Matching Items (1,688)
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For as long as humans have been working, they have been looking for ways to get that work done better, faster, and more efficient. Over the course of human history, mankind has created innumerable spectacular inventions, all with the goal of making the economy and daily life more efficient. Today,

For as long as humans have been working, they have been looking for ways to get that work done better, faster, and more efficient. Over the course of human history, mankind has created innumerable spectacular inventions, all with the goal of making the economy and daily life more efficient. Today, innovations and technological advancements are happening at a pace like never seen before, and technology like automation and artificial intelligence are poised to once again fundamentally alter the way people live and work in society. Whether society is prepared or not, robots are coming to replace human labor, and they are coming fast. In many areas artificial intelligence has disrupted entire industries of the economy. As people continue to make advancements in artificial intelligence, more industries will be disturbed, more jobs will be lost, and entirely new industries and professions will be created in their wake. The future of the economy and society will be determined by how humans adapt to the rapid innovations that are taking place every single day. In this paper I will examine the extent to which automation will take the place of human labor in the future, project the potential effect of automation to future unemployment, and what individuals and society will need to do to adapt to keep pace with rapidly advancing technology. I will also look at the history of automation in the economy. For centuries humans have been advancing technology to make their everyday work more productive and efficient, and for centuries this has forced humans to adapt to the modern technology through things like training and education. The thesis will additionally examine the ways in which the U.S. education system will have to adapt to meet the demands of the advancing economy, and how job retraining programs must be modernized to prepare workers for the changing economy.
ContributorsCunningham, Reed P. (Author) / DeSerpa, Allan (Thesis director) / Haglin, Brett (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
This paper considers what factors influence student interest, motivation, and continued engagement. Studies show anticipated extrinsic rewards for activity participation have been shown to reduce intrinsic value for that activity. This might suggest that grade point average (GPA) has a similar effect on academic interests. Further, when incentives such as

This paper considers what factors influence student interest, motivation, and continued engagement. Studies show anticipated extrinsic rewards for activity participation have been shown to reduce intrinsic value for that activity. This might suggest that grade point average (GPA) has a similar effect on academic interests. Further, when incentives such as scholarships, internships, and careers are GPA-oriented, students must adopt performance goals in courses to guarantee success. However, performance goals have not been shown to correlated with continued interest in a topic. Current literature proposes that student involvement in extracurricular activities, focused study groups, and mentored research are crucial to student success. Further, students may express either a fixed or growth mindset, which influences their approach to challenges and opportunities for growth. The purpose of this study was to collect individual cases of students' experiences in college. The interview method was chosen to collect complex information that could not be gathered from standard surveys. To accomplish this, questions were developed based on content areas related to education and motivation theory. The content areas included activities and meaning, motivation, vision, and personal development. The developed interview method relied on broad questions that would be followed by specific "probing" questions. We hypothesize that this would result in participant-led discussions and unique narratives from the participant. Initial findings suggest that some of the questions were effective in eliciting detailed responses, though results were dependent on the interviewer. From the interviews we find that students value their group involvements, leadership opportunities, and relationships with mentors, which parallels results found in other studies.
ContributorsAbrams, Sara (Author) / Hartwell, Lee (Thesis director) / Correa, Kevin (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
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Social-emotional learning (SEL) methods are beginning to receive global attention in primary school education, yet the dominant emphasis on implementing these curricula is in high-income, urbanized areas. Consequently, the unique features of developing and integrating such methods in middle- or low-income rural areas are unclear. Past studies suggest that students

