Making Room for Quantitative Literacy in Historic Preservation: Local Historic District Designation and Property Values as a Case Study

This thesis calls for a twofold shift in the training in and practice of historic preservation: first, increased data literacy and use of data in the discipline, and second, for a higher degree of skepticism about the implications of data-driven findings. Even if the results of quantitative studies are less definitive in their findings than preservation advocates would like, these grey areas can serve a valuable purpose of forcing stakeholders to become more deeply engaged in why effects might be what they are, and how policy can intervene to achieve more desirable outcomes. Following a review of previous studies and their methodologies, this project looks to Philadelphia as a case study for the quantitative analysis of the association between local historic district designation and residential property values, exploring whether it is possible to develop a straightforward and meaningful methodology for assessing the economic impact of local historic district designation on residential property values. Transaction prices serve as the dependent variable in three separate models, each corresponding to a locally designated historic district and a similar but undesignated neighborhood. Limitations are explored in detail, and future directions for study are outlined in order to offer insight to others who might undertake similar work going forward

Fragility of Metallic Glasses and the TA/TG Ratio

From the Washington University Office of Undergraduate Research Digest (WUURD), Vol. 13, 05-01-2018. Published by the Office of Undergraduate Research. Joy Zalis Kiefer, Director of Undergraduate Research and Associate Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences; Lindsey Paunovich, Editor; Helen Human, Programs Manager and Assistant Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences Mentor(s): Ken Kelto

The relationship between the American public and demographics on the Supreme Court: an investigation of “The Harvard- Yale-ification of the Supreme Court.”

There are currently only two law schools represented on the Supreme Court: Harvard and Yale. This research looks to examine this recent narrowing of educational and professional backgrounds on the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Specifically, this paper looks to examine the influence the public has on Supreme Court nominations and the intricacies of public opinion surrounding potential judicial nominees. This is done by drawing from both literature reviewing the influences on Supreme Court nominations and through conducting a public opinion survey on related topics. Through analyzing this prior research and the survey results together it becomes clear that while it is problematic that there are only two law schools represented on the Supreme Court, the public has mixed views on this relative narrowing in diversity

Safe use of symbols in handover documentation for medical teams

Concern has been reported about the safe use of medical abbreviations in documents such as handover sheets and medical notes, especially when information is being communicated between staff of different specialties (BBC 2008, Sheppard et al. 2008). This article describes a study to investigate whether the use of symbols in handover documentation that is shared within and between multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) has similar safety implications. We asked 19 healthcare professionals from a range of specialties to identify 45 different combinations of 38 individual symbols. The symbols and combinations of symbols were extracted from 102 handover sheets taken from 6 different healthcare contexts in 4 London hospitals. Three symbols proposed in Microsoft's Common User Interface guidelines for alert symbols were also included. Results reveal that while some symbols are well understood, many others are either ambiguous or unknown. These results have implications for the safe use of symbols in medical documents, including paper and electronic handover documents and Electronic Patient Records (EPRs), especially where teams comprise individuals from different professional backgrounds, i.e. MDTs. We offer initial suggestions for standardisation and further research