Reconnecting the Urban Web: Chicago\u27s Failed Olympic Hope

‘Towers in the park,’ a destructive urbanistic typology that gained notoriety with idealistic projects by Le Corbusier, are prevalent in American cities. This architectural and urban concept consists of mono-functional high-rise towers, typically residential, placed on a superblock of unprogrammed over-scaled greenspace. The original intention was to create order within the city and provide plenty of landscaping and urban space for the city’s occupants. Noble in goals, these mega-towers have been chastised for their lack of character, inappropriate scale, and the inability to create vibrant public space that promote interaction and community by creating an over concentration of segregated nodes without adequate or engaging connections for the public. As one of these cities that used this typology for its low-income housing projects, Chicago faces many physically segregative issues in its south-side neighborhoods. One such site, Prairie Shores in the Douglas neighborhood, is physically separated from an affluent neighborhood to the west, downtown to the north, and Lake Michigan to the east. Focusing on the physical segregation – as opposed to the racial, economic, and social segregation – this project attempts to reconnect disparate parts of the neighborhood in order to make it a more inclusive part of the city’s urban fabric. Major urban interventions, such as the one being proposed, are very unlikely due to the immense political, economic, and social barriers that occurs in such a large project. Occasionally an event occurs which allows or even promotes urban interventions at a large scale. This proposal uses one of these events – the Olympics – to investigate the opportunities and issues that come with such a massive infrastructural, social, economic, and urban project. Applying these and other findings to the proposed and rejected Chicago 2016 Olympic Village in Prairie Shores, the proposal seeks to rethink urban and architectural morphologies to better integrate transportation infrastructure, ecology, and public space

Two-Way Communication Using RFID Equipment and Techniques

Equipment and techniques used in radio-frequency identification (RFID) would be extended, according to a proposal, to enable short-range, two-way communication between electronic products and host computers. In one example of a typical contemplated application, the purpose of the short-range radio communication would be to transfer image data from a user s digital still or video camera to the user s computer for recording and/or processing. The concept is also applicable to consumer electronic products other than digital cameras (for example, cellular telephones, portable computers, or motion sensors in alarm systems), and to a variety of industrial and scientific sensors and other devices that generate data. Until now, RFID has been used to exchange small amounts of mostly static information for identifying and tracking assets. Information pertaining to an asset (typically, an object in inventory to be tracked) is contained in miniature electronic circuitry in an RFID tag attached to the object. Conventional RFID equipment and techniques enable a host computer to read data from and, in some cases, to write data to, RFID tags, but they do not enable such additional functions as sending commands to, or retrieving possibly large quantities of dynamic data from, RFID-tagged devices. The proposal would enable such additional functions. The figure schematically depicts an implementation of the proposal for a sensory device (e.g., a digital camera) that includes circuitry that converts sensory information to digital data. In addition to the basic sensory device, there would be a controller and a memory that would store the sensor data and/or data from the controller. The device would also be equipped with a conventional RFID chipset and antenna, which would communicate with a host computer via an RFID reader. The controller would function partly as a communication interface, implementing two-way communication protocols at all levels (including RFID if needed) between the sensory device and the memory and between the host computer and the memory. The controller would perform power

Expanding Access to Undergraduate Higher Education for China\u27s Ethnic Minority Populations

China has one of the world’s oldest and largest sets of minority affirmative action policies, which provide 125 million individuals from recognized ethnic minority groups with preferences in family planning, school admissions, employment, business financing and taxation, and financial subsidies. This paper aims to examine how China implements preferential policies for ethnic minority undergraduate applicants to its higher education institutions. Policies of preferential admissions in China are designed to compensate for inequalities in educational opportunity among different ethnic groups. This compensatory approach is based on the concept that equal treatment of differently situated groups may itself create inequality. Yet preferential policies alone will not eliminate inequities in educational attainment, if preferential policies did not exist, however, competitive examinations and the meritocracy principle would have retained the status quo and perpetuated existing (dis)advantages. Well-focused, high-leverage preferential policies can produce significant and enduring changes, but they will demonstrate limited success unless they are part of a larger, system-oriented, and far-reaching socioeconomic development strategy

Data Development and Analysis Pathways for Marine Mammals and Turtles: Creating a User Interface

A major obstacle in genetic research is developing streamlined methods for analyzing large amounts of data. The statistical computer programming language R provides users with the ability to develop packages containing specific functions in order to create more accessible data analysis pipelines. However, writing code in R can still be intimidating to those with little to no coding experience. Fortunately, the R package shiny provides a framework for developing web applications based on R functions. Using shiny, we developed a user-friendly web application containing functions of the R package strataG. The strataG package contains several functions for summarizing genetic data and analyzing population structure. Researchers who do not know how to use R or may not feel comfortable with using strataG on the R command line can now use a browser-based graphical user interface to load their raw data, select and run analyses, and save the outputs generated. User-friendly data analysis tools such as ours will assist researchers as the field of biology continues to increasingly demand that scientists have advanced computing skills. The user interface of this web application is presented here for “Data Development and Analysis Pathways for Marine Mammals and Turtles.” The server will be presented by Warren Asfazadour, et al. separately in the same series

