Abandoned Projects: The Economic Impact in San Luis Obispo

San Luis Obispo is in the midst of a housing crisis. This small college town cannot keep pace with the growing number of students and residents. The problem is that there are very few new housing options being developed. Other than the new freshman dorms, the housing market in San Luis Obispo has been stagnant for years. The housing market cannot afford inefficiency and waste, but there are still many abandoned construction sites around the city. These sites are not only eye sores and safety hazards, but they are wasted opportunities. They cost the city millions of dollars every year. Even in today’s economic boom, these abandoned sites are still all over the city. When a recession hits, the costs regarding abandoned projects will surely skyrocket. Whether the sites have been abandoned for weeks, months, or even years, they still have the potential to be completed or, at least, redeveloped. Each situation is different, and each site is abandoned for a different reason. Whether it\u27s permitting or a lack of funding each site has an obstacle to overcome. In order for San Luis Obispo to house the vast number of students these sites need to change

From litter decomposition to soil organic matter formation: using stable isotopes to determine the fate of carbon and nitrogen

2014 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.Litter decomposition releases the energy and nutrients fixed during photosynthesis into the atmosphere and soil. In the soil, carbon and nitrogen from the litter can be stabilized in soil organic matter pools, which globally represent large pools of both carbon (C) and nitrogen (N). Soil organic matter pools are heterogeneous, the product of different stabilization processes and will stabilize C and N for periods of time ranging from years to millennia. A thorough mechanistic understanding of the fate of above-ground litter C and N is essential to understand how climate change could affect both carbon sequestration and soil health. This research studied the fate of litter derived organic matter. Isotopically labeled litter was used in a field incubation to trace litter derived C and N into different SOM pools and soil depths over the course of 3 years. Additionally, naphthalene was used to suppress microarthropods to determine the impact of mesofauna on the fate of litter derived N. In the laboratory, soil from the field experiment was incubated for 150 to determine how different SOM pools contributed to respiration and leaching. Microarthropods do not increase overall N mineralization rates, but do influence the fate of litter derived N. When present, microarthropods increased the amount of litter derived N in the light fractions, suggesting that microarthropods increase litter fragmentation. Surprisingly, litter derived organic matter does not contribute to respiration and leaching equally, suggesting that leaching and respiration are not directly related. Litter derived OM behaves differently than older OM present in the soil, with the newer litter derived C and N being more readily lost from SOM pools. This result supports the onion layering model suggested by Sollins (Sollins et al. 2006). In order to create more accurate models, microarthropods and the onion layering model should be included in future C and N dynamic studies

Experiences and perceptions of Spring Lane Sure Start Children's Centre

Spring Lane Sure Start Children’s Centre was designated in September 2007, and ‘officially opened’ in February 2009. The Centre is housed in refurbished premises within a nursery/school complex in the heart of Northampton and offers diverse health, childcare, early education and support services delivered by a multi-professional team. These services and activities are available to children aged 0-5 years old, and their parents/carers, residing within a catchment area comprising eight ‘Super Output Areas’ in the Castle and St. James ward of Northampton. In April 2009, the Centre for Children and Youth (CCY) – a research centre based at The University of Northampton – was commissioned by Spring Lane Sure Start Children’s Centre to collate and gather evaluative data regarding experiences and perceptions of the Children’s Centre during its first year of activitie

Neurogenin2 Expression in Ventral and Dorsal Spinal Neural Tube Progenitor Cells Is Regulated by Distinct Enhancers

AbstractThe basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor Neurogenin2 (NGN2) is expressed in distinct populations of neural progenitor cells within the developing central and peripheral nervous systems. Transgenic mice containing ngn2/lacZ reporter constructs were used to study the regulation of ngn2 in the developing spinal cord. ngn2/lacZ transgenic embryos containing sequence found 5′ or 3′ to the ngn2 coding region express lacZ in domains that reflect the spatial and temporal expression profile of endogenous ngn2. A 4.4-kb fragment 5′ of ngn2 was sufficient to drive lacZ expression in the ventral neural tube, whereas a 1.0-kb fragment located 3′ of ngn2 directed expression to both dorsal and ventral domains. Persistent β-gal activity revealed that the NGN2 progenitor cells in the dorsal domain give rise to a subset of interneurons that send their axons to the floor plate, and the NGN2 progenitors in the ventral domain give rise to a subset of motor neurons. We identified a discrete element that is required for the activity of the ngn2 enhancer specifically in the ventral neural tube. Thus, separable regulatory elements that direct ngn2 expression to distinct neural progenitor populations have been defined

