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- Genre: Doctoral Dissertation
- Status: Published
Description
The contemporary architectural pedagogy is far removed from its ancestry: the classical Beaux-Arts and polytechnic schools of the 19th century and the Bauhaus and Vkhutemas models of the modern period. Today, the "digital" has invaded the academy and shapes pedagogical practices, epistemologies, and ontologies within it, and this invasion is reflected in teaching practices, principles, and tools. Much of this digital integration goes unremarked and may not even be explicitly taught. In this qualitative research project, interviews with 18 leading architecture lecturers, professors, and deans from programs across the United States were conducted. These interviews focused on advanced practices of digital architecture, such as the use of digital tools, and how these practices are viewed. These interviews yielded a wealth of information about the uses (and abuses) of advanced digital technologies within the architectural academy, and the results were analyzed using the methods of phenomenology and grounded theory. Most schools use digital technologies to some extent, although this extent varies greatly. While some schools have abandoned hand-drawing and other hand-based craft almost entirely, others have retained traditional techniques and use digital technologies sparingly. Reasons for using digital design processes include industry pressure as well as the increased ability to solve problems and the speed with which they could be solved. Despite the prevalence of digital design, most programs did not teach related design software explicitly, if at all, instead requiring students (especially graduate students) to learn to use them outside the design studio. Some of the problems with digital design identified in the interviews include social problems such as alienation as well as issues like understanding scale and embodiment of skill.
ContributorsAlqabandy, Hamad (Author) / Brandt, Beverly (Thesis advisor) / Mesch, Claudia (Committee member) / Newton, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The dissertation focuses on several Romanian avant-garde magazines, such as Contimporanul, Integral, and 75HP, that Romanian artists and writers created in Romania in the 1920s, after Romanian Dadaists Tristan Tzara and Marcel Iancu disbanded from Zurich Dada in the 1910s. The Romanian avant-garde magazines launched the Romanian avant-garde movement—the most intense period of artistic production in the country. The Romanian avant-gardists established Integralism in an attempt to differentiate themselves from other European avant-garde groups and to capture the intense and innovative creative spirit of their modern era by uniting and condensing avant-garde and modern styles on the pages of their magazines. However, I argue that instead of Integralism, what the Romanian avant-garde magazines put forth were Romanian avant-garde versions of Constructivism and Cubism conveyed in the magazines’ constructivist prints and reproductions of cubist paintings. The originality of the Romanian avant-garde magazines, thus, is concentrated in their appropriation and reinterpretation of Constructivism and Cubism rather than in their Integralism. Moreover, in their rebellion and resistance to Romania’s social, political, and artistic status quo, the Romanian avant-garde magazines functioned as an instrument with which the Romanian avant-gardists expressed their complex relationship with their Jewish identity. The magazines were not on the periphery of artistic production, as art history discourse on modern and avant-garde art has situated them, but were an important player in the global network of avant-garde magazines that traversed across eastern and western Europe, South America, the United States, and Japan.
ContributorsMiholca, Amelia (Author) / Mesch, Claudia (Thesis advisor) / Orlich, Ileana (Committee member) / Holian, Anna (Committee member) / Navarro, Rudy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Understanding why animals form social groups is a fundamental aim of sociobiology. To date, the field has been dominated by studies of kin groups, which have emphasized indirect fitness benefits as key drivers of grouping among relatives. Nevertheless, many animal groups are comprised of unrelated individuals. These cases provide unique opportunities to illuminate drivers of social evolution beyond indirect fitness, especially ecological factors. This dissertation combines behavioral, physiological, and ecological approaches to explore the conditions that favor group formation among non-kin, using as a model the facultatively social carpenter bee, Xylocopa sonorina. Using behavioral and genetic techniques, I found that nestmates in this species are often unrelated, and that non-kin groups form following extensive inter-nest migration.Group living may arise as a strategy to mitigate constraints on available breeding space. To test the hypothesis that nest construction is prohibitively costly for carpenter bees, I measured metabolic rates of excavating bees and used imaging techniques to quantify nest volumes. From these measurements, I found that nest construction is highly energetically costly, and that bees who inherit nests through social queuing experience substantial energetic savings. These costs are exacerbated by limitations on the reuse of existing nests. Using repeated CT scans of nesting logs, I examined changes in nest architecture over time and found that repeatedly inherited tunnels become indefensible to intruders, and are subsequently abandoned. Together, these factors underlie intense competition over available breeding space. The imaging analysis of nesting logs additionally revealed strong seasonal effects on social strategy, with social nesting dominating during winter. To test the hypothesis that winter social nesting arises from intrinsic physiological advantages of grouping, I experimentally manipulated social strategy in overwintering bees. I found that social bees conserve heat and body mass better than solitary bees, suggesting fitness benefits to grouping in cold, resource-scarce conditions. Together, these results suggest that grouping in X. sonorina arises from dynamic strategies to maximize direct fitness in response to harsh and/or competitive conditions. These studies provide empirical insights into the ecological conditions that favor non-kin grouping, and emphasize the importance of ecology in shaping sociality at its evolutionary origins.
