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Description
The greatest challenge facing humanity in the twenty-first century is our ability to reconcile the capacity of natural systems to support continued improvement in human welfare around the globe. Over the last decade, the scientific community has attempted to formulate research agendas in response to what they view as the problems of sustainability. Perhaps the most prominent and wide-ranging of these efforts has been sustainability science, an interdisciplinary, problem-driven field that seeks to address fundamental questions on human-environment interactions. This project examines how sustainability scientists grapple with and bound the deeply social, political and normative dimensions of both characterizing and pursuing sustainability. Based on in-depth interviews with leading researchers and a content analysis of the relevant literature, this project first addresses three core questions: (1) how sustainability scientists define and bound sustainability; (2) how and why various research agendas are being constructed to address these notions of sustainability; (3) and how scientists see their research contributing to societal efforts to move towards sustainability. Based on these results, the project explores the tensions between scientific efforts to study and inform sustainability and social action. It discusses the implications of transforming sustainability into the subject of scientific analysis with a focus on the power of science to constrain discourse and the institutional and epistemological contexts that link knowledge to societal outcomes. Following this analysis, sustainability science is repositioned, borrowing Herbert Simon's concept, as a "science of design." Sustainability science has thus far been too focused on understanding the "problem-space"--addressing fundamental questions about coupled human-natural systems. A new set objectives and design principles are proposed that would move the field toward a more solutions-oriented approach and the enrichment of public reasoning and deliberation. Four new research streams that would situate sustainability science as a science of design are then discussed: creating desirable futures, socio-technical change, sustainability values, and social learning. The results serve as a foundation for a sustainability science that is evaluated on its ability to frame sustainability problems and solutions in ways that make them amenable to democratic and pragmatic social action.
ContributorsMiller, Thaddeus R. (Author) / Minteer, Ben A (Thesis advisor) / Redman, Charles L. (Committee member) / Sarewitz, Daniel (Committee member) / Wiek, Arnim (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Extant evaluation studies of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 have focused primarily on its effects on the pace of innovation and on the norms and practices of academic research but neglected other public values. Seeking to redress this shortcoming, I begin by examining Bayh-Dole with respect to other relevant public values following the Public Value Failure approach. From that analysis, equity emerges as a pressing issue. I define equity issues, in a loosely Rawlsian sense, as situations of unfair distribution of political power and economic resources. My analysis identifies a business model of offices of technology transfer--that I call "nurturing start-ups"--that is likely to become a standard of practice. This model can foster either firm competition or concentration in emerging industries and will therefore have an impact on the distribution of economic benefits from innovation. In addition, political influence to reform Bayh-Dole is allocated disproportionately in favor of those who stand to gain from this policy. For instance, elite universities hold a larger share of the resources and voice of the university system. Consequently, adjusting the nurturing start-ups model to foster competition and increasing cooperation among universities should lead to a more equitable distribution of economic benefits and political voice in technology transfer. Conventional policy evaluation is also responsible for the neglect of equity considerations in Bayh-Dole studies. Currently, "what is the policy impact?" can be answered far more systematically than "why the impact matters?" or "is this policy designed and implemented legitimately?" The problem lies with the consequentialist theory of value that undergirds evaluation. Hence, I propose a deontological theory of evaluation to reaffirm the discipline's commitment to democratic policy making.
ContributorsValdivia, Walter (Author) / Guston, David H. (Thesis advisor) / Sarewitz, Daniel (Committee member) / Bozeman, Barry (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Meteorology is an uncommon term rarely resonating through elementary classrooms. However, it is a concept found in both fourth and sixth grade Arizona science standards. As issues involving the environment are becoming more pertinent, it is important to study and understand atmospheric processes along with fulfilling the standards for each grade level. This thesis project teaches the practical skills of weather map reading and weather forecasting through the creation and execution of an after school lesson with the aide of seven teen assistants.
ContributorsChoulet, Shayna (Author) / Walters, Debra (Thesis director) / Oliver, Jill (Committee member) / Balling, Robert (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
Plants are essential to human life. They release oxygen into the atmosphere for us to breathe. They also provide shelter, medicine, clothing, tools, and food. For many people, the food that is on their tables and in their supermarkets isn't given much thought. Where did it come from? What part of the plant is it? How does it relate to others in the plant kingdom? How do other cultures use this plant? The most many of us know about them is that they are at the supermarket when we need them for dinner (Nabhan, 2009) (Vileisis, 2008).
