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- Creators: College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
- Resource Type: Text
- Status: Published
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
Rabies disease remains enzootic among raccoons, skunks, foxes and bats in the United States. It is of primary concern for public-health agencies to control spatial spread of rabies in wildlife and its potential spillover infection of domestic animals and humans. Rabies is invariably fatal in wildlife if untreated, with a non-negligible incubation period. Understanding how this latency affects spatial spread of rabies in wildlife is the concern of chapter 2 and 3. Chapter 1 deals with the background of mathematical models for rabies and lists main objectives. In chapter 2, a reaction-diffusion susceptible-exposed-infected (SEI) model and a delayed diffusive susceptible-infected (SI) model are constructed to describe the same epidemic process -- rabies spread in foxes. For the delayed diffusive model a non-local infection term with delay is resulted from modeling the dispersal during incubation stage. Comparison is made regarding minimum traveling wave speeds of the two models, which are verified using numerical experiments. In chapter 3, starting with two Kermack and McKendrick's models where infectivity, death rate and diffusion rate of infected individuals can depend on the age of infection, the asymptotic speed of spread $c^\ast$ for the cumulated force of infection can be analyzed. For the special case of fixed incubation period, the asymptotic speed of spread is governed by the same integral equation for both models. Although explicit solutions for $c^\ast$ are difficult to obtain, assuming that diffusion coefficient of incubating animals is small, $c^\ast$ can be estimated in terms of model parameter values. Chapter 4 considers the implementation of realistic landscape in simulation of rabies spread in skunks and bats in northeast Texas. The Finite Element Method (FEM) is adopted because the irregular shapes of realistic landscape naturally lead to unstructured grids in the spatial domain. This implementation leads to a more accurate description of skunk rabies cases distributions.
ContributorsLiu, Hao (Author) / Kuang, Yang (Thesis advisor) / Jackiewicz, Zdzislaw (Committee member) / Lanchier, Nicolas (Committee member) / Smith, Hal (Committee member) / Thieme, Horst (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Bacteriophage (phage) are viruses that infect bacteria. Typical laboratory experiments show that in a chemostat containing phage and susceptible bacteria species, a mutant bacteria species will evolve. This mutant species is usually resistant to the phage infection and less competitive compared to the susceptible bacteria species. In some experiments, both susceptible and resistant bacteria species, as well as phage, can coexist at an equilibrium for hundreds of hours. The current research is inspired by these observations, and the goal is to establish a mathematical model and explore sufficient and necessary conditions for the coexistence. In this dissertation a model with infinite distributed delay terms based on some existing work is established. A rigorous analysis of the well-posedness of this model is provided, and it is proved that the susceptible bacteria persist. To study the persistence of phage species, a "Phage Reproduction Number" (PRN) is defined. The mathematical analysis shows phage persist if PRN > 1 and vanish if PRN < 1. A sufficient condition and a necessary condition for persistence of resistant bacteria are given. The persistence of the phage is essential for the persistence of resistant bacteria. Also, the resistant bacteria persist if its fitness is the same as the susceptible bacteria and if PRN > 1. A special case of the general model leads to a system of ordinary differential equations, for which numerical simulation results are presented.
ContributorsHan, Zhun (Author) / Smith, Hal (Thesis advisor) / Armbruster, Dieter (Committee member) / Kawski, Matthias (Committee member) / Kuang, Yang (Committee member) / Thieme, Horst (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
In vertebrate outer retina, changes in the membrane potential of horizontal cells affect the calcium influx and glutamate release of cone photoreceptors via a negative feedback. This feedback has a number of important physiological consequences. One is called background-induced flicker enhancement (BIFE) in which the onset of dim background enhances the center flicker response of horizontal cells. The underlying mechanism for the feedback is still unclear but competing hypotheses have been proposed. One is the GABA hypothesis, which states that the feedback is mediated by gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), an inhibitory neurotransmitter released from horizontal cells. Another is the ephaptic hypothesis, which contends that the feedback is non-GABAergic and is achieved through the modulation of electrical potential in the intersynaptic cleft between cones and horizontal cells. In this study, a continuum spine model of the cone-horizontal cell synaptic circuitry is formulated. This model, a partial differential equation system, incorporates both the GABA and ephaptic feedback mechanisms. Simulation results, in comparison with experiments, indicate that the ephaptic mechanism is necessary in order for the model to capture the major spatial and temporal dynamics of the BIFE effect. In addition, simulations indicate that the GABA mechanism may play some minor modulation role.
