Within the last decade, it has become increasingly apparent that the effects of climate change are getting harder and harder to ignore. This fact has led to increased interest in sustainability and an increased pressure from consumers to have these ideals implemented into a variety of global industries. The fashion industry, in particular, has been facing this pressure toward the desire for sustainable products is the fashion industry. Over the last five years, sustainability has become a main focus within the fashion industry. Countless brands now include sustainability within their marketing tactics and a variety of fashion organizations release reports on the unsustainable practices that currently dominate fashion production. These misleading marketing tactics and enigmatic intensive reports lead to confusion on what sustainable fashion actually looks like for both consumers and suppliers alike.<br/> This report attempts to help tackle this problem by using sustainable fashion certifications as a tactic to prove sustainability within business procedures. To compare eight of the most common fashion certifications, this paper assumes a systems thinking approach to creating an assessment framework, which is then applied to said certifications. To back up the importance of the topic, this paper presents key points of the current issues related to this case, which then contribute to the integration of basic sustainability assessment criteria and case-specific factors into overarching core criteria. The application of this framework is utilized to determine which certifications cover certain aspects of the curated core criteria. This is then used to present consumers and manufacturers with a more accurate understanding of each of these certifications. This information is then followed up with a recommendation of certifications that align most within researched-based consumer and supplier desires.

Cancer rates vary between people, between cultures, and between tissue types, driven by clinically relevant distinctions in the risk factors that lead to different cancer types. Despite the importance of cancer location in human health, little is known about tissue-specific cancers in non-human animals. We can gain significant insight into how evolutionary history has shaped mechanisms of cancer suppression by examining how life history traits impact cancer susceptibility across species. Here, we perform multi-level analysis to test how species-level life history strategies are associated with differences in neoplasia prevalence, and apply this to mammary neoplasia within mammals. We propose that the same patterns of cancer prevalence that have been reported across species will be maintained at the tissue-specific level. We used a combination of factor analysis and phylogenetic regression on 13 life history traits across 90 mammalian species to determine the correlation between a life history trait and how it relates to mammary neoplasia prevalence. The factor analysis presented ways to calculate quantifiable underlying factors that contribute to covariance of entangled life history variables. A greater risk of mammary neoplasia was found to be correlated most significantly with shorter gestation length. With this analysis, a framework is provided for how different life history modalities can influence cancer vulnerability. Additionally, statistical methods developed for this project present a framework for future comparative oncology studies and have the potential for many diverse applications.

Though about 75 percent of American waste is recyclable, only 30 percent of it is actually recycled and less than ten percent of plastics disposed of in the United States in 2015 were recycled. A statistic like this demonstrates the immense need to increase recycling rates in order to move towards cultivating a circular economy and benefiting the environment. With Arizona State University’s (ASU) extensive population of on-campus students and faculty, our team was determined to create a solution that would increase recycling rates. After conducting initial market research, our team incentives or education. We conducted market research through student surveys to determine the level of knowledge of our target audience and barriers to entry for local recycling and composting resources. Further, we gained insight into the medium of recycling and sustainability programs they would be interested in participating in. Overall, the results of our surveys demonstrated that a majority of students were interested in participating in these programs, if they were not already involved, and most students on-campus already had access to these resources. Despite having access to these sustainable practices, we identified a knowledge gap between students and their information on how to properly execute sustainable practices such as composting and recycling. In order to address this audience, our team created Circulearning, an educational program that aims to bridge the gap of knowledge and address immediate concerns regarding circular economy topics. By engaging audiences through our quick, accessible educational modules and teaching them about circular practices, we aim to inspire everyone to implement these practices into their own lives. Though our team began the initiative with a focus on implementing these practices solely to ASU campus, we decided to expand our target audience to implement educational programs at all levels after discovering the interest and need for this resource in our community. Our team is extremely excited that our Circulearning educational modules have been shared with a broad audience including students at Mesa Skyline High School, ASU students, and additional connections outside of ASU. With Circulearning, we will educate and inspire people of all ages to live more sustainably and better the environment in which we live.

