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- Creators: Barrett, The Honors College
- Creators: Poulenc, Francis, 1899-1963
Description
Coffee is an important link between the United States and Latin America and an important part of Latin America’s culture and economy. This paper looks at the similarities and differences between coffee organizations in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Guatemala. Colombia has the strongest coffee organizations with the most political power. Guatemala and Peru, to a lesser extent, have well organized and powerful organizations that make up their industry. However, Ecuador has a significantly less organized organization. At their core, each country has a similar structure. There is one organization on the national level that watches out for the industry as a whole. Underneath that, there are smaller, often regional organizations made up of cooperatives pooling their resources for export. They function in similar ways as the national organizations, but have less reach. At the bottom, there are individual cooperatives and independent farmers. These cooperatives do not have much reach or connection to international markets.
ContributorsChabin, James Edward (Author) / Janssen, Marco (Thesis director) / Taylor, Keith (Committee member) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
The purpose of this paper is to make the beyond a reasonable doubt standard in criminal trials more comprehensible for the modern juror while also increasing the modern juror’s motivation and ability to apply this standard consistent with trial proceedings. The major problems addressed include why the beyond a reasonable doubt standard is so difficult for modern jurors to understand in addition to why modern jurors lack both the motivation and ability to perform their integral function in criminal trials due to their enforced passive role. This paper traces the origins of the modern jury, delving into the centuries-long transition of the jury from an active to passive function, and the impacts historical change has had on the modern juror’s role in criminal trials. It also looks to define the beyond a reasonable doubt standard in terms of case law and pattern jury instructions and through contrast with its constituent lower civil standards of evidentiary certainty. The solution posed to remedy the aforementioned issues rests on a unique application of metaphor and imagery that can be implemented in lawyers’ rhetorical methods to instruct jurors on their paramount function in modern criminal suits.
ContributorsTodd, Madolynn Susan (Co-author) / Koretz, Lora (Thesis director) / Moore, James (Committee member) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Cell viability is an important assessment in cell culture to characterize the health of the cell population and confirm if cells are alive. Morphology or end-line assays are used to determine cell viability of entire populations. Intracellular pO2 levels is indicative of cell health and metabolism that can be used as a factor to asses cell viability in an in-line assay. Siloxane based pO2 sensing nanoprobes present a modality to visualize intracellular pO2. Using fluorescent lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM), pO2 levels can be mapped intracellular as a highly functional in-line assay for cell viability. FLIM is an imaging modality that reconstructs an image based of its fluorescent lifetime. Nanoprobes were synthesized in different manufacturing/storage conditions. The nanoprobes for both long- and short-term storage were characterized in a cell free environment testing for changes in fluorescent intensity, average and maximum nanoprobe diameter. The nanoprobes were validated in two different culture systems, 2D and microcarrier culture systems, for human derived neural progenitor cells (NPCs) and neurons. Long- and short-term storage nanoprobes were used to label different neuronal based culture systems to asses labeling efficiency through fluorescent microscopy and flow cytometry. NPCs and neurons in each culture system was tested to see if nanoprobe labeling effected cellular phenotype for traits such as: cell proliferation, gene expression, and calcium imaging. Long-term and short-term storage nanoprobes were successfully validated for both NPCs and neurons in all culture systems. Assessments of the pO2 sensing nanoprobes will be further developed to create a highly functional and efficient in-line test for cell viability.
ContributorsLeyasi, Salma (Author) / Brafman, David (Thesis director) / Kodibagkar, Vikram (Committee member) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
My thesis is an exploration on the principles of algorithmic trading. I was introduced to the world of algorithmic trading in the Summer of 2018 when I got an internship at a startup trading firm called Helios Machine Intelligence. At HeliosMI, my job was to model algorithms for their in-house developed platform (in Java and C#). I learned how to model several different strategies, but I didn’t understand how, or more importantly, why these strategies worked. In the Spring of 2019 when I first began planning my thesis, I initially planned on recreating and optimizing HeliosMI’s trading platform. It was after reading a few books over the summer, namely; The Man Who Solved the Market by Gregory Zuckerman, Algorithmic Trading by Ernie Chan, and A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Gordon Malkiel, that I realized that I was much more interested in learning the fundamentals of algorithmic trading, so I decided to make this the new focus of my thesis. At HeliosMI, we tested strategies against the historical data of stocks using an application called QuantConnect. This application is easy-to-use, cheap (even offering a free tier) and provides plenty of documentation with an active community forum, making it the obvious choice as the platform for my thesis research. Throughout my research I focused on exploring high-frequency trading algorithms, mainly because these are the types of algorithms that are employed at Wall Street hedge funds, and also the type I worked on at HeliosMI. I developed three distinct algorithms throughout my research; a momentum based strategy, a mean reversion based strategy, and a preferred time of day based strategy. In my thesis report, I go in depth on each of these strategies, as well as discuss the history of algorithmic trading, and explore some future research aspirations.