Social-emotional learning (SEL) methods are beginning to receive global attention in primary school education, yet the dominant emphasis on implementing these curricula is in high-income, urbanized areas. Consequently, the unique features of developing and integrating such methods in middle- or low-income rural areas are unclear. Past studies suggest that students exposed to SEL programs show an increase in academic performance, improved ability to cope with stress, and better attitudes about themselves, others, and school, but these curricula are designed with an urban focus. The purpose of this study was to conduct a needs-based analysis to investigate components specific to a SEL curriculum contextualized to rural primary schools. A promising organization committed to rural educational development is Barefoot College, located in Tilonia, Rajasthan, India. In partnership with Barefoot, we designed an ethnographic study to identify and describe what teachers and school leaders consider the highest needs related to their students' social and emotional education. To do so, we interviewed 14 teachers and school leaders individually or in a focus group to explore their present understanding of “social-emotional learning” and the perception of their students’ social and emotional intelligence. Analysis of this data uncovered common themes among classroom behaviors and prevalent opportunities to address social and emotional well-being among students. These themes translated into the three overarching topics and eight sub-topics explored throughout the curriculum, and these opportunities guided the creation of the 21 modules within it. Through a design-based research methodology, we developed a 40-hour curriculum by implementing its various modules within seven Barefoot classrooms alongside continuous reiteration based on teacher feedback and participant observation. Through this process, we found that student engagement increased during contextualized SEL lessons as opposed to traditional methods. In addition, we found that teachers and students preferred and performed better with an activities-based approach. These findings suggest that rural educators must employ particular teaching strategies when addressing SEL, including localized content and an experiential-learning approach. Teachers reported that as their approach to SEL shifted, they began to unlock the potential to build self-aware, globally-minded students. This study concludes that social and emotional education cannot be treated in a generalized manner, as curriculum development is central to the teaching-learning process.
ContributorsBucker, Delaney Sue (Author) / Carrese, Susan (Thesis director) / Barab, Sasha (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor, Contributor) / School of Civic & Economic Thought and Leadership (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
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Construction is a defining characteristic of geometry classes. In a traditional classroom, teachers and students use physical tools (i.e. a compass and straight-edge) in their constructions. However, with modern technology, construction is possible through the use of digital applications such as GeoGebra and Geometer’s SketchPad.
Many other studies have

Construction is a defining characteristic of geometry classes. In a traditional classroom, teachers and students use physical tools (i.e. a compass and straight-edge) in their constructions. However, with modern technology, construction is possible through the use of digital applications such as GeoGebra and Geometer’s SketchPad.
Many other studies have researched the benefits of digital manipulatives and digital environments through student completion of tasks and testing. This study intends to research students’ use of the digital tools and manipulatives, along with the students’ interactions with the digital environment. To this end, I conducted exploratory teaching experiments with two calculus I students.
In the exploratory teaching experiments, students were introduced to a GeoGebra application developed by Fischer (2019), which includes instructional videos and corresponding quizzes, as well as exercises and interactive notepads, where students could use digital tools to construct line segments and circles (corresponding to the physical straight-edge and compass). The application built up the students’ foundational knowledge, culminating in the construction and verbal proof of Euclid’s Elements, Proposition 1 (Euclid, 1733).
The central findings of this thesis are the students’ interactions with the digital environment, with observed changes in their conceptions of radii and circles, and in their use of tools. The students were observed to have conceptions of radii as a process, a geometric shape, and a geometric object. I observed the students’ conceptions of a circle change from a geometric shape to a geometric object, and with that change, observed the students’ use of tools change from a measuring focus to a property focus.
I report a summary of the students’ work and classify their reasoning and actions into the above categories, and an analysis of how the digital environment impacts the students’ conceptions. I also briefly discuss the impact of the findings on pedagogy and future research.
ContributorsSakauye, Noelle Marie (Author) / Roh, Kyeong Hah (Thesis director) / Zandieh, Michelle (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
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This document is a proposal for a research project, submitted as an Honors Thesis to Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University. The proposal summarizes previous findings and literature about women survivors of domestic violence who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as well as outlining the design and

This document is a proposal for a research project, submitted as an Honors Thesis to Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University. The proposal summarizes previous findings and literature about women survivors of domestic violence who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as well as outlining the design and measures of the study. At this time, the study has not been completed. However, it may be completed at a future time.
ContributorsKunst, Jessica (Author) / Hernandez Ruiz, Eugenia (Thesis director) / Belgrave, Melita (Committee member) / School of Music (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
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Description
Many factors are at play within the genome of an organism, contributing to much of the diversity and variation across the tree of life. While the genome is generally encoded by four nucleotides, A, C, T, and G, this code can be expanded. One particular mechanism that we examine in