ContributorsBarron, Kara (Author) / Landrum, Leslie (Thesis director) / Swanson, Tod (Committee member) / Pigg, Kathleen (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
DescriptionBased on previous research and findings it is proven that a non-profit class to create awareness will be beneficial in the prevention of eating disorders. This analysis will provide significant research to defend the proposed class.
ContributorsAllen, Brittany (Author) / Chung, Deborah (Author) / Fey, Richard (Thesis director) / Peck, Sidnee (Committee member) / Mazurkiewicz, Milena (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
Restraint stress is the most commonly used laboratory stressor. It is difficult to characterize as psychological or physical, because past studies show psychological features, but the nature of confinement adds a physical dimension. This was the first study to investigate how experience with restraint stress affects brain response to the next stress without a physical burden. Pair-housed adult male rats were transported to a novel context and restrained or left undisturbed (6hr). The next day, rats were returned to the same context and were either restrained or left undisturbed in the context (n=8/group). After 90min, rats were euthanized to determine functional activation in limbic structures using Fos immunohistochemistry and to measure HPA axis reactivity through blood serum corticosterone levels. Regardless of day 1 experience, context exposure on day 2 enhanced Fos expression in CA1 and CA3 of the hippocampus, basolateral amygdala, and central amygdala. Conversely, other regions and corticosterone levels demonstrated modulation from the previous day's experience. Specifically, rats that were placed back into the restraint context but not restrained on day 2 showed enhanced Fos expression in the dentate gyrus suprapyramidal blade (DGSup), and infralimbic cortex (IL). Also Fos expression was attenuated in rats that received two restraint exposures in the IL and medial amygdala (MEA), suggesting habituation. Only the DG infrapyramidal blade (DGInf) showed enhanced Fos expression to restraint on day 2 without influence of the previous day. While context predominately directed Fos activation, prior experience with restraint influenced Fos expression in the DGSup, IL, MEA and corticosterone levels to support restraint having psychological components.
ContributorsAnouti, P. Danya (Author) / Conrad, D. Cheryl (Thesis director) / Hammer, Ronald (Committee member) / Hoffman, N. Ann (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
This document builds a model, the Resilience Engine, of how a given sociotechnical innovation contributes to the resilience of its society, where the failure points of that process might be, and what outcomes, resilient or entropic, can be generated by the uptake of a particular innovation. Closed systems, which tend towards stagnation and collapse, are distinguished from open systems, which through ongoing encounters with external novelty, tend towards enduring resilience. Heterotopia, a space bounded from the dominant order in which novelty is generated and defended, is put forth as the locus of innovation for systemic resilience, defined as the capacity to adapt to environmental changes. The generative aspect of the Resilience Engine lies in a dialectic between a heterotopia and the dominant system across a membrane which permits interaction while maintaining the autonomy of the new space. With a model of how innovation, taken up by agents seeking power outside the dominant order, leads to resilience, and of what generates failures of the Resilience Engine as well as successes, the model is tested against cases drawn from two key virtual worlds of the mid-2000s. The cases presented largely validate the model, but generate a crucial surprise. Within those worlds, 2008-2010 saw an abrupt cultural transformation as the dialectic stage of the Resilience Engine's operation generated victories for the dominant order over promising emergent attributes of virtual heterotopia. At least one emergent practice has been assimilated, generating systemic resilience, that of the conference backchannel. A surprise, however, comes from extensive evidence that one element never problematized in thinking about innovation, the discontent agent, was largely absent from virtual worlds. Rather, what users sought was not greater agency but the comfort of submission over the burdens of self-governance. Thus, aside from minor cases, the outcome of the operation of the Resilience Engine within the virtual worlds studied was the colonization of the heterotopic space for the metropolis along with attempts by agents both external and internal to generate maximum order. Pursuant to the Resilience Engine model, this outcome is a recipe for entropic collapse and for preventing new heterotopias from arising under the current dominant means of production.
