Determinants of Housing Prices in Pittsylvania County

The purpose of this research is to determine the implicit factors influencing housing prices in Pittsylvania County, a rural county in Southside Virginia. Currently in Pittsylvania County there is a debate over whether or not to mine what is believed to be the largest deposit of uranium in the United States, containing approximately 119 million pounds of uranium ore at an estimated value of $7 billion to$10 billion. The Virginia Coal and Energy Commission issued its final approval for the National Academy of Sciences to study the debate from a socio-economic standpoint. The $1.2 million study is currently taking place on Coles Hill Farm in Chatham, VA and is expected to last 18 months. In addition to the uranium issue, much of the previous work on housing valuation models has been done in urban areas, so it is of interest to see which factors are important in a rural community as opposed to a metropolitan area. The sample consists of 163 transactions obtained from the Navica Multiple Listing Service system for the date range of September 1st, 2008 through August 31st, 2009. A hedonic pricing model was used to estimate the regressions because of the heterogeneous nature of housing market. The hedonic model allows us to measure the marginal effect of a one unit change in any of the independent variables on the dependant variables. Continuous and dummy variables were used in the regressions. The continuous variables estimated were: acres of the property, age of the house, age squared, number of bathrooms, number of bedrooms, square footage of the basement, number of days the house was on the market, miles away from Cole Hill Farm, and square footage of the house. The dummy variables that were estimated include: whether or not the house had central air, if the basement was finished or not, if the house was stick built or not, and location dummies for Chatham High School, Dan River High School, and Tunstall High School. The major findings were that across the board location within Pittsylvania County does not seem to matter, at least based on the four high school districts. The presence of the current uranium situation also doesn\u27t seem to have any significant influence on prices in the current time period. The most significant variables are the physical characteristics that make up the house and property itself such as acres, age, age squared, bedrooms, bathrooms, basement square footage, house square footage, and whether the house was stick built or not

Test-Driven Web Application Development: Increasing the Quality of Web Development By Providing Framework with an Emphasis On Test-Driven Design and Development Methodologies

Web applications , especially those based on interpreted programming languages , are quickly becoming more utilized and more commonplace than traditional client applications. Despite this growth, no open solution has yet fulfilled the need of a risk-reducing development framework that supports test-driven methodologies and tools designed to coordinate the resources responsible for the most effective development of web applications based on interpreted programming languages. This research paper presents a test-driven development framework consisting of openly available components that can be used by development teams writing web applications based on interpreted programming languages based on the methodologies and tools used by traditional software development teams using compiled programming languages

Ecosystem effects of ocean acidification

I am investigating areas of the seabed that are already acidified by carbon dioxide, so that we can see which organisms thrive and which are most vulnerable. To do this I am investigating underwater volcanoes where carbon dioxide bubbles up like a Jacuzzi, acidifying large areas of the seabed for 100s of years. The natural gradients of carbon dioxide are like a time machine, showing which organisms can survive and what coastal habitats might look like in the coming years. But a major criticism has been that all my work was focused on one volcanic vent site off Ischia Island near Vesuvius; so how is this relevant to the people who grow shellfish in the NE Atlantic or those that show tourists the Great Barrier Reef? For the past year my group has been repeating the Ischia experiments at other volcanic vents in Europe, Baja California and Papua New Guinea. What concerns me most is that as the carbon dioxide levels increase to those we expect to see in our life-times this causes a dramatic loss of marine biodiversity, both in temperate and in tropical systems. Key groups, like sea urchins and coralline algae, cannot survive as the water becomes corrosive, and fish avoid the high carbon dioxide areas when they lay their eggs. Some organisms are able to adapt to the effects of long-term acidification – some can calcify even faster at high carbon dioxide levels - but the vents mainly benefit non-calcified organisms. Invasive species of algae and stinging jellyfish do especially well. Some species have an outer layer of protective tissue that allows them to tolerate acidified seawater, such as Porites corals in the tropics and Mytilus mussels in temperate areas. But these carbon dioxide tolerant organisms can only survive if they are not stressed by other factors. We have found that the combination of acidification and rising temperatures kills-off corals and shellfish and that increasing carbon dioxide reduces biodiversity across-the-board, from simple organisms (such as bacteria and microalgae), to flora (like seaweeds and seagrasses), and fauna (such as corals and molluscs). I hope that information from these naturally acidified areas will be used to strengthen marine conservation efforts, as unstressed systems are more resilient than stressed ones.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Mechanized Metrics: From Verse Science to Laboratory Prosody, 1880-1918

Post-print version of the article deposited in accordance with SHERPA RoMEO guidelines. Copyright © 2009, Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science and Technology Vol.17(3), pp285-308. Reprinted with permission by The Johns Hopkins University Press.From roughly the 1880s, a methodical verse “science” was beginning to assert itself. Gripped by the thought of articulating an objective, fact-based metrics, poetry scientists brought to bear on the traditional verse line principles of observation and later full-blown experimental practices--not to mention a curious array of instrumentation. By the turn of the century, metrical verse was being subjected to a rigorous measurement regime, which employed techniques and apparatus derived from the new disciplines of experimental physiology and psychology. Proponents of this newly mechanized metrics pitched themselves enthusiastically into the turn-of-the-century prosody fray, believing they could resolve, once and for all, some of the fundamental dilemmas of versification

Vitamin A Metabolism and Commensal Stimulationi in the Promotion of Mucosal Immunity

The gastrointestinal tract is replete with commensal microbes and dietary nutrients that provide homeostatic signals. Antigen presenting dendritic cells (DC) residing in the underlying lamina propria (Lp) respond to these signals; however, how they contribute to intestinal T cell homeostasis is unclear. In Chapter 2, LpDC are revealed to uniquely induce naïve T cell differentiation into the Foxp3+ regulatory T cell (Treg) subset. Further, the molecular mechanisms controlling this capacity both in vitro and in vivo are shown to hinge on the vitamin A metabolite, retinoic acid (RA), which LpDC are equipped to synthesize, and the cytokine, TGF-beta. T cell expression of retinoic acid receptor alpha (RARalpha) is shown to be critical for RA to induce enhanced Foxp3+ Treg induction. Chapter 3 extends upon these findings and addresses the influence of the commensal microbiota in the regulation of this pathway. A Toll like receptor (TLR) 9 ligand, commensal derived DNA, is identified as a potent adjuvant in the gut mucosa, which shapes T cell homeostasis in the GI tract. Accordingly Tlr9–⁄– mice display an intestinal site-specific increase in Foxp3+Treg concomitant with a decrease in TH cells. Dysregulation in Foxp3+ Treg/TH homeostasis results in mucosal-specific impaired immune responses in Tlr9–⁄– animals, which can be reversed upon partial depletion of Foxp3+ Treg. Chapter 4 builds upon findings from Chapter 2. The role of vitamin A metabolism in the regulation of mucosal immunity is examined. Vitamin A insufficient (VAI) mice, which lack vitamin A and metabolic derivatives, mount impaired mucosal TH-1 and TH-17 responses. These defects are reversed upon administration of RA. Moreover, Rara–⁄– mice recapitulate the homeostatic and immune defects observed in VAI mice. Strikingly, loss of basal RA/RARalpha signaling hinders early T cell activation events. Cumulatively, the data argue that steady-state cues from microbiota and nutrients shape the inflammatory tone of the Lp to prime mucosal TH responses. These data also identify a fundamental role for vitamin A metabolism in T cell activation and suggest this pathway may have evolved with the development of adaptive CD4+ T cell responses to coordinate host protection