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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
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
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
A roofing manufacturer wants to differentiate themselves from other roofing manufacturers based on performance information. However, construction industry has revealed poor performance documentation in the last couple of decades. With no current developed performance measurement model in the industry, two roofing manufacturers approached the research group to implement a warranty program that measures the performance information of their systems and applicators. Moreover, the success of any project in the construction industry heavily relies upon the capability of the contractor(s) executing the project. Low-performing contractors are correlated with increased cost and delayed schedules, resulting in end-user dissatisfaction with the final product. Hence, the identification and differentiation of the high performing contractors from their competitors is also crucial. The purpose of this study is to identify and describe a new model for measuring manufacturer performance and differentiating contractor performance and capability for two roofing manufacturers (Manufacturer 1 and Manufacturer 2) in the roofing industry. The research uses multiple years of project data and customer satisfaction data collected for two roofing manufacturers for over 1,000 roofing contractors. The performance and end-user satisfaction was obtained for over 7,000 manufacturers' projects and each contractor associated with that project for cost, schedule, and quality metrics. The measurement process was successfully able to provide a performance measurement for the manufacturer based on the customer satisfaction and able to identify low performing contractors. This study presents the research method, the developed measurement model, and proposes a new performance measurement process that entities in the construction industry can use to measure performance.
ContributorsGajjar, Dhaval (Author) / Kashiwagi, Dean (Thesis advisor) / Sullivan, Kenneth (Thesis advisor) / Kashiwagi, Jacob (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Transportation infrastructure in urban areas has significant impacts on socio-economic activities, land use, and real property values. This dissertation proposes a more comprehensive theory of the positive and negative relationships between property values and transportation investments that distinguishes different effects by mode (rail vs. road), by network component (nodes vs. links), and by distance from them. It hypothesizes that transportation investment generates improvement in accessibility that accrue only to the nodes such as highway exits and light rail stations. Simultaneously, it tests the hypothesis that both transport nodes and links emanate short-distance negative nuisance effects due to disamenities such as traffic and noise. It also tests the hypothesis that nodes of both modes generate a net effect combining accessibility and disamenities. For highways, the configuration at grade or above/below ground is also tested. In addition, this dissertation hypothesizes that the condition of road pavement may have an impact on residential property values adjacent to the road segments. As pavement condition improves, value of properties adjacent to a road are hypothesized to increase as well. A multiple-distance-bands approach is used to capture distance decay of amenities and disamenities from nodes and links; and pavement condition index (PCI) is used to test the relationship between road condition and residential property values. The hypotheses are tested using spatial hedonic models that are specific to each of residential and commercial property market. Results confirm that proximity to transport nodes are associated positively with both residential and commercial property values. As a function of distance from highway exits and light rail transit (LRT) stations, the distance-band coefficients form a conventional distance decay curve. However, contrary to our hypotheses, no net effect is evident. The accessibility effect for highway exits extends farther than for LRT stations in residential model as expected. The highway configuration effect on residential home values confirms that below-grade highways have relatively positive impacts on nearby houses compared to those at ground level or above. Lastly, results for the relationship between pavement condition and residential home values show that there is no significant effect between them.
Some differences in the effect of infrastructure on property values emerge between residential and commercial markets. In the commercial models, the accessibility effect for highway exits extends less than for LRT stations. Though coefficients for short distances (within 300m) from highways and LRT links were expected to be negative in both residential and commercial models, only commercial models show a significant negative relationship. Different effects by mode, network component, and distance on commercial submarkets (i.e., industrial, office, retail and service properties) are tested as well and the results vary based on types of submarket.
Consequently, findings of three individual paper confirm that transportation investments mostly have significant impacts on real-estate properties either in a positive or negative direction in accordance with the transport mode, network component, and distance, though effects for some conditions (e.g., proximity to links of highway and light rail, and pavement quality) do not significantly change home values. Results can be used for city authorities and planners for funding mechanisms of transport infrastructure or validity of investments as well as private developers for maximizing development profits or for locating developments.