Many factors are at play within the genome of an organism, contributing to much of the diversity and variation across the tree of life. While the genome is generally encoded by four nucleotides, A, C, T, and G, this code can be expanded. One particular mechanism that we examine in this thesis is modification of bases—more specifically, methylation of Adenine (m6A) within the GATC motif of Escherichia coli. These methylated adenines are especially important in a process called methyl-directed mismatch repair (MMR), a pathway responsible for repairing errors in the DNA sequence produced by replication. In this pathway, methylated adenines identify the parent strand and direct the repair proteins to correct the erroneous base in the daughter strand. While the primary role of methylated adenines at GATC sites is to direct the MMR pathway, this methylation has also been found to affect other processes, such as gene expression, the activity of transposable elements, and the timing of DNA replication. However, in the absence of MMR, the ability of these other processes to maintain adenine methylation and its targets is unknown.
To determine if the disruption of the MMR pathway results in the reduced conservation of methylated adenines as well as an increased tolerance for mutations that result in the loss or gain of new GATC sites, we surveyed individual clones isolated from experimentally evolving wild-type and MMR-deficient (mutL- ;conferring an 150x increase in mutation rate) populations of E. coli with whole-genome sequencing. Initial analysis revealed a lack of mutations affecting methylation sites (GATC tetranucleotides) in wild-type clones. However, the inherent low mutation rates conferred by the wild-type background render this result inconclusive, due to a lack of statistical power, and reveal a need for a more direct measure of changes in methylation status. Thus as a first step to comparative methylomics, we benchmarked four different methylation-calling pipelines on three biological replicates of the wildtype progenitor strain for our evolved populations.
While it is understood that these methylated sites play a role in the MMR pathway, it is not fully understood the full extent of their effect on the genome. Thus the goal of this thesis was to better understand the forces which maintain the genome, specifically concerning m6A within the GATC motif.
ContributorsBoyer, Gwyneth (Author) / Lynch, Michael (Thesis director) / Behringer, Megan (Committee member) / Geiler-Samerotte, Kerry (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
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This paper emphasizes how vital prosthetic devices are as tools for both congenital and acquired amputees in order to maximize this population's level of societal productivity, but several issues exist with the current technological focus of development by the prosthetic industry that creates unnecessary hurdles that amputees must surpass in

This paper emphasizes how vital prosthetic devices are as tools for both congenital and acquired amputees in order to maximize this population's level of societal productivity, but several issues exist with the current technological focus of development by the prosthetic industry that creates unnecessary hurdles that amputees must surpass in order to truly benefit from these tools. The first major issue is that these devices are not readily available to all amputees. The astronomical cost of most prosthetic devices is a variable that restricts low income amputee populations from obtaining these vital tools regardless of their level of need, thus highlighting the fact that amputees who are not financially stable are not supported in a fashion that is conducive to their success. Also, cost greatly affects children who suffer from a missing appendage due to the fact that they are in constant need of prosthetic replacement because of physical growth and development. Another issue with the current focus of the prosthetic industry is that it focuses on acquired amputees because this population is much larger in comparison to congenital amputees and thus more lucrative. Congenital amputees' particular needs are often entirely ignored in terms of prosthetic innovation. Finally, low daily utilization is a major issue amongst the amputee population. Several variables exist with the use of prosthetic devices that cause many amputees to decide against the utilization of these tools, like difficulty of use and lack of comfort. This paper will provide solutions to cost, discrimination, issues in development, and daily utilization by emphasizing on how lowering the cost through alternative designs and materials, transitioning the focus of technological development onto the entire amputee population rather than targeting the most lucrative group, and advancing the design in a fashion to which promotes daily utilization will provide the largest level of societal support, so that the amputee population as a whole can maximize their level of productivity in a manner that will allow this group to conquer the hardships that are introduced into their lives due to a missing appendage.
ContributorsO'Connor, Casey Charles (Author) / Popova, Laura (Thesis director) / Graff, Sarah (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Social Work (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
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Osteoporosis is a medical condition that leads to decreased bone mineral density, resulting in increased fracture risk.1 Research regarding the relationship between sleep and bone mass is limited and has primarily been studied in elderly adults. While this population is most affected by osteoporosis, adolescents are the most proactive population

