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- Creators: Department of Psychology
- Status: Published
Description
This paper investigates the challenges associated with creating engaging virtual programming during the COVID-19 pandemic through the event Playfest from the ASU Art Museum. A survey was created and given to participants of the live Zoom event to understand which aspects were a success from the audience perspective. Staff members from different job ranks were interviewed about the internal structure in place for altering the popular in-person event into a digital one. Even though the COVID-19 pandemic will not last forever, exploring how to create virtual programming that is successful at engaging audiences allows for museums to remain relevant in a world where digital media is frequently consumed.
ContributorsKenrick, Eleni Maria (Author) / Coats, Cala (Thesis director) / Medill, Kathryn (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
HackerHero is an educational game designed to teach children, especially those from marginalized backgrounds, computation thinking skills needed for STEAM fields. It also teaches children about social injustice. This project was focused on creating an audio visualization for an AI character within the HackerHero game. The audio visualization consisted of a static silhouette of a face and a wave-like form to represent the mouth. Audio content analysis was performed on audio sampled from the character’s voice lines. Pitch and amplitude derived from the analysis was used to animate the character’s visual features such as it’s brightness, color, and mouth movement. The mouth’s movement and color was manipulated with the audio’s pitch. The lights of Wave were controlled by the amplitude of the audio. Design considerations were made to accommodate those with visual disabilities such as color blindness and epilepsy. Overall the final audio visualization satisfied the project sponsor and built upon existing audio visualization work. User feedback will be a necessity for improving the audio visualization in the future.
ContributorsNguyen, Joshep D (Author) / Chavez-Echaegaray, Helen (Thesis director) / Waggoner, Trae (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
This project is a feminist exploration of the muse as a cultural icon, and of the relationship dynamic between artists and their muses, using specific twentieth century photographers and their models as examples. The pairs discussed are Lee Miller and Man Ray, Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, and Charis Wilson and Edward Weston.
ContributorsFanguy, Rachel Marie (Author) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Thesis director) / Fahlman, Betsy (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Background: Both puberty and diets composed of high levels of saturated fats have been shown to result in central adiposity, fasting hyperinsulinemia, insulin resistance and impaired glucose tolerance. While a significantly insulinogenic phenotypic change occurs in these two incidences, glucose homeostasis does not appear to be affected. Methods: Male, Sprague-dawley rats were fed diets consisting of CHOW or low fat (LF), High Fat Diet and High Fat Diet (HFD) with supplementary Canola Oil (Monounsaturated fat). These rats were given these diets at 4-5 weeks old and given intraperitoneal and oral glucose tolerance tests(IPGTT; OGTT) at 4 and 8 weeks to further understand glucose and insulin behavior under different treatments. (IPGTT: LF-n=14, HFD-n=16, HFD+CAN-n=12; OGTT: LF-n=8, HFD-n=8, HFD+CAN-n=6). Results: When comparing LF fed rats at 8 weeks with 4 week glucose challenge test, area under the curve (AUC) of glucose was 1.2 that of 4 weeks. At 8 weeks, HFD fed rats AUCg was much greater than LF fed rats under both IPGTT and OGTT. When supplemented with Canola oil, HFD fed rats AUC returned to LF data range. Despite the alleviating glucose homeostasis affects of Canola oil the AUC of insulin curve, which was elevated by HFD, remained high. Conclusion: HFD in maturing rats elevates fasting insulin levels, increases insulin resistance and lowers glucose homeostasis. When given a monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA) supplement fasting hyperinsulinemia, and late hyperinsulinemia still occur though glucose homeostasis is regained. For OGTT HFD also induced late hyper c-peptide levels and compared to LF and HFD+CAN, a higher c-peptide level over time.
ContributorsRay, Tyler John (Author) / Caplan, Michael (Thesis director) / Herman, Richard (Committee member) / Towner, Kali (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Nucleic acids encode the information required to create life, and polymerases are the gatekeepers charged with maintaining the storage and flow of this genetic information. Synthetic biologists utilize this universal property to modify organisms and other systems to create unique traits or improve the function of others. One of the many realms in synthetic biology involves the study of biopolymers that do not exist naturally, which is known as xenobiology. Although life depends on two biopolymers for genetic storage, it may be possible that alternative molecules (xenonucleic acids – XNAs), could be used in their place in either a living or non-living system. However, implementation of an XNA based system requires the development of polymerases that can encode and decode information stored in these artificial polymers. A strategy called directed evolution is used to modify or alter the function of a protein of interest, but identifying mutations that can modify polymerase function is made problematic by their size and overall complexity. To reduce the amount of sequence space that needs to be samples when attempting to identify polymerase variants, we can try to make informed decisions about which amino acid residues may have functional roles in catalysis. An analysis of Family B polymerases has shown that residues which are involved in substrate specificity are often highly conserved both at the sequence and structure level. In order to validate the hypothesis that a strong correlation exists between structural conservation and catalytic activity, we have selected and mutated residues in the 9°N polymerase using a loss of function mutagenesis strategy based on a computational analysis of several homologues from a diverse range of taxa. Improvement of these models will hopefully lead to quicker identification of loci which are ideal engineering targets.
ContributorsHaeberle, Tyler Matthew (Author) / Chaput, John (Thesis director) / Chen, Julian (Committee member) / Larsen, Andrew (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Emerging Information Technology, Storage and Evaluation within Healthcare: A Discerning IMT Analysis
Description
The introduction of novel information technology within contemporary healthcare settings presents a critical juncture for the industry and thus lends itself to the importance of better understanding the impact of this emerging "health 2.0" landscape. Simply, how such technology may affect the healthcare system is still not fully realized, despite the ever-growing need to adopt it in order to serve a growing patient population. Thus, two pertinent questions are posed: is HIT useful and practical and, if so, what is the best way to implement it? This study examined the clinical implementation of specific instances of health information technology (HIT) so as to weigh its benefits and risks to ultimately construct a proposal for successful widespread adoption. Due to the poignancy of information analysis within HIT, Information Measurement Theory (IMT) was used to measure the effectiveness of current HIT systems as well as to elucidate improvements for future implementation. The results indicate that increased transparency, attention to patient-focused approaches and proper IT training will not only allow HIT to better serve the community, but will also decrease inefficient healthcare expenditure.
