The purpose of this paper is to explore and minimum wage and whether it serves its purpose of fighting poverty. After extensive research on the origin and purpose of minimum wage laws in the US via reading different studies and weighing its positive and negative effects, I have found that minimum wage is not the most effective tool to fight poverty. There exist programs that would be more beneficial in fighting poverty such as earned-income tax credit (EITC) or training programs.

This project was organized to analyze a multitude of data in order to determine the economic impact of a professional sports team starting in a particular location, or “market”. The thesis group (“group”) collected historical data on professional sports teams from 1975 to present, state economic data as applicable, and data indicating sports fan preferences and behavior. This data was collected, cleaned, and analyzed in order to understand trends and impacts of sports teams in local economies. The group looked at a number of statistical factors including team performance, championships, state GDP and employment, and digital trends regarding the sports teams. Using economic models and statistics, the group was able to derive insights on the factors that cause sports teams to influence the economy they are located in. Additionally, the group analyzed reporting on teams in particular markets, as well as the financing surrounding stadiums to provide a diverse perspective on the topic. At a high level, starting a professional sports team in a new market does not have a significant impact on the economy: the data did not demonstrate statistical significance and qualitative analysis proved that the impact of a new team is negligible. The following serves as documentation and explanation of the group’s analysis on this topic.

This thesis project was conducted to create a practical tool to help micro and small local food enterprises identify potential strategies and sources of finance. Currently, many of these enterprises are unable to obtain the financial capital needed to start-up or maintain operations.

Sources and strategies of finance studied and ultimately included in the tool were Loans, Equity, Membership, Crowdfunding, and Grants. The tool designed was a matrix that takes into account various criteria of the business (e.g. business lifecycle, organizational structure, business performance) and generates a financial plan based on these criteria and how they align with the selected business strategies. After strategies are found, stakeholders can search through an institutional database created in conjunction with the matrix tool to find possible institutional providers of financing that relate to the strategy or strategies found.

The tool has shown promise in identifying sources of finance for micro and small local food enterprises in practical use with hypothetical business cases, however further practical use is necessary to provide further input and revise the tool as needed. Ultimately, the tool will likely become fully user-friendly and stakeholders will not need the assistance of another expert helping them to use it. Finally, despite the promise of the tool itself, the fundamental and underlying problem that many of these businesses face (lack of infrastructure and knowledge) still exists, and while this tool can also help capacity-building efforts towards both those seeking and those providing finance, an institutional attitude adjustment towards social and alternative enterprises is necessary in order to further simplify the process of obtaining finance.

RecyclePlus is an iOS mobile application that allows users to be knowledgeable in the realms of sustainability. It gives encourages users to be environmental responsible by providing them access to recycling information. In particular, it allows users to search up certain materials and learn about its recyclability and how to properly dispose of the material. Some searches will show locations of facilities near users that collect certain materials and dispose of the materials properly. This is a full stack software project that explores open source software and APIs, UI/UX design, and iOS development.

In the past ten years, the United States’ sound recording industries have experienced significant decreases in employment opportunities for aspiring audio engineers from economic imbalances in the music industry’s digital streaming era and reductions in government funding for career and technical education (CTE). The Recording Industry Association of America reports promises of music industry sustainability based on increasing annual revenues in paid streaming services and artists’ high creative demand. The rate of new audio engineer entries in the sound recording subsection of the music industry is not viable to support streaming artists’ high demand to engineer new music recordings. Offering CTE programs in secondary education is rare for aspiring engineers with insufficient accessibility to pursue a post-secondary or vocational education because of financial and academic limitations. These aspiring engineers seek alternatives for receiving an informal education in audio engineering on the Internet using video sharing services like YouTube to search for tutorials and improve their engineering skills. The shortage of accessible educational materials on the Internet restricts engineers from advancing their own audio engineering education, reducing opportunities to enter a desperate job market in need of independent, home studio-based engineers. Content creators on YouTube take advantage of this situation and commercialize their own video tutorial series for free and selling paid subscriptions to exclusive content. This is misleading for newer engineers because these tutorials omit important understandings of fundamental engineering concepts. Instead, content creators teach inflexible engineering methodologies that are mostly beneficial to their own way of thinking. Content creators do not often assess the incompatibility of teaching their own methodologies to potential entrants in a profession that demands critical thinking skills requiring applied fundamental audio engineering concepts and techniques. This project analyzes potential solutions to resolve the deficiencies in online audio engineering education and experiments with structuring simple, deliverable, accessible educational content and materials to new entries in audio engineering. Designing clear, easy to follow material to these new entries in audio engineering is essential for developing a strong understanding for the application of fundamental concepts in future engineers’ careers. Approaches to creating and designing educational content requires translating complex engineering concepts through simplified mediums that reduce limitations in learning for future audio engineers.

