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- All Subjects: Business
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
- Resource Type: Text
Description
Businesses stand to face many uncertainties from the moment they start up to every moment in between. A business can try to recognize them and plan ahead, react to them as they occur, or be rocked by a black swan they never saw coming. How a business deals with unforeseen events can increase its potential for success or failure. With this in mind, there is no better bridge between the here and now and the future than planning for change in order to move a company toward preparing for change, adapting to change and achieving optimal results. Interested in taking a step toward the digital age, Alpha Homes Management, Inc. (Alpha Homes) sought our help to explore ideas and options to take their company to a new level. This Barrett Creative Project was centered on designing a system for Alpha Homes that will replace their outdated paper-based system with a more digital one. This aligns with the project also featured as a capstone project as required by the information technology degree expectations. In supplement to the capstone, and for the Barrett Creative Project, the final product was presented to the owners of Alpha Homes Management, Inc. to be utilized by the business. The end goal is to provide a platform which provides a paperless environment for documentation and bring the company a step closer to having a robust internet presence. Now that the web-based application product has been created and presented, the testing phase can now begin to evaluate its efficacy.
ContributorsBrice-Nash, Tristan (Co-author) / Alfawzan, Mohammad (Co-author) / Doheny, Damien (Thesis director) / Rodriguez, Carlos (Committee member) / Information Technology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Cellular and molecular biologists often perform cellular assays to obtain a better understanding of how cells work. However, in order to obtain a measurable response by the end of an experiment, the cells must reach an ideal cell confluency. Prior to conducting the cellular assays, range-finding experiments need to be conducted to determine an initial plating density that will result in this ideal confluency, which can be costly. To help alleviate this common issue, a mathematical model was developed that describes the dynamics of the cell population used in these experiments. To develop the model, images of cells from different three-day experiments were analyzed in Photoshop®, giving a measure of cell count and confluency (the percentage of surface area covered by cells). The cell count data were then fitted into an exponential growth model and were correlated to the cell confluency to obtain a relationship between the two. The resulting mathematical model was then evaluated with data from an independent experiment. Overall, the exponential growth model provided a reasonable and robust prediction of the cell confluency, though improvements to the model can be made with a larger dataset. The approach used to develop this model can be adapted to generate similar models of different cell-lines, which will reduce the number of preliminary range-finding experiments. Reducing the number of these preliminary experiments can save valuable time and experimental resources needed to conduct studies using cellular assays.
ContributorsGuerrero, Victor Dominick (Co-author) / Guerrero, Victor (Co-author) / Watanabe, Karen (Thesis director) / Jurutka, Peter (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
After freelancing on my own for the past year and a half, I have realized that one of the biggest obstacles to college entrepreneurs is a fear or apprehension to sales. As a computer science major trying to sell my services, I discovered very quickly that I had not been prepared for the difficulty of learning sales. Sales get a bad rap and very often is the last thing that young entrepreneurs want to try, but the reality is that sales is oxygen to a company and a required skill for an entrepreneur. Due to this, I compiled all of my knowledge into an e-book for young entrepreneurs starting out to learn how to open up a conversation with a prospect all the way to closing them on the phone. Instead of starting from scratch like I did, college entrepreneurs can learn the bare basics of selling their own services, even if they are terrified of sales and what it entails. In this e-book, there are tips that I have learned to deal with my anxiety about sales such as taking the pressure off of yourself and prioritizing listening more than pitching. Instead of trying to teach sales expecting people to be natural sales people, this e-book takes the approach of helping entrepreneurs that are terrified of sales and show them how they can cope with this fear and still close a client. In the future, I hope young entrepreneurs will have access to more resources that handle this fear and make it much easier for them to learn it by themselves. This e-book is the first step.
ContributorsMead, Kevin Tyler (Author) / Sebold, Brent (Thesis director) / Kruse, Gabriel (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Vitellogenin (vg) is a precursor protein of egg yolk in honeybees, but it is also known to have immunological functions. The purpose of this experiment was to determine the effect of vg on the viral load of deformed wing virus (DWV) in worker honey bees (Apis mellifera). I hypothesized that a reduction in vg expression would lead to an increase in the viral load. I collected 180 worker bees and split them into four groups: half the bees were subjected to a vg gene knockdown by injections of double stranded vg RNA, and the rest were injected with green fluorescent protein (gfp) double stranded RNA. Half of each group was thereafter injected with DWV, and half given a sham injection. The rate of mortality in all four groups was higher than expected, leaving only 17 bees total. I dissected these bees' fat bodies and extracted their RNA to test for vg and DWV. PCR results showed that, out of the small group of remaining bees, the levels of vg were not statistically different. Furthermore, both groups of virus-injected bees showed similar viral loads. Because of the high mortality rate bees and the lack of differing levels of vg transcript between experimental and control groups, I could not draw conclusions from these results. The high mortality could be caused by several factors: temperature-induced stress, repeated stress from the two injections, and stress from viral infection. In addition, it is possible that the vg dsRNA batch I used was faulty. This thesis exemplifies that information cannot safely be extracted when loss of sampling units result in a small datasets that do not represent the original sampling population.
ContributorsCrable, Emma Lewis (Author) / Amdam, Gro (Thesis director) / Wang, Ying (Committee member) / Dahan, Romain (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
Although there are some key qualities that all good leaders employ, variations in effective leadership approaches are evident across different cultures. This project sought to compare and analyze the differences and similarities in leadership principles between Chinese and American business cultures, with emphasis on the divergence caused by the influences of history, culture and politics.