ContributorsMaietta, Myles Anthony (Author) / Kashiwagi, Dean (Thesis director) / Kashiwagi, Jacob (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
We examined the relations between maternal depression, discipline practices, and toddler mental health outcomes, specifically competence and total problem behavior. Ethnicity was considered as a moderator in all analyses. For the first time, ethnicity was considered as a moderator of the heritability of toddler competence and total problem behavior. The data came from the Arizona Twin Project. A subsample containing only Caucasian (66%) and Hispanic (34%; 87% of Mexican descent) participants was used. Primary caregivers (>95% mothers) reported on levels of maternal depression, discipline practices, and their twins' competency and problem behaviors. It was hypothesized that maternal depression would be associated with less competency and more problem behaviors in toddlers; inductive discipline practices would be associated with higher competency and fewer problem behaviors; and punitive discipline practices would be associated with lower competency and more problem behaviors. Ethnicity was predicted to moderate only the relation between discipline practices and toddler mental health. Consistent with predictions, maternal depression predicted less competency and more problem behaviors, and inductive discipline predicted higher competency and fewer problem behaviors, while punitive discipline predicted lower competency and more problem behaviors. Ethnicity moderated the relation between maternal depression at 12 months and total problem behaviors. The heritability of competence and total problem behavior varied across the Caucasian and Hispanic samples.
ContributorsChon, Sarah Maria (Author) / Lemery-Chalfant, Kathryn (Thesis director) / Knight, George (Committee member) / Bradley, Robert (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the US. Low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) scans are speculated to reduce lung cancer mortality. However LDCT scans impose multiple risks including false-negative results, false- positive results, overdiagnosis, and cancer due to repeated exposure to radiation. Immunosignaturing is a new method proposed to screen and detect lung cancer, eliminating the risks associated with LDCT scans. Known and blinded primary blood sera from participants with lung cancer and no cancer were run on peptide microarrays and analyzed. Immunosignatures for each known sample collectively indicated 120 peptides unique to lung cancer and non-cancer participants. These 120 peptides were used to determine the status of the blinded samples. Verification of the results from Vanderbilt is pending.
ContributorsNguyen, Geneva Trieu (Author) / Woodbury, Neal (Thesis director) / Zhao, Zhan-Gong (Committee member) / Stafford, Phillip (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The relationship between mental illness (or "madness," as Socrates labeled psychosis, as well as a wide range of states of thought and emotion [Jamison, 1993]) and creativity has been noted since before the times of Socrates. The questions that this noted relationship pose are significant. Famous authors, poets, artists, and musicians who suffered from various forms of mental illness are littered throughout history. Edgar Allen Poe himself noted, "Men have called me mad but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence \u2014 whether much that is glorious \u2014 whether all that is profound \u2014 does not spring from disease of thought \u2014 from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect." Only in recent years have researchers begun to classify these disorders of past artists using modern diagnostic measures. While the concept of a relationship between creativity and mental illness is fascinating in and of itself, understanding the implications of a possible correlation is essential to the care and treatment that individuals with the diseases are given. If, indeed, creativity is linked with affective disorders, what does this mean for the treatment of these disorders? By eliminating the symptoms of mood disorders, are we also inadvertently eliminating creativity? It is important to acknowledge the possibility that mental illnesses like bipolar disorder include benefits to those afflicted. How can we treat the negative symptoms of mood disorders while enhancing the positive symptoms? In order to conclude that there is a link between creativity and mood disorders, it is first necessary to reexamine and reestablish the processes by which mood disorders are diagnosed. Although currently diagnosed on a categorical scale \u2014 meaning the patient is diagnosed under the black-and-white category of manic or depressive at a given point in time \u2014 this paper will argue that mood disorders can be better diagnosed and treated on a continuum of mood states. Furthermore, by viewing mood disorders on such a continuum, writers like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, whose diagnoses are debated by historians and professionals, can be established as having a diagnosable affective disorder, since both experienced symptoms of depression and mania, if not in the precise timing and manner proscribed by the Diagnostic Manual. Finally, by determining these writers' diagnoses, a relationship can be explored between their creative states and their mood states.
ContributorsKugler, Danica Eileen (Author) / Montesano, Mark (Thesis director) / Holbo, Christine (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Letters and Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Using DNA nanotechnology a library of structures of various geometries have been built; these structures are modified chemically and/or enzymatically at nanometer precisions. With DNA being chemically very stable, these structures can be functionalized through an abundance of well-established protocols. Additionally, they can be used for various biological and medicinal purposes, such as drug delivery. For in vivo applications, the DNA nanostructures must have a long circulation life in the bloodstream; otherwise, they could be easily excreted shortly after entry. One way of making these nanostructures long lasting in the blood is to cover them with the biocompatible polymer, polyethylene glycol (PEG). Adding DNA to PEG before forming structures has been found to interfere in the hybridization of the DNA in the structure, resulting in formation of deformed structures. In this study we have developed a new methodology based on "click chemistry" (CC) to modify the surface of DNA nanostructures with PEG after they are formed. These structures can then be used for in vivo studies and potential applications in the future.
ContributorsSmith, Eric Lynn (Author) / Yan, Hao (Thesis director) / Liu, Yan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor)
Created2015-05