Preparing for Exit from Sport: a Phenomenological Examination of the Pre-transition Experiences of Division I Female Intercollegiate Athletes

The purpose of this study was to discover the meanings female intercollegiate athletes ascribe to their experiences preceding exit from NCAA Division I competition. The study sample included five Division I female intercollegiate athletes. Four of these attended a large public research institution in the Southern Plains area of the United States (three Caucasian and one African-American) and the fifth attended a large private religiously affiliated university in the Midwest (Caucasian). The five athletes previously competed in four sports - track and field, basketball, soccer, and cross country. The methodology utilized was Moustakas' (1994) transcendental phenomenology and the study included a number of data collection methods including demographic profiles, participant-produced drawings, individual phenomenological interviews, bi-weekly journal responses, and examinations of printed and audiovisual data related to participants' sport experiences. Results from data analysis procedures yielded seven themes related to participants' experiences in preparing to exit competitive sport. These themes included bittersweet, on your own, being part of a team, I will forever be an athlete, free time, it creeps up on you, and they think they do a lot. In addition to these themes, textural and structural descriptions of experience, as well as the invariant structure of experience were developed. Overall, athletes appeared to express both positive and negative feelings regarding their experiences leading up to formal sport transition. Athletes also reported on the significance of important relationships in assisting with their transition, their struggle to adjust to a new sense of self following career termination, and the belief they were mostly unprepared to deal with the reality of sport transition due to the prolonged engagement with sport they experienced. Suggestions for future research included expanding qualitative studies on athlete experience, the use of alternative qualitative methods in sport-related research, and examining the influence of contextual factors on athlete transition.School of Educational Studie

Evaluating Watershed Condition: Bottom Up Vs. Top Down Approaches?

Habitat degradation has been identified as one of the major factors affecting the declines of fishes in the Columbia River Basin. The condition of physical habitat and the biotic integrity of stream systems are often directly correlated with substantial alterations to key landscape attributes. As such, numerous approaches to measure watershed condition have been developed. Here, we compare two separate measures of watershed condition: 1) a GIS-based measure of condition, i.e., top down; and 2) a ground based assessment of condition, i.e., bottom up), using field data collected across 1200 sites in the Interior Columbia River Basin under the PIBO Effectiveness Monitoring Project. With our GIS approach, we integrate land management and natural disturbance from watershed upstream of sample reaches into an overall watershed condition score. With our bottom-up approach, we integrate stream temperature data, indices of macroinvertebrate health, and an index of physical habitat condition from reach-level field data into an overall condition score. Our results indicate significant differences in assessments of condition across the two methods, as the GIS approach ranked considerably more watersheds with management activities into a low condition category than found in the bottom-up approach. Conversely, the GIS approach also categorized most watersheds with no or minimal management activities, i.e., reference, as low risk, while the field-based, bottom up approach illustrated a wide range of condition of reference sites due to natural disturbances. Our results suggest GIS-based approaches tended to quantify the ‘risk’ rather than condition within watersheds. The bottom-up approach tended to quantify actual conditions within streams, without consideration of potential risks associated with land management activities. Here, we advocate the most beneficial approach that would be some combination of the two to help guide and prioritize restoration activities to enhance habitat conditions and minimize risk of catastrophic disturbances

Quantifying Temporal Variability in Stream Habitat Data: Implications for Restoration and Monitoring

Quantifying natural and anthropogenic-induced levels of temporal variability is essential for robust trend analyses and for evaluating the effectiveness of restoration activities or changed management actions. Here, we used data collected as part of the Pacfish/Infish Biological Effectiveness Monitoring Project to evaluate the extent of temporal variability in instream habitat collected at the reach scale. We integrated habitat data collected yearly (2001-2009) at 50 sites experiencing a range of management activities into our analyses to better understand the consistency of temporal variability in watersheds with inherently different landscape characteristics and disturbance regimes. We initially decomposed variance estimates to remove site-to-site variability, sampling error, and year effects and use the remaining variance as a measure of site-specific temporal variability. We then relate this temporal variability to landscape, management, and climate attributes at multiple scales to better understand which characteristics result in more or less variability in habitat attributes at specific sites. Our results suggest temporal variability differs significantly across individual sites and attributes within sites, indicating our ability to detect significant changes as a result of management changes and/or restoration efforts are context dependent. The spatial scale of landscape attributes, e.g., stream buffer vs. catchment, related to temporal variability also varied across individual attributes. Our efforts highlight the importance of considering site specific measures of temporal variability as they relate to specific restoration and management goals