Hundreds of thousands of people die annually from malaria; a protozoan of the genus Plasmodium is responsible for this mortality. The Plasmodium parasite undergoes several life stages within the mosquito vector, the transition between which require passage across the lumen of the mosquito midgut. It has been observed that in about 15% of parasites that develop ookinetes in the mosquito abdomen, sporozoites never develop in the salivary glands, indicating that passage across the midgut lumen is a significant barrier in parasite development (Gamage-Mendis et al., 1993). We aim to investigate a possible correlation between passage through the midgut lumen and drug-resistance trends in Plasmodium falciparum parasites. This study contains a total of 1024 Anopheles mosquitoes: 187 Anopheles gambiae and 837 Anopheles funestus samples collected in high malaria transmission areas of Mozambique between March and June of 2016. Sanger sequencing will be used to determine the prevalence of known resistance alleles for anti-malarial drugs: chloroquine resistance transporter (pfcrt), multidrug resistance (pfmdr1) gene, dihydropteroate synthase (pfdhps) and dihydrofolate reductase (pfdhfr). We compare prevalence of resistance between abdomen and head/thorax in order to determine whether drug resistant parasites are disproportionately hindered during their passage through the midgut lumen. A statistically significant difference between resistance alleles in the two studied body sections supports the efficacy of new anti-malarial gene surveillance strategies in areas of high malaria transmission.

This thesis project has been conducted in accordance with The Founder’s Lab initiative which is sponsored by the W. P. Carey School of Business. This program groups three students together and tasks them with creating a business idea, conducting the necessary research to bring the concept to life, and exploring different aspects of business, with the end goal of gaining traction. The product we were given to work through this process with was Hot Head, an engineering capstone project concept. The Hot Head product is a sustainable and innovative solution to the water waste issue we find is very prominent in the United States. In order to bring the Hot Head idea to life, we were tasked with doing research on topics ranging from the Hot Head life cycle to finding plausible personas who may have an interest in the Hot Head product. This paper outlines the journey to gaining traction via a marketing campaign and exposure of our brand on several platforms, with a specific interest in website traffic. Our research scope comes from mainly primary sources like gathering opinions of potential buyers by sending out surveys and hosting focus groups. The paper concludes with some possible future steps that could be taken if this project were to be continued.

We created a website with the intent to educate on the Valley Metro light rail. We showcased different aspects of the light rail and presented an argument as to why it should be utilized and expanded. We also created a social media account that highlights art pieces along the light rail.

One of the largest problems facing modern medicine is drug resistance. Many classes of drugs can be rendered ineffective if their target is able to acquire beneficial mutations. While this is an excellent showcase of the power of evolution, it necessitates the development of increasingly stronger drugs to combat resistant pathogens. Not only is this strategy costly and time consuming, it is also unsustainable. To contend with this problem, many multi-drug treatment strategies are being explored. Previous studies have shown that resistance to some drug combinations is not possible, for example, resistance to a common antifungal drug, fluconazole, seems impossible in the presence of radicicol. We believe that in order to understand the viability of multi-drug strategies in combating drug resistance, we must understand the full spectrum of resistance mutations that an organism can develop, not just the most common ones. It is possible that rare mutations exist that are resistant to both drugs. Knowing the frequency of such mutations is important for making predictions about how problematic they will be when multi-drug strategies are used to treat human disease. This experiment aims to expand on previous research on the evolution of drug resistance in S. cerevisiae by using molecular barcodes to track ~100,000 evolving lineages simultaneously. The barcoded cells were evolved with serial transfers for seven weeks (200 generations) in three concentrations of the antifungal Fluconazole, three concentrations of the Hsp90 inhibitor Radicicol, and in four combinations of Fluconazole and Radicicol. Sequencing data was used to track barcode frequencies over the course of the evolution, allowing us to observe resistant lineages as they rise and quantify differences in resistance evolution across the different conditions. We were able to successfully observe over 100,000 replicates simultaneously, revealing many adaptive lineages in all conditions. Our results also show clear differences across drug concentrations and combinations, with the highest drug concentrations exhibiting distinct behaviors.