The New Urban Spiritual? Tentative Framings for a Debate and a Project

AHRC-funded project 'The Urban Spiritual: Placing Spiritual Practices in Context' (AH/H009108/1), Working Paper #1

Analysis of the usability of a preliminary design for an EDM metadata mapping tool

Europeana aims to bring together metadata for cultural heritage objects from institutions throughout Europe, to increase their visibility and accessibility. This project requires that metadata created and stored in a multitude of different formats and variations to be normalized into a single, standard format, which is soon to be EDM. This constitutes a massive effort on the part of institutions and aggregators, and any system that can ease the process of converting millions of metadata records could be very beneficial to these cultural institutions. This research explores the usability of a potential design for a metadata mapping tool intended to assist in the creation of a mapping specification from a local schema to Europeana’s EDM format. The design incorporates five components necessary to consider when creating a quality mapping of elements. In order to ascertain usability, a prototype system was created, and a cognitive walkthrough was conducted to identify usability issues. While the design could be a viable option, usability issues must first be addressed, including how metadata information is presented and how the tool handles complex mapping situations.Joint Master Degree in Digital Library Learning (DILL

ANALYSIS OF REACTION TIME EXPERIMENT DATA USING POINT PROCESS TECHNIQUES

Point process data with a latent or hidden component arise in a variety of research fields. Examples include reaction time, forest fires, seismology, and transactional data. We develop statistical methodology that can be applied to point process data with a latent component. The methodology is applied to data from a number of reaction time (RT) experiments. Reaction time experiments have been of interest to psychophysicists for more than a century. A reason for this interest lies in the fact that the time taken to perform a task indicates the complexity of the operations occurring in the brain. We study three types of visual-motor RT experiments that increase in complexity. The main contributions of my thesis are the development of two types of models that can be used in the analysis of point process data, in particular RT data. For each of the three RT experiments, we develop a parametric model to help provide a foundation for understanding the behavior of nonparametric intensity estimates. We also study threshold models and introduce different variants for the three RT experiments. The parameters in a threshold model have direct biological interpretations regarding inferences on the eye-brain-hand system. Additional contributions include the use of nonlinear regression in parameter esti111 mation for our simple RT parametric model. This estimation method is useful when it is of interest to obtain a single set of parameter estimates for data sets obtained using different flash rates. We also provide a derivation of a covariance that is necessary for a hypothesis test by Asimit and Braun (2005)

When the saints go marching in: an ethnography of volunteer tourism in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans

This original study examines a new phenomenon in New Orleans tourism. Since Hurricane Katrina hit in late August 2005, droves of individuals and groups have come to New Orleans to help rebuild the city. Through conducting fifty interviews with these individuals from 2008-2009, the author traces the steps of volunteer tourists in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. This study investigates the experiences of volunteer tourists. Additionally, the author immersed herself with volunteer tourism groups to experience volunteering and the groups herself. Through careful inspection of original interviews with volunteer tourists, the author discovers how the volunteer tourists contribute to the city of New Orleans. Particularly, the author looks how stories explicate the experiences of volunteer tourists in New Orleans and how stories serve as souvenirs for the tourists. Additionally, the author shows how volunteer tourists are motivated through their altruism and how religion facilitates volunteer tourists’ altruistic motives. The next chapter discusses volunteer tourists decisions to work on vacation and how they understand their work in New Orleans as contributions to the city. In “Layers of Place: Understanding New Orleans through the Perspectives of Volunteers,” the author uncovers how volunteer tourists form a relationship with the city and its residents. Finally, the author looks at future possibilities for research

Long term production of genetically transformed somatic embryos of orchardgrass (Dactylis glomerata) in suspension culture