Theo Angelopoulos and the Cinema of Contemplation

Includes image: 'landscape with three figures', 1935. I dedicate this essay to Theo Angelopoulos' wife Phoebe Economopoulou and their daughters, Anna, Eleni and KaterinaAbstractI am honored to be here at the University of Sydney for this, the 11th Biennial Conference of the Modern Greek Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand. It was last Fall that I was invited to speak on the cinema of Theo Angelopoulos since I have known him and written about his films for over thirty five years. But the invitation was before this renowned Greek filmmaker died after being accidently run over by a motorcyclist on the set of his latest film The Other Sea January 24th of this year, 2012. I wish to state up front, what a hard moment this was and is, not only for the Angelopoulos family and for Greek cinema, but for those fans including myself all over the world who appreciate the kind of distinctively individually crafted cinema that Theo’s films represent. I am speaking personally also because I was actually on the set of this film with Theo during the first week of January, two weeks before his death.I wish to begin with three quotes that I feel provide a framework for Theo, as we shall call him here, and his cinema of contemplation that I wish to discuss

Methods for proteomic characterization of antibody repertoires and de novo peptide sequencing

Driven by the increased performance and availability of protein mass spectrometry and next generation sequencing technologies, research in proteomics and systems biology has expanded far beyond the study of model organisms. This heralds a deeper understanding of biology, the world, and human health. However, it also brings significant new challenges to the interpretation of sequencing and mass spectrometry data, the current software tools ill-suited for many modern studies. The first half of this dissertation explores some of these challenges and solutions in the context of a particularly demanding domain – that of serological antibody proteomics. Our team has developed a combined sequencing and proteomics approach for profiling the human serum antibody repertoire. This opens an unprecedented view into the nature of the adaptive immune system and provides insight on antibody repertoire dynamics in both health and disease. The platform also provides effective means to evaluate vaccine efficacy and identify potential antibody therapeutics. Chapter 1 reviews recent advances in and results from such molecular level characterization of the serum antibody repertoire. Detailed in the second chapter, challenges specific to antibody repertoire proteomics preclude the use of standard analysis methods and motivated our development of novel tools and approaches for interpreting serum repertoire proteomic data. I will shift focus in chapters 3 and 4 to present an experimental and computational workflow for accurate and full-length de novo peptide sequencing. We applied 351 nm ultraviolet photodissociation (UVPD) on chromophore-tagged peptides and developed software for sequencing the resultant UVPD mass spectra. Improvements described in chapter 4 enable the software to automatically learn from and interpret new types and combinations of spectra from the same precursor peptide. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this machine learning framework on CID/UVPD spectral pairs and obtain results, from low resolution spectra, comparable to current state of the art. Continued development of these de novo interpretation and sequencing methods, in part or in whole, may sidestep many of the remaining challenges facing repertoire proteomics, and successful application of these efforts promises further advancement in antibody repertoire characterization and understanding.Biomedical Engineerin

Linguistic discrimination on campus: Ratings of and attitudes toward student writing with African-American English

Based on empirical evidence, this study identifies a contradiction between attitudes towards the use of African-American English in student writing vs. how such writing is actually rated by university English instructors. Even when instructors expressed highly positive views of the use of stigmatized varieties of English in student essays, a statistically significant difference (p=0.027) was found between their ratings of essays with and without features of African-American English. These findings indicate that university instructors, even those who are consciously aware that linguistic discrimination is problematic, are not immune to the effects of linguistic discrimination. These results highlight the importance of dialect education and awareness programs for university English instructors as well as the need for further research into the prevalence of standard language ideology and linguistic discrimination at the university level