Square One Station: Atlanta\u27s New Multi-modal Passenger Terminal

The Atlanta Journal Constitution Building and its block is located in arguably the most historically significant area to Atlanta: The Gulch. Being so close to the original Zero Milepost location, this is where the City of Atlanta was founded. The Gulch started out as the center of downtown’s business district, but has since steadily declined in popularity, initially triggered by people moving out to suburban homes Even after multiple attempts to revive the area, it proved unsuccessful. This is best illustrated by the fact that the city lost money on the property even during big events like the 1996 Olympics and the premier of Gone With the Wind. The area is currently owned by a Los-Angeles developer called CIM Group which has promised the most recent redevelopment of the area. Sadly, this includes the demolition of the AJC Building. Incidentally, in the past few years, the Georgia Department of Transportation dedicated a research team to initiate the process of adding a High Speed Rail (HSR) System connecting Atlanta to Chattanooga. After a thorough environmental analysis, the team concluded that the preferred route for this proposed infrastructure is along highway I-75, and passing under downtown Atlanta, with a downtown station location not yet determined. That being said, as an alternative to demolishing the building, this thesis project proposes converting the AJC Building and the block it sits on into a Multi-Modal Passenger Terminal (MMPT). This would provide improved public transportation where travelers will no longer have to rely only on the overutilized car, expensive air travel, and the inefficient bus ride. As passengers come through and it becomes an attractive area for businesses, there will be much higher pedestrian activity as this becomes a city hub and an essential resource to this currently underserved area

About the corporate social responsibility beyond the framework of charity

The pursuit of "sustainable development" in the 21st century requires from companies to be good corporate citizens. The practical approach to achieving this is related to integrating the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) into the overall corporate strategy. For companies in Bulgaria this is a relatively new practice. The lack of sufficient experience influences the understanding of some businesspersons on the scope of socially responsible behavior and, as a result, in some cases, limits it to charity events. Referring to the results of an empirical study on the carbonated soft drinks market in Bulgaria, this article aims to present CSR beyond the framework of charity. The collected data proves that in this market, both for producers/bottling companies and for consumers, charity is isolated and insufficient manifestation of socially responsible behavior. Recognizing a company as a good corporate citizen on the one hand and exercising such behavior on the other hand requires a much wider form of CSR engagement. The statistical affirmation of the latter assertion suggests that this understanding of the nature of CSR could be also relevant for representatives of the other sectors of the economy in Bulgaria

Crisis risk measurements – trade with credit default swaps against measurements of the capital trade dynamics

This study represents the increasing significance of credit default swaps for European capital markets, namely Germany, France, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania. The period of analysis is between 2003- 2016 years. After developing a theoretical and empirical framework to model the relationship between credit default swap market and capital market, we apply an empirical research which uses logistic regression. Our dataset assesses the ability of CDS to predict financial crisis at stock markets.  Regarding sovereign credit default swaps as reflection of credit risk, we find them to be a significant indicator explaining the periods proceeding financial crises, especially to developed capital markets

Inmigración y derechos humanos

A pesar del reconocimiento internacional de cada vez mayores cuotas de derechos a los inmigrantes, continúa habiendo cierta desigualdad respecto a los nativos, manifestada especialmente en campos tales como la sanidad o los derechos políticos. Los extranjeros siguen estando sometidos en muchas ocasiones a discriminación y reacciones adversas por parte de la ciudadanía, fomentadas por los medios de comunicación, las autoridades o la propia sociedad.Grado en Derech

The Importance of Financial Condition Indices in South-Eastern Europe

In this paper, we construct the Financial Conditions Index of 11 European economies - Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Germany, and Turkey. We aim to reveal the sensitivity of the FCIs to the dynamics of the global financial conditions and to investigate and establish dependencies between the constructed FCIs and those of the USA and Germany. We prove that FCI is sensitive to the upcoming shocks from the USA and Germany. When studying the sensitivity of the FCIs to the U.S and German indices we prove that the impact of the American conditions is substantially stronger. We may conclude that the tightening of financial conditions causes a slowdown in GDP growth in the future while a weakening stimulates inflation. We proved that local financial conditions incorporate faster and more strongly the influence of global financial shocks than changes in domestic policy rates