This study aims to examine how the use of consensus-based transactions, smart contracts,and interoperability, provided by blockchain, may benefit the blood plasma industry. Plasmafractionation is the process of separating blood into multiple components to garner benefitsof increased lifespan, specialized allocation, and decreased waste, thereby creating a morecomplex and flexible supply chain. Traditional applications of blockchain are developed onthe basis of decentralization—an infeasible policy for this sector due to stringent governmentregulations, such as HIPAA. However, the trusted nature of the relations in the plasmaindustry’s taxonomy proves private and centralized blockchains as the viable alternative.Implementations of blockchain are widely seen across pharmaceutical supply chains to combatthe falsification of possibly afflictive drugs. This system is more difficult to manage withblood, due to the quick perishable time, tracking/tracing of recycled components, and thenecessity of real-time metrics. Key attributes of private blockchains, such as digital identity,smart contracts, and authorized ledgers, may have the possibility of providing a significantpositive impact on the allocation and management functions of blood banks. Herein, we willidentify the economy and risks of the plasma ecosystem to extrapolate specific applications forthe use of blockchain technology. To understand tangible effects of blockchain, we developeda proof of concept application, aiming to emulate the business logic of modern plasma supplychain ecosystems adopting a blockchain data structure. The application testing simulates thesupply chain via agent-based modeling to analyze the scalability, benefits, and limitations ofblockchain for the plasma fractionation industry.

Osteosarcopenia is a newly formed term that combines the symptoms of osteoporosis and sarcopenia together because of their concurrent appearances in life. They are both age-related, debilitating conditions that affect older adults’ skeleton and musculoskeletal system. Osteoporosis specifically targets the cells of the bone and make them weak and porous. Sarcopenia attacks the skeletal muscles and deteriorates the muscle fibers, decreasing mass and strength. Both diseases put sedentary elders at high risk of sustaining fractures and proneness to fall. The manifestation of one condition typically leads to the other because of their obvious physical attachments as well as their direct chemical crosstalk. The onset of osteosarcopenia is subtle coinciding with age related processes that become greatly exacerbated and accelerated when coupled with chronic inactivity. Thus, a critical intervention for managing the disability associated with osteosarcopenia is physical activity. While some pharmacological treatments or supplements are known to have positive results in stemming further bone loss, regular participation in moderate-intensity exercises is considered the most effective treatment for attenuating further bone and muscle loss.

Empathy Link is a creative project that looks at the universal problems that many college students experience. The show is an interview style podcast, in which the students come on and talk about their life experiences, specifically the dilemmas and emotional challenges they face. Furthermore, Empathy Link delves into student’s identities, and how many of the more “universal problems” that the students face, are also affected by the identity and background, such as ethnicity, gender, immigration status, class, etc. By analyzing the cross-section between the more relatable problems that almost every student experiences and the more unique identity problems, listeners are able to find common ground with students from different backgrounds from them as well as begin to understand struggles that they may not or will never experience. Empathy Link consists of a six-episode first season. Each episode is somewhere between 20 – 30 minutes long. The topics discussed in episodes were wide-ranging: disagreeing with the worldviews of one’s parents, wanting to pursue a passion but scared because of financial instability, the anxiety of over-working, the feeling of listlessness post-college life, and the passing of a loved one. Before each episode, I would perform a pre-interview for each guest to ensure they would be a good fit for the show, write questions for that guest, and schedule a time and place to record. Afterwards, I would edit each episode for clarity, sound quality, and flow to ensure the content was up to par. Empathy Link is a podcast dedicated to bridging the gap between the perceptions of college students, specifically those from marginalized groups, and the actual experiences and struggles that they face.

With the rise in education costs and student debt, financial literacy and knowledge has never been more important. Sadly, the current reality is that financial literacy is not a staple in the curriculum for most of the American education system. Budgeting, saving, building credit and many other financial skills are key parts of your life right after college and very few students come out of school with a solid understanding of them. The goal of this paper is to introduce a few key elements of personal finance for those students and recent graduates who have little to no exposure to them. The topics I chose to discuss are budgeting, student loans, investing, and retirement. The numbers and salary figures are from Arizona State Career services to set up scenarios that many ASU graduates will face right out of school. More specifically the budgeting section is set up to mimic what income level, rent expense, and student loan payments graduating Sun Devils can expect to see right out of school. It was also important for me to introduce topics for long term planning like investing and retirement. Setting goals and preparing for the future, no matter how far down the road it seems, are fundamental for establishing a healthy financial foundation. Building a healthy financial foundation takes time, patience and understanding but it is a possibility for everyone. Establishing a very basic knowledge of these topics can help students immensely and utilizing this guide, along with other outside resources, students and graduates will be able to start their journey toward a more secure financial future.

Influencer marketing has exploded into a multi-billion dollar industry, with millions of influencers spanning thousands of different industries. The beauty industry is one of the most popular industries for influencer marketing, with influencers having the ability to collaborate with popular beauty brands like L’Oréal as well as being able to create their own successful beauty companies. With consumers exposed to thousands of brand deals every day, brands are now searching for the keys to creating an authentic brand partnership with influencers. This thesis looks at the factors that go into authentic influencer marketing to help brands understand what they should be looking for when creating a partnership that consumers would deem as authentic, with a specific emphasis on the beauty industry. This thesis includes a multi-method study using a focus group and a survey. Specifically, the focus group focused on finding common themes related to authenticity and the survey uncovered whether follower count influences consumers’ perception of authenticity. The studies revealed that follower count doesn’t impact how consumers’ perceived authenticity, but authenticity and trust do play a role in whether consumers will interact with an influencer’s paid advertisement. To better understand the research presented in this thesis, an analysis of influencers and the psychology of influence are presented, along with a case study of a successful beauty brand partnership and an in depth look at FTC guidelines.