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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
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
With higher than normal levels of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, and sexually transmitted diseases within the Deaf community, it is clear that the current level of medical care is failing. This can stem from many different issues, from the mistrust of doctors to the fact that scientific education in the Deaf community is introduced at a later time in comparison to the hearing population. Similarly, there is a distinct lack of Deaf and hard of hearing medical staff. All of this culminates in the fact that the system needs to change. The addition of more Deaf staff in the medical environment, more staff interpreters, and doctors that have experience with the Deaf community engenders the metamorphosis of this group from unhealthy to healthy. Extra exposure for doctors during clinical rotations to deaf patients as well as training in Deaf Culture will further increase the comfort level of Deaf community members utilizing health services. As a result, the overall state of medical care for the Deaf population will improve with these modifications to the current system.
ContributorsBrar, Serbnoor Singh (Author) / Quinn, Paul (Thesis director) / Howard, Pamela (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Sickle cell disease is a genetic disorder that can cause substantial helath problems. It is the result of a mutation in the DNA coding for hemoglobin. As a result of changes in two important amino acids, a person suffering from sickle cell disease will have erythrocytes that do not maintain the typical biconcave shape and instead for a crescent shape. Individuals with sickle cell disease may have many health problems tied to their irregular hemoglobin. The unusual shape of the erythrocytes leads to a much shorter cell life, which means that even though bone marrow remains active long past childhood to try to keep up with the loss of erythrocytes, the body is still unable to accommodate the rapid death of erythrocytes. The malformed erythrocytes can also cause vascular occlusion, blocking blood vessels and slowing blood flow. While sickle cell disease has the potential to spread worldwide, it is particularly common in Africa. This may be because people with the sickle cell trait have a high resistance to malaria, making them more likely to survive that ubiquitous disease and pass on their traits to their offspring. However, the mortality rate in young children with sickle cell disease is very high, in part because the spleen, already stressed by filtering out dead erythrocytes, has difficulties filtering out bacteria. One of the keys to stopping the spread of the disease is neonatal screening, but this requires specialized equipment that is fairly uncommon in rural areas, as can be seen in Kenya. Therefore, it would be highly beneficial to develop a more cost-effective and widely available method for testing for sickle cell disease.
ContributorsWold, John (Author) / Caplan, Michael (Thesis director) / LaBelle, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Snyder, Jan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2012-05
Description
Microvillus Inclusion disease is a fatal disease found in the Navajo population caused by a single nucleotide polymorphism. It is characterized by intractable diarrhea and is often fatal early in life.1 The current method of diagnosis is sending duodenal biopsies for histopathological examination and confirmatory testing through genomic sequencing. The purpose of this experiment was to create a more simple and cost-effective diagnostic method for detecting Microvillus Inclusion disease. Three methods were explored (RFLP2, ARMS3,4, and Tentacle Probes5,6) and two methods were tested to determine their ability and their efficiency in detecting the SNP that causes the disease.2 Tests using the RFLP2 method and synthetic DNA resulted in 9% false-positive rate and 11% false-negative rate in a blind trial for detecting both target (mutation present) and non-target (mutation absent) DNA when gel analyzing software was used to compare Rf values after gel electrophoresis. Using the ARMS method3, a nine-sample randomized test was run that ended up with 22% false-positive rate and 19% false-negative rate from a blind trial when using a gel analyzing software to determine presence of the SNP by band intensity. Disclaimer: No DNA from human patients was used in this study. Only synthetic DNA used.
ContributorsHelmbrecht, Hawley Elizabeth (Author) / Caplan, Michael (Thesis director) / Carpentieri, David (Committee member) / Dubois, Courtney (Committee member) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) is a prevalent genetic disease in Africa, and specifically in Kenya. The lack of available relevant disease education and screening mean that most don't understand the importance of getting testing and many children die before they can get prophylactic care. This project was designed to address the lack of knowledge with supplemental educational materials to be partnered with an engineering capstone project that provides a low cost diagnostic test.
ContributorsShawver, Jamie Christine (Author) / Caplan, Michael (Thesis director) / Snyder, Jan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
Adaptive thermogenesis is an innate mechanism that assists the body in controlling its core temperature that can be stimulated in two ways: cold and diet. When adaptive thermogenesis is stimulated through diet, the metabolic rate of the body should increase and the metabolic efficiency of the body should decrease. This activation should, theoretically, help to control weight gain. A protocol was developed to study four male Sprague-Dawley rats throughout a fourteen week period through the measurement of brown adipose tissue blood flow and brown adipose tissue, back, and abdomen temperatures to determine if diet induced thermogenesis existed and could be activated through norepinephrine. The sedative used to obtain blood flow measurements, ketamine, was discovered to induce a thermal response prior to the norepinephrine injection by mimicking the norepinephrine response in the sympathetic nervous system. This discovery altered the original protocol to exclude an injection of norepinephrine, as this injection would have no further thermal effect. It was found that ketamine sedation excited diet induced thermogenesis in periods of youth, low fat diet, and early high fat diet. The thermogenic capacity was found to be at a peak of 2.1 degrees Celsius during this time period. The data also suggested that the activation of diet induced thermogenesis decreased as the period of high fat diet increased, and by week 4 of the high fat diet, almost all evidence of diet induced thermogenesis was suppressed. This indicated that diet induced thermogenesis is time and diet dependent. Further investigation will need to be made to determine if prolonged high fat diet or age suppress diet induced thermogenesis.
ContributorsJayo, Heather Lynn (Author) / Caplan, Michael (Thesis director) / Herman, Richard (Committee member) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12