With as rapid a growth that Esports has had and its current introduction to the public mainstream, there is yet to be sufficient studies and research compiled to fully develop the profile of an Esport consumer. While companies such as Neilson and others have begun scratching the surface of the Esport community, there is much that is relatively unknown. Consumer behavior patterns of traditional sports has been defined for years, however as the billion dollar a year industry that Esports is, Esport consumer behavior is still taking shape. This thesis will attempt to build upon previous studies conducted by former Arizona State University students to continue to define the Esport consumer. Through quantitative research conducted via an online survey consisting of demographic, behavioral, and psychographic questions, the stereotype of an Esport consumer will be dissolved to reveal their true nature. This study will prove to be an iteration among the previous research by -<br/>• Developing a functional segmentation of Esport consumers, which will allow for marketers within the industry to better understand their audience in their attempts to persuade/incentivize<br/>• Understanding and dissecting the scale of influence that content creators (those who play Esports for the purpose of entertaining through various platforms) and competitive Esport athletes have on certain segmentations of consumers<br/>• Discovering the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on certain segmentations in regards to their time spent playing themselves<br/><br/> After compiling results from this questionnaire, marketers that are both endemic and non-endemic brands seeking to partner within the Esports space will have a better understanding of their audience and how to connect with them.

In this essay, I set out to explore and analyze how Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and the character of Eleanor Vance in particular, disrupts and redefines the traditional conventions of the Female Gothic within the context of the 20th century. I utilize Tania Modleski's gendering of Freud's theory of psychoanalysis in her exploration of the ‘Female Uncanny,’ arguing that the source of the Uncanny in the Female Gothic can be found in the "fear of being lost in the mother." I argue that Jackson's complex personal life, including her fraught relationship with her mother and her difficult marriage with literary critic Edgar Hyman, color her fiction and the primary motivations of her protagonist, Eleanor Vance. I also outline the traditional structure of the Gothic novel and the heroine's journey. With the necessary context provided, I then explain how Eleanor Vance’s character rejects these Gothic traditions and ushers in a new era of Female Gothic fiction.

As part of the Founders’ lab program, this thesis explores a social venture idea whose concept is to connect the philanthropic community with individuals and organizations in need of funding a project relating to (Sustainable Development Goals) SDG indicators through a peer-to-peer donation-based crowdfunding platform. Through this platform, the philanthropic community will have the possibility to easily access a wide range of projects to support as well as underserved individuals and communities seeking help, track their impact, donate in a complete transparent donation process, and automate donations through bank card round-ups. This social venture idea has been named PhilanthroGo.

Previous studies about the effects of regulatory institutions on the outcomes of regulation have resulted in a lack of consensus on the nature of these impacts. This paper seeks to resolve some of this ambiguity by analyzing two dimension of electric utility regulatory outcomes, prices and reliability, with a broader panel of explanatory variables and with a Hausman-Taylor regression technique. The results suggest that elected regulators and deregulated electricity markets result in worse reliability outcomes for consumers without strong evidence that either institution secures lower electricity prices. Incorporating these insights into a theoretical model of regulation could give more detailed insight into how to create regulatory institutions that can optimize the outcomes of governance.

With the rise of fast fashion and its now apparent effects on climate change, there is an evident need for change in terms of how we as individuals use our clothing and footwear. Our team has created Ray Fashion Inc., a sustainable footwear company that focuses on implementing the circular economy to reduce the amount of waste generated in shoe creation. We have designed a sandal that accommodates the rapid consumption element of fast fashion with a business model that promotes sustainability through a buy-back method to upcycle and retain our materials.