Osteoporosis is a medical condition that leads to decreased bone mineral density, resulting in increased fracture risk.1 Research regarding the relationship between sleep and bone mass is limited and has primarily been studied in elderly adults. While this population is most affected by osteoporosis, adolescents are the most proactive population in terms of prevention. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between sleep efficiency and serum osteocalcin in college-aged individuals as a means of osteoporosis prevention. Thirty participants ages 18-25 years (22 females, 8 males) at Arizona State University were involved in this cross-sectional study. Data were collected during one week via self-recorded sleep diaries, quantitative ActiWatch, DEXA imaging, and serum blood draws to measure the bone biomarker osteocalcin. Three participants were excluded from the study as outliers. The median (IQR) for osteocalcin measured by ELISA was 11.6 (9.7, 14.5) ng/mL. The average sleep efficiency measured by actigraphy was 88.3% ± 3.0%. Regression models of sleep efficiency and osteocalcin concentration were not statistically significant. While the addition of covariates helped explain more of the variation in serum osteocalcin concentration, the results remained insignificant. There was a trend between osteocalcin and age, suggesting that as age increases, osteocalcin decreases. This was a limited study, and further investigation regarding the relationship between sleep efficiency and osteocalcin is warranted.
ContributorsMarsh, Courtney Nicole (Author) / Whisner, Corrie (Thesis director) / Mahmood, Tara (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Nutrition and Health Promotion (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
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The passage of 2007's Legal Arizona Workers Act, which required all new hires to be tested for legal employment status through the federal E-Verify database, drastically changed the employment prospects for undocumented workers in the state. Using data from the 2007-2010 American Community Survey, this paper seeks to identify the

The passage of 2007's Legal Arizona Workers Act, which required all new hires to be tested for legal employment status through the federal E-Verify database, drastically changed the employment prospects for undocumented workers in the state. Using data from the 2007-2010 American Community Survey, this paper seeks to identify the impact of this law on the labor force in Arizona, specifically regarding undocumented workers and less educated native workers. Overall, the data shows that the wage bias against undocumented immigrants doubled in the four years studied, and the wages of native workers without a high school degree saw a temporary, positive increase compared to comparable workers in other states. The law did not have an effect on the wages of native workers with a high school degree.
ContributorsSantiago, Maria Christina (Author) / Pereira, Claudiney (Thesis director) / Mendez, Jose (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
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This study examines Glamour magazine to determine the messages the publication sends to its readers and to evaluate if such messages align with modern feminist goals. The articles of Glamour's 12 issues from the year of 2016 are analyzed using a framework adapted from previous research on women's magazines. Articles

This study examines Glamour magazine to determine the messages the publication sends to its readers and to evaluate if such messages align with modern feminist goals. The articles of Glamour's 12 issues from the year of 2016 are analyzed using a framework adapted from previous research on women's magazines. Articles are coded as either positive (feminist, anti-traditional, promotes equality) or negative (anti-feminist, traditional, promotes inequality). Distinct content themes (appearance, dating, home, self-development, career development, politics/world issues, and entertainment) are also examined individually. After the presentation of data, I examine my findings through a feminist lens to determine the nature of the messages being sent to women through the magazine's editorial content, followed by an assessment of the value of women's magazines and how they could potentially shape the beliefs and roles of a 2017 woman. It is found that about half of the articles in Glamour could be considered as having feminist messages, with strong themes of personal choice, individual empowerment, and political involvement or activism in these articles and throughout the magazine. The content also has many blatantly feminist messages, including consistent use of the word itself. Another 40% of the articles are found to be neutral (no clear message to reader), and the remaining are negative. The sexism inherent in these negative articles is critically examined. Finally, the main takeaways of the findings and their ramifications are discussed from both a media consumer and a media producer perspective, with arguments for why it is important to be critical of a magazine's editorial content.
ContributorsAllnatt, Libby Paige (Author) / Pucci, Jessica (Thesis director) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Committee member) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12