Advancing Information Design for Architectural Image Interfaces

A Level II Digital Humanities Start-Up grant of $49,673 is requested for the design and implementation of an innovative and highly sophisticated user interface for the Brumfield Russian Architecture Photographic Collection of some 30,000 images, which has been digitized and cataloged by the University of Washington Libraries-- an enormously labor-intensive process. This work was supported by an NEH grant in 2006-2009, an earlier pilot grant from the Gladys Kriebel Delmas Foundation, and subsequent smaller awards from the Allen and Smith Foundations. This project will realize in a fully functioning interface both the possibilities inherent in the already innovative metadata structure devised for the collection under the previous grants, and the potential of the most recent techniques and strategies for managing and presenting large and complex data sets on the internet

Professionals Knowledge Of Standards Required For Leed Certification Of Indoor Recreation Facilities At Four Year Public Universities

Bryant (1995), found that students “were at least 20% more likely to take part in recreational activity than in any other listed campus activity”. Campus recreation facilities (CRF)s promote “healthy living” programs and services for students. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a certification program housed within the United States Green Building Council and a LEED certification indicates the facility has a “green” status. LEED certification standard measures include Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy and Atmosphere, Materials and Resources, and Indoor Environmental Quality. Interestingly, southeastern states have the fewest LEED certified CRFs (Kiernan, 2015). The purpose of this study was to explore LEED certification knowledge among campus recreation associates (CRA) and university architects (UA) at four-year public universities in the Southeastern United States. This study explored how well prepared CRF professionals are to lead LEED certification efforts. Data was collected via survey to determine the breadth and depth of facility professional knowledge of LEED certification criteria for the Building Design and Construction certification. 119 complete responses were used in this study, and the response rate was 41%. As a control, the survey was sent to 16 campuses currently LEED certified and listed as best CRFs in the USA (Church, 2013). Data was analyzed using SPSS software to determine the differences in hypotheses centered on LEED certification awareness among the participants (ANOVA, Paired T-Test, and Independent T-Test) as well as to determine the certification standards met and not met (Means and Standard Deviations). The main findings revealed that UAs at universities that have a certified CRF are the most knowledgeable about LEED standards. However, hypothesis two found that there was a significant difference between the LEED survey scores of UAs and CRAs and the known LEED score of the CRF at the university of which they were employed in the categories of Materials and Resources (p=.00), Indoor Environmental Quality (p=.00), Total LEED (p=.01), and Prerequisite (p=.00). This shows that, even though UAs at universities that have a certified CRF may have the most LEED knowledge, they may not know all of the criteria that each facility on their campus meets. CRAs at universities with a CRF that is not certified had the least amount of LEED knowledge about their CRF. This could be true because the CRAs have less to do with LEED certification than UAs. There were some LEED standards that no respondent had knowledge about. For example, Prerequisites measured whether facilities used chlorofluorocarbon-based refrigerants. The three most met standards among UAs and CRAs at universities with a noncertified CRF were Materials and Resources, Indoor Air Quality, and Prerequisites. Results suggest that at universities with a noncertified CRF at least 50% of UAs indicated their facilities met 36 out of 56 standards and CRAs met 32 out of 56 standards. Further research needs to continue to investigate the benefits of LEED certification as it goes through updates. Also, future research should investigate why southeastern states are so far behind when it comes to sustainability

‘The Lorn land’: A Winter’s Tale

This article attempts to extract some sense of the genuine experience of peasant life in the north in the harsh winters of this climatic zone. What did the tillers of the land do in the frigid months from November to March? How did they cope with the inhospitable weather —blanketing snows, bitter cold, biting winds, and recurrent frosts that delayed the spring thaw, conditions that transformed the north country into a ‘lorn land’, a land lost, forsaken, wretched?

Measurement of Birefringence of Low-Loss, High-Reflectance Coating of M-Axis Sapphire

The birefringence of a low-loss, high-reflectance coating applied to an 8-cm-diameter sapphire crystal grown in the m-axis direction has been mapped. By monitoring the transmission of a high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavity as a function of the polarization of the input light, we find an upper limit for the magnitude of the birefringence of 2.5 x 10^-4 rad and an upper limit in the variation in direction of the birefringence of 10 deg. These values are sufficiently small to allow consideration of m-axis sapphire as a substrate material for the optics of the advanced detector at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory

The Pregnant Diabetic

At present, more diabetic females of childbearing age are going through pregnancy, and more diabetic children are living beyond maturity. The outlook for the pregnant diabetic has improved greatly but the infant mortality rate of diabetic children remains relatively high. My remarks are based on observations on 105 pregnant diabetics from my private practice

Essays on the Impacts of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

This dissertation consists of three chapters, each of which provides causal evidence on the impacts of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in a distinct, policy-relevant area. The first chapter provides evidence of SNAP’s effects on the food retail industry. I combine data on SNAP participation, industry-specific retailer outcomes, and state SNAP expansions from 1998 to 2016. To address the endogeneity of SNAP participation, I employ a novel simulated eligibility instrumental variables framework exploiting variation in state SNAP eligibility expansions. I find that higher SNAP participation leads firms to operate more stores in industries where benefits are typically accepted, especially smaller general stores – a category dominated by dollar and discount stores. The second chapter provides evidence of SNAP’s effects on Medicaid enrollment and spending. I combine state-level information on SNAP eligibility expansions, SNAP participation, and Medicaid enrollment and spending from 1999 to 2012. I summarize diverse SNAP eligibility expansions through a novel simulated eligibility measure. I find that SNAP expansions increase Medicaid enrollment and decrease Medicaid spending per enrollee, suggesting that SNAP participation lowers barriers to enrollment in Medicaid for groups who cost lower on average to cover. The third chapter provides evidence of SNAP’s effects on mortality during its introduction in the “War on Poverty” era. SNAP was introduced as the Food Stamp Program (FSP) on a county-by-county basis from 1961 to 1975. I combine county-level information on the timing of FSP introduction with death counts from 1969 to 1978. I estimate the impacts of the FSP’s introduction on various mortality rates over time, including the overall mortality rate, population subgroup-specific rates, and cause-specific rates. I find that, among a subsample of high-poverty counties where the program’s introduction is likely to have a larger impact, the FSP reduced mortality over time. This effect was largely driven by reductions in the black, male, and age 0-19 mortality rates