Orchardgrass is the only Gramineae species whose somatic embryos progress to a fully mature (germinable) stage within one liquid medium. As embryos mature, the scutellar epidermis begins to dedifferentiate and cells are sloughed off. These cells divide and form new embryos creating a cyclic regeneration system. Genetic transformation of these cells provides the opportunity to mass produce transformed embryos. In this study, somatic embryos removed from leaves were transformed via microprojectile bombardment with a gene construct containing both the uidA gene coding for expression of the bar gene which inactivates phosphinothricin (PPT), the active ingredient in herbicides such as Basta and bialaphos. Both genes were driven with the ubi1 promoter. Embryos were cultured before bombardment on Schenk and Hildebrandt medium amended with 30 μM dicamba (SH-30) and containing 0.3 M each of mannitol and sorbitol for a 24 h pre and 24 h post bombardment osmotic treatment. The embryos were then transferred to fresh SH-30 medium and cultured in the dark at 21°C for 2 wk to form callus. Samples of the resulting calli were incubated in 5-bromo-4-chloro-3-indolyl β-D glucuronic acid (x-gluc) substrate to test for GUS expression. All embryos whose callus showed GUS expression were placed into suspension culture. The cultures were sieved through a 710 μm mesh screen at 30 d intervals and the medium and cells which passed through were returned to culture. From the tissue that was removed, 100 embryos were incubated in x-gluc to determine the number of transformed embryos present. The number of embryos expressing GUS was found to increase more than 2 fold between 30 d and 60 d after culture initiation and did not decrease until 120 d after initiation. One hundred remaining embryos were plated on SH medium without dicamba (SH-0) and incubated in 16 h light/8 h dark at 21 °C/15 °C in order to germinate. Regenerated plants were potted and kept in the greenhouse. A young leaf of each plant was brushed with a 0.1% solution of Basta to test for tolerance to the herbicide. A total of 143 plants were tested. Six displayed complete tolerance and 10 showed a localized reaction where the herbicide was applied. Of the six tolerant plants, one was confirmed by Southern blot analysis to contain the bar transgene. Six cultures remaining from the above experiment were each sieved through a 710 μm and a 210 μm screen to create three fractions of different cell size. Each fraction was then split into two cultures. One culture was suspended in liquid SH-30 medium amended with 12 mM each of proline and serine plus 2.5 mg/L bialaphos added as a selective agent. The other culture was suspended in SH-30 medium with casein hydrolysate and used both as a control and to continue the culture. The control cultures were then split into a casein hydrolysate control and a control containing 12 mM each of proline and serine. At 14 d intervals, fresh weight of each culture was measured and viable cells were counted in 1 ml samples of each culture. At 49 d after culture initiation, all cultures were incubated in x-gluc to test for both the number of embryos expressing GUS and the extent to which GUS was expressed. It was observed that, although more embryos exhibited some amount of GUS expression in non-selective cultures, cultures which had undergone selection pressure displayed uniform GUS expression throughout the tissue

Accountancy Master\u27s Graduates Receive Prestigious CPA Exam Award

Ole Miss ranks No. 1 in the SEC, tied for No. 4 nationally for Sells Awards from 2020 to \u272

Fortification of pureed foods for long-term care residents

Elderly people living in long-term care (LTC) are at risk for malnutrition. Those who consume a pureed diet may be particularly at risk because of the food restrictions required on a pureed diet. Fortification of pureed foods with micronutrients may be an effective technique to treat malnutrition. The purpose of this study was to develop fortified pureed foods to incorporate into a menu at a LTC facility to assess if nutrient intakes and serum vitamin levels increased. Fortification levels were determined using a combination of two techniques: the Dietary Reference Intakes report on planning formula, Estimated Average Requirement plus two standard deviations of intake; and Health Canada’s method of using a defined nutrient contribution to the total daily intake. Fortification levels for 11 vitamins and 9 minerals were determined, which allowed for formulation of a vitamin/mineral mix and a vitamin-only mix. Seven pureed foods were fortified and triangle sensory tests were performed to determine whether fortification changed the flavour of the foods. Panelists were able to discriminate between the unfortified and vitamin/mineral fortified mix samples (P > 0.05). When the vitamin-only fortified foods were subjected to the triangle test, the panelists were unable to detect a difference (P 0.05).The development of acceptable vitamin-fortified pureed foods is feasible and fortified pureed foods are an effective way to increase the nutritional status of LTC residents

Socio‐spatial negotiations in Lisbon: Reflections of working‐aged lifestyle migrants on place and privilege

In the context of inequalities inherent in regimes of mobility and the rapid transformation of Lisbon by increased tourism and transnational mobility, this paper seeks to foreground under-the-radar narratives of young working-aged middle-class migrants on their socio-spatial positioning in the city. Situated at the nexus of youth mobilities and lifestyle migration, our objective is to examine the stratifications and diversities present within lifestyle migration to the city by focusing on migration motivations and migrants' own reflections on their place-making strategies and privilege in the city. Based on 10 narrative interviews and participant observation in transnational hangouts, our results reveal how the creation of “alternative” lifestyles is hinged on both mobility practices and local moorings as young movers reinvent themselves professionally in the place of arrival. Our results show that they negotiate their place and social position through (i) balancing place-consumption practices between what is construed as the transnational and the local and (ii) by situating themselves outside of the subjective residential geography of privileged migrants. This is part of a moral code to appease their political conscience and justify their presence in a city that has been rapidly transformed by tourism and other transient populations.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

'Its a fine line between . . . self discipline, devotion and dedication: negotiating authority in the teaching and learning of Ashtanga yoga

This article looks at the production and shaping of the self via Ashtanga yoga, a bodily practice, growing in significance in Western cultures, which can involve a radical form of (re)shaping the self. In particular, it looks at the interaction of external and internal sources of authority, including the yoga student’s own expertise of themselves (experiential authority), the authority of the practice and the authority of the teacher. This allows the article to rethink standard models of authority in educational and ‘spiritualities of life’ literatures, which have generally imagined a top-down singular form of authority, essentially stamped onto the subjects being educated. The article outlines what might enter into a more ‘distributed’ form of authority – being not simply the educator figure (their positionality, status, institutional location, contextualisation within prior fields of knowledge/belief) but also how their exertion of authority meshes (and sometimes conflicts with) the ‘experiential authority’ of the subjects being educated, articulating with their own ‘self-authority’ (what they know, expect and command from themselves, on the basis of countless prior experiences, encounters, interactions, times and spaces). The article draws upon qualitative fieldwork carried out in Brighton, UK