Depression in patients with heart failure

Introduction: Heart failure (HF) is a chronic progressive syndrome, which is a result of preceding heart diseases and manifests with serious symptoms. Depression and anxiety are frequent comorbidities in chronic HF, which deteriorate the general status of the patients and are related to unfavorable health results—increased number of hospitalizations, deteriorated quality of life, and elevated mortality.Aim: The aim of this article is to assess the tendency to fall into depression of patients with HF in NYHA class III-IV, hospitalized in the non-invasive cardiology clinic of St. Marina University Hospital, Varna and the link to socioeconomic factors—social isolation, family status, educational level, region of residence and so on.Materials and Methods: Overall, 39 patients with HF (17 women and 22 men) were investigated. They were in III-IV NYHA functional class during hospitalization. After preliminarily informed consent, they were asked to fill out a validated screening questionnaire for depression in adults—the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). The link to the patients’ socioeconomic, demographic, biological, and clinical characteristics was sought with the help of a multi-factor linear and logistic regression analysis.Results: The results for the level of depression among HF patients were related to socioeconomic factors—region of residence, level of education, social isolation as well as to other variables—gender, age, and systolic left ventricular function assessed through the ejection fraction (EF). Higher levels of depression were observed in patients who resided in larger populated areas, with higher level of education and patients living alone. As far as gender was concerned, females were more susceptible to depressive episodes than males. At an average EF of 49.54 ±15.29%, the decreased left ventricular systolic function was also a factor of the degree of development of anxiety and depression. In a multi-factor analysis, however, only living alone was related to enhanced depressive attitude.Conclusion: Depression/anxiety in HF patients requires increased need of health care, shows poor health results, has high costs for treatment related to the serious symptoms, disability and high mortality. Regardless of that, no programs for timely detection, diagnosis, and treatment have been developed yet

Occupational burnout in pharmacists practising in a pharmacy - research protocol

Introduction: Burnout describes emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion directly related to the occupational environment observed in healthy individuals. The Maslach Burnout Inventory Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS(MP)) tool is used as a standard for evaluating burnout among medical professionals. According to Maslach, those affected by burnout are characterised by a combination of emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalisation and dehumanisation (DP), as well as impaired performance (PP). Burnout syndrome is considered with increased values of one of the EE and/or DP scales and/or decreased PP.The purpose of this article is to present a research protocol a study aiming to determine the level of professional burnout and analyse the work environment of master pharmacists practising in pharmacies serving the population.Material and methods: To achieve the purpose of the study, a direct anonymous paper-based survey was carried out, intended for master pharmacists with more than 1 year of experience who practice in the city of Varna, in pharmacies serving the population, which have a contract with the National Health Insurance till). The survey includes demographic characteristics, the MBI-HSS(MP) questionnaire, and questions focused on the specific characteristics of the work environment.Results: 301 master pharmacists met the inclusion criteria, of which 127 participated in the study. 53% have a medium to high level of professional burnout. Pharmacists face the most serious difficulties when processing prescriptions paid by the NHIF, due to frequent changes in legislative requirements and lack of precise instructions. The problems encountered by pharmacists are also due to a large administrative workload and lack of time to provide pharmaceutical care.Conclusion: There is professional burnout among the pharmacists studied. The greatest difficulties are encountered in the processing of prescriptions paid by the NHIF. It is necessary to make a thorough analysis of the working environment’s influence on the level of burnout

Disaster medical support plan as an element of the hospital disaster resilience

Abstract Introduction: Every disastrous event, by definition, results in infrastructure damage and a large number of casualties that exceeds the community’s ability to respond effectively and quickly to the human and material losses. The ability to respond quickly, adequately, and effectively in emergency situations, by changing the activities performed and to restore the state of functionality in a short time before disaster is defined as hospital disaster resilience. In order for disaster resilience to be granted for effective and adequate disaster response, the medical staff has to be aware of and trained on medical specialists’ activities described in the disaster medical support plan. Aim: To analyse the medical professionals’ awareness of hospital disaster medical support plan and its impact on the disaster resilience. Materials and methods: A 55-question anonymous survey was conducted among 295 hospital professionals in Plovdiv Region between July and September 2019. The respondents were questioned about their awareness of the medical activities described in the hospital disaster medical support plan. Descriptive statistics was used to calculate the relative percentages, along with the Pearson chi-square test and Spearman’s correlation. All descriptive and analytical analyses were performed using SPSS v. 21 for Windows XP. Results: Thoroughly performed analyses of the respondents’ answers presents that the medical specialists in Plovdiv Region are not well informed about the hospital disaster medical support plan’s content. Conclusions: Poor knowledge about the required changes into every medical specialist’s activities in case of a disaster has a negative impact on the hospital resilience

The impact of the thread design compared to the impact of the surface topography on the primary stability of implants inserted into fresh pig ribs

The aim of this investigation was to compare the effect of the thread pitch, thread profile and the surface morphology on the primary stability of implants of a different diameter. Eighty test specimens of dental im­plants were inserted into 16 untreated pig ribs, as the maximum insertion torque (MIT), periotest values (PTV) and implant stability quotient (ISQ) were measured. Considering the results, we concluded that the higher thread profile, even with a wider thread pitch, affects the primary stability more than the rougher surface of the implants

Bone characteristics and implant stability

The aim of this literature data review was to investigate the influence of the bone density, bone volume, cortical bone thickness and the anatomical area on the primary stability of dental implants. Understanding the effect of the bone quality could help us predict the primary stability and prevent to some extent the poor implant stability by choosing implants of different design, diameter, length or surface modification.Considering the reviewed articles, we have concluded that inserting implants in dense bone of higher quality with thick cortical portion, as well as implant placement in lower jaw could lead to higher primary stability of those implants. To enhance the primary stability in bone of poor quality we suggest the use of implants with such characteristics of the design or dimensions, which are proven to influence the primary stability of the implant in a positive way