ContributorsMaheshwari, Nicholas Leo (Author) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Thesis director) / Hoffman, David (Committee member) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
In 2019 the beauty industry was valued at $532 billion and is continuing to grow at lightning pace (Biron). Clearly, the beauty industry is profitable, so why have so few people bothered to study it? In the Barrett thesis database, as of 2020 there were less than half a dozen theses addressing the cosmetic industry, compared to nearly 50 projects concerning football. In response to the lack of study in academics and general public knowledge concerning the history and impact of cosmetics, the multi-part podcast series, Making Ourselves Up: The History and Impact of Cosmetics/Makeup was created by Kaley Scott, a fashion and sociology student. The personal nature of makeup and cosmetics, making the intimate forum of a podcast the perfect medium. The podcast operates in five episodes. First is: Making Ourselves Up, Makeup Fueling our Memories and Selfhood which contains personal narratives of makeup through interviews, establishing the intimate and wide-reaching effects of cosmetics and makeup. The second and third episodes: How We’ve Made Ourselves Up, from Cleopatra to Helena Rubenstein and How We’ve Made Ourselves Up, from Elizabeth Arden to Glossier cover the entirety of the history of makeup and cosmetics, focusing on western beauty. The third episode: Making Faces, Applying Makeup, the Theories that Let Us Create which focuses on techniques and theories of color and makeup application. Lastly is, Making Change, Cosmetics as a Current of Social Change which reveals how cosmetics have led to social change and continue to allow us to reinvent our society and ourselves. Makeup and cosmetics have been incredibly important for the creator for much of her life and she created this project with the aim of proving how important they are to the rest of the world.
ContributorsScott, Kaley Wynter (Author) / Sewell, Dennita (Thesis director) / Aiello, Diane (Committee member) / College of Integrative Sciences and Arts (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
As the prevalence of augmented reality (AR) technology continues to increase, so too have methods for improving the appearance and behavior of computer-generated objects. This is especially significant as AR applications now expand to territories outside of the entertainment sphere and can be utilized for numerous purposes encompassing but not limited to education, specialized occupational training, retail & online shopping, design, marketing, and manufacturing. Due to the nature of AR technology, where computer-generated objects are being placed into a real-world environment, a decision has to be made regarding the visual connection between the tangible and the intangible. Should the objects blend seamlessly into their environment or purposefully stand out? It is not purely a stylistic choice. A developer must consider how their application will be used — in many instances an optimal user experience is facilitated by mimicking the real world as closely as possible; even simpler applications, such as those built primarily for mobile devices, can benefit from realistic AR. The struggle here lies in creating an immersive user experience that is not reliant on computationally-expensive graphics or heavy-duty models. The research contained in this thesis provides several ways for achieving photorealistic rendering in AR applications using a range of techniques, all of which are supported on mobile devices. These methods can be employed within the Unity Game Engine and incorporate shaders, render pipelines, node-based editors, post-processing, and light estimation.
ContributorsSchanberger, Schuyler Catherine (Author) / LiKamWa, Robert (Thesis director) / Jayasuriya, Suren (Committee member) / Arts, Media and Engineering Sch T (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Entrepreneurship is an incredibly difficult endeavor. Along with the potentially high risk-to-return-ratio, starting an entrepreneurial venture, in nearly any capacity, necessitates a significant summation of work, time, creativity, and adaptability.1 In my opinion, many of the token hyper-productive individuals that have produced enormous amounts of value for the world were entrepreneurs who started their own companies and organizations. However, for every successful founder, there are thousands of failed entrepreneurs. In 2015, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that roughly 50% of businesses fail in the first four years.2 Founders, over time, must become professionals in their respective industries in order to succeed. With limited financial capital to hire employees, founders must learn skills in a variety of focus areas which could include finance, strategy, technology, management, marketing, sales, and many more, until they can generate enough capital to hire employees to fulfill these roles. Although the learnings and experiences from starting a company can more effectively be understood through experiencing it first-hand, in this document, I intend to start a startup from scratch, learn a multitude of skills involved with starting a startup and describe my experience. My hope is that potential founders can read this document and get a better understanding of what it’s like to start a startup. This thesis will be less focused on quantitative data capturing and more focused on my first-hand experience.
ContributorsNaluz, Ethan Gabriel (Author) / Sebold, Brent (Thesis director) / Mian, Sami (Committee member) / Ravichandran, Anirudh (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
In an era where college undergraduates are spending five dollars on a cup of coffee and ten dollars on avocado toast, now seems like an appropriate time to reevaluate these questions:
• Are current college undergraduates interested in the idea of saving for retirement?