ContributorsMcKnight, John Carter (Author) / Miller, Clark (Thesis advisor) / Hayes, Elisabeth (Committee member) / Allenby, Braden (Committee member) / Daer, Alice (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Many different levels of government, organizations, and programs actively shape the future of energy in Arizona, a state that lacks a comprehensive energy plan. Disparate actions by multiple actors may slow the energy policy process rather than expedite it. The absence of a state energy policy or plan raises questions about how multiple actors and ideas engage with state energy policy development and whether the absence of a comprehensive state plan can be understood. Improving how policy development is conceptualized and giving more focused attention to the mechanisms by which interested parties become involved in shaping Arizona energy policy. To explore these questions, I examine the future energy efficiency. Initially, public engagement mechanisms were examined for their role in policy creation from a theoretical perspective. Next a prominent public engagement forum that was dedicated to the topic of the Arizona's energy future was examined, mapping its process and conclusions onto a policy process model. The first part of this thesis involves an experimental expert consultation panel which was convened to amplify and refine the results of a public forum. The second part utilizes an online follow up survey to complete unfinished ideas from the focus group. The experiment flowed from a hypothesis that formal expert discussion on energy efficiency policies, guided by the recommendations put forth by the public engagement forum on energy in Arizona, would result in an increase in relevance while providing a forum for interdisciplinary collaboration that is atypical in today's energy discussions. This experiment was designed and evaluated utilizing a public engagement framework that incorporated theoretical and empirical elements. Specifically, I adapted elements of three methods of public and expert engagement used in policy development to create a consultation process that was contextualized to energy efficiency stakeholders in Arizona and their unique constraints. The goal of the consultation process was to refine preferences about policy options by expert stakeholders into actionable goals that could achieve advancement on policy implementation. As a corollary goal, the research set out to define implementation barriers, refine policy ideas, and operationalize Arizona-centric goals for the future of energy efficiency.
ContributorsBryck, Drew (Author) / Graffy, Elisabeth A. (Thesis advisor) / Dalrymple, Michael (Committee member) / Miller, Clark (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Corporations in biomedicine hold significant power and influence, in both political and personal spheres. The decisions these companies make about ethics are critically important, as they help determine what products are developed, how they are developed, how they are promoted, and potentially even how they are regulated. In the last fifteen years, for-profit private companies have been assembling bioethics committees to help resolve dilemmas that require informed deliberation about ethical, legal, scientific, and economic considerations. Private sector bioethics committees represent an important innovation in the governance of emerging technologies, with corporations taking a lead role in deciding what is ethically appropriate or problematic. And yet, we know very little about these committees, including their structures, memberships, mandates, authority, and impact. Drawing on an extensive literature review and qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with executives, scientists and board members, this dissertation provides an in-depth analysis of the Ethics and Public Policy Board at SmithKline Beecham, the Ethics Advisory Board at Advanced Cell Technology, and the Bioethics Committee at Eli Lilly and offers insights about how ideas of bioethics and governance are currently imagined and enacted within corporations. The SmithKline Beecham board was the first private sector bioethics committee; its mandate was to explore, in a comprehensive and balanced analysis, the ethics of macro trends in science and technology. The Advanced Cell Technology board was created to be like a watchdog for the company, to prevent them from making major errors. The Eli Lilly board is different than the others in that it is made up mostly of internal employees and does research ethics consultations within the company. These private sector bioethics committees evaluate and construct new boundaries between their private interests and the public values they claim to promote. Findings from this dissertation show that criticisms of private sector bioethics that focus narrowly on financial conflicts of interest and a lack of transparency obscure analysis of the ideas about governance (about expertise, credibility and authority) that emerge from these structures and hamper serious debate about the possible impacts of moving ethical deliberation from the public to the private sector.
ContributorsBrian, Jennifer (Author) / Robert, Jason S (Thesis advisor) / Maienschein, Jane (Committee member) / Hurlbut, James B (Committee member) / Sarewitz, Daniel (Committee member) / Brown, Mark B. (Committee member) / Moreno, Jonathan D. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The humanities as a discipline have typically not used a rigid or technical method of assessment in the process of analysis. GIScience offers numerous benefits to this discipline by applying spatial analysis to rigorously understand it. Photography studios developed in the mid-19th Century as a highly popular business and emerging technology. This project was initiated by Dr. Jeremy Rowe with support from the ASU Emeritus College Research and Creative Activity and Undergraduate Research Initiative grants, and seeks to use GIS tools to understand the explosive growth of photography studios in the New York City area, specifically Manhattan and Brooklyn. Demonstrated in this project are several capabilities of the ESRI online GIS, including queries for year information, a tool showing growth over time, and a generated density map of photography studios.
ContributorsAbeln, Garrett James (Author) / Li, Wenwen (Thesis director) / Rowe, Jeremy (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor)
Created2015-05