Eric W. Rood Administration Center- Fire Protection and Life Safety Analysis

A Fire Protection & Life Safety Analysis was conducted in order to fulfill the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Fire Protection Engineering. The Fire Protection & Life Safety Analysis consisted of a prescriptive and performance-based analysis of the Eric Rood Administration Center (Rood Center). The prescriptive based analysis was conducted to determine if the Rood Center adhered to the applicable codes and standards. It utilized the 2013 California Building and Fire Codes and the 2012 Life Safety Code (NFPA 101). Other NFPA codes that were referenced included the 2013 edition of NFPA 13, Standard for the Installation of Sprinkler Systems, the 2013 edition of NFPA 72, National Fire Alarm Signaling Code, and the 2015 edition of NFPA 2001, Standard on Clean Agent Fire Extinguishing systems. The prescriptive based analysis examined four portions of the building’s fire protection system: Egress Analysis & Design, Fire Detection & Alarm Notification, Water-based Fire Suppression, and Structural Fire Protection Deficiencies were found in the building’s fire detection and notification systems, as well as the inspection, testing, and maintenance of said systems. The building’s primary fire alarm system has photoelectric smoke detectors installed in only portions of the building. The bulk of the detectors are installed in the exit corridors with typically only one detector per department. While the number of smoke detectors in most departments is lacking, some departments don’t have any at all. The first floor has only 23 smoke detectors, while the second floor has only 16. Based on coverage-area-per-detector calculations alone, the first floor should have a minimum of 56 detectors and the second floor should have a minimum of 58. One of the departments in the building that does have smoke detectors, has only local detectors (they are not connected to the building’s fire alarm control panel (FACP)). Two of the fire scenarios in the performance based analysis indicated the fires were detected within 10 seconds of ignition. In the other two fire scenarios, the fires were not detected until 73 seconds and 107 seconds into the simulations respectively. Examining the building’s notification systems revealed several issues as well. Three of the notification devices types currently in use in the building are listed in the FACP’s manual as not compatible. Similar to the detection system, there are not enough notification appliances (audio or visual) throughout the building to ensure proper coverage. Inspections and tests are not done to confirm proper audible and/or visual levels in the building during an active alarm. The performance based analysis examined how the building’s fire protection system would react to a fire, and whether occupants would have enough time to escape to safety. A computational fluid dynamics modeling program, Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS), was used to estimate the available safe egress times (ASET) for four different fire scenarios throughout the building. Those values were then compared with the required safe egress times (RSET) calculated in the prescriptive based analysis for each fire scenario. The original RSET values were calculated for the departments affected by the fire scenarios. The fire models were analyzed and the ASET values were determined when conditions either first became untenable, or when all the occupants had exited the building; whichever came first. The conditions in the building became untenable before people could evacuate the building in all four fire scenarios (RSET \u3e ASET). In some situations, conditions became untenable seconds after the fire alarm was activated, and several minutes before evacuations were complete. The performance based analysis determine that the arrangement of the dead end hallway off the second floor lobby was especially problematic as it could cause the occupants to be trapped in the event of a fire. Two fire scenarios were examined, one with the fire in the dead end hallway, and another with the fire in the main lobby. In both cases, the conditions in the building became untenable long before the occupants would have been able to escape the hallway, let alone the building

An Effect All Together Unexpected: The Grotesque In Edgar Allan Poe\u27s Fiction

Edgar Allan Poe is everywhere. His influence resonates not only in American literary criticism, but in popular culture where Homer and Bart Simpson act out The Raven in an episode of The Simpsons and Poe can be seen getting into a rap battle with Stephen King on the popular YouTube video series Epic Rap Battles. While a great deal has been written about the significance of Poe\u27s oeuvre, few scholars have focused primarily on the grotesque in his short fiction. This thesis will explore Edgar Allan Poe\u27s aesthetic influences, his place within the gothic tradition and describe the three elements that create his specific grotesque aesthetic: the affective reader, obsessive design, and haptic space. This thesis will describe how these elements whether in the unnamed narrator\u27s bridal suite in Ligeia or the protagonist of The Pit and the Pendulum experiencing the apparatus of torture during the Spanish Inquisition, create a sense of indeterminacy, trapped between pain and pleasure, beauty and terror, life and death. Analyzing Poe\u27s texts this thesis will describe these grotesque figurations and what these constructions mean narratively and artistically and how they inform the author\u27s larger intellectual goals

Crossing the race divide : interracial sex in antebellum Savannah

This article explores the social significance of inter-racial sexual contact in an antebellum Southern city. How did inter-racial sex challenge the established social hierarchy in Savannah? Was it a controversial issue, viewed as a threat to the social order, or was it accepted as an inevitable evil resulting from a mixed population residing in close proximity

Substantial Guidance Without Substantive Guides: Resolving the Requirements of Moore v. Texas and Hall v. Florida

