THE EFFECTS OF NEW MEDIA ON ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT AMONG MILLENNIALS: A CASE STUDY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY COLLEGE OF HEALTH SCIENCES ALUMNI

This thesis explores the effects of new media, specifically the Internet and the popular social networking site Facebook, on alumni engagement among Millennials in the University of Kentucky College of Health Sciences. Millennials are defined as those born in or after 1982. Alumni engagement is defined as part of the larger social science term of social capital and is defined here as consisting of volunteerism and financial giving. To explore this topic, a survey was constructed and sent electronically to all Millennial alumni from the UK College of Health Sciences. Data reveal Millennial alumni from the College of Health Sciences are not particularly engaged through volunteerism or financial giving. Survey responses, however, indicated that most young alumni are recommending the college to prospective students and plan to give financially in the future. Practical implications from this study may prove beneficial for advancement practitioners and administrators in the University of Kentucky College of Health Sciences

Receipt from Dr. C. Horseman to Ogden Goelet

https://digitalcommons.salve.edu/ochre-court/1237/thumbnail.jp

Current welfare problems facing horses in Great Britain as identified by equine stakeholders

This is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Despite growing concerns about the welfare of horses in Great Britain (GB) there has been little surveillance of the welfare status of the horse population. Consequently we have limited knowledge of the range of welfare problems experienced by horses in GB and the situations in which poor welfare occurs. Thirty-one in-depth interviews were conducted with a cross -section of equine stakeholders, in order to explore their perceptions of the welfare problems faced by horses in GB. Welfare problems relating to health, management and riding and training were identified, including horses being under or over weight, stabling 24 hours a day and the inappropriate use of training aids. The interviewees also discussed broader contexts in which they perceived that welfare was compromised. The most commonly discussed context was where horses are kept in unsuitable environments, for example environments with poor grazing. The racing industry and travellers horses were identified as areas of the industry where horse welfare was particularly vulnerable to compromise. Lack of knowledge and financial constraints were perceived to be the root cause of poor welfare by many interviewees. The findings give insight into the range of welfare problems that may be faced by horses in GB, the contexts in which these may occur and their possible causes. Many of the problems identified by the interviewees have undergone limited scientific investigation pointing to areas where further research is likely to be necessary for welfare improvement. The large number of issues identified suggests that some form of prioritisation may be necessary to target research and resources effectivelyThe research was funded by World Horse Welfare: http://www.worldhorsewelfare.org/Home Grant code: DFAS SJ1045

Specialized Safety Training and Tracking for KYTC Construction and Maintenance Personnel

High-quality safety training is critical for educating employees in the highway construction and maintenance industry about workplace hazards and giving them tools to remove and/or minimize associated risks. But researchers and state transportation agencies have not committed enough resources to develop safety trainings that address the unique needs of this sector. This report fills in this gap for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) by cataloguing safety training resources available through other state and federal transportation agencies, documenting trainings available to Cabinet staff, identifying and prioritizing training gaps, and critically evaluating the content, quality, and duration of training resources. A web-based tool developed as part of this effort can be used by KYTC employees to quickly identify training resources by topic and view evaluations. In collaboration with the Kentucky Transportation Center’s Technology Transfer Program, researchers propose recommendations for safety trainings that can address needs beyond the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) 10-hour course Cabinet employees take. Future efforts should work to integrate these training modules into KYTC’s recently acquired comprehensive safety management system

Consolidation and rebound properties of Opalinus Clay : a long-term, fully drained test

