It is estimated that anywhere from 30 to 60 percent of athletes experience performance anxiety (Rowland, D. L., & van Lankveld, J., 2019). Currently, there are very few solutions on the market to help athletes prevent performance anxiety besides typical cognitive-behavioral therapy solutions. ITZ Technologies is using NASA-patented technology to combat performance anxiety in elite athletes. This technology includes reading brain activity through electroencephalography and utilizing biofeedback through an engaging augmented reality game to help athletes recognize when they are “out of the zone” and help them reduce their performance anxiety. This product will be marketed to facilities that train high-level athletes to provide training services to their athletes. Surveys and interviews with athletes and those in the sports performance industry have shown favorable feedback on the device concept.

CircaLight is a Barrett Honors Thesis Project that was conducted through the Founder’s Lab Program in the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. A team of three students, each with different majors, came together to complete the project. Jackson Krug, Benjamin Sare, and Gabriel Zimm formed the team as part of Cohort 3 of the 2021-2022 Founders Lab Program. They are each pursuing bachelors degrees in Mechanical Engineering, Finance, and Business Administration, respectively. This diversity of schooling allowed them to approach this project from multiple, diverse perspectives. Due to their familiarity with sleep deprivation throughout college, the team chose to pursue a project centered around NASA’s Advanced Solid State Lighting System, which functionally mimics the changes in natural light that humans would typically experience on earth. This technology provides these same fluctuations to astronauts in space. A unique logo and branding were created for a potential product that would use this technology. Three different marketing strategies relating to this brand were developed and tested to achieve this project’s goal: determining the best prospective market for this technology. The three potential market areas we tested dealt with: general fatigue & lack of productivity, family sleep habits, and jet lag. Through our research, we found the most attractive market to be people who are looking to improve their sleep habits and productivity at home. Conversely, we concluded that while there is an audience for travel fatigue solutions, the market is not interested in this NASA technology.

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of the generation. Both faith organizations and scientific research are striving to solve problems related to climate change. Both show significant motivations to act on the effects that global warming is predicted to have. Combining the motivations and finding common ground could be the key to changing the fundamental issues that lead to climate change and both sides need each other to carry out the goal of preventing climate change. Some potential outcomes of cooperation are explored and the impact that these measures could have are described. These effects will be synthesized from previous research on the subjects, compiling qualitative data on the motivations and effects of both religion and science on climate change.

It was hypothesized that information about current romantic involvement could make a male target more attractive to females. A 2 (Gender) X 4 (Romantic Involvement: Current Romance, Past Romance, Friend, and Control) factorial design was created to test competing predictions from scarcity/reactance, impression-formation, and sociobiological perspectives. A total of 235 male and female subjects saw a photograph of an opposite gender target person, then read a brief description about the target that contained one of the three involvement manipulations, or contained no involvement manipulation (Control). Subjects then rated the target along a 14 item scale to measure romantic attraction. ANOVA and MANOVA results revealed main effects of Gender and Romantic Involvement. Simple effects for Romantic Involvement were found for female, but not male subjects. A priori contrasts testing the predictions from the competing theoretical perspectives provided support only for the socio-biological prediction for female subjects.

This thesis presents two main causes of the Asian financial/economic crisis. The first major cause of the Asian financial crisis can be directly attributed to the international financial markets. In short, the crisis was brought about due to fundamental structural problems in the financial systems of the Southeast Asian countries. International financial institutions lent large sums of capital to many of the countries of Southeast Asia without first thoroughly examining the borrower's ability to pay (i.e. creditworthiness). The preceding cause was made possible by two factors. The first factor pertains to inadequate government and bank supervision of the scale and usage of the foreign debt taken on by companies throughout the various countries of Southeast Asia. the second factor relates to the corporate business practices based on excessive borrowing of foreign capital and the poor management of that debt. The Korean financial system lacked the checks and balances, and accountability characteristic of the banks in the U.S., Japan, and many other industrial nations. A second cause for the Asian financial crisis lies in the structural deficiencies of the Southeast Asian economies, and to a greater extent, that of South Korea. The prevalence of covert dealings between government officials and businesses, and the lack of transparency of these economies eventually lead to the loss of confidence on the part of international lenders and speculators. the hypothesis of this thesis is that the crisis was made possible by the systemic changes in international capitalism - specifically in the growing prominence of highly mobile and volatile forms of capital and transactions.

Both attentional focus and creativity have been shown to differ depending on the emotional state one is experiencing. We hypothesize that different positive emotions, in this case amusement, enthusiasm and awe, induce characteristically different breadths of attentional focus that are reflective of their respective evolutionary functions and levels of approach motivation. Ultimately we predict that high-approach motivations such as enthusiasm will result in attentional localization and an overall decrease in creativity, whereas low-approach motivations, such as amusement and awe, will result in attentional globalization and overall increased levels of creativity. In this study 105 participants read an emotion inducing story, followed by a globalization attentional focus test, the Alternate Uses Task test for creativity, and an emotion manipulation check. A 1-way ANOVA followed by several t-tests were completed to compare the effects of the different emotion conditions as a whole, and then individually against one another. The experiment was statistically underpowered, and as such there were no significant differences found either for overall emotional affects or those between emotions. However, the patterns suggested by the results of the analyses were not expected and creativity measures differed strongly from predicted results. Data collection is ongoing, and in the future problems with study underpowerment will likely be amended.