Partisan politics has created an increasingly polarized political climate in the United States. Despite the divisive political climate, women’s representation in politics has also increased drastically over the years. I began this project to see if there is a partisan rivalry between women in politics or a sense of shared “womanhood.” This thesis explores the role political parties play for women in office by examining how they vote on bills, what type of bills they propose, and whether or not they work collaboratively with their female counterparts at the Arizona State Legislature. My main goals for this project are to see how strong or weak political parties are in shaping political behavior at the Arizona State Legislature and to determine if there is a sense of “womanhood” despite different political affiliations. I also explore the role party affiliation plays within women legislators at the Arizona State Legislature.

This thesis identifies and explains two main problems students face during their internships. The first problem relates to feeling bored at internships due to the simplicity of projects or lack of work. From the interviews conducted, several strategies to avoid this boredom were created, including having employers design education plans for interns to further their knowledge in programs such as excel during their downtime. The second problem with internships discovered focuses on the gap between what is taught in schools versus what is expected of interns in practice. This thesis identifies several opportunities for improvement in education and strategies on how to handle feeling overwhelmed on intern projects due to lack of knowledge.

Animals encounter information from different resources simultaneously, integrating input from multiple sensory systems before responding behaviorally. When different cues interact with one another, they may enhance, diminish, or have no impact on their responses. In this project, we test how the presence of chemical cues affect the perception of visual cues. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) often use both chemical cues and visual cues to communicate with shoal mates, to assess predation risk, and to locate food. For example, zebrafish rely on both olfactory cues and visual cues for kin recognition, and they frequently use both chemical and visual cues to search for and to capture prey. In zebrafish, the terminal nerve (TN) constitutes the olfacto-visual centrifugal pathway and connects the olfactory bulb with the retina, thus allowing olfactory perception also to activate visual receptors. Past studies have found that the presence of an olfactory cue can modulate visual sensitivity in zebrafish through the terminal nerve pathway. Alternatively, given that zebrafish are highly social, the presence of social chemical cues may distract individuals from responding to other visual cues, such as food and predator visual cues. Foraging and predator chemical cues, including chemical food cues and alarm cues, may also distract individuals from responding to non-essential visual cues. Here, we test whether the response to a visual cue either increases or decreases when presented in concert with alanine, an amino acid that represents the olfactory cues of zebrafish prey. We found that the presence of chemical cues did not affect whether zebrafish responded to visual cues, but that the fish took longer to respond to visual cues when chemical cues were also present. These findings suggest that different aspects of behavior could be affected by the interaction between sensory modalities. We also found that this impact of delayed response was significant only when the visual cue<br/>was weak compared to the strength of the chemical cue, suggesting that the salience of interacting cues may also have an influence on determining the outcomes of the interactions. Overall, the interactive effects of chemicals on an animal’s response to visual cues may also have wide-ranging impacts on behavior including foraging, mating, and evading predators, and the interaction of cues may affect different aspects of the same behavior.

The purpose of this study is to create and establish an efficient and cost-effective solution to decrease the effects of sedentarism in pregnant women. Our team was given a propelling question, from which we had to narrow down our scope and conduct primary and secondary research to determine our ideal customers. The design of our study intends to imitate the development of a startup where ideas are created from scratch and the final deliverable is a business model plan that shows some sort of traction. Our first major finding is that a sedentary lifestyle can be treated without major challenges in low risk pregnancies. We determined that uncertainty and lack of concise and clear information is one of the main causes of an increased level of sedentary behavior in low risk pregnancies. A significant driver for women to do some sort of activity or exercise stems from feeling supported, which doesn’t necessarily come from their partner or couple, but instead from other women that are going to a similar process as them. There are apps in the market that intend to serve pregnant women; however, there is not one that incorporates a social aspect to achieve their goal. In conclusion, there is opportunity in the market for a socially integrated pregnancy fitness app. The Gleam concept has been consciously developed to decrease sedentary behavior through concise, clear, and reliable information and by encouraging women through a socialization platform.

Humans use emotions to communicate social cues to our peers on a daily basis. Are we able to identify context from facial expressions and match them to specific scenarios? This experiment found that people can effectively distinguish negative and positive emotions from each other from a short description. However, further research is needed to find out whether humans can learn to perceive emotions only from contextual explanations.

Locusts are generalist herbivores meaning that they are able to consume a variety of plants. Because of their broad diet, and ability to respond rapidly to a favorable environment with giant swarms of voracious insects, they are dangerous pests. Their potential impacts on humans increase dramatically when individuals switch from their solitarious phase to their gregarious phase where they congregate and begin marching and eventually swarming together. These swarms, often billions strong, can consume the vegetation of enormous swaths of land and can travel hundreds of kilometers in a single day producing a complex threat to food security. To better understand the biology of these important pests we explored the gut microbiome of the South American locust (Schistocerca cancellata). We hypothesized generally that the gut microbiome in this species would be critically important as has been shown in many other species. We extracted and homogenized entire guts from male S. cancellata, and then extracted gut microbiome genomic DNA. Genomic DNA was then confirmed on a gel. The initial extractions were of poor quality for sequencing, but subsequent extractions performed by collaborators during troubleshooting at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville proved more useful and were used for PCR. This resulted in the detections of the following bacterial genera in the gut of S. cancellata: Enterobacter, Enterococcus, Serratia, Pseudomonas, Actinobacter, and Weisella. With this data, we are able to speculate about the physiological roles that they hold within the locust gut generating hypotheses for further testing. Understanding the microbial composition of this species’ gut may help us better understand the locust in general in an effort to more sustainably manage them.

