Application of Natural Language Processing to Determine User Satisfaction in Public Services

Research on customer satisfaction has increased substantially in recent years. However, the relative importance and relationships between different determinants of satisfaction remains uncertain. Moreover, quantitative studies to date tend to test for significance of pre-determined factors thought to have an influence with no scalable means to identify other causes of user satisfaction. The gaps in knowledge make it difficult to use available knowledge on user preference for public service improvement. Meanwhile, digital technology development has enabled new methods to collect user feedback, for example through online forums where users can comment freely on their experience. New tools are needed to analyze large volumes of such feedback. Use of topic models is proposed as a feasible solution to aggregate open-ended user opinions that can be easily deployed in the public sector. Generated insights can contribute to a more inclusive decision-making process in public service provision. This novel methodological approach is applied to a case of service reviews of publicly-funded primary care practices in England. Findings from the analysis of 145,000 reviews covering almost 7,700 primary care centers indicate that the quality of interactions with staff and bureaucratic exigencies are the key issues driving user satisfaction across England

Anthropogenic Disturbance in Nocturnal Primates & Conservation Perception in Zaraninge Forest, Tanzania

Galagos are an understudied family of primates which inhabit much of Sub-Saharan Africa, some of which are potentially at risk. The coastal forests of East Africa are home to many galagos, however this habitat is under threat from an increasing human population seeking timber, charcoal and land for agriculture, amongst other pressures. This study used repeated transect methods when estimating the density of both the Zanzibar galago (Galagoides zanzibaricus) and Garnett’s galago (Otolemur garnetti) in a human influenced forest and a relatively undisturbed forest which were otherwise similar. Densities of Zanzibar galagos were not significantly influenced by human activities. Garnett’s galago numbers showed a statistically significant though slight increase when their environment displayed signs of modification by human activities. Results also indicate that the future use of territory mapping style methods may give reliable estimates of species that have been difficult to monitor in the past, as well as providing a more comprehensive view of social structure in surveyed populations. A survey of 60 households in close proximity to these forests found that 56.7% of household heads thought that conservation of the forests and their resources were worth conserving. It also identified that problems need to be addressed in the management of the park to prevent loss of crops for farmers and that many of them resent stringent restrictions they must abide by when living in proximity to this protected forest. This study shows that proposed agroecosytems to be used to help the conservation of primates will only aid certain species and that further study is necessary of the Galago family to determine how they will fare in rapidly changing coastal forest environments.Galagos are a family of primates which inhabit much of Sub-Saharan Africa, some of which are potentially at risk. Many species are not very well studied and so as a result there is little known about them. Some species of galago often co-exist in the same habitats as they exploit different resources of the environments. Many species inhabit the coastal forests of East Africa, including some potentially threatened species. The coastal forests of East Africa are home to many species of galagos, however this habitat is under threat from an increasing human population seeking timber, charcoal and land for agriculture. For these reasons it was thought necessary to measure population changes in some species when their habitat has been modified in some way by human activity, which has been suggested as a useful tool in the conservation of some primate species. This study estimated the density of both the Zanzibar galago (Galagoides zanzibaricus) and Garnett’s galago (Otolemur garnetti) in a human influenced forest and a relatively undisturbed forest, which were similar in other aspects. Densities of Zanzibar galagos were not significantly influenced by human activities. Garnett’s galago numbers showed a statistically significant, though slight increase, when their environment had been changed in some way by humans. Results also indicate that the future use of territory mapping style methods may give reliable estimates of galago species which have been difficult to monitor in the past, as well as providing a more comprehensive view of social structure in surveyed populations. A survey of households in close proximity to these forests found that 56.7% of household heads thought that conservation of the forests and their resources were worth conserving. It also identified that problems need to be addressed in the management of the park to prevent loss of crops for farmers and that many of them resent stringent restrictions they must abide by when living in proximity to this protected forest. This study shows that proposed agroecosytems to be used in the conservation of primates will only aid certain species and that further study is necessary of the Galago family to determine how they will fare in rapidly changing coastal forest environments. Further study is needed into these animals in order to better understand them and how they will respond to human induced changes to these environments

The Outer Halo of the Milky Way as Probed by RR Lyr Variables from the Palomar Transient Facility

RR Lyr stars are ideal massless tracers that can be used to study the total mass and dark matter content of the outer halo of the Milky Way. This is because they are easy to find in the light curve databases of large stellar surveys and their distances can be determined with only knowledge of the light curve. We present here a sample of 112 RR Lyr beyond 50 kpc in the outer halo of the Milky Way, excluding the Sgr streams, for which we have obtained moderate resolution spectra with Deimos on the Keck 2 Telescope. Four of these have distances exceeding 100 kpc. These were selected from a much larger set of 447 candidate RR Lyr which were datamined using machine learning techniques applied to the light curves of variable stars in the Palomar Transient Facility database. The observed radial velocities taken at the phase of the variable corresponding to the time of observation were converted to systemic radial velocities in the Galactic standard of rest. From our sample of 112 RR Lyr we determine the radial velocity dispersion in the outer halo of the Milky Way to be ~90 km/s at 50 kpc falling to about 65 km/s near 100 kpc once a small number of major outliers are removed. With reasonable estimates of the completeness of our sample of 447 candidates and assuming a spherical halo, we find that the stellar density in the outer halo declines as the -4 power of r.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Ap