ContributorsChang, Shaojie (Author) / Baer, Steven M. (Thesis advisor) / Gardner, Carl L (Thesis advisor) / Crook, Sharon M (Committee member) / Kuang, Yang (Committee member) / Ringhofer, Christian (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Salmonella enterica is a gastrointestinal (GI) pathogen that can cause systemic diseases. It invades the host through the GI tract and can induce powerful immune responses in addition to disease. Thus, it is considered as a promising candidate to use as oral live vaccine vectors. Scientists have been making great efforts to get a properly attenuated Salmonella vaccine strain for a long time, but could not achieve a balance between attenuation and immunogenicity. So the regulated delayed attenuation/lysis Salmonella vaccine vectors were proposed as a design to seek this balance. The research work is progressing steadily, but more improvements need to be made. As one of the possible improvements, the cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) -independent cAMP receptor protein (Crp*) is expected to protect the Crp-dependent crucial regulator, araC PBAD, in these vaccine designs from interference by glucose, which decreases synthesis of cAMP, and enhance the colonizing ability by and immunogenicity of the vaccine strains. In this study, the cAMP-independent crp gene mutation, crp-70, with or without araC PBAD promoter cassette, was introduced into existing Salmonella vaccine strains. Then the plasmid stability, growth rate, resistance to catabolite repression, colonizing ability, immunogenicity and protection to challenge of these new strains were compared with wild-type crp or araC PBAD crp strains using western blots, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) and animal studies, so as to evaluate the effects of the crp-70 mutation on the vaccine strains. The performances of the crp-70 strains in some aspects were closed to or even exceeded the crp+ strains, but generally they did not exhibit the expected advantages compared to their wild-type parents. Crp-70 rescued the expression of araC PBAD fur from catabolite repression. The strain harboring araC PBAD crp-70 was severely affected by its slow growth, and its colonizing ability and immunogenicity was much weaker than the other strains. The Pcrp crp-70 strain showed relatively good ability in colonization and immune stimulation. Both the araC PBAD crp-70 and the Pcrp crp-70 strains could provide certain levels of protection against the challenge with virulent pneumococci, which were a little lower than for the crp+ strains.
ContributorsShao, Shihuan (Author) / Curtiss, Roy (Thesis advisor) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This paper studies the change in social diversity and interaction space from the Classic to Postclassic periods in the Mimbres Valley and East Mimbres Area. Between the Classic and Postclassic periods the Mimbres region of the American Southwest exhibits an increase in diversity of ceramic wares. Previous research suggests that increased diversity of ceramics indicates a more diverse community, which could pose challenges to local social interaction (Nelson et al. 2011). I am interested in whether the architecture of plazas, focal points of communities' social structures, change in response to the growing social diversity. To examine this, I quantify the diversity of painted ceramics at Classic and Postclassic villages as well as the extent of the enclosure of plazas. I find that there is a definite shift towards greater plaza enclosure between the Classic and Postclassic periods. I conclude this paper with a discussion of possible interpretations of this trend regarding the social reactions of Mimbres communities to the changes which reshaped the region between the Classic and Postclassic periods.
ContributorsHarkness, Rebecca Jean (Author) / Nelson, Margaret (Thesis director) / Hegmon, Michelle (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
This project created a teaching curriculum resource guide for using the popular series, The Hunger Games, in 6th-8th grade classrooms to introduce cultural issues such as child soldiers and international development to students. Studies have shown that literature can cultivate empathy and encourage youth to act. This combined with the expanding phenomenon of participatory culture and fandom activism as outlined by Henry Jenkins demonstrate the potential for youth to learn and act when given the opportunity and resources to do so. The curriculum is composed of three units: The first is a three-week reading of the books with various activities for students to really understand the narrative and source text. The second and third units address the issues of child soldiers and international development using The Hunger Games as a framework and a keystone to build connections so that these complex issues are accessible to youth. This project is a first step in the development of a curriculum that spans the full trilogy and covers a variety of current event topics.
ContributorsSimpson, Rebecca (Author) / Sivak, Henry (Thesis director) / Blasingame, James (Committee member) / Nelson, Margaret (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
Through this creative project, I executed a Distracted Driving Awareness Campaign at Arizona State University to raise awareness about the dangers of distracted driving, specifically texting while driving. As an Undergraduate Student Government Senator, my priority is the safety and success of students, both in and out of the classroom. By partnering with State Farm and AT&T, we were able to raise awareness about the dangers of distracted driving and collected over 200 pledges from students to never text and drive.
ContributorsHibbs, Jordan Ashley (Author) / Miller, Clark (Thesis director) / Parmentier, Mary Jane (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Graduate College (Contributor)
Created2014-05