The Real Disaster Is Above Ground: A Mine Fire and Social Conflict

In the 1950s Centralia was a small town, like many others in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania. But since the 1960s, it has been consumed, outwardly and inwardly by a fire that has inexorably spread in the abandoned mines beneath it. The earth smokes, subsides, and breathes poisonous gases. No less destructive has been the spread of dissension and enmity among the townspeople. The Real Disaster Is Above Ground tells the story of the fire and the tragic failure of all efforts to counter it. This study of the Centralia fire represents the most thorough canvass of the documentary materials and the community that has appeared. The authors report on the futile efforts of residents to reach a common understanding of an underground threat that was not readily visible and invited multiple interpretations. They trace the hazard management strategies of government agencies that, ironically, all too often created additional threats to the welfare of Centralians. They report on the birth and demise of community organizations, each with its own solution to the problem and its diehard partisans. The final solution, now being put into effect, is to abandon the town and relocate its people. Centralia’s environmental disaster, the authors argue, is not a local or isolated phenomenon. It warns of the danger lurking in our own technology when safeguards fail and disaster management policy is not in place to respond to failure, as the examples of Chernobyl and Bhopal have clearly demonstrated. The lessons in this study of the fate of a small town in Pennsylvania are indeed sobering. They should be pondered by a variety of social scientists and planners, by all those dealing with the behavior of people under stress and those responsible for the welfare of the public. J. Stephen Kroll-Smith is associate professor of sociology at the Hazelton campus of Pennsylvania State University. Stephen Robert Couch is associate professor of sociology at the Schuylkill campus of Pennsylvania State University.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_labor_history/1002/thumbnail.jp

The Buyer's Response Technique - A Framework for Improving Comparable Selection and Adjustment in Single-Family Appraising

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the Buyer's Response Technique (BRT) may be used as an adjunct or alternative framework to estimating appropriate adjustment size when performing the sales comparison approach for single-family houses. The BRT builds upon the traditional appraisal forms used in the appraisal profession, while capturing the benefits of selected marketing research techniques. The goal is to illustrate a technique the appraiser can use to achieve more accurate market value estimates in the appraisal of single-family houses by incorporating information provided by recent purchasers.

Utility Theory and Rent Optimization: Utilizing Cluster Analysis to Segment Rental Markets

The research reported here segments apartment residents and units into homogeneous groups. This segmentation is accomplished via cluster analysis. The purpose of the research is to identify market segments with higher marginal utility preferences for selected project or unit amenities; with the ultimate goal of rental rate optimization. The uniqueness of the research is twofold in that the "tenant response" based hedonic analysis is modeled via cluster analysis instead of the typical regressive framework. The usefulness of the research is based in the presentation of a methodology that should at least be considered as an adjunct technique to the typical regression analysis.

Exploring Strategic Organizational Engagement in Social Media: A Revelatory Case

There has been little theorizing in information systems (IS) or management literature to inform organizational strategies for social media engagement. Aral et al. (2013) lament the dearth of scholarly work focused on understanding organizations’ high-level social media strategies. In this research, we describe our case research to develop an empirically informed understanding of strategic organizational engagement in social media to advance organizational goals. We present an in-depth case study of strategic social media engagement at a successful multi-national business and IT consulting firm who routinely develops and deploys social media strategies to advance organizational goals. We situate our interpretation in the dynamic capabilities perspective, and present a revelatory case well-suited to developing an empirically-informed understanding of strategic social media engagement to advance organizational goals. We develop an analytic perspective of social media based as social systems, and describe topical collectivities as strategically important members of their ontology

A scoping review of the pharmaceutical care needs of people with sensory loss

Objectives This scoping review collated evidence of the pharmaceutical care needs of people with sensory loss (SL). Methods Electronic databases were searched with no limit on year of publication: Medline (1946); Embase; Cinahl (1979); and Web of Science (1985). Search terms included the following: pharmacy; sight/hearing/dual impairment. Studies were included if they involved people with SL requiring pharmaceutical care and/or pharmacists/pharmacy support staff providing pharmaceutical care for people with SL. All study designs were eligible. This was a scoping review, and as such, the quality of studies was not formally evaluated. Key findings Eleven studies were included. People with SL had lower levels of medication knowledge than their peers without SL. People with SL were identified as being at higher risk of iatrogenic harm than people without SL. Communication was a barrier to the provision of pharmaceutical care for people with hearing loss, with pharmacists relying on the provision of written information. The prevalence of SL increases with age, yet only two studies included older people. No studies involved family or carers of people with SL, people with dual loss or people with SL receiving polypharmacy. Conclusions There is a paucity of data regarding the pharmaceutical care needs of people with SL. Unmet pharmaceutical care needs put people with SL at increased risk of harm from their medicines. A detailed understanding of the needs of people with SL is required which will inform future delivery of pharmaceutical care for this vulnerable population

The Associations of Cancer’s Financial Stress on the Patient-Caregiver Dyad’s Sleep and Psychological Well-Being

https://openworks.mdanderson.org/sumexp23/1037/thumbnail.jp