Matching Items (151)
Description
Following the implementation of federal immigration control measures in the 1990s, Arizona became the main point of entry for undocumented immigrants along the US border with Mexico in the early 2000s. Since then, reports have blamed human smuggling facilitators for the increase of undocumented immigration into the state and the apparent development of violent practices targeting the undocumented. However, little is known about the organization of the groups who work at facilitating the transit of undocumented immigrants along the US Mexico Border. Based on interviews and narratives present in legal files of smuggling cases prosecuted in Phoenix, Arizona, the present study provides an analysis of local human smuggling operations. It argues that far from being under the control of organized crime, smuggling is an income generating strategy of the poor that generates financial opportunities for community members in financial distress. The study, raises questions over smuggling's perceptions as violent and instead identifies smuggling-related violence as a reflection of the structural violence carried out by the state against immigrant communities through policing, surveillance and the consistent and systematic exercise of race-based policies.
ContributorsSanchez, Gabriella (Author) / Romero, Mary L (Thesis advisor) / Fonow, Mary Margaret (Committee member) / Tsuda, Takeyuki (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Though it is a widespread adaptation in humans and many other animals, parental care comes in a variety of forms and its subtle physiological costs, benefits, and tradeoffs related to offspring are often unknown. Thus, I studied the hydric, respiratory, thermal, and fitness dynamics of maternal egg-brooding behavior in Children's pythons (Antaresia childreni). I demonstrated that tight coiling detrimentally creates a hypoxic developmental environment that is alleviated by periodic postural adjustments. Alternatively, maternal postural adjustments detrimentally elevate rates of egg water loss relative to tight coiling. Despite ventilating postural adjustments, the developmental environment becomes increasingly hypoxic near the end of incubation, which reduces embryonic metabolism. I further demonstrated that brooding-induced hypoxia detrimentally affects offspring size, performance, locomotion, and behavior. Thus, parental care in A. childreni comes at a cost to offspring due to intra-offspring tradeoffs (i.e., those that reflect competing offspring needs, such as water balance and respiration). Next, I showed that, despite being unable to intrinsically produce body heat, A. childreni adjust egg-brooding behavior in response to shifts in nest temperature, which enhances egg temperature (e.g., reduced tight coiling during nest warming facilitated beneficial heat transfer to eggs). Last, I demonstrated that A. childreni adaptively adjust their egg-brooding behaviors due to an interaction between nest temperature and humidity. Specifically, females' behavioral response to nest warming was eliminated during low nest humidity. In combination with other studies, these results show that female pythons sense environmental temperature and humidity and utilize this information at multiple time points (i.e., during gravidity [egg bearing], at oviposition [egg laying], and during egg brooding) to enhance the developmental environment of their offspring. This research demonstrates that maternal behaviors that are simple and subtle, yet easily quantifiable, can balance several critical developmental variables (i.e., thermoregulation, water balance, and respiration).
ContributorsStahlschmidt, Zachary R (Author) / DeNardo, Dale F (Thesis advisor) / Harrison, Jon (Committee member) / McGraw, Kevin (Committee member) / Rutowski, Ronald (Committee member) / Walsberg, Glenn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Masculinity has been increasingly recognized as a critical and relatively unexplored area of inquiry in anthropological gender studies. This project seeks to expand anthropological research on masculinity to contemporary American society. Using the case study of a male-centered popular new sport, Mixed Martial Arts (also known as cagefighting) this project integrates theories of embodiment and feminist perspectives to explore how masculinity and masculine hegemony are shaped, contested, and perpetuated in the United States. Using a multi-level framework this project explores: 1) How is masculinity experienced and expressed by Mixed Martial Arts fighters as a form of self-identity? How do their bodies play a role in constructing masculinity? 2) What are the pervasive forms of masculinity associated with Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)? Are they truly representative of the sport? 3) Can these pervasive forms of masculinity be seen as hegemonic? How would hegemony operate in relation to individual experience? Using multiple methods to capture multiple points of view was critical to thoroughly examining the complex notion of masculinity. This study employed participant observation, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, surveys, photo elicitation, and media content analysis, as each presented particular benefits and allowed for the development a more well-rounded understanding of masculinity within the realm of MMA. This study also situates the rise of MMA and its representations of masculinity within the greater perspective of contemporary American society. By doing so reveals how ideologies of prescribed masculinity do not arise out of a vacuum but in relation to particular economic, social and political contexts. An emphasis of this study was to examine the daily lives of MMA fighters to understand how their participation in what may be regarded as a hypermasculine activity affects their own perceptions of masculinity. In looking at how masculinity is embodied, the gaps and often contradictions between representation and individual experiences are revealed. Ultimately, the goal of this research is to contribute to a better understanding of masculinity as both an embodied and relational construct.