ContributorsOstwald, Madeleine (Author) / Fewell, Jennifer H (Thesis advisor) / Amdam, Gro (Committee member) / Harrison, Jon (Committee member) / Pratt, Stephen (Committee member) / Kapheim, Karen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
This dissertation consists of three chapters that investigate the rapid adoption and complex implementation of city commitments to transition to 100% renewable energy (100RE). The first paper uses a two-stage, mixed methods approach to examine 100RE commitments across the US, combining a multivariate regression of demographic, institutional, and policy factors in adoption and six interview-based state case studies to discuss implementation. Adoption of this non-binding commitment progressed rapidly for city councils around the US. Results show that many cities passed 100RE commitments with no implementation plan and minimal understanding of implementation challenges. This analysis highlights that many cities will need new institutions and administrative capacities for successful implementation of these ambitious new policies. While many cities abandoned the commitment soon after adoption, collaboration allowed cities in a few states to break through and pursue implementation, examined further in the next two studies. The second paper is a qualitative case study examining policymaking for the Utah Community Renewable Energy Act. Process tracing methods are used to identify causal factors in enacting this legislation at the state level and complementary resolutions at the local level. This Act was passed through the leadership and financial backing of major cities and committed the investor-owned utility to fulfill any city 100RE resolutions passed through 2019. Finally, the third paper is a mixed-methods, descriptive case study of the benefits of Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) in California, which many cities are using to fulfill their 100RE commitments. Cities have adopted CCAs to increase their local voice in the energy process, while fulfilling climate and energy goals. Overall, this research shows that change in the investor-owned utility electricity system is in fact possible from the city scale, though many cities will need institutional innovation to implement these policies and achieve the change they desire. While cities with greater resources are better positioned to make an impact, smaller cities can collaborate to similarly influence the energy system. Communities are interested in lowering energy costs for customers where possible, but the central motivations in these cases were the pursuit of sustainability and increasing local voice in energy decision-making.
ContributorsKunkel, Leah Christine (Author) / Breetz, Hanna L (Thesis advisor) / Parker, Nathan (Committee member) / Salon, Deborah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Plasma and serum are the most commonly used liquid biospecimens in biomarker research. These samples may be subjected to several pre-analytical variables (PAVs) during collection, processing and storage. Exposure to thawed conditions (temperatures above -30 °C) is a PAV that is hard to control, and track and could provide misleading information, that fail to accurately reveal the in vivo biological reality, when unaccounted for. Hence, assays that can empirically check the integrity of plasma and serum samples are crucial. As a solution to this issue, an assay titled ΔS-Cys-Albumin was developed and validated. The reference range of ΔS-Cys-Albumin in cardio vascular patients was determined and the change in ΔS-Cys-Albumin values in different samples over time course incubations at room temperature, 4 °C and -20 °C were evaluated. In blind challenges, this assay proved to be successful in identifying improperly stored samples individually and as groups. Then, the correlation between the instability of several clinically important proteins in plasma from healthy and cancer patients at room temperature, 4 °C and -20 °C was assessed. Results showed a linear inverse relationship between the percentage of proteins destabilized and ΔS-Cys-Albumin regardless of the specific time or temperature of exposure, proving ΔS-Cys-Albumin as an effective surrogate marker to track the stability of clinically relevant analytes in plasma. The stability of oxidized LDL in serum at different temperatures was assessed in serum samples and it stayed stable at all temperatures evaluated. The ΔS-Cys-Albumin requires the use of an LC-ESI-MS instrument which limits its availability to most clinical research laboratories. To overcome this hurdle, an absorbance-based assay that can be measured using a plate reader was developed as an alternative to the ΔS-Cys-Albumin assay. Assay development and analytical validation procedures are reported herein. After that, the range of absorbance in plasma and serum from control and cancer patients were determined and the change in absorbance over a time course incubation at room temperature, 4 °C and -20 °C was assessed. The results showed that the absorbance assay would act as a good alternative to the ΔS-Cys-Albumin assay.
