Retreat in Northern California

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1988.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 77).This design thesis explores the relationship between building and the natural environment. The design and site, a retreat in a wild area of the California coast, were chosen to provide ample engagement of this theme. The design concept is to design a retreat whose architecture is inspired by rhythms of time in nature. The site , Sinkyone Wilderness Park, provides a diverse landscape with several specific sites that are dominated by temporal rhythms in nature. Four such sites have been chosen: 1. The Redwood Grove , temporal rhythm is long , the trees are two thousand years old and insulate the micro-climate under the forest canopy from seasonal changes; 2. The Sea Cliff, temporal rhythm is the periodicity of the tides; 3. The Hilltop, temporal rhythm is dominated by the yearly changes in the sky and heavens ; 4. The fault-line Rift Valley, a micro-climate of high seasonal response in foliage and animal life. The retreat occupies all four sites. A guest stays a few nights at each. Although each retreat fragment has been designed to respond to its micro-environment, the experience of the whole is to accentuate a way of being in and looking at the landscape that is consistent, and is based on the initial design concept. The retreat's function is divided programatically into two basic divisions; chapel or meditation spaces, and the sleeping and eating spaces. The chapel spaces have responded most directly to the sites' temporal nature, capturing in their focus the unique quality about the site. The dwelling spaces, though architecturally linked to the chapel space, play off of the intense focus of the chapel space by accentuating the act of habitation and dwelling on that site. The four retreat dwellings are explored in site models and the development of the designs. A narrative that leads one through the site will give an experience of the retreat.by Christopher McTee Lyon.M.Arch

eBank UK: linking research data, scholarly communication and learning

This paper includes an overview of the changing landscape of scholarly communication and describes outcomes from the innovative eBank UK project, which seeks to build links from e-research through to e-learning. As introduction, the scholarly knowledge cycle is described and the role of digital repositories and aggregator services in linking data-sets from Grid-enabled projects to e-prints through to peer-reviewed articles as resources in portals and Learning Management Systems, are assessed. The development outcomes from the eBank UK project are presented including the distributed information architecture, requirements for common ontologies, data models, metadata schema, open linking technologies, provenance and workflows. Some emerging challenges for the future are presented in conclusion

The relationship between job performance and voluntary turnover in the Canadian Forces

x, 123 leaves : ill. ; 28 cm.Bibliography: leaves 67-70.The primary objective of this study is to examine the direct relationship between job performance and voluntary turnover in the Canadian Forces (CF). Principle Components Analysis using a sample of 10,422 officers uncovered intellect, operational job performance, professionalism and physical fitness and appearance as performance factors. Categorized by four equal interval performance levels, one-way analyses of variance showed a significant negative linear relationship between Operational Job Performance and voluntary turnover. A significant positive linear trend exists between Intellect performance and voluntary turnover. Finally, significant negative linear and quadratic trends exist between Professionalism and voluntary turnover where the highest proprotions of voluntary turnover are in the extreme performance intervals. No significant relationship with turnover appear for the Physical Fitness and Appearance performance factor. A sample of 24,213 Non Commissioned Member personnel was subject to the same procedures, however, findings were non-significant. The conclusions are: (1) proprotions of Officers who voluntarily leave vary significantly as a function of their level of performance; (2) the importance of the factor and direction of the relationship varies as a function of the type of performance observed and the type of occupational group studied; (3) the findings suggest that the majority of officer leavers can be described as, poor operational job performers, good intellectual performers, and poor professionals; and, (4) in general, because of the importance of the Operational Performance as a measure of military performance, voluntary turnover is interpreted as having an overall positive impact on the organizational effectiveness

A Dominant-Negative PPARγ Mutant Promotes Cell Cycle Progression and Cell Growth in Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells

PPARγ ligands have been shown to have antiproliferative effects on many cell types. We herein report that a synthetic dominant-negative (DN) PPARγ mutant functions like a growth factor to promote cell cycle progression and cell proliferation in human coronary artery smooth muscle cells (CASMCs). In quiescent CASMCs, adenovirus-expressed DN-PPARγ promoted G1→S cell cycle progression, enhanced BrdU incorporation, and increased cell proliferation. DN-PPARγ expression also markedly enhanced positive regulators of the cell cycle, increasing Rb and CDC2 phosphorylation and the expression of cyclin A, B1, D1, and MCM7. Conversely, overexpression of wild-type (WT) or constitutively-active (CA) PPARγ inhibited cell cycle progression and the activity and expression of positive regulators of the cell cycle. DN-PPARγ expression, however, did not up-regulate positive cell cycle regulators in PPARγ-deficient cells, strongly suggesting that DN-PPARγ effects on cell cycle result from blocking the function of endogenous wild-type PPARγ. DN-PPARγ expression enhanced phosphorylation of ERK MAPKs. Furthermore, the ERK specific-inhibitor PD98059 blocked DN-PPARγ-induced phosphorylation of Rb and expression of cyclin A and MCM7. Our data thus suggest that DN-PPARγ promotes cell cycle progression and cell growth in CASMCs by modulating fundamental cell cycle regulatory proteins and MAPK mitogenic signaling pathways in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs)