Investigations

This powerpoint presentation covers investigation of workers’ compensation claims

Report of the Transition Leadership Team of Jim Rex, State Superintend of Education

South Carolina’s sixteenth State Superintendent of Education, Dr. Jim Rex began working to implement the comprehensive vision for education reform. Dr. Rex’s transition leadership team began the task of recommending reforms in five areas crucial in improving South Carolina’s schools: Accelerating innovation; Reforming accountability to ensure success; Expanding choices for parents and students; Promoting fair and equitable school funding; and Elevating and reinvigorating the teaching profession. The team's recommendations will be the catalyst for a statewide discussion of comprehensive school reform

Directory of South Carolina schools 1999-2000

This is a school directory for South Carolina, published for the 1999-2000 school year, beginning with an organizational chart of schooling. The directory includes a map outlining school districts. The directory covers state, county, and local personnel as well as all South Carolina schools. Personnel information includes main addresses of institutions, individual names, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses. The directory includes alphabetical personnel, division, office, and service indexes. The directory includes listings for education-related institutions and organizations, state-supported, vocational, and federal schools, and special school districts. The directory lists colleges and college presidents, denoting type of institution, enrollment, and contact information. The directory includes a listing of private and charter schools. The directory lists elementary and high schools and includes brief school statistics such as the numbers of students enrolled and numbers of teachers. Public schools are organized both alphabetically and by county. The directory also includes scheduling information and calendars for families and students, organized by district. This includes a calendar of opening and closing dates as well as a composite of school calendars. The directory lists chief administrators, supervisors, and superintendents for South Carolina schools, and all main superintendents in the United States

The values and benefits of environmental elements on housing rents

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. The value provided by availability of environmental elements on human quality of urban life is difficult to assess and incorporate into urban planning and development. Researchers worldwide have seldom objectively factored these attributes into property pricing and associated decisions. This study contends that a better understanding of the effect of environmental elements requires systematic study of the relationship between objective and subjective measures of environmental phenomena and human responses. This paper summarizes the outcomes from applying Hedonic Pricing (HP) and Life Satisfaction (LS) methods - providing valuation in an increasingly expanding and privatized property Iranian market. A survey was carried out from 400 households that are more likely to make location choices and pay rent and property expenses in the city of Shiraz. The findings indicates that Shiraz neighbourhoods are likely to be characterized by deep environmental segregation. This study informs the decisions of policy makers and property developers regarding sales and purchases conversion, property development, urban nature conservation, and design of ecological green-space networks

Safety and Security Certification of Electric Bus Fleets - Industry Best Practices

Recently, bus transit agencies nationwide have slowly shifted from reducing their carbon footprints through alternative fuel vehicles to eliminating their carbon emissions by adopting battery electric fleets. This push is supported by FTA's commitment to reducing carbon emissions from transit vehicles, infrastructure, and construction through their Low or No Emissions Grant Program funding. In harmony with the battery electric bus (BEB) market's expansion, bus transit systems are also presented with the emergence of new technologies not commonly found in U.S. transit systems, specifically with BEBs. The progression of such technology has exemplified the need to expand current safety and security certification (SSC) capabilities to ensure that agencies can maintain their overall safety performance. Therefore, the primary objective of this research initiative is to develop minimum SSC program practices and protocols for transit agencies to verify that BEBs and their associated facilities, systems, and equipment are safe for revenue operations

A longitudinal study of tobacco use among American Indian and Alaska Native tribal college students

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>American Indians (AI) have the highest smoking rates of any ethnic group in the US (40.8%), followed most closely by African Americans (24.3%) and European Americans (23.6%). AI smokers also have more difficulty quitting smoking compared to other ethnic groups, evidenced by their significantly lower quit ratios, and are among the least successful in maintaining long term abstinence. While health disparities like these have existed for years among AI, the epidemiology of smoking and nicotine dependence has not been optimally described among this underserved population.</p> <p>Our overarching hypothesis is that the susceptibility of AI to cigarette smoking and nicotine dependence and its consequences has both an underlying nicotine metabolism component as well as psychosocial, cultural, and environment causes. We are well-positioned to explore this issue for the first time in this population. Our objective is to establish a cohort of AI tribal college/university students to determine the predictors of smoking initiation (non-use to experimentation), progression (experimentation to established use), and cessation (established use to cessation). Much of what is known about the process of smoking initiation and progression comes from quantitative studies with non-Native populations. Information related to smoking use among AI tribal college/university (TCU) students is entirely unknown and critically needs further investigation. This study will be the first of its kind among AI college students who are at the highest risk among all ethnic groups for tobacco dependence.</p> <p>Methods/design</p> <p>First year students at Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas will be recruited over four consecutive years and will be surveyed annually and repeatedly through year 5 of the study. We will use both longitudinal quantitative surveys and qualitative focus group methods to examine key measures and determinants of initiation and use among this high risk group.</p

The performance of the jet trigger for the ATLAS detector during 2011 data taking

The performance of the jet trigger for the ATLAS detector at the LHC during the 2011 data taking period is described. During 2011 the LHC provided proton–proton collisions with a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and heavy ion collisions with a 2.76 TeV per nucleon–nucleon collision energy. The ATLAS trigger is a three level system designed to reduce the rate of events from the 40 MHz nominal maximum bunch crossing rate to the approximate 400 Hz which can be written to offline storage. The ATLAS jet trigger is the primary means for the online selection of events containing jets. Events are accepted by the trigger if they contain one or more jets above some transverse energy threshold. During 2011 data taking the jet trigger was fully efficient for jets with transverse energy above 25 GeV for triggers seeded randomly at Level 1. For triggers which require a jet to be identified at each of the three trigger levels, full efficiency is reached for offline jets with transverse energy above 60 GeV. Jets reconstructed in the final trigger level and corresponding to offline jets with transverse energy greater than 60 GeV, are reconstructed with a resolution in transverse energy with respect to offline jets, of better than 4 % in the central region and better than 2.5 % in the forward direction