• Do they have realistic expectations about how much money they need to save in order to live comfortably during retirement?
• Are there differences in expectations between people who are interested in saving for retirement using traditional means and people who are interested in saving for retirement using the extreme-saving FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) method?
This paper examines students’ interest in the idea of saving for retirement through a series of lenses: demographics, financial retirement literacy, and expressed commitment to save for retirement. I hypothesized that traditional retirement expected savers and FIRE expected savers, who correctly answer financial retirement literacy questions, are realistic about how much money they will need to save in order to live comfortably during retirement. To investigate this, a survey was sent out to two ASU Tempe campus business classes; 171 completed responses were analyzed. The statistical analysis of the unfiltered survey results showed three findings, but one finding stood out the most: Students who know what a 401k is (Question 5 in Exhibit 1) are significantly more likely to plan on saving for retirement, when compared to students who don’t know what a 401k is.
When filtering survey results to only show responses from students who know what a 401k is, median responses show that traditional retirement expected savers are somewhat realistic with their retirement savings expectations, while FIRE expected savers are not realistic with their retirement savings expectations.
• Are current college undergraduates interested in the idea of saving for retirement?
• Do they have realistic expectations about how much money they need to save in order to live comfortably during retirement?
• Are there differences in expectations between people who are interested in saving for retirement using traditional means and people who are interested in saving for retirement using the extreme-saving FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) method?
This paper examines students’ interest in the idea of saving for retirement through a series of lenses: demographics, financial retirement literacy, and expressed commitment to save for retirement. I hypothesized that traditional retirement expected savers and FIRE expected savers, who correctly answer financial retirement literacy questions, are realistic about how much money they will need to save in order to live comfortably during retirement. To investigate this, a survey was sent out to two ASU Tempe campus business classes; 171 completed responses were analyzed. The statistical analysis of the unfiltered survey results showed three findings, but one finding stood out the most: Students who know what a 401k is (Question 5 in Exhibit 1) are significantly more likely to plan on saving for retirement, when compared to students who don’t know what a 401k is.
When filtering survey results to only show responses from students who know what a 401k is, median responses show that traditional retirement expected savers are somewhat realistic with their retirement savings expectations, while FIRE expected savers are not realistic with their retirement savings expectations.
ContributorsDeSantangilo, Nicholas Charles (Author) / Radway, Debra (Thesis director) / Roberts, Nancy (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
When I first began thinking about what to do my honors thesis on during junior year, I knew that I wanted to do something creative. While I had successfully written a plethora of research papers and such throughout college, I knew that, were I to try to make my thesis entirely research based, I would not be able to be passionate about it. This thesis is what is going to be left for other Barrett students, current and future, to look at. I do not want to work on something that I would not be passionate about knowing that other people would see it and maybe even look at it when trying to find inspiration for their own theses. In order to accomplish this, I knew working on a creative project as my thesis was my best option. I would be passionate about what I was working on, and it would also allow me to work on something that did not just feel like more schoolwork. In other words, I would not get as “burnt out” working on my thesis if it were something that I enjoyed working on, rather than something that felt tedious.
ContributorsPrieve, Connor Taylor (Author) / Schmidt, Peter (Thesis director) / Ison, Tara (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
The first chapter of the Seattle SuperSonics’ story is one full of pride, including a championship run in the 1970s, being one of the most popular teams of the 1990s, along with having an incredibly loyal fan base. The next chapter of that story is one filled with painful memories for those same loyal fans. In 2008, the team was stripped away from Seattle, eventually landing in Oklahoma City, leaving countless people heartbroken and a gaping hole in the professional sports landscape. For some people, that removal was where the story ended; for many, however, that was just the end of another chapter. The movement to bring the SuperSonics back to the city and their beloved fans began the day after the team left town, and has been going strong ever since. While the voices of fans cry out for a return, many critics say that a new team would no longer be able to flourish in Seattle, and that the NBA should stand pat where they are. This project seeks to determine the truth to that statement by investigating one central question: Should the Seattle SuperSonics be brought back to life? The question is viewed through a pair of perspectives over the course of this paper. The first is based in business, where I completed a thorough analysis that covers five major factors that are crucial to determining success. The second is that of the fans, which was accessed through a survey created to figure out what truly was important to them when looking at a new team. After these perspectives have been examined, the project will turn to the debate that asks which form of reentry would be more efficient for a rebuild: league expansion or relocation of a current franchise. I feel as though this topic is one that should be more well known across the realm of sports, and wanted to shine a light on it through this process. No fan would ever want to experience the kind of loss that comes with their favorite team being taken away, and I believe that acknowledging past failures can help leagues make better decisions in the future.
ContributorsKoufidakis, Nicholas (Author) / Eaton, John (Thesis director) / McIntosh, Daniel (Committee member) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05