Crummer/SunTrust Portfolio Spring 2007

The Cummer/SunTrust portfolio does not lie on the efficient frontier, but instead is positioned just below it. It is worth mentioning that the efficient portfolios are often not properly diversified, and the majority of their allocation is often composed of just one or two asset classes. The efficient frontier is not designed to tell investors a precise composition of asset classes in their portfolio. Instead, it is just another tool, or mathematical model, to help investors make prudent decisions. Consequently, the group believes that the Crummer/SunTrust portfolio is well positioned relative to the efficient frontier, which ensures high expected return for the assumed level of risk, and at the same time provides proper diversification. The portfolio’s expected return is slightly above the higher limit of required return developed in the Investment Policy Statement and the risk level is well within the level considered appropriate by the class

Integration of suboptimal health status evaluation as a criterion for prediction of preeclampsia is strongly recommended for healthcare management in pregnancy: A prospective cohort study in a Ghanaian population

Background: Normotensive pregnancy may develop into preeclampsia (PE) and other adverse pregnancy complications (APCs), for which the causes are still unknown. Suboptimal health status (SHS), a physical state between health and disease, might contribute to the development and progression of PE. By integration of a routine health measure in this Ghanaian Suboptimal Health Cohort Study, we explored the usefulness of a 25-question item SHS questionnaire (SHSQ-25) for early screening and prediction of normotensive pregnant women (NTN-PW) likely to develop PE. Methods: We assessed the overall health status among a cohort of 593 NTN-PW at baseline (10–20 weeks gestation) and followed them at 21–31 weeks until 32–42 weeks. After an average of 20 weeks follow-up, 498 participants returned and were included in the final analysis. Hematobiochemical, clinical and sociodemographic data were obtained. Results: Of the 498 participants, 49.8% (248/498) had ‘high SHS’ at baseline (61.7% (153/248) later developed PE) and 38.3% (95/248) were NTN-PW, whereas 50.2% (250/498) had ‘optimal health’ (17.6% (44/250) later developed PE) and 82.4% (206/ 250) were NTN-PW. At baseline, high SHS score yielded a significantly (p \u3c 0.05) increased adjusted odds ratio, a wider area under the curve (AUC) and a higher sensitivity and specificity for the prediction of PE (3.67; 0.898; 91.9% and 87.8%), PE coexisting with intrauterine growth restriction (2.86, 0.838; 91.5% and 75.9%), stillbirth (2.52; 0.783; 96.6% and 60.0%), hemolysis elevated liver enzymes and low platelet count (HELLP) syndrome (2.08; 0.800; 97.2% and 63.8%), acute kidney injury (2.20; 0.825; 95.3% and 70.0%) and dyslipidaemia (2.80; 0.8205; 95.7% and 68.4%) at 32–42 weeks gestation. Conclusions: High SHS score is associated with increased incidence of PE; hence, SHSQ-25 can be used independently as a risk stratification tool for adverse pregnancy outcomes thereby creating an opportunity for predictive, preventive and personalized medicine

Suboptimal health pregnant women are associated with increased oxidative stress and unbalanced pro- and antiangiogenic growth mediators: A cross-sectional study in a Ghanaian population

Optimal oxidative stress (OS) is important throughout pregnancy; however, an increased OS may alter placental angiogenesis culminating in an imbalanced of angiogenic growth mediators (AGMs). Suboptimal Health Status (SHS), a physical state between health and disease, may be associated with increased OS and unbalanced AGMs. In this study, we explored the association between SHS, biomarkers of OS (BOS) and AGMs among normotensive pregnant women (NTN-PW) in a Ghanaian Suboptimal Health Cohort Study (GHOACS). This comparative GHOACS recruited 593 NTN-PW from the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Ghana. SHS was measured using a Suboptimal Health Status Questionnaire-25 (SHSQ-25). Along with the subjective SHS measure, objective BOS: 8-hydroxy-2-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG), 8-epiprostaglandinF2 alpha (8-epi-PGF2α), total antioxidant capacity (TAC), and AGMs: vascular endothelial growth factor-A (VEGF-A), soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase receptor 1 (sFlt-1), placental growth factor (PIGF) and soluble endoglin (sEng) were evaluated. Compared to optimal health NTN-PW, levels of PlGF, VEGF-A and TAC were significantly (p \u3c 0.05) reduced and negatively associated with SHS whilst sEng, sFlt-1, 8-epiPGF2α, 8-OHdG, and combined ratios of sFlt-1/PlGF, 8-epiPGF2α/PlGF, 8-OHdG/PlGF, and sEng/PlGF were significantly increased and positively associated with SHS. The first quartile for PIGF (2.79-fold) and VEGF-A (5.35-fold), and the fourth quartile for sEng (4.31-fold), sFlt-1 (1.84-fold), 8-epiPGF2α (2.23-fold), 8-OHdG (1.90-fold) and urinary 8-OHdG (1.95-fold) were independently associated with SHS (p \u3c 0.05). SHS is associated with increased OS and unbalanced AGMs. Early identification of SHS-related OS and unbalanced AGMs may inform clinicians of the need for therapeutic options