ContributorsHolthuysen, Jaime (Author) / Hjorleifur Jonsson (Thesis advisor) / Tsuda, Takeyuki (Committee member) / Ballestero-Salaverry, Andrea (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Nucleosomes are the basic repetitive unit of eukaryotic chromatin and are responsible for packing DNA inside the nucleus of the cell. They consist of a complex of eight histone proteins (two copies of four proteins H2A, H2B, H3 and H4) around which 147 base pairs of DNA are wrapped in ~1.67 superhelical turns. Although the nucleosomes are stable protein-DNA complexes, they undergo spontaneous conformational changes that occur in an asynchronous fashion. This conformational dynamics, defined by the "site-exposure" model, involves the DNA unwrapping from the protein core and exposing itself transiently before wrapping back. Physiologically, this allows regulatory proteins to bind to their target DNA sites during cellular processes like replication, DNA repair and transcription. Traditional biochemical assays have stablished the equilibrium constants for the accessibility to various sites along the length of the nucleosomal DNA, from its end to the middle of the dyad axis. Using fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS), we have established the position dependent rewrapping rates for nucleosomes. We have also used Monte Carlo simulation methods to analyze the applicability of FRET fluctuation spectroscopy towards conformational dynamics, specifically motivated by nucleosome dynamics. Another important conformational change that is involved in cellular processes is the disassembly of nucleosome into its constituent particles. The exact pathway adopted by nucleosomes is still not clear. We used dual color fluorescence correlation spectroscopy to study the intermediates during nucleosome disassembly induced by changing ionic strength. Studying the nature of nucleosome conformational change and the kinetics is very important in understanding gene expression. The results from this thesis give a quantitative description to the basic unit of the chromatin.
ContributorsGurunathan, Kaushik (Author) / Levitus, Marcia (Thesis advisor) / Lindsay, Stuart (Committee member) / Woodbury, Neal (Committee member) / Yan, Hao (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Studies of animal contests often focus solely on a single static measurement of fighting ability, such as the size or the strength of the individual. However, recent studies have highlighted the importance of individual variation in the dynamic behaviors used during a fight, such as, assessment strategies, decision making, and fine motor control, as being strong predictors of the outcome of aggression. Here, I combined morphological and behavioral data to discover how these features interact during aggressing interactions in male virile crayfish, Faxonius virilis. I predicted that individual variation in behavioral skill for decision making (i.e., number of strikes thrown), would determine the outcome of contest success in addition to morphological measurements (e.g. body size, relative claw size). To evaluate this prediction, I filmed staged territorial interactions between male F. virilis and later analyzed trial behaviors (e.g. strike, pinches, and bout time) and aggressive outcomes. I found very little support for skill to predict win/loss outcome in trials. Instead, I found that larger crayfish engaged in aggression for longer compared to smaller crayfish, but that larger crayfish did not engage in a greater number of claw strikes or pinches when controlling for encounter duration. Future studies should continue to investigate the role of skill, by using finer-scale techniques such as 3D tracking software, which could track advanced measurements (e.g. speed, angle, and movement efficiency). Such studies would provide a more comprehensive understanding of the relative influence of fighting skill technique on territorial contests.