A specimen of Opalinus clay from Mont Terri has been subjected to stress testing over a period of 532 days. Testing was undertaken by changing either (or both) of the axial and confining stresses in sharp steps followed by periods of between 4 and 82 days during which time the specimen was allowed to adjust to the new stress state. In this way, the drained consolidation, creep and rebound behaviour of an Opalinus clay specimen was examined. The test material was subjected to a maximum average effective stress of 38.3 MPa. Volumetric strain data for both volume change and porewater displacement measurements indicate a small inflection in the standard geotechnical plot of void ratio against the logarithm of average effective stress at a value between 20 and 22 MPa. The negative slope of the consolidation curve (α) based on volume change measurements exhibits a general trend of increasing magnitude as effective stress rises. Even though the data do not exhibit the sharp increase in α indicative of classic virgin consolidation behaviour, it would appear that plastic yielding is occurring at an average effective stress below 20 MPa. Analysis of net porewater flow measurements suggest original interstitial fluid was not expelled from the specimen until average effective stress exceeded 20 MPa. Given the data available, an estimate for the preconsolidation stress in the region of 20 to 25 MPa seems reasonable. As effective stress rises the duration of the strain transients lengthen. As the induration state of the mudrock increases, strain traces are characterised by less well-defined transients, indicative of time-dependent plastic yielding at high effective stresses. The volumetric strain data for both volume change and porewater displacement shows similar transient behaviour. These results give an average principal strain ratio of 0.252, suggesting the material is either mechanically anisotropic or behaving as a non-ideal elastic medium. Specific storage values derived from porewater displacement measurements show a general decreasing trend with increasing average effective stress and are in the range 1.5 to 12.5 × 10-6 m-1. Data from volume change measurements are less sensitive to changes in effective stress and are in the range 1.2 to 17.5 × 10-6 m-1. Elastic constants derived for undrained quantities are significantly higher than those for drained conditions by approximately one order of magnitude. Data suggests there is a transition in behaviour centred around an average effective stress of approximately 20 MPa. Analysis of creep curves can be broken down into three distinct responses. The Lemaitre model, as applied to Opalinus clay by Boidy (Boidy et al., 2002), was applied to the current test data. However the published model parameters failed to adequately fit the current data. Minor alteration of these parameters enabled modelling of the longer-term volumetric responses to be undertaken. The Lemaitre model did not predict the initial stage of creep very effectively. A much slower response time was seen in the current data, which was absent in the work by previous researchers. A power-law creep model was established. In general the fit was adequate for the volumetric strain observed, although these data exhibited some noise. In contrast, the fit of the axial strain data was not adequate and even the subdividing of the data into the individual creep stages failed to give an acceptable fit. A combination of power-law for the initial response and Lemaitre for the longer response may achieve a better prediction for this test stage. A numerical simulation was run using the 2-dimensional coupled flow and deformation code STAFAN. Two phases of the testing were modelled separately. During Phase 1, the model was used in an attempt to fit the creep data. A reasonable fit was made to the first step axial strain data, but the extrapolation to later stages showed a progressive deviation from the data. In addition, the model made poor predictions for the radial strain and porewater flow data in all steps. These observations indicate that both the assumptions of linear elasticity and isotropic deformation are probably invalid for this specimen. During the second phase of testing, the axial and confining stresses were raised synchronously in a series of seven 4 MPa steps. In view of the results of the Phase 1 modelling, it was decided to treat each step of Phase 2 as a separate test and to use the model to parameterise the changing state of the specimen. Young’s modulus was significantly lower than those derived from volume and porewater displacement measurements, which can be explained by the over prediction of radial strain due to the simple linear-elastic assumption in the STAFAN model. It has been shown that the linear elastic deformation model is not a good analogue for the behaviour of this specimen. There are clear indications of non-linear responses to stress changes in the data and it seems likely that some form of viscoelastic or viscoplastic model should be adopted. In addition, the axial and radial strain responses would seem to be anisotropic, bringing further complexity to the model that should be employed

Scorch marks from the sky

Daily sunshine duration is commonly reported at weather stations. Beyond the basic duration report, more information is available from scorched cards of Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorders, such as the estimation of direct-beam solar irradiance. Sunshine cards therefore potentially provide information on sky state, as inferred from solar-radiation data. Some sites have been operational since the late 19th century, hence sunshine cards potentially provide underexploited historical data on sky state. Sunshine cards provide an example of an archive source yielding data beyond the measurements originally sought

Development of a Low-Cost 6 DOF Brick Tracking System for Use in Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor Model Tests

This paper presents the design of a low-cost, compact instrumentation system to enable six degree of freedom motion tracking of acetal bricks within an experimental model of a cracked Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor (AGR) core. The system comprises optical and inertial sensors and capitalises on the advantages offered by data fusion techniques. The optical system tracks LED indicators, allowing a brick to be accurately located even in cluttered images. The LED positions are identified using a geometrical correspondence algorithm, which was optimised to be computationally efficient for shallow movements, and complex camera distortions are corrected using a versatile Incident Ray-Tracking calibration. Then, a Perspective-Ray-based Scaled Orthographic projection with Iteration (PRSOI) algorithm is applied to each LED position to determine the six degree of freedom pose. Results from experiments show that the system achieves a low Root Mean Squared (RMS) error of 0.2296 mm in x, 0.3943 mm in y, and 0.0703 mm in z. Although providing an accurate measurement solution, the optical tracking system has a low sample rate and requires the line of sight to be maintained throughout each test. To increase the robustness, accuracy, and sampling frequency of the system, the optical system can be augmented with an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). This paper presents a method to integrate the optical system and IMU data by accurately timestamping data from each set of sensors and aligning the two coordinate axes. Once miniaturised, the developed system will be used to track smaller components within the AGR models that cannot be tracked with current instrumentation, expanding reactor core modelling capabilities