Whispers from Above is a creative project that aims to normalize the conversation and validate the emotional experience of grief, through the use of art therapies. Art therapy can be expressive in which someone creates their own work, such as visual art, poetry, performance, music, movement, etc. Art therapy can also be receptive in which someone analyzes and understands someone else's artwork. This project was released on SoundCloud in order to make grief resources more accessible to all and to build an online community.<br/><br/>Whispers from Above worked with twelve poets, fifteen artists, six different interviewees, and multiple musicians to create a month of grief support. The finale piece of Whispers from Above was devised from the twenty-nine poems used within this month-long healing journey. All the individual poems were woven into a single devised poem to be presented as the final piece symbolizing that no one is alone in grief.<br/><br/>Whispers from Above is creative community exploration of grief, loss, and death in which we hope contributors, and listeners find solace and support. This series will exist on SoundCloud after March 27th, 2021 with a monthly release of a poem or interview accompanied by art, and music.

As America undergoes a modern, civil rights movement, the reality of police brutality can no longer be disregarded by everyday voters. The Black Lives Matter movement has become ubiquitous, both in real life and in the media, after the murder of George Floyd. This moment has made way for widespread video coverage of police brutality incidents, a litany of written think pieces dissecting the long-term effectiveness of the police, and a myriad of articles discussing prospective policy actions. With a rise in coverage comes a heightened level of awareness of and conversation around this issue. We have witnessed the pervasiveness of the Black Lives Matter movement and an increasing conversation around the allocation of funding towards police departments. Change has been sparked, but which form of media has most effectively influenced the public? Seeing as one of the principal goals of police-related advocacy groups is to fulfill their vision of a properly functioning police force, including in relation to accountability and reform, it is vital to understand which medium the public is most receptive to. This study and its design serve to examine how exposure to different media regarding police brutality affects people’s opinions on Black Lives Matter, police reform policies, and similar changes. Moving forward, social movements will have a better understanding of which types of media can best target the public when trying to coalesce support around their movement.

This thesis project has been conducted in accordance with The Founder’s Lab initiative which is sponsored by the W. P. Carey School of Business. This program groups three students together and tasks them with creating a business idea, conducting the necessary research to bring the concept to life, and exploring different aspects of business, with the end goal of gaining traction. The product we were given to work through this process with was Hot Head, an engineering capstone project concept. The Hot Head product is a sustainable and innovative solution to the water waste issue we find is very prominent in the United States. In order to bring the Hot Head idea to life, we were tasked with doing research on topics ranging from the Hot Head life cycle to finding plausible personas who may have an interest in the Hot Head product. This paper outlines the journey to gaining traction via a marketing campaign and exposure of our brand on several platforms, with a specific interest in website traffic. Our research scope comes from mainly primary sources like gathering opinions of potential buyers by sending out surveys and hosting focus groups. The paper concludes with some possible future steps that could be taken if this project were to be continued.

Actuaries can analyze healthcare trends to determine if rates are reasonable and if reserves are adequate. In this talk, we will provide a framework of methods to analyze the healthcare trend during the pandemic. COVID-19 may influence future healthcare cost trends in many ways. First, direct COVID-19 costs may increase the amount of total experienced healthcare costs. However, with the implementation of social distancing, the amount of regularly scheduled care may be deferred to a future date. There are also many unknown factors regarding the transmission of the virus. Implementing epidemiology models allows us to predict infections by studying the dynamics of the disease. The correlation between infection amounts and hospitalization occupancies provide a methodology to estimate the amount of deferred and recouped amounts of regularly scheduled healthcare costs. Thus, the combination of the models allows to model the healthcare cost trend impact due to COVID-19.

In collaboration with Moog Broad Reach and Arizona State University, a<br/>team of five undergraduate students designed a hardware design solution for<br/>protecting flash memory data in a spaced-based radioactive environment. Team<br/>Aegis have been working on the research, design, and implementation of a<br/>Verilog- and Python-based error correction code using a Reed-Solomon method<br/>to identify bit changes of error code. For an additional senior design project, a<br/>Python code was implemented that runs statistical analysis to identify whether<br/>the error correction code is more effective than a triple-redundancy check as well<br/>as determining if the presence of errors can be modeled by a regression model.