ContributorsNguyen, Phillip Huy (Author) / Angilletta, Michael (Thesis director) / McGraw, Kevin (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
"Culture talk" figures prominently in the discussions of and about Muslims, both locally and globally. Culture, in these discussions, is considered to be the underlying cause of gender and generational divides giving rise to an alleged "identity crisis." Culture also presumably conceals and contaminates "pure/true Islam." Culture serves as the scaffold on which all that divides Muslim American immigrants and converts is built; furthermore, the fear of a Muslim cultural takeover underpins the "Islamization of America" narrative. This dissertation engages these generational and "immigrant"-"indigenous" fissures and the current narratives that dominate Muslim and public spheres. It does so through the perspectives of the offspring of converts and immigrants. As the children and grandchildren of immigrants and converts come of age, and distant as they are from historical processes and experiences that shaped the parents' generations while having shared a socialization process as both Muslim and American, what role do they play in the current chapter of Islam in post-9/11 America? Will the younger generation be able to cross the divides, mend the fissures, and play a pivotal role in an "American Muslim community"? Examining how younger generations of both backgrounds view each other and their respective roles in forging an American Muslim belonging, agenda and discourse is a timely and much needed inquiry. This project aims to contribute by shedding more light on the identities, perspectives and roles of these younger generations through the four dominant narratives of identity crisis, pure/true Islam vs. Cultural Islam, the Islamization of America, and creation of an American Muslim community/identity/culture. These narratives are both part of public discourse and themes generated from interviews, a questionnaire\survey, and personal observation. This ethnographic study examines how American born and/or raised offspring of both converts to Islam and immigrant Muslims in the Phoenix and Chicago metropolitan areas define self and community, how they negotiate fissures and fault lines (ethnicity, race, class, gender, and religious interpretation) within their communities, and how their faith informs daily life and envisions a future. I utilize participant observation, interviews, and surveys and examine digital, visual and published media to answer these questions.
ContributorsAli, Muna (Author) / Eder, James (Thesis advisor) / Jackson, Sherman (Committee member) / Hjorleifur Jonsson (Committee member) / Tsuda, Takeyuki (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Food system and health characteristics were evaluated across the last Waorani hunter-gatherer group in Amazonian Ecuador and a remote neighboring Kichwa indigenous subsistence agriculture community. Hunter-gatherer food systems like the Waorani foragers may not only be nutritionally, but also pharmaceutically beneficial because of high dietary intake of varied plant phytochemical compounds. A modern diet that reduces these dietary plant defense phytochemicals below levels typical in human evolutionary history may leave humans vulnerable to diseases that were controlled through a foraging diet. Few studies consider the health impact of the recent drastic reduction of plant phytochemical content in the modern global food system, which has eliminated essential components of food because they are not considered "nutrients". The antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory nature of the food system may not only regulate infectious pathogens and inflammatory disease, but also support beneficial microbes in human hosts, reducing vulnerability to chronic diseases. Waorani foragers seem immune to certain infections with very low rates of chronic disease. Does returning to certain characteristics of a foraging food system begin to restore the human body microbe balance and inflammatory response to evolutionary norms, and if so, what implication does this have for the treatment of disease? Several years of data on dietary and health differences across the foragers and the farmers was gathered. There were major differences in health outcomes across the board. In the Waorani forager group there were no signs of infection in serious wounds such as 3rd degree burns and spear wounds. The foragers had one-degree lower body temperature than the farmers. The Waorani had an absence of signs of chronic diseases including vision and blood pressure that did not change markedly with age while Kichwa farmers suffered from both chronic diseases and physiological indicators of aging. In the Waorani forager population, there was an absence of many common regional infectious diseases, from helminthes to staphylococcus. Study design helped control for confounders (exercise, environment, genetic factors, non-phytochemical dietary intake). This study provides evidence of the major role total phytochemical dietary intake plays in human health, often not considered by policymakers and nutritional and agricultural scientists.
ContributorsLondon, Douglas (Author) / Tsuda, Takeyuki (Thesis advisor) / Beezhold, Bonnie L (Committee member) / Hruschka, Daniel (Committee member) / Eder, James (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Human-induced rapid environmental change (HIREC) influences nearly all of Earth's ecosystems through processes such as urbanization. Previous studies have found that urbanization influences biodiversity patterns, often yielding an increase in the abundance of a few urban-adapted taxa at the expense of native species diversity. The western black widow spider, Latrodectus hesperus, is a medically-important pest species that often forms dense urban subpopulations (i.e., infestations) relative to the low-density subpopulations found throughout undisturbed, desert habitat. Here, I employ field and laboratory studies to examine the population ecology and stoichiometry of this urban pest to increase our understanding of the mechanisms underlying its success. The population ecology of ten black widow subpopulations spread across metropolitan Phoenix, AZ was examined during the peak breeding season (June-August). This study revealed that arthropod prey abundance, female mass and population density of females showed significant spatial variation across the ten subpopulations. Additionally, prey abundance and foraging success, measured as the number of carcasses found in webs, were a strong determinant of female mass and population density within each subpopulation. To test the mechanisms that drive black widow infestations, I used ecological stoichiometry to examine the nutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus) composition of spiders and arthropod prey from urban habitat, desert habitat and a laboratory diet regime. These studies revealed that (1) spiders are more nutrient rich than cricket prey in the field, (2) spider subpopulations exhibit significant spatial variation in their nitrogen composition, (3) nutrient composition of urban spider subpopulations does not differ significantly from Sonoran desert subpopulations, (4) laboratory-reared spiders fed a diet of only laboratory-reared crickets are more nitrogen and phosphorus limited than field-captured spiders, and (5) cannibalism by laboratory-reared spiders alleviated phosphorus limitation, but not nitrogen limitation, when compared to field-captured spiders. This work highlights the need to examine the population ecology of species relationships, such as predator-prey dynamics, to fully understand the fecundity and population growth of urban pest species. Moreover, the integration of population ecology and stoichiometry illustrates the need to address mechanisms like nutrient limitation that may explain why urban pest populations thrive and native species diversity suffers following HIREC.
