A Case Study: Project Scheduling on Quick Serve Tenant Improvement Projects

Scheduling is the basis for nearly all construction planning. For small tenant improvement projects, time is often of the essence. However, often times the project’s schedule is not closely followed, monitored, or updated. Discovering why the project’s schedule has not been followed, monitored, or updated will illuminate potential ways to improve the efficiency of planning and managing a quick serve construction project. This report will provide this information through a series of indepth interviews, as well as, observations from a three McDonald’s tenant improvement projects on the California Central Coast. From these interviews, the interviewee’s perspective of the project’s progress and schedule is important in gaining a wide perspective of this unconventional form of project management. From the observations of project’s, an outsider’s perspective is necessary to develop and research the potential efficiencies and deficiencies of this style of project management. The combination and analysis of this information provides the construction industry with new knowledge on how to manage and maintain project schedules on quick serve tenant improvement projects

The Antiferromagnetic Band Structure of La2CuO4 Revisited

Using the Becke-3-LYP functional, we have performed band structure calculations on the high temperature superconductor parent compound, La2CuO4. Under the restricted spin formalism (rho(alpha) equal to rho(beta)), the R-B3LYP band structure agrees well with the standard LDA band structure. It is metallic with a single Cu x2-y2/O p(sigma) band crossing the Fermi level. Under the unrestricted spin formalism (rho(alpha) not equal to rho(beta)), the UB3LYP band structure has a spin polarized antiferromagnetic solution with a band gap of 2.0 eV, agreeing well with experiment. This state is 1.0 eV (per formula unit) lower than that calculated from the R-B3LYP. The apparent high energy of the spin restricted state is attributed to an overestimate of on-site Coulomb repulsion which is corrected in the unrestricted spin calculations. The stabilization of the total energy with spin polarization arises primarily from the stabilization of the x2-y2 band, such that the character of the eigenstates at the top of the valence band in the antiferromagnetic state becomes a strong mixture of Cu x2-y2/O p(sigma) and Cu z2/O' p(z). Since the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem requires the spin restricted and spin unrestricted calculations give exactly the same ground state energy and total density for the exact functionals, this large disparity in energy reflects the inadequacy of current functionals for describing the cuprates. This calls into question the use of band structures based on current restricted spin density functionals (including LDA) as a basis for single band theories of superconductivity in these materials.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. B, for more information see http://www.firstprinciples.co

An Evidence-Based Approach to Utilizing Cold Therapies for Post-Exercise Recovery

Whilst cold therapies such as cold-water immersion are regularly used in practice, the practical application does not always align with best practices. In this commentary, we highlight the key components of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences (BASES) Expert Statement on the use of cooling therapies for post-exercise recovery and provide additional discussion on the empirical evidence and rationale that informed our perspective. We developed a series of specific questions to ensure that cold therapy recovery protocols are context-specific and tailored to the needs of the individual athletes. These questions, which cover the WHEN, WHAT, and HOW of cold therapy, were central to the development of the Expert Statement. This was presented as a decision tree to ensure that key messages could be concisely disseminated across a range of sporting environments and populations (e.g., gyms, locker rooms, and treatment rooms), supporting and informing decision-making for those wanting to use cold therapy to assist their recovery in line with previously published peer-reviewed work. Discussion points included the suitability of cooling therapies in some contexts, how athletes’ choice of cooling mode should be largely driven by practicalities (e.g., budget and availability), and, lastly, future research directions

IR Spectrometer Using 90-Degree Off-Axis Parabolic Mirrors

A gated spectrometer has been designed for real-time, pulsed infrared (IR) studies at the National Synchrotron Light Source at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. A pair of 90-degree, off-axis parabolic mirrors are used to relay the light from an entrance slit to an output recording camera. With an initial wavelength range of 1500–4500 nm required, gratings could not be used in the spectrometer because grating orders would overlap. A magnesium oxide prism, placed between these parabolic mirrors, serves as the dispersion element. The spectrometer is doubly telecentric. With proper choice of the air spacing between the prism and the second parabolic mirror, any spectral region of interest within the InSb camera array’s sensitivity region can be recorded. The wavelengths leaving the second parabolic mirror are collimated, thereby relaxing the camera positioning tolerance. To set up the instrument, two different wavelength (visible) lasers are introduced at the entrance slit and made collinear with the optical axis via flip mirrors. After dispersion by the prism, these two laser beams are directed to tick marks located on the outside housing of the gated IR camera. This provides first-order wavelength calibration for the instrument. Light that is reflected off the front prism face is coupled into a high-speed detector to verify steady radiance during the gated spectral imaging. Alignment features include tick marks on the prism and parabolic mirrors. This instrument was designed to complement single-point pyrometry, which provides continuous time histories of a small collection of spots from shock-heated targets

How Should Research And Monitoring Be Integrated?

Scientific knowledge of Chesapeake Bay and tidal tributaries has accumulated over many years beginning mostly with descriptive surveys prior to the 1960\u27s and 1970\u27s and evolving towards a coupling of monitoring and research in recent years. This essay discusses the need to more fully couple monitoring and research efforts in the Bay system because such a union of efforts is argued to be the most effective way to assess gross trends in the health of the system (monitoring) and to understand the basic forces causing these trends (research). We argue that together they provide part of the framework necessary for effective management of the living resources of the bay region.https://scholarworks.wm.edu/vimsbooks/1176/thumbnail.jp

Migraine in postmenopausal women and the risk of invasive breast cancer.

BACKGROUND: The frequency of migraine headache changes at various times of a woman's reproductive cycle. Menarche, menses, pregnancy, and perimenopause may carry a different migraine risk conceivably because of fluctuating estrogen levels, and in general, migraine frequency is associated with falling estrogen levels. Given the strong relationship between endogenous estrogen levels and breast cancer risk, migraine sufferers may experience a reduced risk of breast cancer. METHODS: We combined data from two population-based case-control studies to examine the relationship between migraine and risk of postmenopausal invasive breast cancer among 1,199 ductal carcinoma cases, 739 lobular carcinoma cases, and 1,474 controls 55 to 79 years of age. Polytomous logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). RESULTS: Women who reported a clinical diagnosis of migraine had reduced risks of ductal carcinoma (OR, 0.67; 95% CI, 0.54-0.82) and lobular carcinoma (OR, 0.68; 95% CI, 0.52-0.90). These associations were primarily limited to hormone receptor-positive tumors as migraine was associated with a 0.65-fold (95% CI, 0.51-0.83) reduced risk of estrogen receptor-positive (ER+)/progesterone receptor-positive (PR+) ductal carcinoma. The reductions in risk observed were seen among migraine sufferers who did and did not use prescription medications for their migraines. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that a history of migraine is associated with a decreased risk of breast cancer, particularly among ER+/PR+ ductal and lobular carcinomas. Because this is the first study to address an association between migraine history and breast cancer risk, additional studies are needed to confirm this finding

Status of U.S. testing of the High Performance Hall System SPT-140 Hall thruster

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/77315/1/AIAA-2000-1053-280.pd

RAMESES publication standards: realist syntheses

PMCID: PMC3558331This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited