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This study focused on the connection between the EnvZ/OmpR two-component regulatory system and the iron homeostasis system in Escherichia coli, specifically how a mutant form of EnvZ11/OmpR is able to reduce the expression of fepA::lacZ, a reporter gene fusion in E. coli. FepA is one of several outer membrane siderophore receptors that allow extracellular siderophores bound to iron to enter the cells to power various biological processes. Previous studies have shown that in E. coli cells that expressed a mutant allele of envZ, called envZ11, which led to altered expression of various iron genes including down regulation of fepA::lacZ. The wild type EnvZ/OmpR system is not considered to regulate iron genes, but because these envz11 strains had downregulated fepA::lacZ, this study was undertaken to understand the connection and mechanisms of this downregulation. A large number of Lac+ revertants were obtained from the B32-2483 strain (envz11 and fepA::lacZ) and 7 Lac+ revertants that had reversion mutations not directly correcting the envZ11 allele were further characterized. With P1 phage transduction genetic mapping that involved moving a kanamycin resistance marker linked to fepA::lacZ, two Lac+ revertants were found to have their reversion mutations in the fepA promoter region, while the other five revertants had their mutations mapping outside the fepA region. These two revertants underwent DNA sequencing and found to carry two different single base pair mutations in two different locations of the fepA promoter region. Each one is in the Fur repressor binding region, but one also may have affected the Shine-Dalgarno region involved in translation initiation. All 7 reveratants underwent beta-galactosidase assays to measure fepA::lacZ expression. The two revertants that had mutations in the fepA promoter region had significantly increased fepA activity, with the revertant with the Shine-Dalgarno mutation having the most elevated fepA expression. The other 5 revertants that did not map in the fepA region had fepA expression elevated to the same level as that found in the wild type EnvZ/OmpR background. The data suggest that the negative effect of envZ11 can be overcome by multiple mechanisms, including directly correcting the envZ11 allele or changing the fepA promoter region.
ContributorsKalinkin, Victor Arkady (Co-author) / Misra, Rajeev (Co-author, Thesis director) / Mason, Hugh (Committee member) / Foy, Joseph (Committee member) / Biomedical Informatics Program (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
My passion on the importance of oral health began when I was four years old with the traumatic experience of witnessing my grandmother, my idol, with a toothless smile without her dentures in. At present, I have been a dental assistant for five years, and have heard of similar stories of people struggling with maintaining oral hygiene and having access to oral health care, including: family members, friends, patients, coworkers, and even Arizona State University faculty. Since the abolishment of emergency dental services in Arizona's Health Care Cost Containment System, dental related oral health care rates have jumped incrementally. In addition Arizona has created a dental desert, because dentists are not setting up their practices in the rural areas of the Valley, due to wanting to generate the most amount of income. Studies have also shown that dentists feel inept at treating ethnically diverse patients as well as patients from lower socioeconomic classes. These problems create a myriad of mental effects and physical ailments on the patient that are not limited to the oral cavity. In this paper, these issues in oral health care were studied along with their effects, including recommendations for resolutions.
ContributorsTaylor, Janine Marie (Author) / Ingram-Waters, Mary (Thesis director) / Ili, Joan (Committee member) / School for the Future of Innovation in Society (Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Sex trafficking is an issue that is prevalent in the United States, including in Arizona. The Catholic Charities Diversion Program in Phoenix seeks to rehabilitate adults who have been involved in prostitution. The aim of this paper was to test three pilot interventions to address stress experienced by the program clients through three different techniques which was given in a workshop format. Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), Dance Movement Therapy (DMT), and yoga and meditation are the three types of stress reduction techniques that have been studied in previous research and were pilot tested with adult sex-trafficked victims. This particular sections discusses the benefits of DMT and the results obtained after teaching sex-trafficked victims this therapy. The results of the pilot studies found that all three techniques reduced levels of stress significantly, and that they want further testing.
ContributorsKhanal, Garima (Co-author) / Somayaji, Vallari (Co-author) / Satapathy, Nikita (Co-author) / Sepowitz, Dominique Roe (Thesis director) / Graff, Sarah (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Sex trafficking is an issue that is prevalent in the United States, including in Arizona. The Catholic Charities Diversion Program in Phoenix seeks to rehabilitate adults who have been involved in prostitution. The aim of this paper was to test three pilot interventions to address stress experienced by the program clients through three different techniques that were given in workshop format. Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), Dance Movement Therapy, and yoga and meditation are the three types of stress reduction techniques that have been studied in previous research and were pilot tested with adult sex trafficking victims. The results of the pilot studies and all three techniques reduced levels of stress significantly, and they warrant future testing.
ContributorsSatapathy, Nikita (Co-author) / Khanal, Garima (Co-author) / Somayaji, Vallari (Co-author) / Roe-Sepowitz, Dominique (Thesis director) / Graff, Sarah (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Sex trafficking is an issue that is prevalent in the United States, including in Arizona. The Catholic Charities Diversion Program in Phoenix seeks to rehabilitate women who were involved in prostitution. The aim of this paper was to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) through three different techniques, which will be given in the format of workshops. Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), Dance Movement Therapy (DMT), and yoga and meditation are the three types of stress reduction techniques that have been studied in previous papers and will be used for sex-trafficked victims. It is important to combat stress and find stress reducing techniques to improve health and quality of life in an individual. This specific section of the study focuses on yoga and meditation therapy and how it helps to reduce stress. The results showed that all three techniques, including yoga and meditation, reduced levels of stress significantly, thereby giving them a tool to use on their own to improve their health, and that they can be further tested in a longitudinal study to examine the reduction of PTSD symptoms over time.
ContributorsSomayaji, Vallari (Co-author) / Khanal, Garima (Co-author) / Satapathy, Nikita (Co-author) / Roe-Sepowitz, Dominique (Thesis director) / Graff, Sarah (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder in the central nervous system that affects a host of daily activities and involves a variety of symptoms; these include tremors, slurred speech, and rigid muscles. It is the second most common movement disorder globally. In Stage 3 of Parkinson's, afflicted individuals begin to develop an abnormal gait pattern known as freezing of gait (FoG), which is characterized by decreased step length, shuffling, and eventually complete loss of movement; they are unable to move, and often results in a fall. Surface electromyography (sEMG) is a diagnostic tool to measure electrical activity in the muscles to assess overall muscle function. Most conventional EMG systems, however, are bulky, tethered to a single location, expensive, and primarily used in a lab or clinical setting. This project explores an affordable, open-source, and portable platform called Open Brain-Computer Interface (OpenBCI). The purpose of the proposed device is to detect gait patterns by leveraging the surface electromyography (EMG) signals from the OpenBCI and to help a patient overcome an episode using haptic feedback mechanisms. Previously designed devices with similar intended purposes utilize accelerometry as a method of detection as well as audio and visual feedback mechanisms in their design.
ContributorsAnantuni, Lekha (Author) / McDaniel, Troy (Thesis director) / Tadayon, Arash (Committee member) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
The Community Action Research Experiences (CARE) Program collaborated with a local non-profit organization called Arizona Facts of Life to design a program evaluation for their Youth Leadership Development Training Program, FACTS Curriculum. The purpose of this study was to identify targeted program outcomes, design an assessment to address these outcomes, and recommend possible evaluation designs. Arizona Facts of Life will implement the assessment using one of the recommended evaluation designs, and use the results to measure their Youth Leadership Development Training Program's outcomes and demonstrate efficacy.
ContributorsVan Vianen, Olivia Leigh (Author) / Updegraff, Kimberly (Thesis director) / Dumka, Larry (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor)
Created2016-05
The neurobiology of sentence comprehension: an fMRI study of late American Sign Language acquisition
Description
Language acquisition is a phenomenon we all experience, and though it is well studied many questions remain regarding the neural bases of language. Whether a hearing speaker or Deaf signer, spoken and signed language acquisition (with eventual proficiency) develop similarly and share common neural networks. While signed language and spoken language engage completely different sensory modalities (visual-manual versus the more common auditory-oromotor) both languages share grammatical structures and contain syntactic intricacies innate to all languages. Thus, studies of multi-modal bilingualism (e.g. a native English speaker learning American Sign Language) can lead to a better understanding of the neurobiology of second language acquisition, and of language more broadly. For example, can the well-developed visual-spatial processing networks in English speakers support grammatical processing in sign language, as it relies heavily on location and movement? The present study furthers the understanding of the neural correlates of second language acquisition by studying late L2 normal hearing learners of American Sign Language (ASL). Twenty English speaking ASU students enrolled in advanced American Sign Language coursework participated in our functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study. The aim was to identify the brain networks engaged in syntactic processing of ASL sentences in late L2 ASL learners. While many studies have addressed the neurobiology of acquiring a second spoken language, no previous study to our knowledge has examined the brain networks supporting syntactic processing in bimodal bilinguals. We examined the brain networks engaged while perceiving ASL sentences compared to ASL word lists, as well as written English sentences and word lists. We hypothesized that our findings in late bimodal bilinguals would largely coincide with the unimodal bilingual literature, but with a few notable differences including additional attention networks being engaged by ASL processing. Our results suggest that there is a high degree of overlap in sentence processing networks for ASL and English. There also are important differences in regards to the recruitment of speech comprehension, visual-spatial and domain-general brain networks. Our findings suggest that well-known sentence comprehension and syntactic processing regions for spoken languages are flexible and modality-independent.