Coverage of Black soccer players by Italian media outlets perpetuate narratives rooted in anti-Black racism. These narratives reflect the country’s changing attitude toward immigration. Historically a country from which citizens emigrated, it is now a recipient of immigrants from Africa. These changing demographics have also caused a shift in the focus of racism in Italy, from discrimination against southern Italians to anti-Black racism. As the country has explored what defines a unified Italian identity, Afro-Italians have been excluded. This study evaluates how these perceptions of Afro-Italian soccer players manifest according to various racial frames, and the frequency with which they do so in three Italian sports dailies: La Gazzetta dello Sport, Corriere dello Sport – Stadio, and Tuttosport. In this context, Afro-Italian refers to an Italian citizen of African descent, and anti-Black racism denotes any form of discrimination, stereotyping, or racism that specifically impacts those of African descent. For this study, a representative sample was collected consisting of website coverage published by the three sports dailies: articles devoted to Mario Balotelli that appeared between 2007 and 2014, and articles devoted to Moise Kean between 2016 and 2019. Three coders recorded the content of the sample articles on a spreadsheet organized by the type of racial frame applied to Black athletes. The analysis reveals that the players were frequently portrayed as being incapable of self-determination and of having an innate, natural athletic capability, rather than one honed through practice. The coders noted that in addition to explicit racial framing, there were also instances of implicit and subtle ways these racial frames manifest. In future research, the coding procedure will need to be adapted to account for these more layered and nuanced manifestations of anti-Black racism.

The digital education market has been expanding rapidly during the last few years, providing ample opportunity in the future. There are many technologies involved in this market, with the most significant being cloud client services, edge computing, and interactive flat panel displays (IFPDs). Combined, these technologies represent ninety-two percent of the Serviceable Available Market with IFPDs as the largest opportunity with sixty-nine percent (Company X Data). Cloud computing provides anytime/anywhere services that can be accessed from any device: e-portfolios, content access, and creation. Edge computing processes data closer to its source and the point of service delivery, providing ultra-low latency to help boost efficiency, mainly used for data processing. Lastly, IFPDs are touchscreen display devices ideal for collaborative spaces and meeting rooms. They are a substitute for outdated projector technology and provide better connectivity and built-in software solutions. <br/>We decided to develop a strategy to expand the market share in the IFPD market because it is the largest, and we consider Company X has a significant advantage in this sector. Company X manufactures the processors used in IFPDs and has established good relationships with manufacturers of these devices.

The Arizona Teachers Academy is a program that was first designed and implemented by Governor Doug Ducey in 2017 with a simple concept: to cover the tuition and fees of Arizona higher education students learning to teach in exchange for fulfilling a commitment to teach at an Arizona public school following graduation. The academy has evolved quite rapidly in its short history, going from an unfunded mandate that Arizona universities could not afford to be funded to a voter-approved tax, and seeing its student enrollment numbers increase by over tenfold. This paper seeks to be an overview and process evaluation of the program, as well as an outlook into the program’s future. As a process evaluation, the thesis includes examinations of the program’s presumed logic model, that model’s assumptions, and relevant stakeholders. I used a multi-method approach: statutory and financial data were collected from web research and agency archival collections, and a series of interviews were conducted to ask analytical questions to key stakeholders and program directors about the program’s internal operations and data findings. These stakeholders and program directors consist of staff at the Arizona Board of Regents, the Arizona Department of Education, all three major Arizona public universities (Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, and the University of Arizona), as well as multiple elected officials and political advocacy groups that have impacted the program through legislation and ballot initiative. This thesis finds that the Arizona Teachers Academy does not have a stated logic model, which in turn led to program assumptions that fail to meet the needs of Arizona public schools and did not allow for all key stakeholders to be involved in the process.

Over 40% of adults in the United States are considered obese. Obesity is known to cause abnormal metabolic effects and lead to other negative health consequences. Interestingly, differences in metabolism and contractile performance between obese and healthy weight individuals are associated with differences in skeletal muscle fiber type composition between these groups. Each fiber type is characterized by unique metabolic and contractile properties, which are largely determined by the myosin heavy chain isoform (MHC) or isoform combination that the fiber expresses. In previous studies, SDS-PAGE single fiber analysis has been utilized as a method to determine MHC isoform distribution and single fiber type distribution in skeletal muscle. Herein, a methodological approach to analyze MHC isoform and fiber type distribution in skeletal muscle was fine-tuned for use in human and rodent studies. In the future, this revised methodology will be implemented to evaluate the effects of obesity and exercise on the phenotypic fiber type composition of skeletal muscle.