ContributorsJehanathan, Nilojan (Author) / Borges, Chad (Thesis advisor) / Guo, Jia (Committee member) / Van Horn, Wade (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Speciation, or the process by which one population diverges into multiple populations that can no longer interbreed with each other, has brought about the incredible diversity of life. Mechanisms underlying this process can be more visible in the early stages of the speciation process. The mechanisms that restrict gene flow in highly mobile species with no absolute barriers to dispersal, especially marine species, are understudied. Similarly, human impacts are reshaping ecosystems globally, and we are only just beginning to understand the implications of these rapid changes on evolutionary processes. In this dissertation, I investigate patterns of speciation and evolution in two avian clades: a genus of widespread tropical seabirds (boobies, genus Sula), and two congeneric passerine species in an urban environment (cardinals, genus Cardinalis). First, I explore the prevalence of gene flow across land barriers within species and between sympatric species in boobies. I found widespread evidence of gene flow over all land barriers and between 3 species pairs. Next, I compared the effects of urbanization on the spatial distributions of two cardinal species, pyrrhuloxia (Cardinalis sinuatus) and northern cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis), in Tucson, Arizona. I found that urbanization has different effects on the spatial distributions of two closely related species that share a similar environmental niche, and I identified environmental variables that might be driving this difference. Then I tested for effects of urbanization on color and size traits of these two cardinal species. In both of these species, urbanization has altered traits involved in signaling, heat tolerance, foraging, and maneuverability. Finally, I tested for evidence of selection on the urban populations of both cardinal species and found evidence of both parallel selection and introgression between the species, as well as selection on different genes in each species. The functions of the genes that experienced positive selection suggest that light at night, energetics, and air pollution may have acted as strong selective pressures on these species in the past. Overall, my dissertation emphasizes the role of introgression in the speciation process, identifies environmental stressors faced by wildlife in urban environments, and characterizes their evolutionary responses to those stressors.
ContributorsJackson, Daniel Nelson (Author) / McGraw, Kevin J (Thesis advisor) / Amdam, Gro (Committee member) / Sweazea, Karen (Committee member) / Taylor, Scott (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
With rapid advances in technology development and public adoption, it is crucial to understand how these services will shape the future of travel depending on the extent to which people will use these services; impact the transportation and infrastructure systems such as changes in the use of transit and active modes of travel; and influence how technology developers create and update these transportation technologies to better serve people’s mobility needs. This dissertation explores how two major emerging services, namely ridehailing services and autonomous vehicles (AVs), will be used in the future when they are widely available and vastly used, and how they may impact the transportation infrastructure and societal travel patterns. The four proposed chapters use comprehensive quantitative and qualitative methods to explore the status of these technologies from theory, through robust modeling frameworks, to practice, by investigating the recent AV pilot deployments in real-world settings. In the second chapter, it was found that increased frequency of ridehailing use is significantly associated with a decrease in bus usage, suggesting that ridehailing functions more as a substitute for buses than as a complement and implying that transit agencies should explore ways to incorporate ridehailing services in their plans to enhance transit usage. Next, the third chapter showed that interest in using AVs for running errands had a positive and significant effect on AV ownership intent, even after accounting for a host of variables. The fourth chapter depicted how ridehailing experiences have a considerable effect on the willingness to ride AV-based services in both private and shared modes, suggesting that experience is crucial for future adoption of these services. Then, two recent real-world AV experiences are explored in the fifth chapter. Lessons learned from these experiments reinforced the importance of first-hand experiences in promoting AV awareness and trustworthiness, potentially leading to greater degrees of adoption. Finally, the results and discussions presented in this dissertation strengthen the body of literature on key emerging transportation technologies and inform policymakers and stakeholders to properly prepare cities and the public to welcome these technologies into our transportation system in an efficient, equitable, and complementary way.
ContributorsMagassy, Tassio Bezerra (Author) / Pendyala, Ram M (Thesis advisor) / Khoeini, Sara (Committee member) / Polzin, Steven E (Committee member) / Salon, Deborah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is the result of an autoimmune attack against the insulin-producing β-cells of the pancreas causing hyperglycemia and requiring the individual to rely on life-long exogenous insulin. With the age of onset typically occurring in childhood, there is increased physical and emotional stress to the child as well as caregivers to maintain appropriate glucose levels. The majority of T1D patients have antibodies to one or more antigens: insulin, IA-2, GAD65, and ZnT8. Although antibodies are detectable years before symptoms occur, the initiating factors and mechanisms of progression towards β-cell destruction are still not known. The search for new autoantibodies to elucidate the autoimmune process in diabetes has been slow, with proteome level screenings on native proteins only finding a few minor antigens. Post-translational modifications (PTM)—chemical changes that occur to the protein after translation is complete—are an unexplored way a self-protein could become immunogenic. This dissertation presents the first large sale screening of autoantibodies in T1D to nitrated proteins. The Contra Capture Protein Array (CCPA) allowed for fresh expression of hundreds of proteins that were captured on a secondary slide by tag-specific ligand and subsequent modification with peroxynitrite. The IgG and IgM humoral response of 48 newly diagnosed T1D subjects and 48 age-matched controls were screened against 1632 proteins highly or specifically expressed in pancreatic cells. Top targets at 95% specificity were confirmed with the same serum samples using rapid antigenic protein in situ display enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (RAPID ELISA) a modified sandwich ELISA employing the same cell-free expression as the CCPA. For validation, 8 IgG and 5 IgM targets were evaluated with an independent serum sample set of 94 T1D subjects and 94 controls. The two best candidates at 90% specificity were estrogen receptor 1 (ESR1) and phosphatidylinositol 4-kinase type 2 beta (PI4K2B) which had sensitivities of 22% (p=.014) and 25% (p=.045), respectively. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses found an area under curve (AUC) of 0.6 for ESR1 and 0.58 for PI4K2B. These studies demonstrate the ability and value for high-throughput autoantibody screening to modified antigens and the frequency of Type 1 diabetes.