ContributorsLe Tourneur, Maxine Archondakis (Author) / McKinnon, David (Thesis director) / LePine, Marcie (Committee member) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
Through the research of: accredited business articles, wedding sites such as The Knot, personal interviews with brides, research novels, television shows, and movies; this project will depict why and how traditional, American "White Weddings" have become so commercialized by advertisements and businesses as a result of various media channels' reinforcements of cultural ideals and norms about brides and weddings since the 1920s. The purpose of this paper is to identify the largest cultural and commercial forces that contributed to the growth and expansion of the wedding industry.
ContributorsHovendon, Allison Michelle (Author) / Suk, Mina (Thesis director) / Ostrom, Amy (Committee member) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
This study explores the best known practices of small businesses from different entrepreneurs' perspectives and attempts to address the question: are there consistencies between different entrepreneurs' approaches to establishing and growing a business? Ten entrepreneurs from a variety of business types (product and service) were interviewed using a consistent question template that asked questions regarding financing, business strategy (and scalability), interpersonal forces, innate qualities, partnerships, and resources. The primary overlaps between these businesses are with regard to the confluence between personal risk and business strategy, the risk of working with friends and family, the capacity to scale relative to special content knowledge or process knowledge, and partnerships
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ContributorsCole, Chandler William (Author) / Kellso, James (Thesis director) / Gilmore, Bruce (Committee member) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
Triops (Branchiopoda: Notostraca) and Streptocephalus (Branchiopoda: Anostraca) are two crustaceans which cohabitate in ephemeral freshwater pools. They both lay desiccation resistant eggs that disperse passively to new hydrologically isolated environments. The extent of genetic distance among regions and populations is of perennial interest in animals that live in such isolated habitats. Populations in six natural ephemeral pool habitats located in two different regions of the Sonoran Desert and a transition area between the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts were sampled. Sequences from Genbank were used for reference points in the determination of species as well as to further identify regional genetic distance within species. This study estimated the amount of within and between genetic distance of individuals from each region and population through the use of a neutral marker, cytochrome oxidase I (COI). We concluded that, although the method of passive dispersal may differ between the two genera, the differences do not results in different patterns of genetic distances between regions and populations. Furthermore, we only found the putative species, Triops longicaudatus "short", with enough distinct speciation. Although Triops longicaudatus "long" and Triops newberryi may be in the early stages of speciation, this study does not find enough support to conclude that they have separated.
ContributorsMurphy Jr., Patrick Joseph (Author) / Rutowski, Ronald (Thesis director) / Cartwright, Reed (Committee member) / Lessios, Nikos (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This study focused on the connection between the EnvZ/OmpR two-component regulatory system and the iron homeostasis system in Escherichia coli, specifically how a mutant form of EnvZ11/OmpR is able to reduce the expression of fepA::lacZ, a reporter gene fusion in E. coli. FepA is one of several outer membrane siderophore receptors that allow extracellular siderophores bound to iron to enter the cells to power various biological processes. Previous studies have shown that in E. coli cells that expressed a mutant allele of envZ, called envZ11, which led to altered expression of various iron genes including down regulation of fepA::lacZ. The wild type EnvZ/OmpR system is not considered to regulate iron genes, but because these envz11 strains had downregulated fepA::lacZ, this study was undertaken to understand the connection and mechanisms of this downregulation. A large number of Lac+ revertants were obtained from the B32-2483 strain (envz11 and fepA::lacZ) and 7 Lac+ revertants that had reversion mutations not directly correcting the envZ11 allele were further characterized. With P1 phage transduction genetic mapping that involved moving a kanamycin resistance marker linked to fepA::lacZ, two Lac+ revertants were found to have their reversion mutations in the fepA promoter region, while the other five revertants had their mutations mapping outside the fepA region. These two revertants underwent DNA sequencing and found to carry two different single base pair mutations in two different locations of the fepA promoter region. Each one is in the Fur repressor binding region, but one also may have affected the Shine-Dalgarno region involved in translation initiation. All 7 reveratants underwent beta-galactosidase assays to measure fepA::lacZ expression. The two revertants that had mutations in the fepA promoter region had significantly increased fepA activity, with the revertant with the Shine-Dalgarno mutation having the most elevated fepA expression. The other 5 revertants that did not map in the fepA region had fepA expression elevated to the same level as that found in the wild type EnvZ/OmpR background. The data suggest that the negative effect of envZ11 can be overcome by multiple mechanisms, including directly correcting the envZ11 allele or changing the fepA promoter region.
ContributorsKalinkin, Victor Arkady (Co-author) / Misra, Rajeev (Co-author, Thesis director) / Mason, Hugh (Committee member) / Foy, Joseph (Committee member) / Biomedical Informatics Program (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
The ability to draft and develop productive Major League players is vital to the success of any MLB organization. A core of cost-controlled, productive players is as important as ever with free agent salaries continuing to rise dramatically. In a sport where mere percentage points separate winners from losers at the end of a long season, any slight advantage in identifying talent is valuable. This study examines the 2004-2008 MLB Amateur Drafts in order to analyze whether certain types of prospects are more valuable selections than others. If organizations can better identify which draft prospects will more likely contribute at the Major League level in the future, they can more optimally spend their allotted signing bonus pool in order to acquire as much potential production as possible through the draft. Based on the data examined, during these five drafts high school prospects provided higher value than college prospects. While college players reached the Majors at a higher rate, high school players produced greater value in their first six seasons of service time. In the all-important first round of the draft, where signing bonuses are at their largest, college players proved the more valuable selection. When players were separated by position, position players held greater expected value than pitchers, with corner infielders leading the way as the position group with the highest expected value. College players were found to provide better value than high school players at defensively demanding positions such as catcher and middle infield, while high school players were more valuable among outfielders and pitchers.
ContributorsGildea, Adam Joseph (Author) / Eaton, John (Thesis director) / McIntosh, Daniel (Committee member) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05