitch, Tom (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The field of art conservation has evolved parallel to scientific advancements and in response to changing social conditions. Methods have expanded from dusting the surface of a work to bombarding an image with x-rays in an effort to fulfill the ultimate goal of restoration: to return a piece of art to the state originally created by the artist. The process has become much easier and more complex with the introduction of analytical equipment that shifted the focus of the field away from maintenance towards academic study. This work illustrates the changes the field and demonstrates the application of scientific techniques to specific works.
ContributorsSanders, Hailey Jane (Author) / Fahlman, Besty (Thesis director) / Codell, Julie (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The 23-step total synthesis of dolastatin 16, a cyclic depsipeptide of marine origin, is presented. Included are syntheses of nonnatural amino acids dolamethylleuine and dolaphenvaline. The biological activity of the synthetic product differed from naturally isolated dolastatin 16, which may indicate the initial screening identified an inactive compound and the active one was not detected initially, or may be a result of the conformational dynamics induced by the proline residues. Additionally, a family of structural analogues to the bacillistatins, another cyclic marine depsipeptide, were synthesized. These were deemed the silstatins. 8 modifications were produced. The alterations aimed to introduce a heteroatomic residue for further derivatization, such as producing an antibody-drug conjugate. This introduction did in general decrease the neoplastic activity of these agents, as expected, but by modulating the lipophilicity of the compound we were able to salvage much of the potency of the bacillistatins while potentially allowing prodrug development.
ContributorsMacdonald, Christian B. (Author) / Pettit, George (Thesis director) / Wang, Xu (Committee member) / Melody, Noeleen (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
As the prevalence of childhood obesity in the United States rises, opportunities for children to be physically active become more vital. One opportunity for physical activity involves children walking to and from school. However, children that live in areas with a pedestrian-unfriendly built environment and a low degree of walkability are less likely to be physically active and more likely to be overweight. The purpose of this study was to study walking routes from schools in low-income neighborhoods in Southwestern United States to a local community center. Walking routes from the three study schools (South Mountain High School, Percy Julian Middle School, and Rose Linda Elementary School) were determined by distance, popularity, and the presence of a major thoroughfare. Segments and intersections, which formed the routes, were randomly selected from each school's buffer region. The walking routes as a whole, along with the segments and intersections, were audited and scored using built environment assessments tools: MAPS, PEQI and Walkability Checklist. These scores were utilized to develop interactive mapping tools to visualize the quality of the routes, segments and intersections and identify areas for improvement. Results showed that the routes from Percy Julian to the Kroc Center were, overall, rated higher than routes from the other two schools. The highest scoring route, from the seven routes studied, was route 2 from Percy Julian to the Kroc Center along Broadway Road. South Mountain High School was overall the worst starting point for walking to the Kroc Center as those three walking routes were graded as the least walkable. Possible areas for improvement include installing traffic calming features along major thoroughfares and reducing the perceived risk to pedestrian safety by beautifying the community by planting greenery. Future directions include studying the built environment in South Phoenix communities that surround the Kroc Center.
ContributorsZeien, Justin Lee (Author) / Buman, Matthew (Thesis director) / Hekler, Eric (Committee member) / Fellows, Brian (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
This project, which consists of a review article and an applied creative project, proposes mirror neurons as being a physiological mechanism for motor imagery. The review article highlights similarities between motor imagery research and research on mirror neurons. The research is roughly divided into three types of studies: neuroimaging studies, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and electromyography (EMG) studies, and electroencephalography (EEG) studies. The review also discusses the associative hypothesis of mirror neuron origin as support for the hypothesis and concludes with an assessment of conflicting research and the limitations of the hypothesis. The applied creative project is an instructional brochure, aimed at anyone who teaches motor skills, such as dance teachers or sports coaches. The brochure takes the academic content of the review and presents it in a visually pleasing, reader-friendly fashion in an effort to educate the intended audience and make the research more accessible. The brochure also prescribes research-based suggestions for how to use motor imagery during teaching sessions and how to get the best benefits from it.
ContributorsNgai, Valerie Christina (Author) / Hoffner, Kristin (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Nutrition and Health Promotion (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Exercise is a great boon to both the health of individuals and the national as a whole. Exercise provides a wide range of significant and well established benefits to both physical and psychological health, with many benefits that are still being discovered. The effects of exercise on health are somewhat unique, as exercise is one of a limited number of ways to improve health that is not harm a reduction strategy, but instead increases health through direct benefit, rather than increasing health by decreasing damage and harm. Support is also given to the proposal that individuals are in best position to determine the intensity of exercise and to choose primary activities to participate in, in order to provide near maximum physical and psychological benefit, with the understanding that frequency of exercise is of the upmost importance for benefit. The accessibility of exercise and the tremendous health benefit of exercise, makes exercise a huge asset in reducing the exorbitant health care spending and improving mediocre health outcomes in this country; a reasonable goal as numerous countries have better health the United States, even though the United States spends the more than any other country on health.
