What Does This Question Mean To You? Cognitive Interviewing to Pretest a Questionnaire for Older Adults

Seven cognitive interviews were conducted in adults aged 80 and older to pretest a questionnaire for the Community Connections - Moving Seniors Toward Wellness research project. Respondents participated in intensive one-on-one interviews. The questionnaire was administered, and respondents were probed for comprehension of question content. Older adults with physical limitations answered questions about depression based on physical rather than emotional status, made distinctions between capacity and performance regarding physical function, and failed to understand key medical terms. Wording of questions about personal hardiness was confusing to older adults. The findings were used to simplify wording throughout the questionnaire. Survey designers should be aware that questions about depression may be testing physical rather than emotional status. Questions about physical function should make a distinction between capacity and performance. Common language rather than medical terminology should be used when surveying older adults. Rewritten hardiness questions may be useful in assessing older adults

East Frederick Monocacy Boulevard City-owned Property Development

Joint final project for ARCH407: Graduate Architecture Design Studio and RDEV6881: Real Estate Development Capstone (Spring 2015). School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, University of Maryland, College Park.This course is part of the PALS program at UMD. PALS (Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainability) is a campus-wide action learning initiative that blends customized coursework, faculty expertise and student ingenuity to tackle challenges facing Maryland communities. ARCH 407 is a collaboration studio – that is, a studio that joins graduate students from Architecture with graduate students from Real Estate Development to work collaboratively on a design project. The project for the Spring 2015 semester worked with community stakeholders and practitioners to come up with a plan for development of the Monocacy Boulevard site in Frederick, Maryland. This studio concentrated on the problems and theories of urbanism and urban design techniques in the context of The City of Frederick and the State of Maryland. Applied theories ranged from Landscape Urbanism, Neo-Traditional Design, Transit- Oriented Development, ecological systems and infrastructure, building typology, and street design. Through early semester research exercises and community workshops, ARCH 407 explored the relationships between cultural, social, and ecological systems in the built environment. The course introduced issues of field (architecture that reaches past its building envelope to shape landscape, ecology, culture, economy, and social behavior), environment, theory, tectonics, and assemblage. By applying fundamental urban design theories and sustainability principles, students proposed three schematic designs illustrated with graphic data conveying the variety of possible development opportunities.The City of Frederic

Putting to rest WISHE-ful misconceptions for tropical cyclone intensification

The purpose of this article is twofold. The first is to point out and correct several misconceptions about the putative WISHE mechanism of tropical cyclone intensification that currently are being taught to atmospheric science students, to tropical weather forecasters, and to laypeople who seek to understand how tropical cyclones intensify. The mechanism relates to the simplest problem of an initial cyclonic vortex in a quiescent environment. This first part is important because the credibility of tropical cyclone science depends inter alia on being able to articulate a clear and consistent picture of the hypothesized intensification process and its dependencies on key flow parameters. The credibility depends also on being able to test the hypothesized mechanisms using observations, numerical models, or theoretical analyses. The second purpose of the paper is to carry out new numerical experiments using a state-of-the-art numerical model to test a recent hypothesis invoking the WISHE feedback mechanism during the rapid intensification phase of a tropical cyclone. The results obtained herein, in conjunction with prior work, do not support this recent hypothesis and refute the view that the WISHE intensification mechanism is the essential mechanism of tropical cyclone intensification in the idealized problem that historically has been used to underpin the paradigm. This second objective is important because it presents a simple way of testing the hypothesized intensification mechanism and shows that the mechanism is neither essential nor the dominant mode of intensification for the prototype intensification problem. In view of the operational, societal, and scientific interest in the physics of tropical cyclone intensification, we believe this paper will be of broad interest to the atmospheric science community and the findings should be useful in both the classroom setting and frontier research

Tropical cyclogenesis via convectively forced vortex Rossby waves in a three-dimensional quasigeostrophic model

