Since urban sustainable development involves dynamic and complex systems, tools, and models to aid urban sustainable development must also reflect dynamism and complexity to foster resilience. System dynamics allows for an iterative and robust approach when studying complex problems. This approach applies both quantitative and qualitative data to help unveil the interconnected components and dependencies within a specific city or community. This study approaches urban sustainable development in terms of its environmental, social, and economic dimensions to holistically look at the different components of the system at various levels. Using Tempe, Arizona as a case study, this research and tool provides a conceptual framework in making strides towards dynamic and interconnected thinking that can be taken further to extend into different communities and levels.

In 2015, a new way to track baseball games was introduced to MLB, marking the beginning of the Statcast Revolution. This new way to track the game brought about a number of new statistics, including the use of expected statistics. Expected statistics provide an estimate of what a player’s statistics should be on average with their same actions. This will be explored more in the upcoming paper. While expected statistics are not intended to predict the future performance of players, I theorized that there may be some relation, particularly on younger players. There is not any research on this topic yet, and if there does exist a correlation between expected statistics and future performance, it would allow teams to have a new way to predict data on their players. Research to find a correlation between the two was carried out by taking predictive accuracies of expected batting average and slugging of 12 MLB players throughout their rookie to 8th year seasons and combining them together to find an interval in which I could be confident the correlation lay. Overall, I found that I could not be certain that there was a correlation between the predictive accuracy of expected statistics and the length of time a player has played in MLB. While this conclusion does not offer any insights of how to better predict a player’s future performance, the methodology and findings still present opportunities to gain a better understanding of the predictive measures of expected statistics.

Stroke survivors must overcome motor deficits that greatly impede their balancing ability, thus stunting their independence and overall quality of life. Robot-aided rehabilitation is a new approach to balance therapy presenting notable advantages in efficiency, precision, and consistency. Prior studies have demonstrated the success of visual feedback, force plates, surface perturbations, and compliant surfaces in improving balance control for people with neuromuscular disorders. However, this study is the first to investigate the effect of incorporating each aspect into a stroke balance training program. The side-specific robotic platforms used could generate perturbations while also simulating compliant surfaces. During the 6-week study, 2 subjects each completed 9, 2-hour long training sessions, along with a clinical pre- and post-assessment. Subjects utilized visual feedback of center of pressure and weight distribution to strive for successful balance, and the platforms perturbed if balance was maintained for a sufficient time period. To increase training difficulty, platform stiffness decreased with increased performance. Improvements in functional postural balance for both subjects were demonstrated by the Berg Balance Scale, Mini-BESTest, Timed 10-Meter Walk Test, and 5 Times Sit-to-Stand Test. Decreases in Time to Perturb and Time to Stabilize were suggestive of improved dynamic postural balance. Decreased platform stiffness indicated sustained improvements in increasingly challenging environments, and a 3-month follow up revealed retained functional balance improvements. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of patient-adaptive perturbation-based robotic training on compliant surfaces in improving postural balance for chronic stroke patients.

Given their manufacturing versatility, plastics have fundamentally changed commercial consumerism. Unfortunately, two of the largest drawbacks to current plastics on the market is their dependency on fossil fuels and their lack of circular recyclability. In this paper, the focus will be on the latter issue. Circular recyclability can be described as the idea of minimizing waste through its reformation back into a commodity. Currently, the primary method of recycling plastics, mechanical recycling, can only be achieved through melting and reshaping plastic for reuse. A significant drawback to this method is the reduction in chain molecular weight and subsequent loss of mechanical integrity through multiple reheating cycles. Chemical recycling provides an alternative where the polymer is broken down through chemically reactive sites, allowing the material to be recycled a theoretically infinite number of times and maintain its mechanical properties. Polyethylene, one of the largest classes of industrially produced plastic, does not have any commercially relevant chemically recyclable derivatives. The structure of polyethylene is primarily composed of long, nonpolar hydrocarbon chains that provide the material’s signature tough property. To make a material that can be depolymerizable for chemical recycling, polar ester functional groups must be added throughout the chain, allowing for chain scission by hydrolysis. Unfortunately, while the incorporation of ester functionality into polyethylene has been studied previously, material strength decreases as a result of this modification, sacrificing the integrity of the final product. Herein, I propose the incorporation of nucleobase pairings into the ester-containing polyethylene, which will add supramolecular hydrogen bonding reinforcements to improve the mechanical performance while maintaining chemical recyclability. This addition to the polyethylene backbone will be achieved by the synthesis of a ureido cytosine (UCy) diol, which contains 4 complementary hydrogen bonding sites for enhanced intermolecular forces between polyethylene chains.

Ballroom dancing, similar to many other forms of dance, art, and expression, has a nature built upon desire to better oneself, to express oneself, and to relate to the audience. While this sits at the core of the artform, there is another element integral to it: competition. Ballroom competitions contribute significantly to the culture of ballroom dancing itself, often conflicting with or undermining its cooperative elements. The question, thus remains, of what the optimal ballroom competition looks like in order to promote the community aspects without compromising the importance of competition to the dancers. This thesis seeks to identify and execute this optimization, culminating in a ballroom competition and a guide detailing every aspect of the competition that was designed to accomplish this goal.

For my thesis, I researched the impact of the gut microbiome on people's lives. My thesis paper explains what the microbiome is, the microbiome-gut-brain axis, the effect of the standard American diet on the human microbiome, and why children might be the solution to fostering a more healthy and happy America. There is a direct connection between one's gut health and one's overall health and happiness. Since the microbiome influences many aspects of people's lives, it is important to take care of it and always protect it. Everything that people consume and expose themselves to will either enhance or destroy the gut microbiome. By bringing awareness of the importance of the gut microbiome to the general population and by providing better resources for Americans to cultivate a healthy microbiome, then more Americans will experience an overall greater quality of life.