Exempting certain classes of people from the possibility of the death penalty is hardly new; Blackstone noted the common law prohibition on executing the insane, stating that furiosus furore solum punitur -madness is its own punishment.\u27 Even then, however, the reasons for the rule [were] less sure and less uniform than the rule itself. 2 In the United States, Eighth Amendment jurisprudence does little to clarify the reasons behind a particular death penalty exemption because it relies, in part, on the practice of the states to decide what is outside the bounds of acceptable punishment. 3 Because exemptions are thus dependent on state actions, the reasoning behind any particular death penalty exemption is a step removed from the states\u27 underlying reasons for their own practices. These states\u27 conclusions, analyzed by the Court independently from their underlying reasons, then become the objective indicia the Court uses to determine whether a punishment is valid under the Eighth Amendment. Ironically, these conclusions are considered the clearest and most reliable objective evidence of contemporary values, even when the reasons behind the legislatures\u27 votes are not considered

Examining the finances of higher education institutions to understand their priorities

These three articles critically examined the priorities of American higher education institutions through studying their patterns of spending. Precipitated from an interest in the consequences that the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009 had on public higher education institutions in the United States, this research studied how the institutions chose to allocate their financial resources. By using finances as a measure of priorities across the higher education system, these collective choices revealed systemic priorities. Each of these three articles analyzed these priorities from a unique perspective. Article one examined the consequences of changes in state funding on the likelihood of academic programs closing by discipline. Using survival analysis with data between 2000 and 2009 from 574 institutions, the study addressed the question of whether changes in state funding had an effect on academic program closures and whether effects differed across academic disciplines. This study contributed to the higher education literature by identifying environmental variables that stakeholders could monitor. It also provided a more complex and contrasting perspective to the most recent literature published on academic program closures. Finally, the stages of budget contraction in the literature were affirmed by this study. The second article showed how institutions\u27 tuition revenues and state funding allocations affect the subsequent expenditure patterns. Using growth curve modeling to analyze data between 1990 and 2009 of 165 public research institutions this study provided insights to how changes in revenues disproportionally effect changes in expenditures. Results demonstrated that negative changes in state funding had significantly different effects on functional areas\u27 proportion of expenditures than did positive changes in state funding. Further, positive and negative changes in tuition revenues had effects on different functional areas. The third article inspected inter-collegiate athletics within the American higher education system and looked at progress toward fulfillment of Title IX by longitudinally analyzing expenditures per sport by gender. Published research had studied participation numbers over time, but no known research studied expenditures as a way to measure progress toward gender equity. This study used univariate growth curve modeling to examine self-reported data from 990 institutions between 2003 and 2010. The findings demonstrated that the growth in funding for men\u27s teams is greater and getting faster than the growth in funding for women\u27s teams

Spin Cobordism and Quasitoric Manifolds

This dissertation demonstrates a procedure to view any quasitoric manifold as a “minimal” sub-manifold of an ambient quasitoric manifold of codimension two via the wedge construction applied to the quotient polytope. These we term wedge quasitoric manifolds. We prove existence utilizing a construction on the quotient polytope and characteristic matrix and demonstrate conditions allowing the base manifold to be viewed as dual to the first Chern class of the wedge manifold. Such dualization allows calculations of KO characteristic classes as in the work of Ochanine and Fast. We also examine the Todd genus as it relates to two types of wedge quasitoric manifolds. Background matter on polytopes and toric topology, as well as spin and complex cobordism are provided

Inside the American Stratification System: Imageries from the Black Writers

The following paper was given at a seminar, Teaching African-American Literature, at the Center for Literary and Cultural Studies of Harvard University in April 1991. The paper addresses several questions. If social science, as a matter of scientific principle, must choose to avoid ethical conclusions, do black novelists, poets, and essayists help fill the ethical void? But then, are they objective enough

A standardized test for the second semester of world history

Not AvailableClinton M. SmithNot ListedNot ListedMaster of ArtsDepartment Not ListedCunningham Memorial library, Terre Haute, Indiana State University.isua-thesis-1931-smithMastersTitle from document title page. Document formatted into pages: contains 79p. : ill. Includes appendix and bibliography

Dosage compensation in birds

AbstractThe Z and W sex chromosomes of birds have evolved independently from the mammalian X and Y chromosomes [1]. Unlike mammals, female birds are heterogametic (ZW), while males are homogametic (ZZ). Therefore male birds, like female mammals, carry a double dose of sex-linked genes relative to the other sex. Other animals with nonhomologous sex chromosomes possess “dosage compensation” systems to equalize the expression of sex-linked genes. Dosage compensation occurs in animals as diverse as mammals, insects, and nematodes, although the mechanisms involved differ profoundly [2]. In birds, however, it is widely accepted that dosage compensation does not occur [3–5], and the differential expression of Z-linked genes has been suggested to underlie the avian sex-determination mechanism [6]. Here we show equivalent expression of at least six of nine Z chromosome genes in male and female chick embryos by using real-time quantitative PCR [7]. Only the Z-linked ScII gene, whose ortholog in Caenorhabditis elegans plays a crucial role in dosage compensation [8], escapes compensation by this assay. Our results imply that the majority of Z-linked genes in the chicken are dosage compensated