Some differences in the effect of infrastructure on property values emerge between residential and commercial markets. In the commercial models, the accessibility effect for highway exits extends less than for LRT stations. Though coefficients for short distances (within 300m) from highways and LRT links were expected to be negative in both residential and commercial models, only commercial models show a significant negative relationship. Different effects by mode, network component, and distance on commercial submarkets (i.e., industrial, office, retail and service properties) are tested as well and the results vary based on types of submarket.
Consequently, findings of three individual paper confirm that transportation investments mostly have significant impacts on real-estate properties either in a positive or negative direction in accordance with the transport mode, network component, and distance, though effects for some conditions (e.g., proximity to links of highway and light rail, and pavement quality) do not significantly change home values. Results can be used for city authorities and planners for funding mechanisms of transport infrastructure or validity of investments as well as private developers for maximizing development profits or for locating developments.
ContributorsSeo, Kihwan (Author) / Michael, Kuby (Thesis advisor) / Golub, Aaron (Committee member) / Salon, Deborah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Neurotoxicology has historically focused on substances that directly damage nervous tissue. Behavioral assays that test sensory, cognitive, or motor function are used to identify neurotoxins. But, the outcomes of behavioral assays may also be influenced by the physiological status of non-neural organs. Therefore, toxin induced damage to non- neural organs may contribute to behavioral modifications. Heavy metals and metalloids are persistent environmental pollutants and induce neurological deficits in multiple organisms. However, in the honey bee, an important insect pollinator, little is known about the sublethal effects of heavy metal and metalloid toxicity though they are exposed to these toxins chronically in some environments. In this thesis I investigate the sublethal effects of copper, cadmium, lead, and selenium on honey bee behavior and identify potential mechanisms mediating the behavioral modifications. I explore the honey bees’ ability to detect these toxins, their sensory perception of sucrose following toxin exposure, and the effects of toxin ingestion on performance during learning and memory tasks. The effects depend on the specific metal. Honey bees detect and reject copper containing solutions, but readily consume those contaminated with cadmium and lead. And, exposure to lead may alter the sensory perception of sucrose. I also demonstrate that acute selenium exposure impairs learning and long-term memory formation or recall. Localizing selenium accumulation following chronic exposure reveals that damage to non-neural organs and peripheral sensory structures is more likely than direct neurotoxicity. Probable mechanisms include gut microbiome alterations, gut lining
damage, immune system activation, impaired protein function, or aberrant DNA methylation. In the case of DNA methylation, I demonstrate that inhibiting DNA methylation dynamics can impair long-term memory formation, while the nurse-to- forager transition is not altered. These experiments could serve as the bases for and reference groups of studies testing the effects of metal or metalloid toxicity on DNA methylation. Each potential mechanism provides an avenue for investigating how neural function is influenced by the physiological status of non-neural organs. And from an ecological perspective, my results highlight the need for environmental policy to consider sublethal effects in determining safe environmental toxin loads for honey bees and other insect pollinators.
damage, immune system activation, impaired protein function, or aberrant DNA methylation. In the case of DNA methylation, I demonstrate that inhibiting DNA methylation dynamics can impair long-term memory formation, while the nurse-to- forager transition is not altered. These experiments could serve as the bases for and reference groups of studies testing the effects of metal or metalloid toxicity on DNA methylation. Each potential mechanism provides an avenue for investigating how neural function is influenced by the physiological status of non-neural organs. And from an ecological perspective, my results highlight the need for environmental policy to consider sublethal effects in determining safe environmental toxin loads for honey bees and other insect pollinators.
ContributorsBurden, Christina Marie (Author) / Amdam, Gro (Thesis advisor) / Smith, Brian H. (Thesis advisor) / Gallitano-Mendel, Amelia (Committee member) / Harrison, Jon (Committee member) / Vu, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016