July 1998.Also issued as Janice Enagonio's thesis (M.S.) -- Colorado State University, 1997.Includes bibliographical references.This work investigates the problem of tropical cyclogenesis in three dimensions. In particular, we examine the interaction of small-scale convective disturbances with a larger­ scale vortex circulation in a nonlinear quasigeostrophic balance model. Convective forcing is parameterized by its estimated net effect on the potential vorticity field. Idealized numerical experiments show that vortex intensification proceeds by ingestion of like-sign potential vorticity anomalies into the parent vortex and expulsion of opposite-sign potential vorticity anomalies during the axisymmetrization process. For the finite amplitude forcing considered here the weakly nonlinear vortex Rossby wave, mean-flow predictions for the magnitude and location of the spinup are in good agreement with the model results. Vortex development is analyzed using Lagrangian trajectories, Eliassen-Palm flux vectors, and the Lorenz energy cycle. Using numerical estimates of the magnitude of PV injection based on previous observational and theoretical work, we obtain spinup to a 15 ms-1 cyclone on realistic time scales. Simulation of a midlevel vortex with peripheral convection shows that axisymmetrization results in the spinup of a surface cyclone. The axisymmetrization mechanism demonstrates the development of a warm-core vortex. The relative contribution from eddy heat fluxes and eddy momentum fluxes to the warm core structure of the cyclone is investigated. The vortex spinup obtained shows greater than linear dependence on the forcing amplitude, indicating the existence of a nonlinear feedback mechanism associated with the vortex Rossby waves. Building on recent work by several authors, this work further clarifies the significance of the axisymmetrization process for the problem of tropical cyclogenesis. The theory is shown to be consistent with published observations of tropical cyclogenesis. Further observational tests of the theory, specific to the dynamics examined here, are proposed.Sponsored by the National Science Foundation grants ATM-9312655 and ATM-9529295

Neutron production of charm particles in Fermilab E-400

Results are presented from Fermilab E-400 on the production of charmed baryons and mesons using incident neutrons. We show evidence for the charm-strange baryon, ..xi../sub c//sup +/, and present our measurements of its mass, width, lifetime, cross section and relative branching fractions, and the A, x/sub f/, p/sub t/, and particle/antiparticle dependence of the state. We show evidence for both the ..sigma../sub c//sup + +/ and ..sigma../sub c//sup 0/, and present measurements of three mass differences, ..sigma../sub c//sup + +/ - ..sigma../sub c//sup 0/, ..sigma../sub c//sup 0/ - ..lambda../sub c//sup +/, and ..sigma../sub c//sup + +/ - ..lambda../sub c//sup +/. Preliminary results on the ratio of two decay modes of the D/sup 0/ are shown. D/sup 0/ ..-->.. K/sup +/K/sup -/ and D/sup 0/ ..-->.. K/sub 0/ anti K/sub 0/. The latter mode has not been previously observed. 8 refs., 10 figs

Charm hadroproduction results from Fermilab E-400

Results are presented from Fermilab E-400 on the production of charmed baryons and mesons at a mean energy of 640 GeV. We show evidence for the charm-strange baryon, ..xi../sub c//sup +/, and present our measurements of its mass, width, lifetime, cross section and relative branching fractions, and the A, x/sub f/, p/sub t/, and particle/antiparticle dependence of the state. We show evidence for both the ..sigma../sub c//sup 2 +/ and ..sigma../sub c//sup 0/, and present measurements of three mass differences, ..sigma../sub c//sup 2 +/ - ..sigma../sub c//sup 0/, ..sigma../sub c//sup 0/ - ..lambda../sub c//sup +/, and ..sigma../sub c//sup 2 +/ - ..lambda../sub c//sup +/. Measurements of the A dependence and particle/antiparticle ratios for ..sigma../sub c/ production are also presented. We show preliminary results on the ratio of two decay modes of the D/sup 0/, D/sup 0/ ..-->.. K/sup +/K/sup -/ and D/sup 0/ ..-->.. K/sub 0/anti K/sub 0/. The latter mode has not been previously observed. 8 refs., 10 figs