Filter as Metaphor: The McMillan Sand Filtration Site

Boon of the municipal water works projects in the 19th century was generated by the need to secure a reliable, efficient and publicly available source of fresh water and prevent the spread of disease, as the number of inhabitants in cities was ever increasing. These water works projects were built out of necessity to maintain the health, safety and welfare of the population they served. The McMillan sand filtration system is a testament to late 19th century engineering and public works design. With the advent of new technologies and growing population, a new, more cost effective, and faster filtration system was built to replace the old slow sand filtration method. This thesis springs from the question of "how can the McMillan sand filtration site maintain its historical role identity and function?" New technologies have rendered the facility obsolete. This thesis will address through alternative master planning, different scenarios by investigating specific intentions. It will also seek to strengthen the community through adaptive re-use of its existing structures, the linkage of the community to the surrounding neighborhoods and its relationship to the city of Washington, DC

Racial differences in functioning among elderly nursing home residents, 2004

"Reducing racial disparities in health care is an important national policy goal. Previous research on racial disparities has focused on nursing home placement rates. Recent research suggests that black nursing home residents may be more likely than residents of other races to reside in facilities that have serious deficiencies, such as low staffing ratios and greater financial vulnerability. In 2004, 11% of the 1.3 million nursing home residents aged 65 and over in the United States were black. National descriptions of black nursing home residents are limited. Using data from the most recent National Nursing Home Survey, this report highlights differences observed between elderly black nursing home residents and residents of other races in functioning and resident-centered care. The specific measures highlighted are functional status, incontinence, and management of incontinence."Adrienne L. Jones, Nancy L. Sonnenfeld, and Lauren D. Harris-Kojetin.Caption title."December 2009."Also available via the World Wide Web.Includes bibliographical references (p. 7

The Voting Rights Act Under Siege: The Development of the Influence of Colorblind Conservatism on the Federal Government and the Voting Rights Act

Recent activity by state governments to change voting rights law to limit access to the polls by minority voters, and directly challenge the legislation that protects voters from discrimination based on race, reveals an unsettling trend: states are increasingly comfortable challenging the federal mandate promulgated by the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965. The Voting Rights Act was once hailed as a crown jewel in the constellation of legislation born of the Civil Rights movement. Its implementation had a significant positive impact, expanding the integration of polls and elected offices. Reauthorized four times since 1965, the VRA appeared to have become a permanent piece of the American voting system. Yet in fact, the VRA has endured significant opposition from conservatives since 1965, opposition that has influenced the federal government that implements the law. The effort to weaken the protection made possible by the VRA is driven by race-based Republican partisanship interested in the establishment of a durable conservative majority. Recently, a challenge to Section 5 of the VRA, Shelby v. Holder (2013), resulted in a Supreme Court decision that ruled Section 4 of the Act is unconstitutional, thereby removing Section 5 coverage over all the states required to submit to federal review of their voting law changes. This dissertation examines how the development of conservatism since 1965 has affected the implementation of the Voting Rights Act and the response by the federal government and the states to the law and its implementation over time. I argue that the development of colorblind conservatism and the ideological platform undergirding it has had a chilling and potentially devastating impact on the federal government\u27s implementation of the spirit and letter of the VRA, on stated adherence to the mandates and intention of the Act, and, ultimately, on the rights of those the VRA was designed to protect

Inclusion, Contrast and Polysemy in Dictionaries: The Relationship between Theory, Language Use and Lexicographic Practice

This paper explores the lexicographic representation of a type of polysemy that arises when the meaning of one lexical item can either include or contrast with the meaning of another, as in the case of dog/bitch, shoe/boot, finger/thumb and animal/bird. A survey of how such pairs are represented in monolingual English dictionaries showed that dictionaries mostly represent as explicitly polysemous those lexical items whose broader and narrower readings are more distinctive and clearly separable in definitional terms. They commonly only represented the broader readings for terms that are in fact frequently used in the narrower reading, as shown by data from the British National Corpus

The PPAR Gamma Agonist Troglitazone Regulates Erk 1/2 Phosphorylation via a PPARγ-Independent, MEK-Dependent Pathway in Human Prostate Cancer Cells

Thiazolidinediones (TZDs) dramatically reduce the growth of human prostate cancer cells in vitro and in vivo. To determine whether the antitumor effects of TZDs were due in part to changes in the MEK/Erk signaling pathway, we examined the regulation of Erk phosphorylation by the TZD troglitazone within the PC-3 and C4-2 human prostate cancer cell lines. Western blot analysis revealed troglitazone-induced phosphorylation of Erk in both PC-3 and C4-2 cells. Troglitazone-induced increases in Erk phosphorylation were suppressed by the MEK inhibitor U0126 but not by the PPARγ antagonist GW9662. Pretreatment with U0126 did not alter the ability of troglitazone to regulate expression of two proteins that control cell cycle, p21, and c-Myc. Troglitazone was also still effective at reducing PC-3 proliferation in the presence of U0126. Therefore, our data suggest that troglitazone-induced Erk phosphorylation does not significantly contribute to the antiproliferative effect of troglitazone

Availability of long-acting and permanent family-planning methods leads to increase in use in conflict-affected northern Uganda: evidence from cross-sectional baseline and endline cluster surveys

Humanitarian assistance standards require specific attention to address the reproductive health (RH) needs of conflict-affected populations. Despite these internationally recognised standards, access to RH services is still often compromised in war. We assessed the effectiveness of our programme in northern Uganda to provide family planning (FP) services through mobile outreach and public health centre strengthening. Baseline (n=905) and endline (n=873) cross-sectional surveys using a multistage cluster sampling design were conducted in the catchment areas of four public health centres in 2007 and 2010. Current use of any modern FP method increased from 7.1% to 22.6% (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 3.34 [95% confidence interval (CI) 2.27–4.92]); current use of long-acting and permanent methods increased from 1.2% to 9.8% (adjusted OR 9.45 [95%CI 3.99–22.39]). The proportion of women with unmet need for FP decreased from 52.1% to 35.7%. This study demonstrates that when comprehensive FP services are provided among conflict-affected populations, women will choose to use them. The combination of mobile teams and health systems strengthening can make a full range of methods quickly available while supporting the health system to continue to provide those services in challenging and resource-constrained settings