ContributorsTrubl, Patricia (Author) / Johnson, James C. (Thesis advisor) / Rutowski, Ronald (Thesis advisor) / McGraw, Kevin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Healthy mitochondria are essential for cell survival. Described herein is the synthesis of a family of novel aminoquinone antioxidants designed to alleviate oxidative stress and prevent the impairment of cellular function. In addition, a library of bleomycin disaccharide analogues has also been synthesized to better probe the tumor targeting properties of bleomycin. The first study involves the synthesis of a benzoquinone natural product and analogues that closely resemble the redox core of the natural product geldanamycin. The synthesized 5-amino-3-tridecyl-1,4-benzoquinone antioxidants were tested for their ability to protect Friedreich's ataxia (FRDA) lymphocytes from induced oxidative stress. Some of the analogues synthesized conferred cytoprotection in a dose-dependent manner in FRDA lymphocytes at micromolar concentrations. The biological assays suggest that the modification of the 2-hydroxyl and N-(3-carboxypropyl) groups in the natural product can improve its antioxidant activity and significantly enhance its ability to protect mitochondrial function under conditions of oxidative stress. The second project focused on the synthesis of a library of bleomycin disaccharide-dye conjugates and monitored their cellular uptake by fluorescence microscopy. The studies reveal that the position of the carbamoyl group plays an important role in modulating the cellular uptake of the disaccharide. It also led to the discovery of novel disaccharides with improved tumor selectivity.
ContributorsMathilakathu Madathil, Manikandadas (Author) / Hecht, Sidney M. (Thesis advisor) / Rose, Seth (Committee member) / Woodbury, Neal (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The children of immigrants who arrived in the United States in the 1980s now make up one of the fastest growing components of American society. They face unique and interesting pressures as they incorporate aspects of their parents' heritage into their contemporary American lives. The purpose of this dissertation is to offer an in-depth look at the 1.5 and second generation by examining how the immigrant descendants negotiate assimilative pressures, transnational practices, and ethnic identification. Using ethnographic research methods, such as participant observation and in-depth interviews, I researched the children of immigrants, ages 18-30, living in northwest Arkansas, who have at least one immigrant parent from Latin America. This research is important because non-traditional receiving towns, especially more rural localities, are often overlooked by scholarly studies of migration in favor of larger metropolitan centers (e.g., Los Angeles, Chicago). Studying immigrant descendants in smaller towns that are becoming increasingly populated by Hispanic/Latinos will create a better understanding of how a new generation of immigrants is assimilating into American society and culture. To increase awareness on the Hispanic/Latino 1.5 and second generation living in small town America and to offer potential solutions to facilitate an upwardly mobile future for this population, my dissertation explores a number of research questions. First, how is this population assimilating to the U.S.? Second, are members of the 1.5 and second generation transnational? How active is this transnational lifestyle? Will transnationalism persist as they grow older? Third, how does this population identify themselves ethnically? I also pay particular attention to the relationships among assimilation, transnationalism, and ethnic identity. My dissertation documents the lived experiences of the 1.5 and second generation in northwest Arkansas. The children of immigrants are one of the fastest growing groups nationwide. To understand their world and the lives they lead is to understand the new fabric of American society. I anticipate that the results from this research can be used to facilitate easier transitions to the U.S. among current and prospective immigrant generations, ensuring a brighter outlook for the future of the newest members of U.S. society.
ContributorsSmith, Claire M. (Author) / Tsuda, Takeyuki (Thesis advisor) / Eder, James (Committee member) / Chance, John K. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014