Thespian, and Other Poems

Thespian Do not intrude, Even though the door---unlocked--- For the smile I wear today Will be tomorrow In the rain… The smiling mask, The private pain

Evaluating Innovation

In their pursuit of the public good, foundations face two competing forces -- the pressure to do something new and the pressure to do something proven. The epigraph to this paper, "Give me something new and prove that it works," is my own summary of what foundations often seek. These pressures come from within the foundations -- their staff or boards demand them, not the public. The aspiration to fund things that work can be traced to the desire to be careful, effective stewards of resources. Foundations' recognition of the growing complexity of our shared challenges drives the increased emphasis on innovation. Issues such as climate change, political corruption, and digital learning andwork environments have enticed new players into the social problem-solving sphere and have con-vinced more funders of the need to find new solutions. The seemingly mutually exclusive desires for doing something new and doing something proven are not new, but as foundations have grown in number and size the visibility of the paradox has risen accordingly.Even as foundations seek to fund innovation, they are also seeking measurements of those investments success. Many people's first response to the challenge of measuring innovation is to declare the intention oxymoronic. Innovation is by definition amorphous, full of unintended consequences, and a creative, unpredictable process -- much like art. Measurements, assessments, evaluation are -- also by most definitions -- about quantifying activities and products. There is always the danger of counting what you can count, even if what you can count doesn't matter.For all our awareness of the inherent irony of trying to measure something that we intend to be unpredictable, many foundations (and others) continue to try to evaluate their innovation efforts. They are, as John Westley, Brenda Zimmerman, and Michael Quinn Patton put it in "Getting to Maybe", grappling with "....intentionality and complexity -- (which) meet in tension." It is important to see the struggles to measure for what they are -- attempts to evaluate the success of the process of innovation, not necessarily the success of the individual innovations themselves. This is not a semantic difference.What foundations are trying to understand is how to go about funding innovation so that more of it can happenExamples in this report were chosen because they offer a look at innovation within the broader scope of a foundation's work. This paper is the fifth in a series focused on field building. In this context I am interested in where evaluation fits within an innovation strategy and where these strategies fit within a foundation's broader funding goals. I will present a typology of innovation drawn from the OECD that can be useful inother areas. I lay the decisions about evaluation made by Knight, MacArthur, and the Jewish NewMedia Innovation Funders against their program-matic goals. Finally, I consider how evaluating innovation may improve our overall use of evaluation methods in philanthropy

Urban tree community: living with tree spirits

In my thesis, I want to discuss the problem of how to use landscape design to change people’s attitudes toward nature through demonstrating the interconnectedness of all living and non-living parts of the Earth, and with hope, changing people’s behavior—starting with studying trees in the urban area and people’s relationship with them. The project aims to introduce a new lifestyle for people living in the urban areas to engage more with trees by developing more opportunities for people to interact with trees through design. I hope to build an urban tree community where people live with tree spirits and make friends with trees. They can learn more about trees and also learn from the trees. I hope that by changing people’s views on trees, people will rethink their place in nature

Maine Forester: 1992

No table of contents available.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/foresteryearbooks/1051/thumbnail.jp

Humanity's Footprint: Tracing the Devastating Effects of Climate Change Through Time

The climate is changing, there is no doubt about that. Past and present practices are not enough, we need to change now. This excerpt gives an adequate explanation on the dire need for change, ?Human experience and memory offer no good analogy for how we should think of those thresholds, but, as with world wars or recurrences of cancer, you don?t want to even see one. [talking about the degrees Celsius the earth warms on average] At two degrees, the ice sheets will begin their collapse, 400 million more people will suffer from water scarcity, major cities in the equatorial band of the planet will become unlivable, and even in the northern latitudes heat waves will kill thousands each summer. There will be thirty-two times as many extreme heat waves in India, and each would last five times as long, exposing ninety-three times more people. This is our best-case scenario? (David Wallace-Wells, 2019). The paragraph continues to lay out each degree and the effects it will have and with each degree living on earth gets increasingly more challenging. These challenges make climate change a topic that a lot of people struggle to make the much needed changes or wrap their heads around the severity. Climate change is many different factors wrapped up into a huge issue, it?s also not right in front of our faces. If you come across a large puddle, you make a quick decision, jump over the puddle, walk around or step in the puddle. This is a threat that is right in front of us whereas the changes we see as an effect of climate change are slow moving and do not always pop right in front of our faces. These challenges will be laid out and addressed through a design project forced to acknowledge the effects of climate change, the ever changing earth, and the people who habitat the earth

Inventory and Characterization of the Riparian Zone of the Current and Jacks Fork Rivers

The ecological, recreational, and economic value of the 134 mile (216 km) riparian corridor within the Ozark National Scenic Riverways (ONSR) is of great interest to land managers and conservationists. Recent interest in applying ecosystem management to forest systems has necessitated a fresh look at the tools and methods in use to assess existing patterns of plant community structure and diversity. The purpose and objective of the study described in this report was to initiate a series of vegetation studies that could be integrated with existing research and management infonnation on the riparian vegetation in the ONSR. Defining the compositional and spatial attributes of the riparian corridor were at the core of our research efforts. We used multivariate analysis and ordination techniques to characterize the composition and distribution of woody and herbaceous vegetation within the ONSR