ContributorsHesterman, Jennifer (Author) / LaBaer, Joshua (Thesis advisor) / Borges, Chad (Committee member) / Sweazea, Karen (Committee member) / Mangone, Marco (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
The past two decades have been marked by disruptions in the way transportation is provided to society. Examples are carsharing, ridehailing services, and electric scooters. Understanding how sensitive travel behavior is during transportation disruptions is a key part of planning for the future of transportation. While the effects of people's attitudes and perceptions on travel behavior and choices have been studied in the past, their role in response to disruptions remains under explored. This dissertation explores the effect of attitudes on travel behavior and perceptions for two distinct disruptions: the advent of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and the COVID-19 pandemic. Before diving into such elaborate relationships, it is important to understand how attitudinal data is collected and measured. Thus, a study of the effects of different survey methods on the collection of attitudes towards transportation disruptions is performed. This dissertation finds that having a favorable perception of AVs is the most important factor in defining one’s willingness to use them. More importantly, those who only heard about AVs without knowing much about them were actually less likely to have a favorable perception when compared to those who never heard of AVs prior to the survey, reinforcing the need for thoughtful education and awareness initiatives. Additionally, gender also played an important role in expectations about the AV Future: not only are women less interested in using AVs as a pooled ride service, but also that the effect of attitudes on defining that choice was different for men and women. Regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, two different attitudes towards COVID were identified: concern about the effects of the COVID-19 response, and concern about the health effects of the coronavirus. Both shaped the ways people traveled, and how often they did so. These findings reinforce the need for the broad collection of attitudinal data and the incorporation of such parameters on future travel forecasting.
ContributorsCapasso da Silva, Denise (Author) / Pendyala, Ram M (Thesis advisor) / Khoeini, Sara (Thesis advisor) / Salon, Deborah (Committee member) / Thompson, Marilyn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Antibodies are the immunoglobulins which are secreted by the B cells after a microbial invasion. They are stable and stays in the serum for a long time which makes them an excellent biomarker for disease diagnosis. Inflammatory bowel disease is a type of autoimmune disease where the immune system mistakenly attacks the commensal bacteria and leads to inflammation. We studied antibody response of 100 Crohn’s disease (CD), 100 ulcerative colitis (UC) and 100 healthy controls against 1,173 bacterial and 397 viral proteins. We found some anti-bacterial antibodies higher in CD compared to controls while some antibodies lower in UC compared to controls. We were able to build biomarker panels with AUCs of 0.81, 0.87, and 0.82 distinguishing CD vs. control, UC vs. control, and CD vs. UC, respectively. Subgroup analysis based on the Montreal classification revealed that penetrating CD behavior (B3), colonic CD location (L2), and extensive UC (E3) exhibited highest antibody reactivity among all patients. We also wanted to study the reason for the presence of autoantibodies in the sera of healthy individuals. A meta-analysis of 9 independent biomarker study was performed to find 77 common autoantibodies shared by healthy individuals. There was no gender bias; however, the number of autoantibodies increased with age, plateauing around adolescence. Molecular mimicry likely contributed to the elicitation of a subset of these common autoantibodies as 21 common autoantigens had 7 or more ungapped amino acid matches with viral proteins. Intrinsic properties of protein like hydrophilicity, basicity, aromaticity, and flexibility were enriched for common autoantigens. Subcellular localization and tissue expression analysis indicated the sequestration of some autoantigens from circulating autoantibodies can explain the absence of autoimmunity in these healthy individuals.
ContributorsShome, Mahasish (Author) / LaBaer, Joshua (Thesis advisor) / Borges, Chad (Committee member) / Stephanopoulos, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021