Rent and How to Pay it

This Document is a record of my process as the Technical Director of West Virginia University School of Theatre & Dance’s production of Rent. Included in the document is a detailed description of my budgeting, planning, and execution of the build as designed during a pandemic. The document is supported by images, schedules, drafting, and other paperwork

Examining Tax Planning, Tax Shelters, Antitrust laws and the History of Mergers and Acquisitions

Throughout the Accounting 420 course our class was given the opportunity to network and attend lectures hosted by a wide array of Accounting firms, companies and individuals. This class opened my eyes to how diverse the accounting field is and the countless opportunities available to me as I begin my career in accounting. During this class I was able to participate in two accounting competitions hosted by KPMG and PWC, meet accounting professionals form the Big 4 and the FBI and examine a complex accounting issue I was interested in. I focused much of my research on Tax based issues surrounding tax shelters and the growing impact of globalization and its effects on the recent uptick in merger and acquisition activity. Through the guidance of my professors and my independent research I was able to focus my interests on accounting topics that I hope to pursue further in my professional career. Accounting 420 helped me grow as a student and opened my eyes to the world of Tax and its long reaching consequences and opportunities

Evaluation of Automated Anthropometrics Produced By Smartphone-Based Machine Learning: A Comparison With Traditional Anthropometric Assessments

Automated visual anthropometrics produced by mobile applications are accessible and cost-effective with the potential to assess clinically relevant anthropometrics without a trained technician present. Thus, the aim of this study was to evaluate the precision and agreement of smartphone-based automated anthropometrics against reference tape measurements. Waist and hip circumference (WC; HC), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), and waist-to-height ratio (W:HT), were collected from 115 participants (69 F) using a tape measure and two smartphone applications (MeThreeSixty®, myBVI®) across multiple smartphone types. Precision metrics were used to assess test-retest precision of the automated measures. Agreement between the circumferences produced by each mobile application and the reference were assessed using equivalence testing and other validity metrics. All mobile applications across smartphone types produced reliable estimates for each variable with ICCs ≥0.93 (all

Values driven policy in designing environments for children and young people's education, health and wellbeing

The new millennium coincided with a reappraisal of value in UK construction and calls from a wide range of influential individuals, professional institutions and government bodies for the industry to exceed stakeholders’ expectations and develop integrated teams that can deliver world class products and services. As such value is certainly topical, but the importance of values as a separate but related concept is less well understood. This paper addresses the construction industry’s need to deliver public buildings that can regenerate communities, transform schools, modernise healthcare facilities and inspire children in a way that will make a real difference to their lives. Doing this requires a strong service and estates vision driven not only by the technical building solutions, but also by practitioners aspirations. Stakeholder engagement is seen by the Government as a way to bring about this reform, however the stakeholder consultation tools that are being deployed by providers and clients alike may be limited in how they translate values, attitudes and good teaching, learning and healthcare practices into building design. The purpose of this paper is to present the need to understand with greater meaning the values and cultures of schools and healthcare facilities during construction briefing and delivery and how the spirits of users can be harnessed to ensure the success and transformation of a new facility. It presents a longitudinal case study in which various tools and approaches have been developed and applied to address this need within education capital projects. It also draws on value, values and stakeholder literature in education and healthcare. The importance of this paper is to extend the range of methodological tools used in construction to structure the effects of meaning, culture and values on the construction industry’s processes, products and building operation and to translate learning between the education, health and social care sectors. It also hopes to encourage construction providers to extend their service and explore the opportunity to employ a similar methodology, particularly in the public sector environment where there is a growing need for multi-agency service integration

Helping Continuing Care Retirement Communities Determine the Best Level of Care for Each Patient

Background: Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs) consists of various neighborhoods and care spaces for senior adults. The neighborhoods are organized and residents are housed based on “levels of care” (LOC), Independent, Assisted, and Nursing. During scheduled interprofessional meetings, the CCRC leadership has the critical task of understanding the residents’ needs and assigning them to the appropriate LOC. Currently, the process of completing this task lacks the necessary structure, which engenders challenges in making recommendations in a systematic way. This project seeks to offer the CCRC interprofessional team a structured approach to determine which LOC and its resources would best serve each individual resident. Methods: User-centered research began at a CCRC, The Hill at Whitemarsh, in Summer 2019. Interviews with administration, employees, and patients were organized. Meetings with employees were observed. Preliminary LOC checklists and questionnaires were tested at The Hill’s biweekly LOC meetings and a final tool was produced. Results: The administration felt the lack of structure during the biweekly LOC meetings led to inefficient discussion and decision-making. The meetings also did not take into consideration patient individuality. The Interprofessional care team preferred a list of questions that was arranged with the intent to guide discussion, with enough freedom to consider the uniqueness of each elder. Conclusion: This tool provides the CCRC Level of Care team with a format to guide their meetings and carefully consider the needs of each resident. Based on feedback, the administration believes this tool improves the efficiency and structure of their discussions. One limitation of this project is time. To improve the validity, the project can be extended to accurately determine the success of the tool for meeting efficiency and patient satisfaction

Using a Checklist to Guide Discussion in Level of Care Meetings at the Hill at Whitemarsh

Background: The Hill at Whitemarsh is a retirement facility in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania which has three bundles of services for residents termed levels of care (LOC). Meeting are held routinely by medical and administrative staff to determine if an individual needs to move to a different LOC to improve her/his quality of life and safety. These meetings require integration of medical, functional, cognitive, social, and subjective factors often requiring input from several staff members. In this project, we seek a checklist for staff members at the Hill to use at the LOC meetings to ensure important points of discussion for a patient are not missed. Methods: We began our research by interviewing the Hill staff including the CEO, director of nursing, social worker, director of recreational therapy, nurses, and nursing assistants. Next, we generated several iterations of the checklist. Then, we implemented the checklist at the Hill in several level of care meetings, and the responses of the staff were recorded. Results: We identified a project at the Hill, interviewed key personnel, iterated, and implemented our design. Although staff admitted that the checklist captured important points of discussion for each patient, it was not thought to improve the decision-making process because decisions were often made without all the information included in the checklist. Conclusions: In this project we found a need to improve the LOC meeting by making a tool to integrate complex impressions from multiple people; however, our solution did not adequately capture the flexibility needed in LOC meetings. A future tool would quantify both the important factors and how important they are in deciding

Time-restricted Feeding Plus Resistance Training in Active Females: A Randomized Trial

Background A very limited amount of research has examined intermittent fasting (IF) programs, such as time-restricted feeding (TRF), in active populations. Objective Our objective was to examine the effects of TRF, with or without β-hydroxy β-methylbutyrate (HMB) supplementation, during resistance training (RT). Methods This study employed a randomized, placebo-controlled, reduced factorial design and was double-blind with respect to supplementation in TRF groups. Resistance-trained females were randomly assigned to a control diet (CD), TRF, or TRF plus 3 g/d HMB (TRFHMB). TRF groups consumed all calories between 1200 h and 2000 h, whereas the CD group ate regularly from breakfast until the end of the day. All groups completed 8 wk of supervised RT and consumed supplemental whey protein. Body composition, muscular performance, dietary intake, physical activity, and physiological variables were assessed. Data were analyzed prior to unblinding using mixed models and both intention-to-treat (ITT) and per protocol (PP) frameworks. Results Forty participants were included in ITT, and 24 were included in PP. Energy and protein intake (1.6 g/kg/d) did not differ between groups despite different feeding durations (TRF and TRFHMB: ∼7.5 h/d; CD: ∼13 h/d). Comparable fat-free mass (FFM) accretion (+2% to 3% relative to baseline) and skeletal muscle hypertrophy occurred in all groups. Differential effects on fat mass (CD: +2%; TRF: −2% to −4%; TRFHMB: −4% to −7%) were statistically significant in the PP analysis, but not ITT. Muscular performance improved without differences between groups. No changes in physiological variables occurred in any group, and minimal side effects were reported. Conclusions IF, in the form of TRF, did not attenuate RT adaptations in resistance-trained females. Similar FFM accretion, skeletal muscle hypertrophy, and muscular performance improvements can be achieved with dramatically different feeding programs that contain similar energy and protein content during RT. Supplemental HMB during fasting periods of TRF did not definitively improve outcomes. This study was prospectively registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT03404271