ContributorsRael, Ashur Scott (Author) / Kashiwagi, Dean (Thesis director) / Kashiwagi, Jacob (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
microRNAs (miRNAs) are short ~22nt non-coding RNAs that regulate gene output at the post-transcriptional level. Via targeting of degenerate elements primarily in 3'untranslated regions (3'UTR) of mRNAs, miRNAs can target thousands of varying genes and suppress their protein translation. The precise mechanistic function and bio- logical role of miRNAs is not fully understood and yet it is a major contributor to a pleth- ora of diseases, including neurological disorders, muscular disorders, and cancer. Cer- tain model organisms are valuable in understanding the function of miRNA and there- fore fully understanding the biological significance of miRNA targeting. Here I report a mechanistic analysis of miRNA targeting in C. elegans, and a bioinformatic approach to aid in further investigation of miRNA targeted sequences. A few of the biologically significant mechanisms discussed in this thesis include alternative polyadenylation, RNA binding proteins, components of the miRNA recognition machinery, miRNA secondary structures, and their polymorphisms. This thesis also discusses a novel bioinformatic approach to studying miRNA biology, including computational miRNA target prediction software, and sequence complementarity. This thesis allows a better understanding of miRNA biology and presents an ideal strategy for approaching future research in miRNA targeting.
ContributorsWeigele, Dustin Keith (Author) / Mangone, Marco (Thesis director) / Katchman, Benjamin (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
Bacteria have been shown to possess a large array of regulatory mechanisms to not just respond to a diverse array of environmental stresses, but to injurious artificial proteins as well. A previous investigation introduced DX, a man-made ATP sequestering protein into Escherichia coli (E. coli) which resulted in the formation of novel endoliposome structures and induced a viable but non-culturable state (VBNC) that was not easily reversed. It was hypothesized that the broadly conserved bacterial stringent response pathway may have been responsible for the observed phenotypic changes. With the goal of unveiling the molecular mechanism behind this novel response, changes in cellular morphology and physiology upon DX expression were assessed in a population of E. coli encoding a dysfunctional relA gene, one of the two genes controlling the induction of the stringent response. It was ultimately shown that RelA directly contributed to cellular filamentation, endoliposome structure formation, and the induction of a VBNC state. While the stringent response has been extensively shown to induce a VBNC state, to our knowledge, relA has not yet been shown to induce filamentation or coordinate the formation of endoliposome structures in bacteria. As the stringent response has been shown to be increasingly involved in antibiotic tolerance, this study provided an exciting opportunity to further characterize this adaptive response pathway to aid in the future development of novel therapeutics. In addition to this, this study continued to highlight that the DX protein may serve one of the first tools to allow for the direct selection of bacteria in a VBNC state by morphologically distinguishing non-culturable cells through cellular filamentation.
ContributorsFrost, Fredrick Charles (Author) / Chaput, John (Thesis director) / Wachter, Rebekka (Committee member) / Korch, Shaleen (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
The Roller Derby Club at Arizona State University became a student organization in the fall of 2013. They became a practicing team known as the Derby Devils in the spring of 2014. This project documents the creation and development a collegiate roller derby team as they go from a student organization to an athletic team. Collegiate roller derby is still in its infant stages and therefore the purpose of this project is to provide a guide for future collegiate roller derby teams as well as other athletic teams.
ContributorsLee, Alisa Yulim (Author) / Looser, Devoney (Thesis director) / Hultsman, Wendy (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
This manual provides a "how-to" framework for the development of a student-run clinic. The manual should be used as a resource, referring to the table of contents and summaries of topics for specific areas of interest. The manual details the phases for the development of a student-run clinic focusing on underserved populations. The Student Health Outreach for Wellness (S.H.O.W.) Community Initiative in Phoenix, Arizona serves as the example. S.H.O.W. represents just one type of clinic structuring. As such, it is important to realize when developing a clinic that there are numerous clinic approaches based on community needs, volunteer support, and funding.
ContributorsWheeler, Shannon Christine (Author) / Thompson, Pamela (Thesis director) / Gaughan, Monica (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor)
Created2014-12