ContributorsMickelsen, Soren Brooks (Co-author) / Johnson, Lisa (Co-author) / Rogalsky, Corianne (Thesis director) / Azuma, Tamiko (Committee member) / Howard, Pamela (Committee member) / Department of Speech and Hearing Science (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
The purpose of this study is to analyze the stereotypes surrounding four wind instruments (flutes, oboes, clarinets, and saxophones), and the ways in which those stereotypes propagate through various levels of musical professionalism in Western culture. In order to determine what these stereotypes might entail, several thousand social media and blog posts were analyzed, and direct quotations detailing the perceived stereotypical personality profiles for each of the four instruments were collected. From these, the three most commonly mentioned characteristics were isolated for each of the instrument groups as follows: female gender, femininity, and giggliness for flutists, intelligence, studiousness, and demographics (specifically being an Asian male) for clarinetists, quirkiness, eccentricity, and being seen as a misfit for oboists, and overconfidence, attention-seeking behavior, and coolness for saxophonists. From these traits, a survey was drafted which asked participating college-aged musicians various multiple choice, opinion scale, and short-answer questions that gathered how much they agree or disagree with each trait describing the instrument from which it was derived. Their responses were then analyzed to determine how much correlation existed between the researched characteristics and the opinions of modern musicians. From these results, it was determined that 75% of the traits that were isolated for a particular instrument were, in fact, recognized as being true in the survey data, demonstrating that the stereotypes do exist and seem to be widely recognizable across many age groups, locations, and levels of musical skill. Further, 89% of participants admitted that the instrument they play has a certain stereotype associated with it, but only 38% of people identify with that profile. Overall, it was concluded that stereotypes, which are overwhelmingly negative and gendered by nature, are indeed propagated, but musicians do not appear to want to identify with them, and they reflect a more archaic and immature sense that does not correlate to the trends observed in modern, professional music.
ContributorsAllison, Lauren Nicole (Author) / Bhattacharjya, Nilanjana (Thesis director) / Ankeny, Casey (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
In this study, I aim to understand general knowledge of menstruation and reproductive health among women who live and work in Dakar, Senegal. While there is an established nationalized sex education curriculum and robust HIV prevention campaigns, there is nonetheless an unmet need for sexual health education in Senegal and limited access to family planning services in low-income communities. I examine data obtained from surveys conducted with participants selected using convenience sampling in five different neighborhoods in Dakar, as well as ethnographic observations during the four month period of study. Qualitative and quantitative analyses address women's comforts levels during menstruation, barriers to access of high quality menstrual care products, familiarity with different kinds of contraceptive methods, and information on where women receive information regarding puberty, sex, and menstruation. Results show that most participants seek out family members, female friends and other respected members in the community for reproductive development information. National programs and international organizations sponsor youth to become community educators, who offer an informal and more accessible method of education. Earlier research shows that informal methods of education can be extremely effective ; in the setting of Dakar, young health educators are also creating inclusive and safe spaces for meaningful discussions about sexuality to be held, combating the negative effects of the traditional patriarchal and conservative culture. Relationships with one's community are extremely important, and can be an invaluable resource in transmitting sexual and reproductive health information to women. Improved understanding of reproductive health among women in Senegal can encourage them to make informed decisions about family planning.
ContributorsShirazi, Afsoon Louise (Author) / Hayford, Sarah (Thesis director) / Suk, Mina (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor, Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05